3ds Max - Hexagons with Classic Mesh Smooth
Software : 3d studio max
Category : 3d Modeling
Description : This Tutorial covers how to turn your mesh into Hexagon poly’s. This is a technique I learned from Toru Hasegawa while we were in school together at the GSAPP. You essentially triangulate a quad poly surface then collapse the triangles to have hexagons.
Get the Flash Player to see this player.
Great! thanks for the tutorial.
This is a quick way to do some early visualization of concepts. Albeit it gets very tricky if you want to have good control over the size of hexagons. It is hard to get the correct balance between changing the values in Mesh Smoothing in the beginning, weld vertices in the middle of the process and the inset values in edit poly at the last step. I tried to use this on meshes that look like the Greater London Authority Building and the Swiss Re Building in London. I am guessing that the weld vertices process wasn’t working on these curved surfaces since I did not notice the surface changing like it was in the video when the values are increased. Subsequently when I applied the inset to polygons, lots of “jaggies” pop out from everywhere. I ended up going back to the very first mesh smoothing operation, added some negative values to the “relax” box and that helped smooth it all the way in appearance. I did not try to make a big inset value to create thick hexagonal frames since I was afraid that jaggies would pop again, and when that happens the computer gets really taxed. In the final step of removing the original mesh, I noticed “left over pieces” just like in the video. The only way I know how to erase them is to go through each polygon individually so I just let them be for now. Next time I do this exercise, I would want to see if I can boolean the mesh with the hexagons frame to get individual hexagon tiles.
If you send me your file I’ll take a look at it. The jaggies can come from many different things. Many of them come from the shell modifier.
and as for “This is a quick way to do some early visualization of concepts.” That’s pretty much the only way I use 3ds Max. These are very fast ways to test design ideas. Once the general framework has been established I will then switch to a more precise modeling package.
Thanks for the comments
Also if you have not done so already watch the Hexagon screen video.
is there a trick when importing geometry from SketchUp without tessilating the object. I wish to maintain the poly’s the way the were imported without further triangulation.
Also, i know this is going too far but can the end product mesh be cleaned for a 3D print?
hmmm. I have to look into sketch up. Honestly i have never used it. We should be able to figure out a way to 3d print it. Can you post your mesh file in the forum? I’ll give it a shot.
You should check out SU, there are some pretty cool plug-ins being developed. There is a new FFD plug-in that is interesting
http://www.sketchucation.com/forums/scf/viewtopic.php?f=180&t=6029&st=0&sk=t&sd=a&hilit=Plugin
Although, i am more interested in how i can take a SU model into MAX and use meshsmooth
Thanks
I think we can figure that out. Check out the optimize modifier. I’ll make a video for that soon
files posted here: http://designreform.net/forum/index.php/topic,735.0.html