Geometry smoothing

[Chris MacDonald]

Hey guys/girls,

 

I've got an issue with a site with some fairly crazy levels, and I've done what I'd normally do and drawn the splines of the road, pavements, grass, etc and put an edit poly on top to create the geometry, but I'm getting some very annoying smoothing issues happening (see picture).

 

 

Now, I am aware that I could go around the site joining the geometry one vertex at a time, but this would take a lifetime, I've tried tesselating, and quadify mesh; both of which create additional geometry where the smoothing issue occurs, and leaves me with some seriously crappy geometry:

 

 

Just wondering if any of you know of a (preferably automated) way around this?

[notamondayfan]

After you've tesselated or divided the mesh, try a relax modifier.

 

Or before you tesselate, use the cut tool and try to control the edges.

 

Dean

[matthewgriswold]

Try this out.

http://populate3d.com/products/terrain/

[Scott Schroeder]

Try this out.

http://populate3d.com/products/terrain/

 

I cannot agree more with this suggestion. It is an awesome tool.

[braddewald]

I hate to change the subject -- but that tool looks awesome. Are there any similar auto-retopologizing tools out there for non-terrain meshes? It seems like this would be extremely useful for cleaning up captures from 123D Catch meshes or something similar.

[salvador]

I agree with populate3D, but for the time being, add an Edit Poly modifier, weld your vertices to a convenient threshold; select all polygons and click "Retriangulate" and clear all smoothing groups.

 

If you need smooth surfaces later on, select them and assign a SG locally.

[Scott Schroeder]

I hate to change the subject -- but that tool looks awesome. Are there any similar auto-retopologizing tools out there for non-terrain meshes? It seems like this would be extremely useful for cleaning up captures from 123D Catch meshes or something similar.

 

Ask and ye shall receive. I haven't had much time to play around with it, but it looks promising.

 

http://www.scriptspot.com/3ds-max/scripts/max-retopo

 

There are other paid options like TopoGun: http://www.topogun.com/

[braddewald]

Awesome! I can't believe I didn't know about this! Thanks a lot Scott!

[Chris MacDonald]

Some excellent responses here, thanks guys.

[cg_Butler]

I can say that populate terrain has been more than useful for me many many times. Not only does it create perfect quads from meshes, but from splines too, and to any detail you specify. It's amazing.

 

Also look at his other plugin to create parametric geometry scatters across surfaces. Populate panels. It too is also amazing!

[miguelalba1]

That tool you sugest Matt Griswold looks very promising, didnt know nothing about this plugin for Max and can be very useful. Thanks for saying.