maya boolean problems

breakneck

i'm building a character model in maya and it was suggested to me that i boolean certain areas. However, when i have two objects and attempt to do the boolean-> union, both objects disappear. I got the boolean to work once on the model just fine, and then a second time but that did the whole disappearing act for a while but it eventually worked. but now this third time i'm getting no luck at all. I can post some screen caps if it helps but i was thinkin that someone out there has heard of this and can help point me in the right direction. Thanks for any help

rooster

hi, are you deleting your history beforehand? sometimes causes problems if you don't

CheeseOnToast

Both objects need to be closed, with no open edges or you'll get exactly the problem you described. It's pretty rare for a boolean to be useful because of all the mess it leaves behind. You sure you're not better doing it manually?

pliang

Post the scrn grabs anyways...also did you also merge the vertices before hand?

One thing to keep in mind when I was doing mine was

1. No open spaces.
2. Merge vertices
3. Delete History
4. Proximity matters, check to see if the geometry you're trying to boolean is sticking out elsewhere.
5. Make sure you have split the polys if you plan to do it again after boolean...otherwise if you say booleaned a hole on a plane and try splitting on it it say "Cannot start a hole"

Illusions

Delete history before and after every boolean operation if you want to perform another. Like rooster said, boolean can cause problems sometimes if you leave too much of the history intact.

breakneck

yea i forgot to mention that i have been deleting history on each object before the boolean operation. Open faces. . . that could be the problem. I'll get some screen caps in a few.
**no need for screens - i didn't notice the open face problem, all is well thanks**

Mark Dygert

http://www.vigville.com/forum_images/BadBoolean.jpg
Open faces like this? Happens in max too =/

pliang

The open box one would also be non editable since you can;t start a hole like that...

Mark Dygert

The capsule shape is being booleaned out of the box(s). The box on the left is missing the top most poly and booleans poorly, not actually carving. Closed it will boolean properly. At least in max it will carve out a hole on an open mesh. Its weird maya wont do that.

pliang

Just another tip to boolean...if you closed and for whatever reason Maya is still giving you problems...especially from a complex surface...you can do this.



By extracting the specific surface(s), you can boolean it seperately if you need to...works too if you combined multiple objects to boolean something say, a group of cylinders.

Hope it helps.