Modo Creating edges without faces/faces behind edges
polycounter lvl 6
I'm usually a 3ds Max person just trying out Modo as Autodesk's Australian tax on 3ds max is starting to annoy me. Some things have been great but it's also making major problems that are huge time wasters.
For example every now and then it decides to throw an edge that looks like it's splitting a face but the edge is actually in just in front of the face and has absolute control over certain vertices and deletes them when I delete it.
Here is a example, this model was made with symmetry, as you can see on the right, the blue one is a single polygon, but the orange selected one is a single polygon as well, also note the edges passing over it are a light greay instead of the black they normally are. The edge over the orange polygon will not loop to any other edge either and if I delete that orange face that edge is still visible just bridging gap with no poly.
I'm just wondering how this happens in at all, and while in symmetry so that one side splits polys correctly while the other side doesn't.
I've also had many other random polys in my model and ridiculus amounts of extra vertices in my model for no reason, but one at a time.
I would very much like to know what it going on, this is a serious time waster amoung the other problems Modo has been giving me, and being primarily a modeller I would love to use Modo to its full potential.
For example every now and then it decides to throw an edge that looks like it's splitting a face but the edge is actually in just in front of the face and has absolute control over certain vertices and deletes them when I delete it.
Here is a example, this model was made with symmetry, as you can see on the right, the blue one is a single polygon, but the orange selected one is a single polygon as well, also note the edges passing over it are a light greay instead of the black they normally are. The edge over the orange polygon will not loop to any other edge either and if I delete that orange face that edge is still visible just bridging gap with no poly.
I'm just wondering how this happens in at all, and while in symmetry so that one side splits polys correctly while the other side doesn't.
I've also had many other random polys in my model and ridiculus amounts of extra vertices in my model for no reason, but one at a time.
I would very much like to know what it going on, this is a serious time waster amoung the other problems Modo has been giving me, and being primarily a modeller I would love to use Modo to its full potential.
Replies
1)Go to Mesh edit tab
2)press Mesh cleanup
3)press F5
4)find mesh.cleanup true
5)right click - map command to key
Press the hotkey A LOT when you model stuff. The only way to work
Second, symmetry is broken in Modo. You can do two things
1)Download Pushing Points toolkit (google it, it comes with a handy Vimeo video)
2)Delete a half of your model, make an instance mirror and continue on modelling. But instance mirror is still broken in 801 (all service packs) so lol
3)buy this plugin - http://mechanicalcolor.com/flipper/
I personally use Pushing Points toolkit. I'm really short on money now so I won't buy plugin but as soon as I can I'll purchase it... probably.
Also about reaching the full potential of Modo... you have to use a lot of scripts to do that. First, you have to download Eterea's swiss Knife. Second you have to download all Seneca's scripts. There are some other scripts I use but I don't have time to write them all down. (almost forgot - Fafarer's vertex normal toolkit is essential).
Without scripts Modo is pain to deal with. But I also think that Max is useless without scripts. As Maya. And Blender without some add-ons. So it might be a personal thing.
I've been using Modo for a year and half and while it's my package of choice the only reason I use it is just because it clicks with me for some reason. There are a lot of stuff other packages do better. But if Modo doesn't click with you... and you need just modelling tools, then Blender may be your choice.
edit: Seneca's scripts - http://community.thefoundry.co.uk/discussion/topic.aspx?f=32&t=64729
Edges can belong to more than two polygons, vertices can belong to two "surfaces", vertices can belong to the same polygon more than once (although this last one is pretty hard to achieve).
Mesh Cleanup can be helpful. But in this instance, I'd just delete the offending polygon and re-bridge the hole.
And besides that, Modo is meant to be used with a stat window opened when modeling at all times specially for this.
viewport.3dView showIndices:?+
(you can map this command in the input editor)
Even works for face and edge selections, not much but i fell off my chair when i first activated it a while back.
