Home Technical Talk

[MAXScript] Turbo Chamfer

interpolator
Offline / Send Message
Revel interpolator

Hey guys, few days ago I've shared one of my personal script to the community via Gumroad, called Turbo Chamfer. It'll help adding Chamfer Modifier and TurboSmooth Modifier to the stack with a predefined setting and properties, besides that, it also remember those settings the next time you apply TurboChamfer after you remove the stacks.

UI screenshot:

MESH CHECK functions:
- Vert Pole: To check and select your verts that's on a hard edges and connected to more then 4 edges.
- Edge Hard:  Toggle the Display Hard Edges just to make sure you get the hard edges on the right places!
- Face SG: To check and select all faces that doesn't have Smoothing Group assigned to them.

HIGH-POLY MESH functions:
- Secondary Chamfer: Add a secondary micro Chamfer on top of your primary Chamfer.
- nGon Solver:  Run the nGon Solver script by Miklós Gábor's toolset, RapidTools*

Gif screen record just to show how it works:


The most important thing here is the way you set your Smoothing Group because it heavily depends on it :wink:

TAKE NOTE: When using Turbo Chamfer, before you click Apply, Max will lock your selection so that weird thing's won't happen. You can manually unlock the selection if you want to.

You can grab the script >>> HERE <<<


Read more on my ArtStation blog, TurboSmooth ❤ Chamfer for more info!

* RapidTools not required to run TurboChamfer, it's an additional feature that can be helpful sometimes.
** 3ds Max 2017+


I decided to share it with the community with no entry price, but if you find it useful please consider for a donation!

DISCLAIMER: The script provided as-is and each user should take their own responsibility. Please save your work often.


Got anymore questions? Leave a comments bellow~
It was made for my personal workflow, and if anyone did try it out I'd love to hear what you think about it.
Thanks!

Replies

  • ridger_drift
    Offline / Send Message
    ridger_drift polycounter lvl 5
    Thank you so much for sharing!  Donated and downloaded.  I'll get to installing rapidTools later when I get the chance, but your tool does work as intended (using Max 2017).  This will save me so much friggin time with setting edge weights and messing with Quad Chamfering and OpenSubDiv. 
  • Revel
    Offline / Send Message
    Revel interpolator
    No kidding man! Thanks so much for that amount! :open_mouth:

    And glad that you liked it! Yeah it saved me tons of time setting the properties of Chamfer and TurboSmooth to not do it over and over again while at the same time need to remember which setting are the best for each object (my gun anatomy project can have more than 100 objs on the scene and it's pretty headache if I need to remember all the setting for each one of them).

    And by using Max build-in quad chamfer means when I pass the file to someone that doen't have this script installed they will be able to open the file no problem.

    About the RapidTools, it's not necessary and I quite seldom to use that option myself, but when I do need it it's there. And the guy so generously share it as well so might as well support him for that as a thanks :)
  • Danielmn
    Offline / Send Message
    Danielmn polycounter lvl 13
    Oh my lorld this is the best valentines Gift I could have recieved....  just tested in max 2018....thank you so much
  • Revel
    Offline / Send Message
    Revel interpolator
    Lol glad you liked it! Please share it with your fellow hard-surface artists by link back to my Gumroad page, hopefully some will consider to give a donation if they found it very useful ;)

    Yeah technically all Max version that has a build in Chamfer Modifier with Quad Chamfer option *should* work, if Autodesk didn't messed up with the internal code that they're established before. I remember the Boolean ops internal maxscript was changed few versions back that will messed up some scripts :\
  • serriffe
    Offline / Send Message
    serriffe polycounter lvl 9
    This is nice! I do use 3DS max but do you have one coming for Maya? 
  • Revel
    Offline / Send Message
    Revel interpolator
    Thanks man! But unfortunately I don't use maya and have no idea how MELScript work :(
  • Axi5
    Offline / Send Message
    Axi5 interpolator
    serriffe said:
    This is nice! I do use 3DS max but do you have one coming for Maya? 
    Hi serrifle

    Take a look at my script on this page: 
    http://polycount.com/discussion/195015/maya-script-request-select-hard-edges-on-current-object

    Then just add this on the end: 
    polyBevel3 -chamfer false

    Mess with the values in the channel box or the IVE that appears in the view port (try press t if not there by default) 

    https://knowledge.autodesk.com/search-result/caas/CloudHelp/cloudhelp/2018/ENU/Maya-Tech-Docs/Commands/polyBevel3-html.html

    Then just hit 3 on your keyboard. 

