3DS Max - Move Along Normal
polycounter lvl 6
Hi,
I have a quick question. I'm learning 3DS Max, and I need to move a selection of polygons along their individual normals.
In Maya I can select the move tool, change it to 'normal' and it constrains to the normals.
In max the solution google always gives me is to change into 'local' mode, which changes to local mode not normal! Ridiculous... People don't seem to realize what moving along a normal actually means.
I'm basically sitting here staring at my screen until I find the answer, so any help is appreciated.
Can't believe how much basic functionality is missing from Max. But I need to learn it.
I have a quick question. I'm learning 3DS Max, and I need to move a selection of polygons along their individual normals.
In Maya I can select the move tool, change it to 'normal' and it constrains to the normals.
In max the solution google always gives me is to change into 'local' mode, which changes to local mode not normal! Ridiculous... People don't seem to realize what moving along a normal actually means.
I'm basically sitting here staring at my screen until I find the answer, so any help is appreciated.
Can't believe how much basic functionality is missing from Max. But I need to learn it.
Replies
In maya when I switch to normal translation it is clean. Basically puffs out a shape. Can't do that in Max I guess.
1) Working with maxs normals can be a nightmare for maya guys, mostly because of the smoothing groups and what they do to the normals. Normals are calculated per vertex based on the surrounding faces. Smoothing averages these normals and doesn't give you the true normal of the face, which in some cases can lead to some undesired results.
"Local" is using the normal assigned to that face or the averaged normal of a selection of faces. That normal might already be averaged to some degree based on the smoothing.
Lets see whats going on and clear up some of the confusion.
Drop an Edit Normals modifier on top of your stack to see the normals. Open it up and click on the "normal" subobject group. Then select everything in the viewport and click break.
With the normals broken it gives each face a unique normal, where you had one averaged normal before, you now have multiple normals for each face connected to that vert. It is like setting all of the edges in maya to hard. Which is the same as clearing the smoothing groups in the edit poly modifier which saves you from having to apply edit normal modifiers to monkey with the smoothing/normals. I'm just using this method so you can see the normals and interact with them.
You can select some normals and hit "Unify" to average the connected normals.
Unified is the same as selecting some faces and placing them in the same smoothing group in edit poly which is how most people deal with the normals and smoothing. There are scripts on scriptspot.com to allow max to operate like Maya and define hard and soft edges, but there are advantages to using smoothing groups. Several tools can use smoothing groups, which makes them kind of handy to use. You can select by smoothing group or in the UV editor you can carve up the UV shells based on the smoothing groups, relax and arrange them with one click, pretty handy. There is more you can do but I won't get into it here.
If you want true per face normals the best work around that I've found is to clear the smoothing groups (and keep them cleared while working) that way the normals are not averaged and are per each face, then switch the gizmo to local. You can toss a smooth modifier on top of your stack and toggle it on/off if you want to see what your model looks like with smoothing. I have a script that toggles the gizmo between local and view if you double tap the key which for me is a lot easier than messing with the ref-coord drop down menu.
2) Most tools like extrude and bevel have several options in the pop-up menu.
Group Normals: This averages the normals to form one general direction.
Local Normals: This uses the exact normals that are on the outside of the selection but averages the normals in the inner selection and welds them together.
By Polygon: This extruded each face based on the local normal for that face, no averaging with the surrounding faces. Nothing is welded together, each face gets its own set of edges.
=> reset Xform
So i tend to get my meshes clean and reset xformed before rotating stuff around.
Anyway, i think you'd better never scale at object level while pure modeling, spares some fixing.
The other thing is I need to be able to select a LOT of polygons and scale/move them along their individual normals rather than their combined normals. This will puff out an object.
Also good tip on the reset xform; it solved shading issues too.
Tried that, but nope. Doesn't even have many options.
Be sure System unit setup and display unit scale are consistent.
Then, in the command pannel, under helpers, you have stuff that can help mesure things (tape for instance), tho most of the time, i just put a box at the right mesure as guide. Each primitive has size parameters.
As for the push, it also works on a face selection. Local move on vertices might work too i think.
Now I have a huge problem with one of my meshes and not sure what to do.
They have really weird lighting - looks like huge artifacts. I'm referring to the odd white light on the mesh. I have no lights in scene, it's set to 'shaded', shadows and AO are turned off.
I'd first think it's normals, first one has smoothed normals (one group) other has no smoothed normals (hard normals).
But that doesn't seem to be it, I have tried all the normal modifiers and nothing seems to fix it.
Cheers
Anyway, in the viewport, right click ont the "+">configure viewports>lighting and shadows > default lights > be sure 1 light is checked.
Now UVs are messing with me. Disgusting seam from cylindrical mapping.
- Weld tool is completely destructive and destroys edges
- Stitch doesn't stitch where I want it to, I select the edge and instead of stitching the adjacent edge it flies off to an edge it's not even connected to on another island.
Edit: The stitch tool works but on the two upper pieces it flies off to another island. How do I fix that? The edges highlight blue where they're going to stitch to, and it looks ok, until I hit stitch.
Edit2: Now I've got seams that can't be stitched, I stitch them and it removes the seam from the place that I DO want it to be, makes ZERO SENSE!!
3DS Max is starting to fail in my eyes. 4 hours to NOT complete a basic cylindrical projection isn't acceptable..
