Duplicate Polygons in max ala XSI

chademond

I'm trying to transition from Max to XSI, and there are a few features I havent come across yet that I'm wondering how to do in Max.

One of the things I loved in XSI was the modeling workflow. I could just select any polygon, CTRL+D to duplicate it (extrude) and I could move/resize all in that 1 action. I could CTRL+D on a selected polygon, resize to "inset" it and CTRL+D again to extrude another set of faces.

In max however, the only way I can find to do this is much longer/unintuitive. I can use the inset feature of Max2010 graphite tools, but I don't find it works very well.

MoP

Not really sure what you're talking about here ... surely Bevel does this?

ie. have a hotkey on Bevel, press it, drag on the face to extrude it then click and drag again to change the scale.

I don't understand how you can have an inset and an extrude in a single action unless it's a bevel function? You have to do some sort of action after CTRL+D otherwise how does it know you want to "inset" (resize) or extrude? Is it some sort of left-click/right-click thing?

Ark

Kinda confused as you say your transitioning from Max to XSI, but talk about features of XSI.

I assume you moving from XSI to Max?

I've never seen this tool you mention when extruding faces. When you use Ctrl + D to duplicate the face, then you have to switch to the translate, scale or rotation tool to modify the selected face.

As Mop said the bevel or extrude tool is what you are looking for. If you bind it to a key, without the options then it should mimic XSI's behavior.

chademond

Sorry guys, yah I wasn't too clear in my original post. I'll hotkey bevel and try that out. Thanks guys, sorry for the confusion!

Sage

shift drag on edges is similar to the extrude of XSI. I use both programs but went from to XSI and prefer the max way. For bevel I prefer max only because XSI limits how much you can bevel something with their slider.

If you want to be fast with max just hot key, connect, extrude, inset, etc. One thing you will miss is the XSI cut tools and the XSI supra mode of doing things.

Ark

Sage you can type into the sliders in XSI to go beyond the default ranges. I tend just to highlight the value in the slider, then roll my mouse wheel.

Sage

Yeah, but it's still annoying to me. I do type in higher value but it feels really lame and sometimes it doesn't seem to make a difference. I'll try the mouse wheel thing.

Ark

If you change the bevel 'unit size' to 'SI units' instead of 'Relative to selection' you can normally get a more broader range to start off with.

Also you can also hold 'Shift' when moving the sliders to move it more discretely.

pior

Hey Chad, after watching some xsi vids and learning the app al little I see exactly what you mean. As a matter of fact i have been trying to implement this in my workflow lately.

For those unfamiliar with XSI, the way bevel and inset are integrated into one single action is very nice and fluid. Worth looking into really. Also the sliders in the popup window work alot better than their Max counterparts too.

Alright here is what I ended up doing.

- find a row of 3 free buttons on your keyboard. I think I used f5 f6 f7.
- you need a script to move verts along their normals (I couldnt find a shortcut to do a proper inset; but this does the trick too and is very handy to have anyways). I think it comes with either CSpolytools or Meshtools.
-assign f5 to extrude face, f6 to convert to vertices, f7 to move verts along normals.
-f5>drag>f6>f7>drag will give you a nice fluid way of doing what I think you want to do. It becomes natural very quick and is very helpful for freestyle highpoly modelling.

MoP

pior: what's wrong with click -> click + drag, using bevel that's an inset in max...

Sage

Ark with the wheel and holding shift it does what I wanted. Thanks for sharing, very cool.

Ark

Glad to be of help.

Since where on about the bevel tool in XSI, another neat trick is to 'freeze all the transforms' on the mesh before you perform the bevel then you get equal rounding like on a cube, on stuff like rectangles and other meshes that are not always equilateral in edge length.
Don't think you can do this in any other software.

McGreed

Yeah, I never understood why you can shift+move edge to create the next polygon, but if you use shift+move polygon, it doesn't extrude, but just detach the polygon, I find that kinda stupid.