    Not happy with the result? Just hit undo, then edit your mesh further and redo the script. Save it to a shelf for fast working. 

    Not as fancy as modifiers but gets the job done
  • Justo
    Offline / Send Message
    Justo polycounter
    Hey Wahyu, thank you for sharing this script, and even more so for being so humble to not encript it and share the mcr...I can learn a looot from you in regards to Maxscript (and much else, really). A few question for you to talk as much as you'd like if you had the time...

    1-When have you had the need to use, as you call it, secondary chamfers? What kind of shapes?
    2-I don't recall which version started adding the support for Hard/Soft edges natively, kindof replicating Maya in a way (I think Alex Senechal had shared somewhere Harden/Soften edges scripts before Max adopted it). But from the little I tried of it, it seemed a bit wonky and sometimes SGs would start breaking. What has been your experience with this? Have you fully embraced the hardening/softening of edges, or do you personally just prefer to work in face mode, assigning SGs?  
    3-Glad to see you spreading the word for RapidTools, they're the best. I haven't used the nGon solver, and much like H/S edges, I vaguely recall it being glitchy at times. Would you agree with this, and if so, do you know in which scenarios not to rely on the nGon solver?
  • Revel
    Offline / Send Message
    Revel interpolator
    Awesome, thanks for the words Justo!

    1- The secondary Chamfer, much like nGon solver, is not the 'use-all-the-time' solution too for me, but when I need it it's there. Normally for an object that has a large surface area and detail surface area on the same mesh it kinda help unified the Chamfer width without needed to increase the TurboSmooth iteration, becuse the primary Chamfer add a control loop to your secondary Chamfer, which helps to localized the detail as opposed to increasing the TurboSmooth iteration that globally add a subdivision across your mesh. But again it's an additional option that you seldom need based on my personal experience :)

    2- Ah the original Hard-Soft edge that I used before Max build it internally was by PJanssen that guy who created the Outliner for Max, but yeah that kinda do some weird stuff once a while. I do use it in from time to time but my primary tools for handling SG is my other custom script that basically just take the selected face and Auto Smooth 60 it across the selection. So the Edge Hard option on the Turbo Chamfer UI do come in handy to preview where I have a smoothing breaks. And yes, Max will remove your smoothing group if it can't find a solution for you when using the build in Make Hard/ Make Soft function, imo it's not that *smart* enough a us human lol!

    3- Hmm, it's kinda hard to answer this one, because it really depends on the mesh you're making. nGon solver you just need to try and see the result and sometimes I'm expecting something but turns out completely pinched my surface, but also sometime I have no idea how to fix the pinch, fire the nGon solver, problem solved! I'm not sure how he managed that or what logic he used for the script, but it does works wonder sometimes and that's why I've included it on my script ;)

    Do you have any specific topology that you working on but got some wonky result with this?
    To be fair I do get the wonky result all the times haha and sometimes I just change the design a little bit to fix the surface error.
  • Justo
    Offline / Send Message
    Justo polycounter
    Thank you for going in detail with this man! Regarding your last question, I don't have anything specific to show atm, but you can bet I'll be sharing some pics with you if a true head-scratcher arrives. 

    Regarding smoothing groups yeah, I also use something of my own (made possible thanks to scripting guru juan martinez) which is similar, a simple context-sensitive script which smooths all selected faces to one group, and if in object mode, smooths the entire thing by a specific angle.

    One thing I'm curious about...I heard this from Perna too, whom just like you, says he chamfers stuff based on difference in materials. Now obviously a bland plastic won't have edges as razor-sharp as some man-made metals, but I still have trouble imagining how useful is such a feature really, speaking in time-saving terms.
    -The artist would probably adjust the value slightly if it really helps some areas topology/pinching-wise, like those areas in which the surface is too small to fit in the chamfers, even if you apply a Vertex Weld modifier on top...So that nullifies any time saved because the artist needs to readjust the value anyway.
    -With this specific script, unless I'm mistaking how it works, if you're working with a complex object with lots of materials this doesn't help you much, because it doesn't know what material type you want, but exclusively the last value used (which is awesome, don't get me wrong!).

    ..So, I guess what I'm trying to ask is, what are your thoughts on this mentality of work, and how would you personally tackle an object which had many materials (unlike a gun, which is mostly made out of the same metal)?
  • Revel
    Offline / Send Message
    Revel interpolator
    Ah yeah my script pretty similar with that, face mode will smooth 60 selected, object mode will smooth 60 entire object, pretty useful!

