Edit a mesh with weighted normals.

german01

There is some way to edit a mesh in 3ds max with weighted normals, without breaking the normals that have already been edited. The normals are broken as soon as you cut the mesh or add an edit poly in the list of modifiers.

Neox

maybe keep a copy of that mesh and then transfer the normals back onto your edited version?

gnoop

   That's why I model in Blender even  after re-subscribing back to MAx again .   Still no transfer modifier  for normals.    

   No reliable interactive UV transfer/projection.     ( the one in Projection  is hardly working)   

   No reliable shrinkwrap   without breaking your brain in MCG,   

    No Blender's cool array modifier that can shift UV in clones

Kanni3d

gnoop said:

   No reliable shrinkwrap   without breaking your brain in MCG,    

Not to go back and forth, but Max's freeform/conform tools are real nice, like shrinkwrap.

coven

We have done a lot of work in the recent versions to retain explicit normals. Can you explain what is causing you to lose your normal data? Also, we have a weighted normals modifier included in Max now.

gnoop

Kanni3d said:

 freeform/conform tools are real nice, like shrinkwrap.

it's nice but couldn't conform to anything even mid res , like mid res LIDAR  scanned surface.   Freezes a whole comp

monster

In Max 2021.2 Edit Poly keeps normals, and lots of other modifiers were updated to not break normals

It's worth upgrading for the following...

1. New Bake to Texture tool in the Utility Panel. 
2. New Shift Drag extrude functionality. (Ctrl + Shift for the old clone behavior.)
3. Weighted Normals. Just keep it at the top and don't worry about setting normals anymore.
4. PBR Material - It's a simplified version of the Physical Material with only common game engine features.

cptSwing

gnoop said:

Kanni3d said:

 freeform/conform tools are real nice, like shrinkwrap.

it's nice but couldn't conform to anything even mid res , like mid res LIDAR  scanned surface.   Freezes a whole comp

There are a variety of MCG's with conform / shrinkwrap functions.. though my success has been mixed.

Klunk

over on cgsoc mxs seg there a thread on this... with scripts. The principle is to copy the normals into a map channel, edit the mesh and restore the normals from the map channel and rely on the interpolation.

gnoop

cptSwing said:

There are a variety of MCG's with conform / shrinkwrap functions.. though my success has been mixed.

yeah, that's why I mentioned MCG.     But it's even more convoluted than Houdini.  Probably a reason why nobody use  it really . 

  Kind of same story as with shader FX.  I loved it it ones  it was a 3d party plugin.   Simple like 2x2 and instantly understandable with lots of ready examples.    

    After Autodesk implementation  it became almost unusable.   I switched to Blender shader node editor for any shader prototyping job ( to share ideas with  our HLSL programmer )   and it's like a breath of fresh air.

PolyHertz

gnoop said:

  Kind of same story as with shader FX.  I loved it it ones  it was a 3d party plugin.   Simple like 2x2 and instantly understandable with lots of ready examples.    

    After Autodesk implementation  it became almost unusable.   I switched to Blender shader node editor for any shader prototyping job ( to share ideas with  our HLSL programmer )   and it's like a breath of fresh air.

I was using ShaderFX recently (in Max 2021) since it's the only way I've found (other then using legacy drivers) to get unfiltered textures in Max. Feels / Looks totally abandoned. Can't even tell what check boxes are checked in the nodes properties due to how buggy its UI is. -_-

gandhics

TyConform can transfer normal I think.

It can transfer UV for sure.

gandhics

gnoop said:

   That's why I model in Blender even  after re-subscribing back to MAx again .   Still no transfer modifier  for normals.    

   No reliable interactive UV transfer/projection.     ( the one in Projection  is hardly working)   

   No reliable shrinkwrap   without breaking your brain in MCG,   

    No Blender's cool array modifier that can shift UV in clones

gnoop

gandhics said:

TyConform can transfer normal I think.

It can transfer UV for sure.

Cool.  Thanks gandhics.    Is it something new in 2021 too?   Where it is in Max?

Ghogiel

gnoop said:

gandhics said:

TyConform can transfer normal I think.

It can transfer UV for sure.

Cool.  Thanks gandhics.    Is it something new in 2021 too?   Where it is in Max?

http://docs.tyflow.com/download/

gnoop

Thanks Ghogiel

german01

Thanks all for the answers!