smoothing with Bionatics trees

[proces2]

I saw a post a little while ago about problems with smoothing on bionatics trees. it seemed that there was an issue with vray - that was preventing the smoothing from working.

anyways, i tried applying a smooth modifier but that doesn't seem to work. the only work around i have found is to first weld all the vertices, then apply the smooth modifier. the problem is, some of the tree models are too hi-res, so welding all the vertices just crashes (or freezes) MAX.

any other options? is there a fix in the works with vray that will solve this?

sean

[Pictor]

Hi

Just tried to replicate your problem but couldn't seem to do it, admittedly I am using the demo version of Vray so that might affect the outcome.

Have you tried collapsing the tree to an editable mesh and then applying the MeshSmooth modifier? If you leave the iterations set to 0 you should still get a nice smooth result without increasing the number of faces from the original.

[proces2]

i have been collapsing them to mesh, but i haven't tried meshsmooth. i'll give that a shot - thanks.

[Pictor]

Hope it works. Also if you're having problem with the high poly count with Bionatics trees try using the Polychop plugin (free from www.maxplugins.de ). I've found that it's much better with Bionatics than the standard Max optimize modifier.

[proces2]

thanks for the extra tip. i got the plug-in - though i guess it only works with Max 5. no problem though - i still have 5 on my computer.

of course, thankfully, vray handles the hi-poly count wonderfully when rendering. too bad that MAX itself chokes on it.