Hard Light Productions Forums

Modding, Mission Design, and Coding => The Modding Workshop => Topic started by: Krackers87 on July 25, 2003, 01:08:21 pm

Title: Un-triangulate?
Post by: Krackers87 on July 25, 2003, 01:08:21 pm

is there a way to de triangulate in truespace? or 3ds max or lightwave or etc...

Title: Un-triangulate?
Post by: StratComm on July 25, 2003, 01:21:54 pm

This actually gets rid of unnecessary triangulation, while keeping any triangulated non-planar faces split up, but it uses Booleans and I know some people have a lot of trouble with those.  If your object already has a heirarchy, i.e. debris, turrets, lods etc, take it apart.  This will mess things up big time if you don't, as booleans don't really know what to do with subobjects.  Next, create a cube (small is fine, big is also ok) and place it where it doesn't intersect or touch your model at all.  Next, select the object that you want to detriangulate, and boolean union it with the cube (make sure your boolean operations are set to delete edges, this property can be accessed by right-clicking the boolean tool).  Finally, take the delete face tool and remove all six faces from the cube so all that you have left is the original object.  You'll have to do this for each object that you have, but it is the only fast-and-nasty way of detriangulating a model that I am aware of.  It keeps UV mapping intact as long as comined polys were in the same UV map group, so it shouldn't do anything negative to your model other than forcing you to rebuild the model heirarchy.

Title: Un-triangulate?
Post by: karajorma on July 25, 2003, 03:25:27 pm

A slightly easier way (but related) is to make a plane that doesn't touch your ship and use boolean subtract to remove it.

All the warnings for stratcomms meathod apply though.

Title: Un-triangulate?
Post by: mikhael on July 25, 2003, 03:26:19 pm

You can safely boolean from the inside of a hierarchy in Truespace if you make sure you only have a single subobject selected.

In lightwave, you can use qemmloss, or the standard poly reduction tool. On minimum settings, both of these tools will simply detriangulate a model to planar polys. Then you can retriangulate the polys with more than 4pts.

Title: Un-triangulate?
Post by: Krackers87 on July 25, 2003, 04:38:57 pm

how do you boolean glue? I dont see a button that says boolean glue.

Title: Un-triangulate?
Post by: karajorma on July 25, 2003, 04:58:05 pm

Quote

Originally posted by Krackers87
how do you boolean glue? I dont see a button that says boolean glue.

Check again. No one mentioned boolean glue until you did :D

Title: Un-triangulate?
Post by: TopAce on July 25, 2003, 05:03:37 pm

Quote

Originally posted by karajorma

Check again. No one mentioned boolean glue until you did :D

Boolen glue? Isn't it the object uniion?

Title: Un-triangulate?
Post by: karajorma on July 25, 2003, 05:06:42 pm

Quote

Originally posted by TopAce


Boolen glue? Isn't it the object uniion?

Yep. He wants to use Object Union to do it Strat's way or object subtraction to do it my way.

The problem is that most of us get used to calling them Boolean x rather than Object x :)

Title: Un-triangulate?
Post by: TopAce on July 25, 2003, 05:08:55 pm

Yeah! At last I had some use, not only asking stupid questions and post polls without timeout ... :)

Title: Un-triangulate?
Post by: StratComm on July 26, 2003, 11:00:00 am

Quote

Originally posted by karajorma


Yep. He wants to use Object Union to do it Strat's way or object subtraction to do it my way.

The problem is that most of us get used to calling them Boolean x rather than Object x :)

Well they are considered Boolean operations; that's the dialogue you get on right click of the tool so I have always refered to them that way.  But I think you are right, the tool tip calls them object union/object subtraction.