3DS Max Enable in render to geo

jordan.kocon

I am making the switch from Maya to 3DS Max for my new job. I am watching the eat 3D video on 3DS Max 101. The instructor uses a lot of splines for things such as barbed wire. After creating the spline, he enables 'enable in renderer' and 'enable in Viewport'. This is all good and fun if you are rendering in 3DS Max, but to make a game asset that will be taken into an engine, how do I convert these splines into polymesh's? I really like how simple it is to draw the spline and modify the thickness, I am hoping the spline's can easily be converted.

Thanks in Advance.

WarrenM

Drop an "Edit Poly" modifier on them.

cptSwing

Usually it exports to FBX/OBJ just fine.

jordan.kocon

Well that's simple enough. Cheers!

Mark Dygert

OR right click in the viewport (or modifier stack) and select "convert to :Editable poly".

Dropping an edit poly on top allows you to go back down and work on the spline add/remove knots, merge splines, tie it in a bow whatever without having to actually manipulate the geometry. Normally before you do any skinning or exporting you will want to collapse stacks because they can cause problems.

xXm0RpH3usXx

well, if you pot an epoly modifier on top of it and afterwards remove a segment from the spline, the epoly modifier could loose its affect, as the vertex ids change.

Mark Dygert

True, its not magical, but there are better ways to work around that if you plan to make edits to the geometry. For example you can use PathDeform(WSM) to conform a piece of geometry to a spline (path).

That way you can edit the geometry but will still be able to edit the spline.

I suggest PathDeform'ing an instance of your geometry so you can work on a flat straight piece.