How to give a spline shape a surface in 3ds max...

Chris2005

I went around and created a spline shape around of Prologic9's Enterprise D warp nacelle:



I wanted to create a new grill, etc. so those gaps at the back of the nacelles would be gone... what I want to do is take this spline shape and make it have a surface, but I can't figure out how... I've tried the shell modifier... no go... unless I need to do something else with the spline first...

japetus

Hi Chris, maybe you could try turning on the Renderable Spline settings and use a rectangular shape, delete the inside facing part of the rectangle faces and then Bridge those edges to close the gaps. The front rounded bit might be harder but that shoudl get you most of the way there.

Coolhand

shell only works on a surface, there is a surface modifier though it probably won't give you the results you want.

not sure why you have so many points in a spline - the whole point of a spline is that you can describe a precise curve by only having to define a couple of points and a handle, i guess you made edge selections and made a spline from that?

since you probably started with mesh geometry, and presumably you're going back there too, why are you even taking this approach? you'd have been better off to extrude new geometry directly from the edge selection you made, making this spline seems like a pointless intermediate step you could have avoided.

japetus

Kind of agree with Coolhand...hard to know w/o seeing the nacelle geometry..are you talking about like the lines going going down the length of the blue nacelle area on the Galaxy?

Chris2005

Coolhand wrote: »

shell only works on a surface, there is a surface modifier though it probably won't give you the results you want.

not sure why you have so many points in a spline - the whole point of a spline is that you can describe a precise curve by only having to define a couple of points and a handle, i guess you made edge selections and made a spline from that?

since you probably started with mesh geometry, and presumably you're going back there too, why are you even taking this approach? you'd have been better off to extrude new geometry directly from the edge selection you made, making this spline seems like a pointless intermediate step you could have avoided.

Because I put a vertex at each vertex of the nacelle's shape so the shape matched the inside if the nacelle for a perfect fitting...

What I did was used the snap to vertex and added vertices to a 4-point square spline... and just basically traced the points on the nacelle itself...

Well, I was trying to find another way, but none was coming to mind... except what I've done here.

japetus wrote: »

Kind of agree with Coolhand...hard to know w/o seeing the nacelle geometry..are you talking about like the lines going going down the length of the blue nacelle area on the Galaxy?

Yes, the inset part of the nacelle that is blue...

Coolhand

again, ditch the spline, i don't see how its helping you at all - just extrude new geo directly off the old geometry, hopefully you can use edge loops to save some clicking - remember you can extrude edges as well as polys.

Chris2005

Coolhand wrote: »

again, ditch the spline, i don't see how its helping you at all - just extrude new geo directly off the old geometry, hopefully you can use edge loops to save some clicking - remember you can extrude edges as well as polys.

Alrighty, I'll give it a shot.