Now I need to do other parts. I expected to be able to select my UVs as they've been broken apart, then go ahead and reproject that selection but NO - I need a mesh select modifier, followed by a uvw map modifier, so that completely blocks me from being able to intuitively select based on UV islands because it has zero options that are actually considered viable.
This is stupid.
This probably sounds primary but you should take a look at what modifier do in the help files.
3ds max stitch is a bit weird and fails most of the time at stitching multipe edges. I agree it's not great.
As for the uv map and mesh select, it has its utility, when unwrapping something like a building and you cant be arsed to open the unwrap. Combined with a uvw xform, you can unfold basic shapes very quickly.
But the unwrap does everything the uv map does and more.
I have a somewhat complex shape - but not by much.
This wont unfold properly regardless of what I do. It isn't complicated enough that max should even struggle let alone not be capable of doing it. I've tried all options I can find for unfolding it.
No matter what I do it just isn't working out. I was liking 3ds max until I hit the UV tools (and they're a big part of whether I like software or not).
Note the massive overlap. This is the best I've gotten it.
I'll try breaking the bottom part and restitching as you suggest.
Cheers
Note:
You can click drag the arrows in all max spinners to adjust the values and it updates in the viewport as you drag.
Right click the spinner to reset it to Zero.
You can also type in the value if you want to be more precise.
The viewport interactivity is something I REALLY miss in Maya, I hear they finally added NEX to 2014 but I also hear its just as buggy as its been in the past which was crash-tastic. Max may have some warts but viewport interactivity with tools, isn't one of them.
You can adjust the gizmo in the viewport to put the seam where you want it, the green line shows you where it will try to put the seam. The Fit, center and rotate buttons help quite a bit if you get funky gizmo placement when you first turn it on, which is normally due to non-uniform scaling.
Weld joins verts together, just like weld in edit poly. If they are within a certain threshold and can be welded together they weld, weld doesn't work on UV shells and won't leave them intact, you use stitch for that.
The stitch tool will never weld to an edge it isn't physically connected to on the actual mesh. In ancient versions of max you could weld non connected verts together but they fixed that and have a check in place similar to what stitch does.
There are 3 stitch tools.
Stitch to Target: Stretches the selected edge to the target.
Stitch to Average: Stretches both edges until they meet in the middle.
Stitch to Source: The Opposite of stitch to target.
Stitch: Custom: Works like the old stitch command by moving the shell.
To be brutally honest, its not max. There are a lot of max users I ask to model this and they wouldn't have any problem with it, myself included. It is your limited understanding of max that is causing a problem.
Word of Caution:
The frustration is understandable, but the misguided blame doesn't really help anyone. It actually makes things worse by perpetuating the "Gaahh XYZ app can't do anything!!11" Max guys do it to Maya, Maya guys do it to max and newbies see that and then run around parroting it all.
When the blame game starts and people pick up rocks, the helpful people check out. Which makes sense you're showing signs of a confrontational attitude and in order for someone to help you they have to confront you, which normally only attracts a certain type of person who is only interested in making matters worse.
The most helpful threads are the ones where someone asks something like "I do this thing really quickly in Maya how do I do it in Max". The two camps normally sit down and hammer something out and if one is deficient scripts are written. But when the rocks come out, the helpful people leave and the smacktard-flame-warriors come out and they're just bitter unhelpful cranks that just want to take their misguided frustration out on something else.
To bind Relax Dialog: Go to the Max Main Menu > Customize > Customize UI > Keyboard Tab > Change the group to Unwrap UVW and bind Relax Dialog.
Also know that you can relax a selection of faces, edges or verts, which allows you to work on the problem areas. It also helps to turn on soft selection so the relax transitions smoothly into the non-relaxed areas.
Also you can select a few faces, break, and hit "quick peel" to relax that piece as closely as possible to the actual face angles on the mesh.
You can also go into edge mode, turn on "point to point seams" and draw your seam on the model in the viewport, break, select the element and relax, or use quick peel. I don't really use Cylindrical mapping that much any more, especially for cylinders that have a lot of curves, the seam gets messy and it will often break horizontal edges that have to be stitched or welded, just a pain, its cleaner this way and faster.
You can also explode along several options, smoothing groups, material ID's and face angles, then you can stitch and relax the shells together, this works on selections as well.
Also, you can use the 'straighten selection' to quickly square everything off
It introduces some stretching but makes it easier to pack. It also makes horizontal lines bake in crisp lines instead of aliased curves, that often need more pixels and higher res, to look sharp but that all depends on what's important to the end result.
You can square things off and then a relax with low settings or the soft select relax on a selection to get something that packs better than a straight relax but is geometrically perfect.
You can try it with "keep boundary points fixed" checked on and it works a bit like the pelt stringer, everything on the outside gets locked in place but the inside gets relaxed and spaced out more evenly. It doesn't take into account the face or edge angles like the other two do so its pretty useless for most things. The other two try to match the angles of the faces or edges on the actual mesh to relax the UV's, which is a lot better.
I haven't had much luck with it, other than using it to relax areas that get bunched up by the other methods. But normally the other two get the job done, often working in tandem. It's old and still in there for who knows why like so many pieces of max, one mans junk anothers treasured heirloom I guess, ha.
It's not anything new and revolutionary, you aren't missing out on anything by ignoring it, ha!