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  • MadKoiFishMadKoiFish9709 Posts: 5,302Member
    I stick with box modeling and use smoothing groups to control the wires, and turbosmooth for the subdiv modifier. Never seen edge constraints or constraints entry in max. Maybe it is that huge ribbon thing I kill on fresh install of max.

    The tut was a loose one just reconstructing the basic shape not any sort of accurization of the studio model.

    The tuts, I gave up maintaining the web based tuts mostly cause these for profit sites would just container link the site and earn income off my web-hosting. At one time 90% or more of my traffic was coming from these "wrapper" sites. Later on i saw sites and magazines selling pdf copies of the website. So I quit making them or maintaining them. I think I have this one somewhere on my old website back up, but finding it and compiling it for the blog will take some time. For some reason this one did not transition. be it lack of popularity or possibly missing stuff. Been so long I forget.

    OK, yeah uh, the website archives are on some hdd somewhere. It is definitely not on any active network storage nor any samples. So if I do find it it will take a while. Got like 20+ loose hdds laying about.
    Each day we draw closer to the end.
  • japetusjapetus2937 SeattlePosts: 1,397Member
    The constraints have been there forever way before the big ribbon. There are some very handy tools on the ribbon, especially conforming brushes from one geo to another and good edge tools, but to each their own I get that.ez054f9bakg6.jpg
  • MadKoiFishMadKoiFish9709 Posts: 5,302Member
    edited September 2020 #34
    Shrug never used em heh. Goes to show how not there I have been that I did not see that. Googling it shows it is some sort of way to limit face movement. could see where this could be helpful on non square faces. Dunno how I never used it before but w/e lol thought it was another subdiv way to control edge loops.

    Still not found the hdd with the web archives so this one might be lost. Probably should back up my blog as this is the ony real remaining data in my control or access.
    Post edited by MadKoiFish on
    Each day we draw closer to the end.
  • StarshipStarship464 São Paulo - BrasilPosts: 1,976Member
    japetus wrote: »
    Well at the risk of revealing how terribly I did, here's my take on the back of it. Probably lots of room for work. That shuttle bay area is indeed tricky, at least on the TMP version.

    After numerous false starts, I started with a 32 sided cylinder, to give me edges along the horizontal and vertical axis, so i could cut it in half and mirror it later...

    Thank you Mike! I´ll try to follow these steps.
    Looks like you ended it with nurms, right?

  • StarshipStarship464 São Paulo - BrasilPosts: 1,976Member
    japetus wrote: »
    The constraints have been there forever way before the big ribbon. There are some very handy tools on the ribbon, especially conforming brushes from one geo to another and good edge tools, but to each their own I get that.ez054f9bakg6.jpg

    Oh I found that ribbon, but I´m not confortable with that thing yet. For now I´m in the "try and error" phase.
    Dude... I never was a pro in Max. I did some good conversions from lightwave and blender to max, but I built just one mesh from my own (the Enterprise-B) released in 2008, in max 9 (the mesh has many flaws, but serves for a distance rendering).
    I have a hd full of unfinished conversions and wips from my own.... Now, my brain is a bit rusty. I need to relearn almost everything. But the COVID times gave me inspiration to try again. ;)
  • StarshipStarship464 São Paulo - BrasilPosts: 1,976Member
    MadKoiFish wrote: »
    I stick with box modeling and use smoothing groups to control the wires, and turbosmooth for the subdiv modifier. Never seen edge constraints or constraints entry in max. Maybe it is that huge ribbon thing I kill on fresh install of max.

    The tut was a loose one just reconstructing the basic shape not any sort of accurization of the studio model.

    Thanks Dan!
    Oh, I´m not worried with accuracy. I´m just trying to learn (or relearn). :)
    I started my sec hull from a sphere, splited in 4 parts. Deleted 2 and moved the other 2 appart, later connected them with bridge. After that mirrored, connected and started to cut the underside and the bay. Later I will post my uggly attempt.
    MadKoiFish wrote: »
    The tuts, I gave up maintaining the web based tuts mostly cause these for profit sites would just container link the site and earn income off my web-hosting. At one time 90% or more of my traffic was coming from these "wrapper" sites. Later on i saw sites and magazines selling pdf copies of the website. So I quit making them or maintaining them.

