Turbosmooth by smoothing group in applications outside of 3DS Max?

tanka

Hey, Here's something that I've been looking into but can't seem to find the answer for..

When you Turbosmooth in max, you have the option to Turbosmooth by smoothing groups, which is awesome for keeping sharp edges. I haven't found this function outside of 3DS Max in any other applications.

Does anybody know if such a function exists in other applications? (Preferably Modo or Blender)

Hang10

I know Modo uses vertex weights, from what I understand smoothing groups don't work the same in Modo as they do in Max. Can't say anything for Blender.

Ark

In Maya and XSI it's known as creasing, Modo also does this.

tanka

Yeah modo's smoothing groups are pretty terrible. You guys put me on the right path though, I did some searching on Vertex Weights and Creasing, and I uncovered a work around for what I'm trying to do.. I thought I'd writeup a mini tutorial for anybody else wondering:

WarrenM

Yep.  

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=afOrviMDB4M

thomasp

in blender you can mark edges as sharp (mesh -> edges -> mark sharp) and in the stack use an edge split modifier together with subsurf. that will keep the edge tack-sharp at all times though, might even export as open geometry. you can't do something like in max where you can have two turbosmooth modifiers stacked, first one takes smooth groups into account and produces the shape, second one ignores smooth groups and just polishes it to look more natural.

in blender there's another option called edge crease which sounds like it should do this but i have not managed to get it to produce the desired effect.

edit: just saw the thread date. nice necro!