help! 3dsmax, animatable high poly text problem

rooster

need this asap.. thought I had it cracked but problems occurring. I have a spline in the shape of some text, need it high poly bevelled edges with good topology for animation/deformation..

heres the spline with a shell:


most of my attempts are going pretty bad, I can get something ok with maxs default text but this has to use the spline..
basically default subdivision (turn to poly) ends up with pretty horrible topology. I need the front of the text there to be all nice quads, any ideas?

I always end up with a horrible tri-mess which subdivides awfully

Joao Sapiro

ok, this is how i do : I select the faces that are fucked up , mainly the 3 d shape , apply like three insents ( ina manner it doesnt create overlaping of vertex ) i chamfer the edges and apply a smoothing group . No meshsmooth as it will fuckup , or you could after the insets delete the unfaced face and retopo a bit ?

motives

well there is probably easier ways to do it.. But if u wanna subdivide those i suggest you remove all those unnecessary edges. Just keep a few to hold the general form, then apply the smooth modifier and add edges/tweak edges so they get the right shape. Keep a copy of the original text in the background as ref maybe?

Eric Chadwick

Another way....

Text shape > Interp rollout > Optimize off.

Bevel modifier > Params rollout > Cap Type: Grid. Then tweak the Bevel Values etc.

Tesselate modifier > Operate on triangles, Face-center.

Sometimes I need to convert the text shape to an Editable Spline and use Refine to add some more verts here and there.

rooster

thanks for the help managed to get something out. Jeez that was a shitty day, get dumped with someone elses stuff cos they go awol and I've no idea where to start with it.. wouldve been easier if it was max text too but all we got was some spline in from a client, no truetype font.. BLAH!
thankless task :[