    Sadly, we will always find thieves like these popping all around...
    Many judge they are smart and the other persons are just muggles. I hate them!
    MadKoiFish wrote: »
    I think I have this one somewhere on my old website back up, but finding it and compiling it for the blog will take some time. For some reason this one did not transition. be it lack of popularity or possibly missing stuff. Been so long I forget.
    OK, yeah uh, the website archives are on some hdd somewhere. It is definitely not on any active network storage nor any samples. So if I do find it it will take a while. Got like 20+ loose hdds laying about.

    Anyway, thank you.
    Just take your time. ;)
  • japetusjapetus2937 SeattlePosts: 1,397Member
    Starship wrote: »
    japetus wrote: »
    Well at the risk of revealing how terribly I did, here's my take on the back of it. Probably lots of room for work. That shuttle bay area is indeed tricky, at least on the TMP version.

    After numerous false starts, I started with a 32 sided cylinder, to give me edges along the horizontal and vertical axis, so i could cut it in half and mirror it later...

    Thank you Mike! I´ll try to follow these steps.
    Looks like you ended it with nurms, right?

    I just ended it with a symmetry and an OpenSubdiv modifier (basically turbosmooth). Did a bit of forming the shuttlebay area with some FFD's, which are nice for moving masses of vertices around.
  • StarshipStarship464 São Paulo - BrasilPosts: 1,976Member
    As I promised, my wip:
    zrqqnva8k29v.jpg
  • japetusjapetus2937 SeattlePosts: 1,397Member
    Looks like it's off to a good start
  • StarshipStarship464 São Paulo - BrasilPosts: 1,976Member
    edited September 2020 #41
    Another approach. For both, the hard part is to chamfer the edges.... Still don´t found a good approach for chamfer.
    This one started with a cylinder, FFD3x3x3, moved a few verts, hinge from edge, and made a cut.
    er3k1r0ed1vr.jpg
    Post edited by Starship on
  • japetusjapetus2937 SeattlePosts: 1,397Member
    Max's chamfer modifier is very powerful these days. They rewrote it a couple times. Could help to bevel in the large faces of the curve and shuttlebay in w/o height then add chamfer modifier with a low amount. I'd try that...
  • MadKoiFishMadKoiFish9709 Posts: 5,302Member
    Even if they rewrote it you want to avoid any edge crossing another ate more than 90 deg as it will be a unequal chamfer in the end. Only way to avoid this is to inset the outer edges (possibly adding in some distortion) or beveling by polygon the inner surfaces.

    It is part of the reason I work in subdiv as I can allow that to take up some of the slack in areas of the hull that can cause issues when box modeling though the latter I have used multiple times.

    When working in direct box modeling you do not need to heed the tri or quad formula. So all those radiating edges are not really needed.

    another tip with the upper bay in the last image corners from the floor to the walls avoid ahving a edge leading out of the "corner" This will help if you are doing manual chamfers as that edge leaving out will cause distortion in the edge measurement.


    Some images that might help,
    examples of chamfering edges not meeting at 90deg
    bevel.jpg
    bevel-03.jpg
    you can use tools to approach adjusting things to meet the needs or do it manually such as manual cutting of a loop. Big thing to learn is how the mesh or polygons will react to what you do.
    bevel-04.jpg
    poly faces at angles thus edges do not meet at 90deg resulting in a chamfer of unequal size
    bevel-02.jpg
    i~3 is manually cutting the edges or insetting the faces then cutting them to the edge and removing the rest of the indet. GOAL is to have a "loop" or edge running the length or those parts i (img2) to remove the center edge to create the chamfer. Example 4 is that same part chamfered using the chamfer tool see how the angle increases the chamfer. This is what you want to avoid.

    not sure how useful this is but wireframe of the closest thing to a TMP refit aft.
    rereconnie-wire-butt.png
    Mix of subdiv and box modeling after collapsing the mesh. Does not show off well the recutting done to control the chamfer rounding on the hull as it is later been adjusted so I have a few edges not making a close to 90 deg crossing.
    japetus
    Each day we draw closer to the end.
  • japetusjapetus2937 SeattlePosts: 1,397Member
    Yah a lot of this just becomes second nature and it gets hard to remember exactly why I do things and what happens when you are just starting out.