    Hmm..I'm not sure I understand your questions really, sorry. Can you elaborate more about the point you saying "artist will need to adjust the value" again?

    I just try to answer based on what I understand from your question. So about the difference of the material, normally I would model them separately so I can have a different setting for each of them. And yeah when the situation where a tiny bits of detail that will make the Chamfer intersect to themself ,due to generally on the most of other area, the particular Chamfer value works great, only small parts that will make the Chamfer intersect to themself, I would have to manually Chamfer those trouble area and smooth them without any SG breaks so that when I apply Turbo Chmafer, it didn't catch that small area and didn't apply any Chamfer only the TurboSmooth, which is exactly what I want.

    The script can't determined material of your mesh, so you as the artist need to adjust the property accordingly :D 
    And the setting that it used not exactly the overall last value, but the individual mesh's last value. For example, you have the metal and you happy with 0.3 Chamfer value, move on to the next object which is plastic and set 0.5 Chamfer value, when you return back to he metal, it still remember the 0.3 because the custom attributes attached to the mesh itself, not to some kind of global variable within the script.

    Haha is that even answering something that you asked?
  • Toku
    Offline / Send Message
    Toku polycounter lvl 6
    wow thanks a lot!! 
  • Justo
    Offline / Send Message
    Justo polycounter
    Haha yeah Revel, and thanks for explaining that bit about your script, that seems really useful! And I agree with how you tackle stuff with the chamfers, at least that's what I do too. Anyway, awesome script man!
  • Darkmaster
    Offline / Send Message
    Darkmaster polycounter lvl 11
  • MisterSande
    Offline / Send Message
    MisterSande polycounter lvl 8
    this is such a nice script for Max users :smiley: good job!
  • Bigg__D
    Offline / Send Message
    Bigg__D polycounter lvl 4
    Looks very nice I would definitely donate as I like to encourage cg artists/technical artists as much as possible so I always donate for free stuff. I do have a question thou & sorry if its a dumb one since I've been mostly focused on drawing lately to improve my concepting skills but I love 3ds Max & so my end goal is to eventually to come back & start trying to build stuff that way. I know a lot of people do concepting straight in 3D nowadays but I enjoy drawing & its just one of those skills that I would like to keep. Anyway so does the script utilize the quad chamfer functionality provided in Max or does it use another solution? I'm not a coder lol & I know theres probably not many ways to chamfer but for example I have marius silagies Quad Chamfer modifier already so would this benefit my workflow in terms of speed? In any case I will check it out, it seems a great addition for hard surface workflow & thanks for your work. 
  • Mark Dygert
    This script is AWESOME! It is saving me a TON of time. Thank you so much!
  • Revel
    Offline / Send Message
    Revel interpolator
    @Bigg__D You don't have to have any additional plugin to run my script. That's always what I try to keep with all my scripts, even if it does use any addition script, it will be a free script as well, like the awesome RapidTools, so it won't limiting my user by having to purchased additional plugin to run this script :)

    @MisterSande & @Mark Dygert Thank you so much you guys! hope it'll help you in any way. And please spread the words if you can by linking it back to the Gumroad page and hope people will come back and donate small amount after they use it for a while :wink:
  • poopipe
    Offline / Send Message
    poopipe grand marshal polycounter
    To clarify..

    This is chamfer + chamfer based rather than inset + chamfer based right  

    - so i know whether it's worth carrying on with my one or not.. 

  • Revel
    Offline / Send Message
    Revel interpolator
    Hmm not sure I understand your point correctly.
    But do you mean something like Swordslayer's Inset Chamfer? nah, mine just a standard Chamfer + TurboSmooth combination.
  • OccultMonk
    Offline / Send Message
    OccultMonk interpolator
    Thanks, It looks very useful! Though I still have not had the time to fully test it yet. I like the nGon solver modifier, was that part of Rappatools?

