looking an efficient fix for flipped faces

[Dave Buckley]

i currently have a shockingly bad model in terms of face orientation and therefore faces not rendering.

 

faces shown green in the screenshot, i'm currently using xView to fix the problem, but it's taking ages to go round and flip the individual faces.

 

does anyone know of a method to make all of the faces consistent? scripts? or am i using xView wrong?

 

i thought that by select each element i could use element sub-object mode in edit mesh modifier then unify then flip until they were oriented correctly.

 

seems i'm wrong

 

really need help now if possible

[Joseph Petrino]

2-Sided materials works well enough.

[mattclinch]

? i thought xview let you select the flipped faces?

[JonRashid]

Unifying and flipping will work better if you have welded all the verts so it can solve the continuous surfaces better

[mattclinch]

just found this on Area -

 

"[in xView] the Face Orientation test is an exception. It does not really attempt to figure out what is correct and what is not. All it does it shade the backfaces of ALL polygons in the highlight color so you can SEE what way they are facing. If you rotate the view around and peek through holes, you will see the backside of each polygon being shaded. Thus, since technically the result from this test is "ALL FACES", using the Select option selects all faces, which is a bit unfortunate, but figuring out what polygon should be considered "flipped" is a tricky business and really depends on the POV. (See the Normals modifier which never manages to do what you think it should).

 

All other xView modules DO select the offending faces, edges or vertices correctly. The Overlapping Faces in the Baghdad example would select them automagically. This also applies to scripted tests - I wrote an example for the MAXScript Reference which lets you check the area of faces and highlight/select using various modes and thresholds, with each mode using its own unique color to represent the results."

[mattclinch]

you might be lucky and find that those flipped faces are whole elements which would speed up the cleaning - otherwise i'd simply suggest importing cleaner geometry.

[Dave Buckley]

you might be lucky and find that those flipped faces are whole elements which would speed up the cleaning - otherwise i'd simply suggest importing cleaner geometry.

 

 

unfortunately not, they aren't complete elements. its a mega ball-ache and is doing my head in. can't import better geometry as the file is from a program called articad and they have nothing else. it exports as .dxf, i tried to go into sketchup first and then save as .skp and then into max via connection extension. that still didn't eliminate the problem.

 

in fact, the one in the screenshot is the .skp import, the direct .dxf is even worse.

 

if i do select the element and then try and unify the faces it doesn't seem to do anything.

 

better get back to it but thanks for the help. click, click, click, click, click

[TheAllusionisst]

If you want me to try running it through PolyTrans, it has a pretty robust DXF geometry cleanup feature that might get you something easier to work with. No promises but I would be glad to run it through and see what it spits out for you, just let me know.

[Dave Buckley]

be my guest, fingers crossed, file attached.

[TheAllusionisst]

Will give it a try!

[TheAllusionisst]

OK, what I did is run it through PolyTrans geometry processing to unify normals, delete redundant vertices, etc. and then saved it out in a few formats to see what worked best, provided those formats and two Max Design 2010 versions after I rotated the scene 90 degrees in the X coordinate.

 

Their is a Cornice piece that is screwed and I think no floor as well as needing some smoothing assigned to stools etc., but all I did is a cursurary glance and you can decide if it is an improvement or not for you. Hope it helps and sorry I don't have a lot of time to spend on it. Here is the link to the file, please let me know when you have it and I will remove it.

 

Link Removed

Edited November 23, 2009 by Russell L. Thomas

[Tommy Burns]

Hi Dave

 

I have come up against models like this in the past and have tried to fix them often spending hours on it. How long have you spent on this so far?

I made a concious decision to remodel projects like this as its not as annoying and probably doesn't take as long. Also you are left with a decent model should the client want to change things around. Let us knowa how you get on with it.

 

Tommy

[Dave Buckley]

thanks guys i have the file

 

gonna check it out now.

 

i spent a bit of time on it over the weekend, mainly texturing the bits i had cleaned.

 

i came up with this crop of the kitchen.

 

this was more of a wood exercise, the customer makes the different woods for the kitchens and they wanted to see their wood looking decent on a render.

 

i was sent a really crappy photo of an exisiting cupboard door so i had to fix distortion, eliminate highlights and shadows and crop it, map it to size for the various parts of the door.

 

add that to the crappy model and this wasn't a fun job.

 

i hate the granite like worktop and the chrome jars, i literally threw them in to populate the scene. just focusing on the wood, still some problems on the wood especially the tops of the draws in the lower half of the image.

[Dave Buckley]

Russell

 

I've just opened the file named 'Max2010DirectPRImport'

 

This works great, all faces oriented correctly, models divided up nicely into individual elements for texturing. Perfect.

 

If possible could you tell me what this .max file consists of.

 

Is it . . .

 

the original .dxf i sent you, opened in polytrans, cleaned, saved back as a dxf (the one included in the file you sent back), then that cleaned .dxf imported into max and saved as a Max file??

 

I just need to know the basic process of that specific .max file. Not in any great detail.

 

I only ask because i'm not sure which programs the other files have come from??

 

I'm guessing you opened the original .dxf in polytrans, then saved the cleaned dxf. Import the dxf inot max and sketchup. the .3ds file is an export from sketchup?

[TheAllusionisst]

All the files were from bringing into PolyTrans your DXF file and running geometry processing on it to unify normals and reduce redundant faxes, edges and vertices. That particular file was just saved as the native BDF file format for PolyTrans and imported into max directly. The other files were exported out of PolyTrans into SKP, OBJ, 3DS etc. format to experiment quickly, the SU.max file I sent was just taking the PolyTrans Exported as SKP and using Max's SKP importer.

 

I just didn't have the time to play with it, just make the conversions and I thought giving you some different formats might allow you to find something that works with your workflow. The ascii DXF version is just one format of DXF and I just ran yours through the process and exported it out as a cleaned up DXF.

 

To re-itterate, your file was imported into PolyTrans (Nugraf actually which is PolyTrans with some rendering capabilities) and the "Geometry Processing" ran on it to fix it up and then saved out in it's native BDF file format and imported into Max Design 2010 via PolyTrans integration plugins.

 

Robert Landsdale, Owner of Okino and PolyTrans is the most helpful vendor I have ever come across, he personally responds immediately via email to try and answer your questions and it has been that way for over 5 years. Just wanted to give them their PROPS!

[Dave Buckley]

brilliant, thanks for the help Russell, it's much appreciated. The direct bdf export works the best of all of them.

 

Anyone else want to C&C on the rendered output i got previously then feel free

[TheAllusionisst]

It should, one less conversion in the process, but for sake of time, I just did a few while I was in Nugraf incase there was a grouping problem or similar. Glad I could help!