    If chamfer example 4 happens to me, and it does sometims, that's when I use the edge constraint to flatten out that uneven chamfer at the end. The edge constraint will maintain the main sloped angle while letting you straighten the uneven chamfer and you won't have to be as super careful to get it all lined up right.
  • japetusjapetus2937 SeattlePosts: 1,397Member
    Also, about chamfering, the chamfer command in editable poly still kinda sucks, the chamfer modifier is where it's at, there are different type of chanfers now that seem to do a lot better job with uneven-ness, i like the modifier cuz I can just turn it on and off and fix things later on, but either way, always gotta double check they turned out ok, and working with subdivision surfaces does get rid of some of that challenge also. Just gotta find what workflow works for your style. Mine comes more from the advertising/vfx modeling where you might have to change things at the last moment so I try to keep things as flexible as possible. I get nervous when I have to collapse my modifier stack, i usually save a backup mesh
  • MadKoiFishMadKoiFish9709 Posts: 5,302Member
    edited September 2020 #46
    Yeah always keep incremental saves and a layer of "crap", "junk" or "shit" then remember to clean it out once in a while. >_> I usually have at least one final stage subdiv version of anything up to a point in modeling so I can revert.

    chamfer-001.png

    just gave it a go in 2019 and the chamfer modifier works no different than the one in editable poly in that it unequally chamfers depending on the angle of the crossing edges. So what I had to say still applies. You need to plan how the wires sit on the mesh. max seems to use some sort of percentage of dividing of the ajoining edges vs a specific measurement between them. So 1" chamfer if running through some edges not fully 90deg is not going to be 1" across the mesh. It is something that has been a issue in max since way before R2.5, when you had to install plugins to poly edit. I have seen other software not have this issue on non 90deg crossing edges. So I point it out as it is a extra thing you need to consider when modeling.

    Dunno if 2016 has the newer style modifier or chamfer tool in editable poly. All it really has done is add extra toys to the base tool. If anything I find the default smooth entire object annoying at best. Nothing worse than a object full of smoothing group settings getting obliterated by a chamfer.

    Not sure what you mean about constraints being able to correct this. Maybe if it is a flat chamfer but along a sweep it seems to just make the distortion worse and that is me having to collapse the modifier to edit this. Never really used constraints anyhow so maybe missing something.
    Post edited by MadKoiFish on
    Each day we draw closer to the end.
  • japetusjapetus2937 SeattlePosts: 1,397Member
    Yeah you're right, they're still not the greatest, especially on those Ngons you highlighted. Another key setting for chamfer is at the bottom there, set it to Smooth Chamfers only and then turn on Smooth to adjacent so it doesnt interpolate the smoothing group normal. I'm on 2020, thinking of going to 2021 finally, dunno if it's been improved. Dunno if you tried the different chamfer types like quad, uniform, or radial. Your case is kinda an extreme low poly curve which I personally wouldn't be chamfering, but I get your point and know you are a quality artist and know what you're talking about.
  • MadKoiFishMadKoiFish9709 Posts: 5,302Member
    edited September 2020 #48
    No those call outs are edges crossing the chamfered edge at steep curves. It is the edges with highly angled crossing edges that are of issue and have arrows. What is of importance are the edges here not the polies themselves.

    If you see the image it is set to quad, I use it if it works for the object or I am lazy or do not care about poly count. I will often double chamfer things to just use 4 edges vs odd edge counts that quad produces.(3 5 7 9 etc) It is a feature added since 2013 I think. Dunno if it is in 2016 (mentioned above as the version being used)

    If I use auto smoothing I will use the smooth chamfer only. as mentioned it is something I hate with the newer chamfer tools as it can fuck up your entire object of chosen smoothing groups because it defaults to smooth entire object. Really do not get why they chose that as default as it adds time wasted changing it. No where have I found it making things faster or easier.

    Again this was a example of the chamfering itself not of surfacing or poly smoothing.

    2019 does not have uniform or radial. What you see in the screen cap is what it has. Which is more than the poly editor chamfer.

    2019 is my last version of max I refuse to pay for rental ware, more so when it is no cheaper than owning it.