That showindices command is interesting too. What do you find it particularly useful for? It doesn't seem like it'd give the best indication of duplicate geo as the numbers are so hard to differentiate anyway (and the geo has to be selected; if you've got what should be one poly selected and your selection reads 2 polygons then you know you've got extra geo)
I dont particularly use it. This is only to get intimate with Modo, to get to know the app if you see what i mean.
That mesh cleanup is magic. Thank you, so very much.
Ever since I've been using that I've had to do a total of 0 cleanup work. And now I'm making meshes in time comparable to what I was in 3ds max, I am extremely satisfied with all the default tools and am looking forward to trying plugins in the future. Any recommened?
There's a great thread for MODO scripts here I found very useful.
http://www.polycount.com/forum/showthread.php?t=137427
If you're making game art, FarFarer's vertex normal toolkit is ESSENTIAL.
The elegance of MODO's modeling tools is compromised by the amount of "dirty mesh" that needs to be cleaned up for game engine use...
I've replaced MODO's default triangulation algorithm with Smart Triangulation: http://community.thefoundry.co.uk/discussion/topic.aspx?f=83&t=90206
Anything from Farfarer is gold to me.
You may want to keep an eye on these threads:
http://community.thefoundry.co.uk/discussion/topic.aspx?f=83&t=90206
http://community.thefoundry.co.uk/discussion/forum.aspx?f=83
http://community.thefoundry.co.uk/discussion/forum.aspx?f=36
Anyone going from Max or Maya to MODO should also look at Richard Yot's short tutorials on YouTube. I learned some of what makes MODO different (like snapping and select-through) from his videos and other short online tutorials:
https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCXLyDQ1uDEq90jP30xDrNxg
PS Does anyone have a list of which of Seneca's scripts/plugins still work with 801?
Could there be a small tutorial or a YT video for starters, i downloaded it a while ago but haven't understood how to use this precisely for game art. I read some of the docs but alas how do you start using it ?
Mostly you're going to be using 4 buttons on the interface;
The top row of 3 - soften, harden and harden by UV.
The one in the bottom right - update.
The top row are context sensitive, based on the selection type (vertex, edge or polygon).
I'll cover the first two, soften and harden;
In vertex mode, they will soften/harden any edge that has the vertices at both ends selected.
Holding Shift and clicking will harden all the edges connected to any selected vertex.
In edge mode, it's as you'd expect from Maya or such. It will soften/harden the selected edges.
In polygon mode, it will soften/harden the boundary edges of your current polygon selection.
The third one, harden by UV, is fairly simple;
It is also context sensitive. In edge mode, it will harden the boundary edges of the currently selected UV map. In polygon mode, it will harden any boundary edges of UV islands (this is the same result as you'd get from the "Smoothing Groups from UV Islands" that TexTools gives you in 3DSMax).
NB: With all of the harden buttons, you can also hold Alt and it will smooth all edges that are not hardened by the operation.
The next row of buttons deal with hardening edges by angle.
The third two buttons are to deal with selecting edges marked as hard or soft.
The fourth row does a couple of things;
The update button will recalculate the normals on the mesh. I can't do this automatically when you edit the mesh due to the way MODO's SDK works. Note that any other soften/harden operation will automatically update the mesh normals - this is purely for when you've made edits to the mesh.
Holding Alt will convert a mesh that is not using hard edges over to hard edges.
Holding Ctrl will toggle the vertex normal map on the mesh, either deleting or recreating it.
The second button brings up a popover for the various smoothing options;
Each should be fairly obvious, the mesh normals are updated each time one is altered so you can see the results of various options immediately.
It's not going to break your mesh from poking at the buttons either - if it all goes awry, you can delete the vert_normal Vertex Normal Map (found under Other in the Map List) and the HardEdges edge selection set map (also found under Other). Your mesh will go back the way it was, entirely unharmed.
The only thing that makes irrevocable changes to the mesh is the "Convert" option, which has the option to remove any smoothing groups applied to the mesh. So careful there