#interactive smoothing
11 messages in this thread
How about edge "painting" with smoothing groups in an interactive
window? Currently, I use the "View " PXP and select faces
individually and then flip back and forth to get the effect I want,
but it's pretty clumsy and doesn't work all that well.
I think 3DS5 would really benefit from a new "edge" object category.
For instance, for smoothing, I want o smooth the border between
adjoining faces, and not necessarily the faces themselves. Also, for
complicated objects (my specialty is characters) I pretty much have
to do the smoothing on a face by face level, selecting individual
faces along a common border-very laborious. If this process could
either be automated or made interactive, I would be grateful.
Also, a question about smoothing: Every once in a while I come across
some faces that won't smooth no matter what: I can set the smoothing
angle in automatic smoothing from 0 to 360, even -1000 to 1000,
detach the offending faces as an object and assign the entire object
to any given group, do the same with selected faces, and I always get
the same result, hard edges between the faces. What am I doing wrong
here?
Hi Andrew,
<< I think 3DS5 would really benefit from a new "edge" object category. >>
recorded the wish..
<< What am I doing wrong here? >>
If you have a small reproducable case, please send it to me.
<If you have a small reproducable case, please send it to me. >
I do, but we may be able to avoid going so far. I have just
discovered that this (non smoothing of certain handfuls of faces)
occurs only with faces which I built using the create/face/build
command. Realizing that this relationship exists does not solve the
problem for me, but maybe it's enough of a clue to give you some
ideas? Also, I should be more exact when I say the faces "aren't
smoothing"; more accurately, I get what seems to be smoothing (a
gradient anyway) across the surface of the faces, but no smoothing
occurs along edges shared with lofted and/or lofted and subsequently
altered faces. Andy
Hi Andrew,
<< Realizing that this relationship exists does not solve the problem for me,
but maybe it's enough of a clue to give you some ideas? >>
I've passed this relationship on to my boss, Bob, he loves to create
geometry when the rest of us would instinctively use a texture map
(he did the klingon war ship on the WCT). He's created countless
faces from scratch and was interested in your problem. He's taken
this face issue off of my hands and will run some tests and then
he'll contact you.
>> but no smoothing occurs along edges shared with lofted and/or
lofted and subsequently altered faces. <<
This might fix it. Select the vertices in the problem area (or even
the entire object), then weld them, then redo the autosmooth. See if
that makes any difference. If not check the weld threshold and try
again with a lower threshold.
<This might fix it. Select the vertices in the problem area (or even
the entire object), then weld them, then redo the autosmooth. See if
that makes any difference. If not check the weld threshold and try
again with a lower threshold. > it works! Thanks., Andy
>> it works! Thanks., <<
God bless, the asoft forum 🙂 You're welcome.
Hi Andrew,
I was playing around with your findings and have come up with mixed
results. I started with a simple Lsphere using the default value of
16 sides. Rendering it produced smooth enough image. I then pulled
off several faces and replaced them with new faces I built via
Create/Face/Build.
I then normalized the object to make sure all the face normal were
correct. and rendered it. My sphere was smooth except for the faces
I replaced. I then did an Auto Smooth of the object and left the
default value of 30 active. Re-rendering produced an image like my
original.
On my second test, I used a lofted cone shape. It had Auto Smoothing
already done at 45. I stripped several faces from along the widest
edge that is open. New faces were built to replace the ones deleted,
and the model was also normalized. I re-applied the Auto Smooth of
45 again and rendered. This time, I noticed that one of the faces
seemed to smooth, but the other didn't smooth as I expected. I'm
beginning to wonder if the fact that my object was open, like an ice
cream cone, has something to do with this problem. I'm going to
continue trying some things out, but if you could give us a basic
example file, that would help us greatly.
Thanks and I'll be in touch later,
Bob
<but if you could give us a basic example file, that would help us greatly.>
If Jonas still has the project file I sent him to test for an abnormal
program termination error, then you can use it. hide everything.
Unhide the "skull", "Jaw", "Chest", and "Uparm" (right or left)
objects. The Skull has some unsmoothable faces on the top towards
the back, the upper arm has some around the base near the elbow (I
created extra faces here for a smooth connection to the elbow), as
well as on the inner side of the deltoid and in a couple other
patches as well. The chest has a few extremely prominent
unsmoothable faces around the top of the shoulders. I should tell
you that Martin Foster of Animatrix sent a message yesterday that
cleared up the majority of the problem, but not all of it. He
suggested that I select all vertices and then weld/vertice/selected
and voila! The faces were mostly now smoothable. The object in
question here is the uparmrt object. Before the weld operation,
there were a couple dozen unsmoothable faces but afterwards I was
able to smooth most of them, but not all-there were still a few near
the elbow with hard edges. The same was true of the chest-most of
the faces would now smooth, but the edge between the pectorals and
shoulders was still hard.
I hope you've still got that project, but if you don't, let me know
and I'll send it to you again. Andy
PMJI,
> but not all-there were still a few near the elbow with hard edges <
I suspect that these faces contain verts that were too far apart for
the weld operation. You might try increasing the weld distance in
the System Options, or manually welding the problem faces on all
three sides.
<< For instance, for smoothing, I want o smooth the border between
adjoining faces, and not necessarily the faces themselves. >>
PMJI, but I take it that you want a filleted/radiused edge between
areas of unsmoothed faces ? And you don't want to actually construct
the filleting ? May I suggest using Skin.axp with the appropriate
tension & bias, perhaps even with the Catmull-Rom spline instead of
the B-Spline ? I think it will produce the look that you're after,
with far less geometry to deal with than constructing the fillets,
and 0 time spent foolin' with smoothing groups.