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Modelling Methods

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Getting rid of weirdness

When you first start out using MODO you are bound to come across some aberrations in your models which you know are wrong, but you have no idea what you did to mess it up, and you certainly have no clue how to fix it. While I certainly cannot predict every problem you'll encounter, as a noob, here are a few that have stumped me.

Intersecting Polys

Intersecting polygons

Initially, when I first encountered this I thought it was a texture problem. Whenever I ran my mouse over it, it would flicker and splutter. It drove me nuts for an hour before I figured out that it was in fact actually two polygons intersecting, or rather overlapping each other along the same plane. Once you know, you can usually figure this out visually, and either move the offending polygon away a bit, or delete it altogether if it's not required.

FBX Normals

FBX Normals

In the second example, I had imported an .fbx file that had previously been exported from Autodesk's CAD application, Revit.  I knew that whatever the problem was, it was something that went wrong in the export process.  So after checking for overlapping polygons, n-gons and any other aberration I'd come across before, I went straight to an expert and asked my mate, Paulo Madeira (Madeira3D) if he could shed any light.

Immediately, he responded and explained that I would need to select all the offending mesh items, go to Lists > Other Maps, select FBX_Normals, right-click and delete them.

FBX Normals

Even though this should have worked, at first it didn't for me. I would select Delete and nothing would happen. So instead, I went to the Vertex Map menu at the top and selected Delete from there, and it worked. Of course (as it always does ;)), the next time I opened MODO and tried right-clicking and deleting the FBX Normal maps, it worked O.o

Vertex Map menu

Vertices that fly into outta space

Errant Vertices

And lastly, this will occur occasionally without you noticing. You'll be working up-close on something and then when you zoom out, you'll see your mesh is messed up because a vertex decided that it didn't want to play with the others. Don't do what I did the first time - and that is, select the 'cone of polygons' and delete them - otherwise, you'll find you've created a big hole in your mesh. Instead, select the single vertex and backspace or delete it, and it should fix itself.

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Modelling a quick trellis

Description

Creating background assets that aren't the primary focus in a game, can be pretty time-consuming for something that no-one really looks at, but they do add to the atmosphere of the game. Here's a quick way of creating a simple item that could be used as metal scaffolding, a tower or even a simple bridge in less than 5 minutes, using basic polygon modelling tools.

Step-by-Step

As shown in the image above;

    • Create a cube. Select one poly face and under the Polygon tools tab, select Sketch Extrude and drag out from the blue dot for the required length, making multiple, even stops along the way.
    • (Alternatively, simply drag out a cube that is say, 1x1x10)
    • In poly-mode, double-click on the item to select all polygons.
    • Under the Polygon tab, click on the Spikey tool, then click on the object. Each face will be sub-divided into 4 tris.
    • Whilst still selected, click on Bevel (B) (make sure Group Polygons is unchecked), and then drag the red-handle in slightly.
    • Press backspace or Delete to remove the inside polygons.
    • That's it!
    • If you want to add some thickness, whilst still selected, click on the Thicken tool and drag slightly.
Source  You can watch a video that details the process here
Author  Ellery Connell - video2brain.com
8.6/105votes
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Organic, low-poly built-in mesh presets

Description

Ever needed a low-poly bird for a background, or wanted to sculpt an organic shape like an animal or human but didn't want to start totally from scratch? Did you know modo has them built-in? They're part of the Solid Sketch menu.

The Solid Sketch tool provides a quick method for “roughing” out organic shapes. By clicking down, new nodes are created and Solid Sketch connects these dots with a smooth flowing mesh. Each node can spawn new branches to create complex shapes quickly and easily.

When you click to create a node you can immediately drag to the right and left to scale the node. Once you have released the mouse button you can use the various handles to move, scale, rotate and twist the node. Additionally, holding the Shift key and dragging on the center handle will scale on all three axes. Clicking on a node with the middle-mouse button will delete that node.

 

Note: It seems for some reason that this functionality has been removed from MODO701.  

How?
SolidSketch

Go to > Geometry > Curve Palette > Presets

9.7/103votes
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How to tell whether you're in Poly, Sub-D or P-Sub mode

Problem

Have you ever been modelling and you accidentally hit the tab or shift-tab key changing your model from regular faces, to Sub-D, or Pixar-SubS without realising it?

If half your model was in P-Sub and the other half, in Sub-D, could you tell which was which?

Well there is a way, even if it is very subtle.

Face SubD PSub 590
Solution

Just run your mouse over the affected polys and you'll see that when you pre-select the different types of subdivision surfaces that, sub-d is shaded purple, regular faceted polygons (faces) are shaded blue, and P-Subs are shaded green.

I wish they were a little more pronounced though.

    • Sub-Ds - Subdivision Surface smoothed polygons.
    • Faces - regular standard unsmoothed polygon faces.
    • P-Subs - Pixar Catmull-Clark smoothed polygons.

Edit: As I mentioned earlier, the colors are quite subtle. But when I went to change them from their default settings to much darker colors, via > Preferences > Display > Colors >Selection Rollovers, you can still barely discern any difference.

ColorPreferences
 colors changed

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