blocky arms

[rence]

hi, i recently finished a mesh with XSI Modtool in smd format but the mesh comes out blocky. I have read in a couple of threads about this problem. Has anyone currently come up with a suggestion for this?

[tiggerypum]

first, did you actually 'weld' the edges?

The seam between the various parts will show up with a light blue line. You can select the points you'd like to weld together and then

Modify > Poly. Mesh > Weld Boundary Points/Edges

The blue line will disappear. I found I could not select the top of the neck with this command, it deformed (at least in the mesh I was working on)

There is another command that I found behaved nicer --

Modify > Poly. Mesh > Filter Points

BUT you need to move the slider to ZERO. At that point I was able to select my entire mesh, including the top of the neck, and it did it very nicely. If you don't move the slider to zero, the sims fingers will get damaged.

The SMD files do not retain the welding on import - so if you have been saving to smd and then loading smd files, you need to do the welding over and over again, so I saved it until the end. The welding is retained if you save modtool 'scenes' though.

Secondly, you might after all that still have some rough spots.

If you do, you need to add some points and shape the arm/leg better. I really *do* need to finish up the docs I've written about this...

select the POLYGONS along one strip of the arm/leg where you'd like to add a second row of points so that you can make things rounder.

Model > Modify - Poly Mesh > Quadrangulate to turn your polys into 'rectangles'

Then select the edges that go across that section (oh this is horrible in text!)

Do a split edges (this is by memory) I use the one with the slider/options

Now go and select all the new points. Pull them a bit out in the two appropriate directions, so that your arm or leg is more of a cylinder.

The smd format will automatically re-triangulate those parts - but just in case, you might want to do it yourself (also you *should* do it yourself if you ever make changes that produce non-quad shapes, because what the smd does to retriangulate those shapes is not always optimal)

Select the quad shaped polygons and you can
Model > Modify - Poly Mesh > Triangulate

The part of the help manual I studied the most often had to do with modifying polys, many of the commands in this section were helpful:

You can do all of that... there is a section of their help file that I keep going back to - from the Index you can find it:

Modeling and Deformations
Section II Polygonal Modeling
Fundamentals of Polygon Modeling

[rence]

thanks! worked like a charm