Spline Slices to Surface

CrazyButcher

hello,
I have lots of splines which are parts of the rat brain. now I wonder if there is a relatively robust way to connect splines to create a hull shape ?
this is 3dsmax5.

The only things that came to my mind is actually surface modifier (which would require me to connect each spline slice with the next on multiple points), or NURBS U Loft (personally I am not a fan of nurbs, and it would be similar amount of work...
I wonder if there is a way that just "connects" open shapes ?

oXYnary

If your lines splines have the same number of points, are part of the same object, and are numbered in the same direction, you can cross section then add the surface modifier on top.

There is should be a cross section option under the splines options. Also in the splines dialog to show the number for each point.

Hey! I actually knew something (looks out for sky falling)

Edit: You could at that point convert each point to a bezier curve if you need added surface concave/convex.

CrazyButcher

cool never heard about cross section modifier before, thanks a lot

Ryno

If they're numbered differently, you'll need to manually create the spline cross sections, then Surface it.

FatAssasin

Don't forget that you can reorder the vert numbering on a spline by selecting one end or the other and hitting the "Make First" button in the Edit Spline vert subobject rollout.

CrazyButcher

yeah, unfortuantely maxscript in max5 is buggy with the makefirst... I wanted to automate the process, of reordering. but anyway I gave up the idea on using surface mod, instead trying to create a voxelhull mesh. but again lots of issues with maxscript... editmesh is extremely crash happy and not practical when creating new geometry, but doesnt have the problem with multiple polys per edge. so I will have to use my own editable poly manual extrude function...

CrazyButcher

and after a series of fights with crashhappy maxscript, the scripted solution is done.

Ventrikelsystem of Rat Brain (no clue what it is for)





it generates voxelcubes from the imported spline shapes, combines the cubes and deletes doublefaces so that the mesh is only made of the outer voxel hull. Finally adds relax/faceextrude/smooth modifiers

takes approximately 3 minutes on my 2.3 ghz p4.

however I will probably recode the voxelmesh generation so that deleting doublefaces and all that isnt needed, but doing my own extrusion.

Once there is a gui for it, I will release the maxscript.

arshlevon

wow thats super cool. would it be hard to do the same thing with a proxy mesh? like say i make a character model, can i generate a voxel volume from it? might be neat for 3d pixel art looking stuff.

CrazyButcher

yes, it could be done, although would take much longer to do. Currently it can be optimized well as I only raytest the slices within a depth layer. If it already was a full 3d mesh, I would need shoot a lot more rays from all sides.

there is already two maxscripts at scriptspot (search for voxel). but it doesnt create a hull mesh, but tons of boxes. However it shows how slow it is with 3d meshes.

because in 3d you need to shoot rays from all sides (+x,-x,+y,-y,+z,-z) and in 2d case I just shoot from +z

sevenfingers

Haha! That's awesome
Looking forward to playing with the maxscript.