Achieving smooth forms...

IchII3D

I have being doing a lot of technical modelling recently and I'm currently working on a Ottoman Empire Flintlock. Because of the age of the weapon and the styling its wood is smooth and rounded in form. Its essentially like the surface of a car, you have your hard edges but in between you have slightly curved surfaces. If I was to make the wood perfectly straight it would feel odd and unnatural.

Anyway, this has brought up a few issues in the way I work and I'm looking to speed things up a little. Whenever I'm creating form I do a lot of the work by hand. The problem is when working with curved surfaces it can be very time consuming nudging all the vertex's into place to get that perfect line. If even the smallest vertex is out of place it looks crap.

I'm looking for some plugin, script or hidden gems within 3dsmax which allow you to select a line of vertex, smooth them out (the relax tool is a bit crap) and hopefully edit your selection with a basic spline.

Anyone got any ideas? It feels like something so useful but don't even know where to begin. What do car modelers do? Assuming there not using splines to create the main model.

Thanks.

Scruples

http://www.mariussilaghi.com/products/smooth-edges ymmv

I should also point you towards the almighty "more geo" thread,
Which would be more useful than that script imo.
http://www.polycount.com/forum/showthread.php?t=56014

IchII3D

Thanks lot dude! That thread is awesome, can't believe I missed it.

cptSwing

Graphite's "Set Flow" can also be useful..