    Edit sorry meant Rapidtools :-)
  • Revel
    Offline / Send Message
    Revel interpolator
    @OccultMonk Ah no the nGon solver is part of RapidTools by Miklós Gábor, different from Rappatools :smile:
    Let me know what you think about it when you got more time to play around with it~also love your work btw!
  • OccultMonk
    Offline / Send Message
    OccultMonk interpolator
    Revel said:
    @OccultMonk Ah no the nGon solver is part of RapidTools by Miklós Gábor, different from Rappatools :smile:
    Let me know what you think about it when you got more time to play around with it~also love your work btw!
    Sorry, I know it was Rapidtools. Somehow I typed Rappatools :-) I just don't know whether Rapidtools had the modifier or just a script for solve nGon.
  • Revel
    Offline / Send Message
    Revel interpolator
    Ah the modifier when you use my script is basically just an edit poly modifier that renamed by the script into 'nGon solver', for identifier location on the stack and to remove when user uncheck the option.
  • Revel
    Offline / Send Message
    Revel interpolator
    Hey guys! It's been a week since I've released my Turbo Chamfer to the Gumroad market and the reaction I got so far is nice! especially for Polycount by featuring my script on the front page! ❤

    Honestly I'd like to keep Turbo Chamfer as it is as I want it to reach and help as much user as possible from student, hobbyist to the professional artist level. Within a week, there are couple hundreds of people downloaded but less then 3% that actually give back a small amount of support (I really grateful for you guys who do!). This does makes me wonder, how useful the script for your day-to-day hard-surface modeling task? Does anyone experimented with it a lot so far?

    Just a small favor, if it does gonna help save you an hour during the day, would you consider to give a support as small as ¢99? more or less, the amount depends on you guys, really, BUT only if it DOES makes you work faster, that is!

    It'll still gonna be 'name a fair price' regardless the response that I got from here, the whole idea I put it like this in the first place is because I'd like the fact that those who use it on the professional environment, that actually benefit from it production wise, hopefully donate a small amount as a support to me and the rest of the user who might be still a student or hobbyist that doesn't generate any income yet can continue to download and use it as it is.

    In the end of the day I hope we all can get a benefit out if it..


    Hope this doesn't give a wrong message about my intention :)
    Again, thank you!
  • OccultMonk
    Offline / Send Message
    OccultMonk interpolator
    I would really like to pay, but I didn't know how useful the script would be. I think most people want to try it out first and then buy it. 
    But when I try to pay for it now it says I already downloaded it / own it. I don't know how to re-pay for it on Gumroad. 
  • ridger_drift
    Offline / Send Message
    ridger_drift polycounter lvl 5
    I would really like to pay, but I didn't know how useful the script would be. I think most people want to try it out first and then buy it. 
    But when I try to pay for it now it says I already downloaded it / own it. I don't know how to re-pay for it on Gumroad. 
    I don't understand, Revel isn't asking for people to pay BEFORE downloading, he's being courteous enough to simply suggest that if we find it useful in our workflow to donate something in return for his time and effort...which I did after downloading and doing some quick and simple prelim testing. 

    Hell, the script isn't even encrypted, so it's open-source donation-ware the way I see it.

    I appreciate Revel's (or any technical artist's) efforts and willingness to share (free or not), and I hope that as a next step in making life easier for Max modelers Revel will be willing to create something that allows for an easier time in the Pro-boolean workflow that Ben Bolton has shown (http://polycount.com/discussion/168610/proboolean-dynamesh-hardsurface-workflow-tutorial/p1

    And yes, I would hope that Revel offers a trial period to ensure that whatever he releases in the future does work as expected IF he is promoting/selling a product to the end-user.  But for the record, he doesn't have to if he feels as such and I would still be interested in buying if he demonstrated enough to entice me.

    And please, Revel, if you want to continue your efforts in releasing stuff like TurboChamfer (<cough>TurboProBoolean<cough>), by all means, charge what you feel is right for your work.  
  • RashedAlmetrami
    Offline / Send Message
    RashedAlmetrami polycounter lvl 10
    Thank you so much! I use Quad Chamfer all the time, such a time saver, Will send a donation soon :)
  • OccultMonk
    Offline / Send Message
    OccultMonk interpolator
    ridger_drift I just don't know how to donate in hindsight. Gumroad says I already purchased the item.
  • Revel
    Offline / Send Message
    Revel interpolator
    @OccultMonk Thank you for considering a donation! Well based on Gumroad help page you can actually re-purchase the items that you had downloaded before >>> here <<< If @ridger_drift can confirm whether this method works for him to actually come back and give a support after download it previously, that would be great!

    @ridger_drift Not too sure of how to set a trial period for a script automatically. Another thing that I'm considering is to use Gumroad's Workflow systems, an automated email that sent after certain period of time to the user who download it to try for free as a gentle reminder if the script does helpful would they consider come back and give a support in a form of small donation? but that Workflow required to subscribe $10 a month to Gumroad Pro, will totally consider this option in the future but for now I'm not making that much profit to cover that cost from releasing this script so probably not for now sadly..

