Maya Triangulation Error

Polygoblin

Having a problem triangulating a high res mesh in Maya. It triangulates the smoothed mesh (seemingly), but when I run a check for n-gons, faces are highlighted that are CLEARLY triangulated.

I delete history and export .obj, only to get (n-gon) errors when trying to bake. Strange...

Anybody seen this before?

ZacD

Have you tried selecting all vertices (before triangulating) and using weld/merge vertices or whatever its called in maya, lowering the threshold to make sure its not effecting anything you can see, and then checking for ngons? There might be some weird vertices that are messing it up.

ivars

My guess is you have double faces. Or maybe a second shape node (from a bake-envelope maybe?) that is hidden.

haiddasalami

Best guess is double Faces. Great way to see them is turn on select face from center in preferences.

bugo

try pressing 3 (mesh smooth preview) and see if the subdivision is going crazy, if it is, probably there's some 2 or 3 verts on the same point of the world, try merging those verts.

Polygoblin

I'm leaning towards corrupt geometry right now. None of them seem to be lamina faces, and I "click-checked" vertices to be sure that two wern't overlapping (un-merged). I've also double-checked all the cleanup settings (and the low res mesh, just in case). Think I may have to export the smoothed mesh to another software to triangulate. I'm hearing from other people who had a similar problem that it's the only real solution.

Thanks for your help

ivars

Have you checked for double shape nodes in the outliner or hypergraph?

Polygoblin

I checked it, and everything is looking fine. I've tried all kinds of things, like deleting the offending faces, merging the surrounding verts, and re-drawing the faces. Still come up as ngons. Nothing seems to work :poly127: Everything is pointing back to an error on Maya's part.

Running out of options, me thinks :poly116:

PolyHertz

Try running this while the object is selected (and NOT in a component mode), it'll break all faces and re-merge them:

string $curSelObj[] = `ls -sl`;
PolySelectConvert 3; //verts
polySplitVertex;
polyMergeVertex -d 0.0001;
select -cl;
selectMode -o;
select -r $curSelObj;

Polygoblin

Same result

Thanks for the leads, guys.

PolyHertz

Can you save out a pre-smoothed/triangulated chunk of the mesh where the problem is happening so we can take a look at it? Also, what method are you using to triangulate?

Polygoblin

Well, I actually just got it to work I had to import the smoothed and triangulated mesh into 3DSMax, then export an .obj back out. Don't know why it works, but it does! Thanks for the help, guys.

I'd still like to know whats going on (this workaround is a pain). Seems I can't attach any .objs to the forum, though.

ZacD

you can use dropbox to host .obj's (or any other file type)

Polygoblin

Oh yeah, I just signed up for Dropbox too :poly136:

http://dl.dropbox.com/u/8508552/StockButtGripHIGH.obj

Give that a look. I smooth it with 2 divisions, then triangulate, and check for ngons. I'm curious to find out if you can replicate the same error.

PolyHertz

Happens in Maya 2009 x64, but not 2011 x64, so looks like a glitch with subdivision in older versions of the app as far as I can tell.

Polygoblin

Okay, thats good. Looks like its time for an upgrade Thanks