    It is why I push Blender for anyone even though I do not use it. It is free and is used more and more in the professional field. It is also much easier to get your work out of blender and into another software.




    Post edited by MadKoiFish on
    Each day we draw closer to the end.
  • MadKoiFishMadKoiFish9709 Posts: 5,302Member
    edited September 2020 #49
    To note on the subject of this thread, the tutorial. I think it is lost as I have gone through a lot of loose hdds so far and not found any of my old html website stuff. This is crap I last touched about 14 to 15yrs ago so it might be on a dvdr in a box in storage or in the attic of a house I no longer live in.

    best I can offer right now is the collection of orphaned images showing random stuff from various posts on forums over the years since I started using wordpress as a host. Some are part of tuts on the blogs themselves but most are instructable images or posted on various forums. Keep in mind some are OLD and of various versions of max. Example one of the materials images is from 2012.

    misc imgs
    https://madkoifish.wordpress.com/2019/07/21/collected-tut-like-images/
    https://madkoifish.wordpress.com/2019/07/21/collected-tut-like-images/
    wireframes
    https://bolidecascade.wordpress.com/2019/07/22/everybody-likes-wireframes/
    https://madkoifish.wordpress.com/2019/07/21/wireframes-r-us/

    Best thing I could offer is to look for box modeling and subdiv tutorials for hard surfacing and to ignore anything said about quads and anti tri and ngon rhetoric as you just need to understand how they affect a mesh, smoothing or subdiv vs just treating them like AIDs or the plague. Where ngons are a issue is in a deform-able animated object or as a box modeled object and it containing non planar surfacing. But even quads can be non planar and cause issues.

    good example of a buttload of ngons. Extra edges removed for ease of modeling and lower poly count. My opinion is if the edge is not changing physical geometry it has no right to exist! Only ones that are not changing geo that exist are to retain and control the smoothing algorithm, EG edge loops etc. one thing to keep in mind are "hidden edges" in poly edit the way to affect these is in poly or edge mode (select face) "retriangulate" or edit triangulation (turn does the same thing). Then you can click them to change them as max never chooses the right way to do it. I think 2013 they sorta screwed this up in usability by making them dashed lines so it is a PITA to see what is doing what in a complex object that or they just stop working or vanish. Only way to fix it is to save and restart max. Some times you have to just have a edge connecting or crossing things. Again this is something hard to teach and has to be learned by doing. It is by no means a max only thing as I filched this off IRML or one of the other LightWave users.

    bal-butt.png

    I might later on when I do not have projects consider re-approaching some of these tuts. As much of what the ones that remain are fairly dated and not much like what I do now.
    Example the hull plate tut I have found 2019 can extrude out a lot of cuts that caused issues in older versions of max in the extrude or bevel from normals.
    Post edited by MadKoiFish on
    Each day we draw closer to the end.
  • MadKoiFishMadKoiFish9709 Posts: 5,302Member
    HAH
    here an example of hidden edges in max 2019. It is a right mess as opening this 2013 file max decided to do what it wanted. ATM there are no errors so I have just left it alone.
    bal-butt-tris.png

    all sort of off topic but meh.
    And since I have the balmung open here is how the warp cutout is formed on that ship. This was a subdiv object prior to being chopped up. Uses smoothing groups to control the curve along the cutout.
    bal-warpcut.png
    probably doesn't help any though, I cannot find anything in subdiv atm on this PC.

    Each day we draw closer to the end.
  • StarshipStarship464 São Paulo - BrasilPosts: 1,976Member
    Mike and Dan: thank you very much! You both provided invaluable material for the subject!!
    Your wires and tips are a great material to study. I´ll play a little with my mesh and later I will post the results.
  • StarshipStarship464 São Paulo - BrasilPosts: 1,976Member
    edited September 2020 #52
    MadKoiFish wrote: »
    HAH
    here an example of hidden edges in max 2019.....

    When I import meshes from sketchup to max, is common to find these additional edges. Sometimes you can remove a lot of them (but usually it forces you to remap the polygons), sometimes not.
    In a max native mesh, I hadn´t seen it yet.
    Post edited by Starship on
  • MadKoiFishMadKoiFish9709 Posts: 5,302Member
    They are "hidden" edges not extra triangulation. It is part of how max works. If you are in editable poly then select edge or face edit then scroll down to the menu marked out in the image you can "edit" these edges.

