3dsMax 2020 Chamfer Modifier
high dynamic range
Max just went semi-CAD with its new Chamfer modifier. Been testing this on the beta for a while and it's fantastic. Anyone doing hard-surface in Max is in for a treat. It almost gives CAD filleting power, I've tested it in lots of different cases and it's VERY good. Check out Martin's(lead dev on it) demo.
Highlights
- The new Fixed Weight Chamfer keeps a consistent chamfer width.
- Weighted chamfer allow chamfer to be controlled on a per-edge basis with crease weights.
- New presets allow to save favorite or set default settings.
- Added Inset adds edge rings to chamfers for users who cannot use smoothing
- groups, such as models for game engines.
- End Point Bias: Edges that don’t end at a corner terminate on the next parallel edge can
bias between the near and far vertex. -
Added Depth allows the profile of the chamfer to go from a depth of 1 (a sharp edge)
to 0 (a straight edge), to -0.5 (an inverted curve)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4421PPbAHLw
Replies
it's only beta user ?
This looks nice.
I've bought a few chamfery/sub-d etc etc packages for Max over the years to try speed up this work flow, and it still looks a bit lossy here. Specifically Marius Silaghi's Quad Chamfer. Which is pretty handy. No offsets though. You'd need to do push/pulls pre-chamfer mod.
But for me, if you WYSIWYG, then doing it in the viewport quickly is nice, handy for an arty method of building something. But if you're doing it WYSIWYG, then one has to assume the design isn't concrete... that means it might change.
And as soon as you change it, perhaps by adding new loops/supports/geometry, I assume all the information about these modifications is lost as it's tied to face/edge/vert numbers, and would become corrupted, just like Quad Chamfer by Marius?
Also a weakness with that tool is no way to assign chamfer info to a vert, so you can have a tapered chamfer along an edge (say large to small)... is that something that is alleviated here?
I've done WYSIWYG kinda arty workflows on assets, to then need to change it, using tools where chamfer info is stored on the edge, then the chamfer info is basically a write off and you have to start again.
The only fix for this is planning, not doing the chamfers until you're almost certain you won't need to change them again. And by that time, the actual workload to complete/tidy up chamfers using existing tools isn't all *that* bad.
So I'm all for these types of tools, good work.
But without some NLE method (perhaps where the chamfer info are saved spatially using a volumetric matrix, rather than assigned to faces/edges/verts) that allows you to add a whole new chunk of parts to a model, and have the chamfer mod respect things set earlier, then it's kinda not all that useful is it?
Maybe I'm missing something?
It looks nice, and I'm glad to see progress in any area... but is it genuinely nice in a proper production environment without the NLE capabilities in there? Those to me, are the things that have let all these tools down for so long and I'd love to see those features added.
Cheers
Dave
Yeah I completely get what you are talking about. We do have some things in Chamfer that help filter without you assigning exact edges to chamfer. If you are modeling and you have it set to all edges, all the edges will chamfer. Then you have a few ways to filter out the edges you don't want. You can set it to only chamfer hard edges and then we also have a min value range that will also filter out edges that are less than the angle.
You also have the data channel modifier which is good for making more complex rules that could pass the selection and update on the fly. It can also set the crease weights automatically based on stuff like edge angles or other things.
We want to have it as procedural as possible. If you have any ideas or suggestions, I'm all ears!
I'm also fairly sure, somehow, that face smooth groups are quite robust if you start messing about with topology (in fact, I think they remain irrespective of what you do, unlike vert/edge info?), so using smooth groups to manage hard edges, which then influence your rules, does give you a robust way to work if you're desperate to have some NLE ability.
I've honestly not thought about it too much to be able to offer any ideas.
My only thought based on the volumetric matrix above thing, is how those tools like Mari will re-map paintwork onto new topology if the mesh artwork changes.
I suppose having a better way for Max to hang onto edge/vert numbers in a more robust way would be the better way around. Come to think of it, I'm not sure what are good/bad practices around retaining numbers. Definitely having a sub-d to add some mesh density in the stack, is a bad thing, if you go change mesh work under the sub-d.
Hmmm
My guess is you want to have a smaller chamfer on the top edges, larger on the rest, but not interpolate along the length of the chamfered edge?
- Radius Bias - Controls the size of the chamfer when you have sharp angles, making the chamfer size more uniform and round.
- Weighted chamfers - We had weighted before with crease weights, but as Dennis pointed out, the interpolation happened between the points, meaning the edges would vary in width. The new method keeps the edges uniform and distorts the mitered corner. The weight is also absolute instead of mapped between a min/max value.
- Flow Loop - We have added a new inset method. 2020 we shipped with a face inset option and by users request we have added a flow loop type inset.
- Depth Weight - Depth can now also be controlled with a weight, allowing for varying depth shapes along the model.
- DCM - You can now use the Data Channel Modifier to control weight, crease weight and depth weight.
Enjoy!Martin
2020.1 Chamfer Update
@cptSwing
We are hearing a lot of requests for FWNs. I think I have a pretty good understanding on what you all need, but please let me know what all you would want in such a tool. Also, if there is already a request on the ideas page, vote it up. If not.. add it! Our team does look at those requests.
Thanks guys!
Martin
m
- We now have Patch and Radial Mitering
- Vertex Chamfering now supports Depth and Segments
- Vertex Chamfering can be driven with vertex weights in edit/able poly
- New chamfer options are now available in Edit/able Poly: Uniform, End Bias, Radial Bias, Tension, and Depth
Here is a link to the help.And here is a preview of it in action.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YhMzfFu4LbM&t=6s
Hope you like the changes, and would love to hear what you think!
Best,
Martin
Thanks!
Martin
Great to hear Musashidan! Can't wait to see it! I started one the other night that will hopefully finish soon. I always find it better to see customer videos though. Less bias of a opinion and it's great to see how others use our tools.
This has been a problem for at least the last four and a half years I've been using Max. Has this ever worked properly or did it get broken somewhere along the line and no one could be bothered to fix it?
A workaround would be to use the uniform mitering option with a tension of 1.0 but then that just creates extra geometry that needs to be cleaned up before bringing the model into a game engine. The ideal solution would be to just fix the tri mitering option and/or implementing support for uneven amounts of edges in the other mitering options.
I do think the improved chamfer modifier is impressive, however there's so many relatively small issues issues like this everywhere in Max. While if you were to look at other software like Blender it mostly just works as you'd expect out of the box.
Currently if we want to do this accurately we need to use one modern corner mitering in max with one segment and than manually remove middle edges wich is sub optimal on complex models.
That being said, with all features included in current chamfer modifier, Max is better than Blender guys ! Weighted changers, Flow Inset, Patch and Radial corner mitering. That is good !
In this case there's a chamfer along each edge, but whenever I move the selected vert as demonstrated, the circled corner collapses.
Theses are the specific settings in this case, but it's the same with other mitering options. Flow loop doesn't affect it, nor does the radius bias.
Now that 2021 is announced, I wanted to let you know of the changes around chamfer. There isn't a lot. More about tying up loose ends on it.
- First, we updated the algorithm to perform better when you have right angles like @Ghogiel posted above.
- We added all the chamfer settings to the edit poly modifier. This had to wait until we were at a full release due to backward compatibility.
- All chamfer types now support zero segments. Works great with the new weighted normals modifier.
Thanks everyone for all the feedback. We hope the chamfer tools are working great for ya! If not, please let us know as we are always trying to improve the tools.Best,
Martin