Important collection of general thoughts on modelling

[g0fthick]

It is a (very) useful technique for some objects, but can be fraught with problems, such as reversed normals, when you clone the first half and mirror it. It can play havoc with pivots, too. I use this technique now when making cabs, half the work and twice the model.

Pivot adjustments are simple in Max, just go to the Hierarchy tab, select "Affect Pivot Only" and go from there, i usually just center my pivots to center unless it's animated or movable, then i manually place pivots.

It can be unpredictable, so I've found, like making clean boolean cuts.

Never never never never use booleans.

[SteelixB]

At least not 3DS Max's own... don't know about 3DS Max 9.

I use the Power Booleans plugin, and it works every time, perfectly.

However, it's only really useful if you're trying to make a solid object, like a game map, where there can't be any gaps in the geometry.

It's also useful if you want to cut holes into things, which is what I will be doing to make the windows of my 158.

[g0fthick]

For things like making cuts i use the cut tool, that way you're not creating extra vertices/edges and the mesh stays clean.

The problem with booleans is the user often wants, for example, an 18 sided hole in a box, the box wont have enough edges for that kind of subtraction and so it generates them, but often ends up in mass triangulation as there are only so many vertices the edges can be drawn to.

[47522]

Ive always found that if you convert the mesh to an editable poly after using the boolean tool it wont create anymore unwanted segments.

As long as you keep the object separate and don't attach it to an editable mesh it works fine, even in MSTS which is kewl!


Regards