CompuServe Thread

#Booly em's

6 messages in this thread
#188181From: Terry MillerAug 30, 1995 6:12 PM
Hey Kyle, I have a strange thing happening with the boolian operation. If you remember the talk we had about the little critter I was building. I took your advice and built it in three meshes, thinking I would just frankenstein everything together later. I am at the point where I have two left, the body and the head. The head was two parts, but I didn't booly them together, I attached then welded vertices. What's happening now is, the program just crashes during the partitioning faces operation. I did a test earlier, knowing that the two parts together would be over the 64K limit of faces. What I got then was "Not enough RAM for that operation". Surprising, I didn't think it would work, but I wasn't expecting that error. I have 128 megs of RAM. Anyway, I put him back on the treadmill and scrubbed off a few pounds. Now the two meshes have face counts of 63432 (the body) and 2329, 65761 total. I know this is slightly over the limit, but should be well within the limit "after" the boolian. I've tried it with "weld elements" on, and off. Same result. The screen just turns light blue all over, with different colored side borders. Any thoughts on whether this is a face count problem, or have I broken my "glitch free" running time string? Thanks, Terry
#188189From: Kyle J. McKisicAug 30, 1995 6:58 PM
Terry, One thing you can do with the clipping box is to create some copies of the box and scale/move them to where you want to generate the mesh from. If you align the boxes right next to each other (i.e. visually sharing the same edge.), you can rename each one in succession to CBOX and generate each mesh. Then do your smoothing and optimization and attach, don't boolean! the objects together. you should have a seamless mesh because the clipping extents of each mesh generation should line up correctly. – note that I'm coming up with this right now and haven't tried it in practice, but I think it should work. (in theory at least! <g>) hope this helps -Kyle
#188215From: Terry MillerAug 30, 1995 8:19 PM
Kyle, Hmmmm, sounds like it oughta work perfectly. Should even have all the vertices right there for welding if you wanted to. I tried, after writing that last message to do an attach. Got, "No RAM for attach." So I figured it had to be a face count problem. I went and optimized the body mesh (the head crashes the program when I try to optimize it) at .08 angle. Just enough to get me under the 64K, I think I ended up with 65,231 faces between the two. Boolian went off without a hitch. The head has some pretty sever angles involved around the ears, that's the only thing I can think of that crashes it when I try optimizing. It's also hollow, (this IS the creatures head we're talking about BTW) does this have anything to do with optimizing? Now, I've got another problem. I tried to crank up Meshpaint. It won't run, saying, "Meshpaint 3D requires a Truecolor display". I looked back through my 3DS.set, and every where I see Truecolor, I see = on. I'm using the Imagine 128 card with a 21" Viewsonic. My colors are set for 1024 x 768 256 colors. I think every where something ask for a driver, it says Vibrant. I wrote Murphy about it, but haven't heard form him yet. I'm sure he has the answer. Anywho, I like that theory, can't wait to try it out on something. Thanks, Terry
#188237From: Kyle J. McKisicAug 30, 1995 11:26 PM
Terry, If you aren't going to be looking inside this guys head – get rid of those inside polygons. you can do it by filling the interior of the head with some larger metaballs. (I think you're doing it with metaballs? right?) or you can do some selective face deletion. << My colors are set for 1024 x 768 256 colors.>> that's your problem – at your "C:\3DS4>" prompt type in "3DS VIBCFG" the configure your vibrant main display for 65K or 16 million colors. then it will work just fine. -Kyle
#188255From: Terry MillerAug 31, 1995 1:00 AM
Kyle, >> I think you're doing it with metaballs? right? << No, not the head. I did the head by starting with one of Tim Wilson's and yanked, deleted, scaled, and welded vertices till I went blind. It looks anything but humanoid at this point. Anyway, it's on the booger and moving lips, nose and eyebrows as I write this. I took the time waiting for the Meshpaint fix, to put in the bones, link em up, and set the pivot points. >> at your C:\3DS4>" prompt type in "3DS VIBCFG" …<< I just got word from Murph, he thinks I *may* have to go download the latest drivers for the 128 card. I'm going to just try what you said first and see where that brings me. Then, download the drivers and try again if that doesn't work. Thanks again for some great help Kyle, I'll let you know how it goes with the VIBCFG thing. Terry
#188256From: Terry MillerAug 31, 1995 1:20 AM
Kyle, >> Then it will work just fine. << Like a charm. Thanks again, Terry