When to Float.

Incomitatum

So I have this Plane/Ship thing I am working on. And I will be adding some flourishes. I know things like bolts can float on the surface, but for some thing like vents, should I take the time to cut those into the geometry, or just let them float too?

On the one hand the rivets will be floating for the normal map, but these vents, mostly, will not be about contributing to the normal map, but rather the silhouette itself. Is it kosher than I float these, or -should- I carve them in and make them part of the whole mesh? I really would only like to do/float one so they can all have the same UV space. What would -you do-?

Ben Apuna

Float it.

It'll be easier to explode the high poly later if you need to for baking. It's also much faster to model, there's no need for those vents to be attached to the main body of the ship.

If the surface they attached to was curved and not flat and you needed a perfect smooth connection between the two in the normal map then you might need to attach them to the main body.

Incomitatum

Thank you good sir; however, what is the hard/fast rule for this? Or -is- there one?

Ben Apuna

Ninja edited my previous post for a better explanation.

Incomitatum

I see

ZacD

Cylinders are normally a good thing to float.

Incomitatum

Alright: here is another question: for things like rivets, if I wanna slap down a ton of them; is there a way to have it snap to the surface-and-normal of the body mesh.

Ruz

I just discovered after hours of frustration that you have to turn off edge padding for floating geo in max or you get weird edge bleeding in your bakes

ZacD

Depends on the app.

Incomitatum

I am using 3DsMax 2008

Ghostscape

get Advanced Painter from scriptspot.com

Use the scatterer tool (or the randomizer).

Incomitatum

Oh? I mean, I don't want to scatter the rivets, but I DO want to plop down more than a few, I also want them to snap to the surface below them, rotated correctly rather than having to play with the rotation for -each- one.

Ben Apuna

In addition to Advanced Painter which IIRC will do what you want there's this collection of scripts by Neil Blevins, the objectPainter script from that set of scripts will work as well.

You simply need to set the script to "paint" one object per click, and align it to the surface's normal.

Ghostscape

The scatterer and randomizer tools let you paint instanced geometry that aligns to a surface normal.

If you've got an edge-loop/ring that runs around where you want your rivets, you can select it, convert the selection to a shape(spline), and use the spacing tool to instance your rivets around the new spline. It gets the normal facing a bit wonky at times but you can rotate the objects in local-space or in sub-object mode to get them facing the right direction.

Mark Dygert

I second the edge loop idea, you can also Path Deform(WSM) a strip of rivets down a path spline. Likewise the spline painter scripts also have a spacing feature making it great for painting rivets evenly spaced on the surface.

Personally I wouldn't waste my time with Advanced Painter it was a nice idea but Neil did it so much better. Most notably he added a click to paint feature, where Advanced Painter requires click/drag painting to place objects. If you use the spacing setting in AP it makes it hard to drop one precisely where you want it.

Neils script also has a lot more useful features where AP kind of falls flat.

Ruz

can anyone tell me how to avoid projecting on both sides of the map. For example I have a pair of laces which are being baked to a pair of shoes,which works fine, but on the uv map the laces appear on the soles and on the back of the shoes

Clockwork

I can't believe no one has said this yet: whatever floats your boat.

Ruz

never mind, I didnl't have include working model checked:)

DarthNater

I third the spline and path deform (Wsm) idea, but I us the array tool with it. Another way would be to use the attachment contraint too, but you have to manually add and move the rivets haha.

Mark Dygert

You can also use the Align Normal tool.

Attachment constraint isn't all that practical unless 1) your main mesh will never change and 2) you want the object to follow along on the mesh as it animates.

To place a new vert you have to manually clone the rivet (which won't move) then go into the motion tab > parameters > Position > then click set position to move it around on the mesh.

Each attached object is attached to a face, each face has a number, when you add or remove geometry the object either resets, or moves to the new face with that number. Because of this, after you're done placing the objects you should take a snapshot (Tools > Snapshot) then delete the objects with attachment constraints.

It's because all of these minor hiccups that I don't really recommend it that much any more. Now some scripts could be written to help automate this but then it would be pretty much just like a painter script would.