3ds Max - Warped polygons... beginner's easy quick question *video*

WhiteNorthStar

Hi Folks

[ame]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JICKM_r_0Kc[/ame]

I'm more of a Max 'tweaker', certainly not yet a Max 'modeller', so I'm not quite sure about how to describe my issue, but some polygons on a slightly-curved surface have gone askew. This is not my model, it's someone else's that I am modding to fit my purpose.

I checked for flipped normals, they are ok.

However, the smoothing groups are a bit unusual though:

Good polygons - All of the 'good' polygons on the surface appear to be in group 2.
Bad polygons - All of the 'bad' polygons on the surface are assigned group 2 and group 1.
Adjacent polygons - The nearby surface, at more than a right angle, are all assigned group 1.

Obviously, I tried changing the 'bad' polygons just to group 2... but this made no visible difference though.

:-D Please help, is it the smoothing groups or something else... am I missing something or is there an extra step I need to take?

Thanks and best regards, David

OBlastradiusO

What the hell? Looks like those polys have double faces on some of them. Did you turbosmooth this?

WhiteNorthStar

Thanks BlastradiusO

I didn't, but the modeler may have. In the whole model, there are about 20 polygons that seem to be 'off' in the same way. There isn't a turbosmooth modifier in the stack, but of course the modeler may have collapsed it.

This helicopter is from Evermotion's Archmodels collection (number 84 - military vehicles)

I ran the STL Check modifier, specifically for double faces, and it seems to have cleaned everything up... yeah, thank you! Is this a good and poly-efficient solution?

OBlastradiusO

Yeah that model's a mess. Some older models tend to import incorrectly too. I had an experience like that while trying to import Google warehouse models. Best of luck to you. I don't think STL Check can clean up a model like that. It just checks for mesh errors.

WhiteNorthStar

Thanks mate.

I totally can't explain it (because I'm not sure what I'm doing)... but running STL check made the bad polys disappear... *fingers crossed*

;-)

OBlastradiusO

Hmm. I would just select all the verts in edit poly mode and weld them 000.1. That should fix some of the problems.

WhiteNorthStar

got it, I'll also do this :-D

.morph3us

yeah, definatly doublefaces!

sometimes throwing a mesh or turbosmooth modfier on it even gets rids of the problem as the triangulation of the mesh changes.
you could also add an edit poly modifier hit 3 for the edge selection and search for "turn".
maybe you can turn some of the edges to not overlap anymore...

in those cases i mostly just delete the area and remodel it.