    The sketchup meshes are probably in 3ds/obj or some format that cannot manage quads and ngons. EG tris only. It is part of the import process that blows as most of the formats have support but it must be set up right on export.
    Starship
    Each day we draw closer to the end.
  • japetusjapetus2937 SeattlePosts: 1,397Member
    Madkoi I see in that screenshot where some booleans are, you inset slightly and extruded in, I like that method too.
  • MadKoiFishMadKoiFish9709 Posts: 5,302Member
    Only booleans in the bal caps are windows. Rest are hand cut and chamfered up or inset. I only use boolean to "stencil" things in. OH I do registries with boolean cut too. Pro-boolean, that is.
    japetus
    Each day we draw closer to the end.
  • japetusjapetus2937 SeattlePosts: 1,397Member
    edited September 2020 #56
    MadKoiFish wrote: »
    Only booleans in the bal caps are windows. Rest are hand cut and chamfered up or inset. I only use boolean to "stencil" things in. OH I do registries with boolean cut too. Pro-boolean, that is.

    Yeah, by booleans I guess I saw they were stencils made by boolean command. I like probooleans....when I need to..and stenciling many times as well. I have a script called cleanbool.mcr that I use when I actually do a boolean not a stencil and it cleans up the junk verts, but proboolean can do that too. Mostly avoid though.
    Do you ever use the Cutter or ProCutter compound object? Sometimes I think I should try to learn how it works but so far I have methods to make things and havent needed to figure it out.
    Post edited by japetus on
  • MadKoiFishMadKoiFish9709 Posts: 5,302Member
    The way I use proboolean the cutter gives the same results. I think it was a buy out so I dunno if they are developing it anymore. Has not changed much at all since 2013.
    Each day we draw closer to the end.
  • japetusjapetus2937 SeattlePosts: 1,397Member
    edited September 2020 #58
    For the sake of discussion, and up to date versions of tools, here's a comparison with your chamfer example in Max 2020. The new(er) Quad chamfer mode fixes the bad chamfer issue in that case. But also like you pointed out with smoothing groups, for this example, on the far right I added a Smooth on top and checked Prevent Indirect Smoothing since the Chamfer modifier couldn't figure them out in this case. Also included the other modes as well. I usually stick to Uniform (default) or Quad, but Radial has been useful a couple times. Anyway...I think we've beaten chamfer to death :-D
    88z5jr3lqr5h.jpg



    Post edited by japetus on
  • MadKoiFishMadKoiFish9709 Posts: 5,302Member
    It looks like quad is actually adding in some loops with near 0 geo change. Issue I have is smoothing down the sides not part of the chamfer as most cases it will cause ugly smoothing issues you need to cut some loops or a row of edges to control. Hence why I dislike automatic anything in max. Smoothing usualy is OK at 30 but default 45 it'll smooth everything as one group unless the angle is greater than 50deg or more as it is a percentage of angle change over a measured span.

    And yes that is only 2020 and I doubt many will be using that as well as it is rentalware. So in the case of my examples it should pertain to almost everyone using max.
    Each day we draw closer to the end.
  • StarshipStarship464 São Paulo - BrasilPosts: 1,976Member
    edited September 2020 #60
    Well, I tryed several approaches and found a way it works.
    The upper part was done with bevel, chamfer and some manual adjustments in the late minute.
    The bottom part was done fist with a negative outline in the curvature, then I deleted the inner pollys and with boder sellected moved it in X and Y and chamfered. Later, used bridge and manual cut to rebuild the geometry.
    The upper cut turnned out good with a smooth modifier added.
    The bottom part also turnned good with the smooth applied, but there are hard edges that still needs correction.
    As a modelling exercise to accquire some knowledge, it isn´t that bad I think. But I could make it different in a second try. ;)
    8a3wpei48t49.jpg
    0elstfk9u66n.jpg
    Post edited by Starship on
    japetus
  • count23count23361 Posts: 779Member
    You might find some more effective help on this on the discord. We can answer in more real time, there's actually an ongoing discussion about doing hull stuff recently, actually. So it may help you.
    Formerly Nadesico.

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