Boolean tip?

[teabag]

Hello guys ive just found out for sure that max just sucks at performing booleans....

i am trying to engrave some text into a solid object.....no luck whatever method i use

any hints?

thank u very much!!!

Martin

[^Lele^]

PowerBooleans fail as well?

[joconnell]

Best method i've used is either make a really dense plane and use a displacement map or alternatively use shape merge with a spline version of the text - turn down the segments quite a bit so you don't get a million edges on the cuts, do your shape merge then clean up the result, cap it and extrude backwards - bit longwinded but good. in terms of easiest setup vray displacement is your best bet but you're taking a hit on each frame.

[suurland]

what about splines?

write the text, make a rectangle around it and attach them to each other and extude it. Then the text would be holes but you can just put something behind it og collapse it to poly and delete the backside of the object and cap the holes.

/Thomas

[percydaman]

I was thinking of something very similiar. create your text splines, attach it to a spline rectangle or something, then just extrude that new spline which will give you text cut all the way through, then just create a new box, same dimension and align it to the bottom. You would have two separate pieces.

[percydaman]

animated booleans! yay!

[ene.xis]

there ya go!

[Morbid Angel]

well his problem might be the opposite geometry. For booleans both geometrical objects must contain volume, i.e. be a closed shape. If one of those objects has holes in it, from another boolean, or just an open shape it wont work. I know for fact that nurbs booleans are the best. For this you may want to try rhino booleans...they are great.

[brian451]

Re: Boolean tip?

Hello guys ive just found out for sure that max just sucks at performing booleans....

i am trying to engrave some text into a solid object.....no luck whatever method i use

any hints?

thank u very much!!!

Martin

I disagree. You can say any feature sucks if it doesn't give you what you want, but if it's because you're just not using it right then it wouldn't be a fair comment. I would guess that the object you're trying to subtract from doesnt have enough vertices in it to begin with...and if so, the booleans can't cut with any accuracy and cant give you good clean edges. Subdivide your object a little first, then perform the operation and it should work fine...optimize or multires your object afterwards to remove those added polygons. You don't even need power booleans, although its an option.

[RErender]

Re: Boolean tip?

Hello guys ive just found out for sure that max just sucks at performing booleans....

i am trying to engrave some text into a solid object.....no luck whatever method i use

any hints?

thank u very much!!!

Martin

I disagree. You can say any feature sucks if it doesn't give you what you want, but if it's because you're just not using it right then it wouldn't be a fair comment. I would guess that the object you're trying to subtract from doesnt have enough vertices in it to begin with...and if so, the booleans can't cut with any accuracy and cant give you good clean edges. Subdivide your object a little first, then perform the operation and it should work fine...optimize or multires your object afterwards to remove those added polygons. You don't even need power booleans, although its an option.

Heh, I believe everyone agreed Max booleans sucked, it has been the consensus for years now.


Powerbooleans at least try to reconstruct the mesh.

[Dynedain]

Max booleans do indeed suck, mostly because Max doesn't as much error-checking and the intersection algorithm isn't nearly as good as other packages.

That said, this is a good thing because booleans are generally a bad way to model... especially with GI and raytrace rendering engines.

FormZ and Sketchup both have very good boolean systems and base their modeling techniques around this... Thoughif you've ever imported geometry from either of those into another app, you'd instantly know just how horrible the resulting geometry is.

[^Lele^]

Any boolean package, nurbs-based included, will fail under some circumstance (see exactly coplanar faces, for instance).
You either tessellate the object before, or the engine has to do it for you during the operation.
Powerbooleans (now in max as a standard) actually do a good job in most cases.

One thing: why do you people assume his engraving is flat?
I thought it was on a curved surface...

[percydaman]

well I actually assumed it wasn't on a flat surface, since max's booleans have little trouble performing what he was asking about when its a simple flat surface.

[priad]

One thing: why do you people assume his engraving is flat?
I thought it was on a curved surface...

second that, a sphere or a strange organic shape?
In most of cases when you need to use the Boolean option, that's the last option, and for flat surface there are many way to achieve that.

[teabag]

wow )))) did not know i would get so many replies b4 i make it back to office hehe...sorry i left u without a better description.

my surface started a s a spline rectangle (outlined) and extruded to give it a certain volume. So its completely flat and yes topology wise it doesnt have any subds only the main polys creating the objects.....on the other hand i have object ...the text that had quite a lot of polys....

I wanted to achieve engraved effect....meaning the text would only cut into the half of the material thickness....neither of booleans worked...it always crashed on max9 64bit....however if i cut it all the way throught the extruded rectangle...thus no engraving but full cut through, the only boolean that performed well was the MAXes one!!!

So i ended up doin it the way that suurland and percydaman suggested.

Anyway, i hate booleans and they r usually the last thing i use, but this time i just wanted to give em a try....lol

I guess the issue really is the objects topology for the successfull boolean.

thnks guys

catch u later!!!!