hi,

Happy christmas to everyone... and a great new year..

just started playing with Moi again, not had much chance recently to do so..

Im wanting to build a greek temple and wanted to know the best way to model the fluted column that is typicaly greek..

2 versions one with clear flutes all along the height of the main column and the harder one with the flutes just ending short of the bottom of the column. this is the one i'm having trouble with.

I ve tried creating a cylinder, then a circular array of pod/cylinders to give around and boolean subtract from the main cylinder. look good until i turn it into a.obj and get a few strange poly's.

not sure if its clear but havent ant screen grabs yet..

ps. when i export the finished mdel in .obj or .lwo, in MODO 401 the object poly's are all separate, is there something im missing to export giving all polys welded together...

thanks for any help

Tony

Hi Tony, re: Greek column - there is actually a video tutorial on doing that in MoI here: http://bitreality.blogspot.com/

Also see the discussion thread about the video here:
http://moi3d.com/forum/index.php?webtag=MOI&msg=522.1


> ps. when i export the finished mdel in .obj or .lwo, in MODO
> 401 the object poly's are all separate, is there something im
> missing to export giving all polys welded together...

The main thing is to make sure to use Join to glue together surfaces at their common edges, instead of just keeping them as separate totally independent objects.

When a mesh is created there is extra work done to ensure a watertight cohesive mesh generated at joined edges.

If you have just 2 independent surfaces sitting next to one another each one will get meshed separately and the meshes may not have the same vertex structure.

If that does not solve your problem could you maybe post an example file (simple if possible) that does not weld for you?

- Michael

hi michael,

thanks for the reply... and on christmas day too....

yeah there is something with the meshes not welding together... im sure its me,

i did select the completed mesh after boolean using control+A, then used join but still had a separate mesh on import into MODO.

will look at the tutes ands ee what im doing wrong...

thanks again and happy christmas...

Hi Tony, can you please post an example model for something that is not welding for you?

If you have 2 solids sitting next to one another, rather than 2 individual surfaces then you would not use join for that because join is for gluing unattached edges of surfaces together. Solids have all edges already attached to something so you usually need to do a boolean union to combine solids rather than Join.

But the specifics depend a lot on what you have for your model - so it is a bit hard to give you a definitive answer without seeing your actual model.

- Michael

hi thanks for the quick response again, here is a breakdown of what ive done so far.

1. create a circle.
2. create a smaller circle on the outer edge of the first circle in step 1. and use a radial array to create the indent shapes for the flutes
3. boolean subtract to take the array away from the original circle in step 1. leaving a profile of the column
4. i then used join to join the profile pieces together
5. then on this shape i extrude to create the column.

this leaves me with a circular column with the flutes i need.

i then export this shape s .obj, with ngons as modo can cope with these but the poly's dont seem t be joined as in the final image.

hope this is a bit clearer, im using 19dec v2 beta

thanks again

Tony

Hi Toni,

Please take a look:

hi Ralph,

thanks for the input..

is it the weld vertices along angle that may be the problem....??

how does this work..

thanks.. happy holidays...

ps. that how mine looks when i import into modo, i hav shown when i select a poly and then move that poly,

Ralph, if you enter polygon mode and select the end polygon, can you then move that polygon as i have shown as it is not welded,

or is it in your example?

I made this in V1.
Hope you can get some value from the file.
Brian

Hi Tony.

I have followed your instructions and imported the object into modo using default .obj export settings and can confirm that the column comes into modo as groups of polys(groups for outer edge, groups for flutes and one ngon each for top and bottom). If you wish to then make this one solid in modo you can just click on vertices tab, select all vertices and run the Merge tool. This will join all vertices existing in the same space(320 in my test) and leave you with a solid column(all polygons joined).

Regards
Malcolm

Hi Tony, like Malcolm mentions you should be able to use the Merge tool inside of Modo to update the model to have welded points.

But it should also be possible to get that built in to the export from MoI - that is entirely what that "Weld vertices along edges" checkbox option inside of MoI's export options is for. When it is checked MoI will generate a welded mesh where polygons from different surfaces will share a single vertex in common between them. When it is unchecked each polygon will instead have their own individual vertices but stacked up on the same location.

It may be possible that Modo's OBJ importer decides on its own to break things up at different smoothing groups or something like that.

I'd recommend using LWO format instead of OBJ format for going into Modo. Previous versions of Modo did not handle n-gons very well in OBJ format, so really LWO has always been the best method for transfer to Modo.

I don't think that Modo messes around as much with the data it gets from LWO since it is closer to its native data arrangement than what is in OBJ.

I only have an old version of Modo here (203), but testing LWO format with it and your shape everything seems to be how you want it.

When I do the import into Modo it looks like this:



And then if I select a vertex and move it, I get this kind of a result:



Is that what you want to get?

Does using LWO format solve your problem?

- Michael

hi everyone,

just read this thread, thanks for all your replies.... will try again today with some different settings and see how it go's.

having to weld all vertices in modo could be a time consuming task depending on the.

ps just found my error... i didnt see the more option arrow on the export dialogue , weld vertices... that was my problem all along...

silly me.. must have been the christmas pudding.... too much brandy in it...

thanks again for all your help

Hi Tony,

Yes, the "Weld vertices along edges" export option is the right choice.

Btw.:Could also be interesting. :)
http://www.guerrillacg.org/home/3d-polygon-modeling/multi-sided-polygons

Hi Tony, that's great I'm glad you have solved the problem!

- Michael

yeah..!! theres a lot to learn even with this 'simple to use' program... thanks for all your help...

A great side effect of this seemingly simple, yet very powerful program, is a gain in understanding how it all really "works".