    I do plan to release my other script, probably sometime next month. Would really love to be able to put it as another '$0+ name a fair price' similar to this, but if less people really consider to support I might put it as "$1+" then and see how it goes, either people much more willing to support or will make them to don't care at all. This is the first time I'm experimenting putting stuff online in the marketplace, hope you understand the situation :smile:

    Regarding ProBoolean, I do have a preset script for Union/ Intersect/ Cut/ Subtract, so that I don't have to set the same option each time I want to do the boolean ops, similar idea to what I have with Turbo Chamfer. This script use Bryan and Perna's Pie Menu function as an interface that they shared few years ago here on Polycount, so all boolean ops is just a swipe away.

    @RashedAlmetrami Thanks! my script use Max build-in quad chamfer and you don't need additional plugin for this :smile:
  • ridger_drift
    Offline / Send Message
    ridger_drift polycounter lvl 5
    Revel said:
    @OccultMonk Thank you for considering a donation! Well based on Gumroad help page you can actually re-purchase the items that you had downloaded before >>> here <<< If @ridger_drift can confirm whether this method works for him to actually come back and give a support after download it previously, that would be great!


    I tried paste and go using an incognito page in Chrome and it worked for me, although I'm fairly certain that if the web browser cache is cleared out, that should also allow anyone to start fresh on the download page.  I have CCleaner to auto clean my browser once I close it so not being able to donate and download was not an issue for me.

    Please do release the ProBoolean script at some point - I'll test it out for myself and definitely donate if it is as good or better than TurboChamfer.  Thanks again.
  • MGM
    Offline / Send Message
    MGM polycounter lvl 12
  • Revel
    Offline / Send Message
    Revel interpolator
    Eh? I've used it all the time on max 2017. What's the error you got?
  • musashidan
    Offline / Send Message
    musashidan high dynamic range
    @Revel great stuff, mate. Very useful. There was a lot of talk of these kinds of tools/workflows doing the rounds this time last year on here. Nice to see you created one yourself. I'll look forward to trying it out.

    I just donated $30 for your efforts. It's also a thank you for an EXTREMELY useful few lines of Maxscript you posted for me a while back(hotkey toggle gizmo) I'll test TC out tomorrow.

    Best of luck with the tool. Personally I think you should have put it up straight away at $5. For anybody using the 'simultaneous low/high hybrid' modeling workflow this is an incredible timesaver. And also, because in all the years I've being using Max(since R4) it's generous community scripters like you who have given us so many brilliant tools.
  • Revel
    Offline / Send Message
    Revel interpolator
    OMG! Thank you so much @musashidan! It was kinda empty in the past month (only download for $0) it's kinda surprised to me to see someone donate that amount! :open_mouth:

    It's been about 2 months since I've uploaded the script and yeah probably I'll try to put it $3 for few weeks and see how it goes.
    Someone like you that willing to give some donations that make me want to continue releasing my scripts :D
  • musashidan
    Offline / Send Message
    musashidan high dynamic range
    I hear you mate. I have a Zbrush IMM armour brush up on my Gumroad with about 50K downloads and not too many donations. Although I did get a personal email from one of my all-time Hard Surface heroes, Furio Tedeschi, thanking me for the asset and telling me he used it on his professional concept work for the latest Transformers movie.....so it was worth it. :)

    I'm very happy to donate as I can certainly appreciate the time and effort that goes into creating something like that and offering it for free.
  • OccultMonk
    Offline / Send Message
    OccultMonk interpolator
    I think that 3-5 Euro's is very reasonable. I also think you could offer a commercial and non-commercial version so that people who don't make money still get to work with it and also for testing purposes before buying. It's difficult to make a donation on Gumroad after testing it.

  • Revel
    Offline / Send Message
    Revel interpolator
    @OccultMonk hmm that's a good idea! Not sure how to do that 2 version thing on Gumroad though, still didn't dig in deeper to all of its feature yet haha! I'll look into that.
  • musashidan
    Offline / Send Message
    musashidan high dynamic range
    @revel you should also look at Cubebrush as an optional sales platform. Personally I think it's a much better platform all round. I've always found Gumroad to be very sluggish and with a non-intuitive set up. CubeBrush just feels a lot better as it's dedicated too all things CG.
  • jake1210
    Offline / Send Message
    jake1210 polycounter lvl 4
    Late to the party, but awesome plugin and thank you for this!
Sign In or Register to comment.