[3DS MAX] Splines extrusion

Filip5

Hey, I am trying to get splines from ilustrator to max. I have done that, but I think that spline might be too complex to be extruded. Max just freezes everytime I try to do something with it.



Frankly its quite overhelming with ammount of vertecies, so I would like to know if it is possible to get this extruded, and if so what are my options...

spacefrog

Complex splines like this can be tricky  to ever get extruded. Think about all the closed inner splines where the extrusion algo has to determine which one should be capped towards the outer spline. On the other hand i was able to generate such complex extrusions in the past.
Usually, the steps would involve welding all spline vertices and ensure that all vertices lie EXACTLY on a plane ( seems to be the case but recheck this )
All the spline handles should lie on the plane too. A final step would be using some of the great spline optimization scripts/plugins which would resample the spline an generate only the necessary.
Another very important issue is scene scale in relation to system units and the offset of the spline from the origin, so best would be to center the spline on the origin and check the system units, so that the resulting vertex coordinates are in a sane range ( to prevent float rounding errors )

I would like to try to do the extrusion... could you post the Max file ,so`that i can have a look on it ?

cptSwing

Maybe using one of the various spline cutting scripts on a plane and picking apart the pieces might be an option? (sorry, just woke up and not up to 100% yet )

Mark Dygert

I would start detaching parts and breaking it down into subobjects.

Filip5

spacefrog said:

Complex splines like this can be tricky  to ever get extruded. Think about all the closed inner splines where the extrusion algo has to determine which one should be capped towards the outer spline. On the other hand i was able to generate such complex extrusions in the past.
Usually, the steps would involve welding all spline vertices and ensure that all vertices lie EXACTLY on a plane ( seems to be the case but recheck this )
All the spline handles should lie on the plane too. A final step would be using some of the great spline optimization scripts/plugins which would resample the spline an generate only the necessary.
Another very important issue is scene scale in relation to system units and the offset of the spline from the origin, so best would be to center the spline on the origin and check the system units, so that the resulting vertex coordinates are in a sane range ( to prevent float rounding errors )

I would like to try to do the extrusion... could you post the Max file ,so`that i can have a look on it ?

Here you go: http://www.filedropper.com/2d_1

So far I have used spline optimizer modifier, but it simplifies mesh by removing vertecies and changing it, so its not quite what I am looking for.

Swordslayer

Here is the spline with reduced knot count: 2D_optimized.max, hope it helps.

spacefrog

Post the illustrator file. The Max spline though Swordslayer did a great job optimizing it, is already flawed, as it contains double paths and what not. I bet you get a better Max imported result after you cleaned up in illustrator and only export the relevant parts

Swordslayer

Most of all stuff like this:



Kinda looks like some automatic trace of a bad-quality image.

Filip5

Well I vectorized the image in ilustrator. I may try to recreate similiar shape in in and see what I get afterwards. Hovewer, I got the best result exportig this out of AI as "dwg" file - autocad I suppose.

Swordslayer, you did ajob with it. How did you manage to simplify it that much without loosing quality ? Anyway, geometry itself, after creating editable poly is still quite heavy and it takes few seconds for max to react. Not much I could do with that, so it seems this technique is unusable.

Swordslayer

Well, you can change the Iterations value for the spline before collapsing to get mesh that's not that fine. Also look for some further inspiration in the Complex spline extrude to mesh thread.

I used the Optimize Spline plugin, even with such a heavy spline, tweaking the parameters is really fast.

Exporting as dwg, you say? So that's how you got that insane number of segments. Next time save to AI version 8, max will import that without issues and it won't be so unnecessarily heavy.

spacefrog

Swordslayer said:

I used the Optimize Spline plugin, even with such a heavy spline, tweaking the parameters is really fast.

I love this plugin too, so bad that Dieter stopped doing recompiles/did'nt give the source code to Dave Baker ( maxplugins.de )
Maybe we should ping Dieter for it ?
PS: contacted Dieter per LinkedIn, lets wait and see how the response will be ....

cptSwing

There's this: http://www.splinedynamics.com/spline-cleaner/

And a number of scripts on scriptspot, might be worth your time.