can pior or someone elaborate on this technique?

fritz

http://www.pioroberson.com/images/minitut_topology_worflow.jpg

i've never tried to "snap" a stipmodel to a highres version. i've been messing around w/it in max but can't snap planes to faces....don't know what i'm doing wrong. anyone?

KDR_11k

Snap to screen sounds like it simply takes the depth value from the Z buffer when you move a vertex around. I.e. you model your cage normally but the vertices always stay on the surface of the reference mesh so you don't have to manually adjust them until they are on the surface.

doc rob

also polyboost's polydraw functionality does this kind of thing very very well.

Eric Chadwick

Yeah, polyboost beats this hands-down. But if you don't wanna shell out, pior's method is do-able, just time-consuming.

He's extruding edges, not planes. It does make planes, but instead of snapping those he's really moving the edge that he's pulling out, snapping that onto the highpoly faces as he moves it.

You have to select an edge that is along an open edge of the low-poly model. Then hold the Shift key as you drag it where you want. Also sometimes Max's Snap won't work unless you set the Transform Center flyout button to Use Selection Center.

One problem with the extrude-snap method is the edges aren't rotated to match the topology, only the position is snapped. You have to rotate them yourself, AFAIK.

fritz

hmmmmm....still doesn't snap. maybe i'll give polyboost a try. i've never used it but it looks promising.

thomasp

i had that mini tut for a while but i never managed to get the snap thing to work either. like eric said, snapping in max has it's quirks and the snap to face stuff has remained uncharted territory for me.

Eric Chadwick

Hmmm, works for me. I'm curious what you set your Transform Center button to? I highlighted it here...

pior

Yeah I think Eric pretty much summed it up. I gonna try this out again tonight and see f it still works Yet that Polyboost thing just ownz my technique anytime, they have awesom vids on their site showing all that.

thomasp

just tried it and it doesn't change the behaviour for me. i made sure that the transform center was set after activating the snaps, btw. user or perspective view, no difference. any other stuff in grid and snap settings, maybe? i didn't change the defaults on this fresh max7 installation.

but yes, max does the blue highlight thing, so snap seems active

MoP

thomasp, try unchecking the tickbox for "use axis constraints" on the Options tab of the Snaps window, that might be why it's not working.

thomasp

it was already unchecked. argh. damn i feel stupid today. might as well call autodesk support and blow a whistle full steam through the phone now

Eric Chadwick

Huh. You say it's a fresh install... didja do the service pack(s)? Can't recall how many they released for 7.

OK, stupid question, but is Snap set to Face and only Face? Also are you using 3D Snap? Also the highpoly can't be frozen, unless you activate "snap to frozen" in the snap dialog.

thomasp

i think there's only SP1. i haven't installed it so far on this box, had it on my old one where i originally failed to follow piors tut. still downloading SP atm but i just flipped through it's readme and it doesn't cover any snapping problems, mostly DX, mental ray stuff. but you never know

i had snap set only to face and only turned on 3D snap, yes. i almost followed your screenshot above to the pixel level and my highpoly wasn't frozen either.
for a quick test, i changed to snap to vertex and edge and it worked in both cases, just not in snap to face mode.

edit: now with SP1, no difference. settings below:

Eric Chadwick

Only weird thing I see is that the selected edge is not being dragged overtop the highpoly model. It's overtop empty space? You shouldn't be seeing the light-blue snap highlight in a different place than the dragged edge.

Ahhhhh you have Lock Selection on! Turn it off. Then place your mouse cursor on top of the selected edge, then Shift-LeftClick-Drag the new edge overtop the other geometry.

Snap only works directly underneath/behind the cursor.

Eric Chadwick

Oh yeah, there is a highlighted-button bug, sometimes happens when you copy a button to a new toolbar. Button still works though. Just a PITA with something visual like the Restrict-To-XYZ axis buttons.

thomasp

eric, i hate to dissapoint you but that's not the lock selection toggle. it's the spinner drag update toggle that i simply threw that icon on to not waste preciousss toolbar space

when i did that screen i kept the edge selected and moved the pointer over the "hi-res" surface, that's why it's highlighted.

hmmm, i'm wondering if some setting in preferences might influence the snap behaviour? i'Ve seen weirder things happen in max btw, thanks for your patience so far!

fritz

i still can't get it to work either thomas....hmmmmmmmm....

Eric Chadwick

No biggie, just a puzzler. I have no idea why you guys can't get this to work, snaps have always worked for me, always.

You say you moved the cursor off the selected edge in order to capture the snap highlight? When I'm shift-dragging a selected edge, it only snaps to the other surface when I'm dragging it overtop the other surface. If there's another surface in between the edge and the high-poly, it won't snap to the high-poly. If my cursor isn't on the edge, it won't snap it.

Max only snaps what's under the cursor to what's directly under that.

Also might check your Prefs... Customize > Preferences > Gizmos > Intersection (instead of Projection).

Oh well, doesn't really matter anyway, since this whole surface-recreation method sucks balls. If Max rotated the edge to match your draw-direction, it might be worthwhile, but nope it don't.