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Modding, Mission Design, and Coding => The Modding Workshop => Topic started by: Rampage on January 13, 2003, 03:21:33 pm

Title: Using Booleans and trueSpace's - BAD - Help System
Post by: Rampage on January 13, 2003, 03:21:33 pm

Okay...  I'm dealing with some - bad model that requires boolean operations to um... look good.  Question: WHAT IS A BOOLEAN OPERATION?  How do I get to it?  Truespace 4's help system is a piece of - doo doo!

NOTE: If boolean operations are just simple glueing, then smack me.

Title: Using Booleans and trueSpace's - BAD - Help System
Post by: mikhael on January 13, 2003, 06:44:56 pm

Boolean operations are the combining of shapes to create other shapes.

In a boolean ADD, two shapes are merged into one, with the bits that are hidden by overlap disappearing.

A boolean SUBTRACT, removes the part of object A where it overlaps with object B.

A boolean UNION joins the two objects into one object, without deleting any geometry.

A boolean INTERSECTION removes everything EXCEPT where the two objects overlap.


I may have gotten those slightly wrong but you get the idea. The best way to test booleans is to take a cube and a cylinder and use the various booleans on them.

Title: Using Booleans and trueSpace's - BAD - Help System
Post by: Rampage on January 13, 2003, 07:59:49 pm

Okay...  I need to find them.  Give me something - graphical. ;)

Title: Using Booleans and trueSpace's - BAD - Help System
Post by: IceFire on January 13, 2003, 08:14:59 pm

Apparently using Booleans in Truespace for FreeSpace 2 ships is a bad bad thing.  But then I've heard to the contrary as well.

Title: Using Booleans and trueSpace's - BAD - Help System
Post by: Anaz on January 13, 2003, 08:40:00 pm

Attached is where they are in TS 4.2

Title: Using Booleans and trueSpace's - BAD - Help System
Post by: StratComm on January 13, 2003, 08:47:35 pm

Using Booleans in TS for ships is only a bad thing if you just stick two things together and expect it to work.  You have to do a lot of work welding vertices and straightening up the mess Booleans make if you want to use them.  However, many (if not all) of my recent ships make use of Booleans, and they are not having serious problems.  The main trouble is that you can't mirror an object and stick it flush with the other side (for reflecting down the ship's spine) as TS Booleans won't work if a line on one object intersects a line on the other object.  Or if you are trying glue to non-planar faces, or a number of other conditions.  Play with them for a while, and see what comes out.  Oh, and Boolean union in TS does remove geometry, where the ships overlap.  Trouble is, you usually wind up with a face containing a hole or you get an unnecessary edge deleted (thus creating a face with at least one angle greater than 180 degrees), and that is what Freespace REALLY doesn't like.

Title: Using Booleans and trueSpace's - BAD - Help System
Post by: tomcat on January 14, 2003, 02:32:24 am

Quote

Originally posted by Rampage
Okay...  I need to find them.  Give me something - graphical. ;)

Rampage ..email me I will teach you in the evil art of Booleans in TS..There aint nothing more simpler than Boolean operations.

Icefire..that is a bad thing to say about booleans :D..how the hell do u think I've created our ships..?:)

Title: Using Booleans and trueSpace's - BAD - Help System
Post by: Rampage on January 14, 2003, 02:08:48 pm

Hmm...  I don't think that this'll be a HUGE problem for me because my models are just imported models from games such as Homeworld, Hellbender, etc.  I don't have plans to make a model from scratch.  Although that could change... :)

Thanks for the input.