Thank you Michael for your kind help !
Yes a car is very difficult to make I found that out in nurbs !
You are right this was with 4 curves rendered in Vray /Truespace)
What i thought was what we are doing manualy aligning
points to get a smooth transition.... couldnt there be a tool that
automates these alignments. You take a point where thes curves come together and
run smooth ?
Peter

Hi Peter, yup that will be called the "Match" tool and it is definitely something that I want to add.

But even when that tool is in place, it will still be easier to get the highest quality by doing things in larger pieces rather than in small diced up patches.

- Michael

If you download the curves that I previously posted, and use them to build one Network, you should see a lot smoother rendering of that version.

- Michael

Yes you are right !
It does render nicely !
This is the tool I was thinking of !
thats one of the few things I miss in nurbs coming from
a poly and sds background . That would greatly speed up things.
As you want Moi to be precise and sometimes these creases are wanted
it would be good to let the application know that at this point or at this
edge you want a smooth transition....
Thanks very much again
Peter

A short update !
I made other shapes that way and the trick with automatically aligning the controlpoints
and making networks in one go works well !

Hi Peter, I'm glad that you are getting some better results now!

Here I'll try to describe why doing things in larger pieces makes smoother results.

Imagine you have 4 points like this:



Now imagine that you wanted to plot a curve that passes through those 4 points. Such a curve might look like this:




That's a very natural shape for just those 4 points. However, in a certain sense the shape ends very abruptly at the end point and does not have any "knowledge" of any kind of a shape beyond those end points.

So if you mirror that shape, you can see that the mirrored result is not smooth as shown here:



In a sense the mirroring is an attempt to continue the shape, but the shape itself came to an abrupt end and did not know anything about a continuation.

If instead of doing this, you take a larger point set, like this:



Then it is possible to plot a curve going through all those points, like this:




Now you can see that the curve does not have an "abrupt end" at that center axis line, it is able to see how the shape continues past that and this will create a smooth shape at that axis line instead:



This same thing comes into play when building a surface out of small pieces. A small surface piece that gets mirrored later is very similar to that first example above. Unless it is built to carefully have a mirrorable shape, it is easy for the surface to just have an abrupt stopping point and end up with a crease when it is mirrored.

Anyway, I thought I would try to explain the reason why doing things in a larger chain can help to give smoother results.

- Michael

Here is another similar example this time with surfaces being generated.

If you start with these 3 curves:



Then loft just these to get a surface:



That surface will form a crease when mirrored:



However, if you create the whole set of section curves:



And do a loft through all of these as one larger loft, you will get this smooth result:



The same effect will happen with other kinds of surfacing tools that build surfaces through your shapes, like Network for example.

- Michael

So that's why if you want something to look like one single smooth sheet, it is a good idea to model it that way too, as one single surface command instead of building it in little separate pieces.

However, it is not good to take this to the extreme and try to build your entire car out of one single surface either - when pieces change in shape quite a bit you will definitely need to try and find some natural divisions between different sections because it tends to be too hard to control a really huge detailed surface that has a lot of variation in it in one single surfacing command.

But for an area where it seems like one logical more broadly smooth piece, like your canopy part there, then that is a good candidate for building as one larger surface.

- Michael

Hi
I have attached my Audi for inspection in case anybody wants to take a look. You might find some ways of doing things and things to avoid. I posted some comments on making it to the 'final rendering' thread. Please feel free to delete it Michael if its just taking up space.

I also attach a couple of other things made in Moi.
Keith

Added to the special thread gallery :)

Those are great explainations Michael. I always find it easier to learn a program if I can understand some of the theory and logic behind it. I hope your examples become part of the manual.

Ed

< I hope your examples become part of the manual.
or maybe inside the Wiki?

Hey Keith, these are nice renderings!

Quite a variety of different things you've got there.

I like the colorization / tone of the Zeppelin Chrysler Building one.

- Michael

Hi Michael !
Thank you very much for the explanation !
I´ve been away from my computer for the last 2 days
and therefore I can only reply now !
Yes the models look logical to me but that exactly is
the point where a smoothing tool would
tell the software that there is no edge but its
going on smoothly.
You paint the first curve then mirror and select the point and run
smooth. same with a curve !
Thank you very much !
Peter

The tool would be some kind of offspin of the fillettool.
Showing your example one can run filet on this one too !

Hi Peter, you can do a fillet there, but it is not quite the same shape as doing a large single flowing piece.

Like you mention a "match" tool will be useful as another way to get smooth shapes, no doubt about that.

But there are several issues that tend to make it more difficult to get a totally flowing result. Even when things are technically smooth to one another, it can be easy for there to be a kind of "bulging" between surfaces.

It is just a very difficult job to totally replicate the very smooth and proportioned flow of a single surface.

So even in the future when that tool becomes available, I would still really recommend building surfaces in larger pieces when possible, as shown above. It will always be the most reliable way to ensure smoothness.

- Michael

Michael you are right with what you say !
But it isnt that easy when you are designing a car....
I just did a conversion from the rar mesh of the Audi that we kindly got
as an example .... I did not do any thing to it just converted it to obj.
and imported into Ts and rendered ... and it doesnt look smooth either....
Peter

It looks like you have a fairly rough mesh export there though - at least some of non-smooth look is probably due to that.

Try moving the slider on mesh export more towards the right to get a higher polygon count, and also if you are still getting some longer polygons you might want to determine their length, and put in a distance under "Divide larger than" at about 1/3 of that length to force them to be subdivided further.

Also, when you import OBJ into trueSpace, is there any option available that says anything about using "vertex normals" for the import? If so make sure that is enabled. It kind of looks like it is not using the vertex normals currently.

Also if there are individual surfaces that are adjacent to one another, select them and use Edit/Join to connect them together, that will also improve the mesh generation as well.

- Michael

Well that did improve the quality....
but there is no setting to import vertex normal but there is a tool
I´m trying to run that.....
Thats what i got so far ....
The mesh is attached to one of the posts
before....from Keith 1961....
All the top was joined only the bottom wasnt ...
Peter

You are right with the flipped normals too !
But it has half of the car flipped and the other vice versa....
Tried on the front to flip the normals of every poly but one gerts old with
that procedure.. hahaha ; P
Peter