Having difficulty welding fire escape poles

[Chaserm2]

Here's what I have so far. I want to weld the end caps, but there's no way of doing so that hasn't resulted in disproportion pipes. I tried making an edge loop in the middle of a pipe and bending it, but that didn't work out as I hoped. I'm kinda stumped



This is the look I'm going for



Any ideas?

[hunharibo]

Why not spline model this? Create a line, then make it renderable or do a loft or whatever. Creates clean geometry.

[Chaserm2]

I did that to the loop pieces for the fencing, but completely forgot that it would make the rails even easier that way. Thanks hunharibo!

Ever since upgrading to Max 2012 I've had some bugs, which I know is normal yet is still frustrating. For instance, when I edit the vertices of a spline, the verts disappear so I can only guess which ones I'm selecting :/

[darthviper107]

You can't connect a spline to the middle of another spline that way. I would create the top bar as one piece and then just have separate splines for the vertical bars, perhaps make them a smaller radius. Otherwise you'll have to be careful that the connecting bars don't go through the other mesh.

[Chaserm2]

I was doing that originally, but what was giving me the headache was the triangle like piece.

Here's what I achieved thus far with the splines



I found that the thickness of one pipe would at some point literally smash into the other, and while it gave me the welded look I was going for I wasn't sure if it was going to pose a problem when I unwrap. Here's a cleaner version of what I'm talking about....

[darthviper107]

Trying it that way won't connect without modifying it later.

An alternate way of doing it is to model it as 4-sided pieces the way you want (with them connected) then you can use turbosmooth to make them into cylinders, then you would add segments around the joints to keep the harder edge.

[Chaserm2]

Is there a way for me to do this without using turbosmooth? I'm trying to maintain a reasonable budget. I like the spline idea, but the problem I'm finding is that if you need to add parts later after converting them into an Editable Poly you're kinda screwed.

The merged look is the issue I want to avoid......unless I'm just being really really picky and it looks fine?

[darthviper107]

You can't add splines together in a configuration like that, that's why I suggested the other options

[JessieG]

I think it looks fine in the last picture you showed. I've noticed in so many games little things like this make it into final versions all the time. Unless its a major focal point in a game, I don't think leaving it like that would detract from the experience.

[joshua.fontany]

Yeah, that should work out OK. You've run into one of the big 'puzzles' of hard-surface modeling. I could probably rough that out in Maya, but I'm not that familiar with Max yet. Even if you get it into continuous mesh, you'd have to decide where to cut UVs.

Oh, this looks relevent: http://cgcookie.com/modo/2010/02/25/...ps-and-tricks/

[Hitpawz]

Darthviper has the best answer for this

An alternate way of doing it is to model it as 4-sided pieces the way you want (with them connected) then you can use turbosmooth to make them into cylinders, then you would add segments around the joints to keep the harder edge.

Here's a video showing it in practice

[Chaserm2]

I wasn't able to visual what you were saying Darth, but I got it now. Thanks for the video Hitpawz! I thought splines would be the go to resource, but it looks like they only take you so far. I've run into a consistent welding problem that's driving me crazy. I've used the bridge tool to get the same effect, but I want to know why the welding tool hasn't worked to get the same outcome.

The selected parts are what I want to weld, yet I can't nor can I target weld.


They're attached as one so I don't know what else is the issue

[Hitpawz]

With editable poly, it tries to avoid you creating rats nests, butterfly points and inner faces by not allowing you to weld when there's geometry in the way. Delete the highlighted faces before you weld and it will work.

[Chaserm2]

Nice! Thanks for the tip cause I've been struggling with figuring this out for awhile.

The next issue, at least it looks like an issue, is the smoothing groups. I've fiddled with auto smoothing and decided it best to just manually do it. I can't tell if the dark areas are shading errors or just shading in general.



Then there's the center that doesn't look right. I have one pole on SG 1, the other on SG 2, and the middle on SG 1 and 2. The middle pole is on SG 1.

[Hitpawz]

In this case I would use one smoothing group for the whole thing. In my test I used for that video, it seemed to be the best option. You could also right-click on the model, go to properties and check "Backface Cull" to ensure your normals are all facing the right direction. This error will show up as missing faces, but they're just flipped the wrong way. That can sometimes cause issues with smoothing aswell.