Low-poly Editing / Power Boolean Refinement
Source: Tom's Guide US | Keywords: autodesk, 3dstudio, max9 | Themes: Software
- 3. Hair And Cloth
- 4. Low-poly Editing / Power Boolean Refinement
4. Low-poly Editing / Power Boolean Refinement
Autodesk/Discreet has made a name for itself in the world of low-poly game modeling. While I have some experience in low-poly, it pales in comparison to that of fellow writer Don Woligroski who has worked on many of Interplay’s Star Trek titles. My use of Max is mostly for print quality stills and mid-resolution animation. Occasionally, I’ll use it to model something in 3D, with which I can then use to make an actual presentation/mockup on my CNC mill.
Putting together accurate geometry is a must for CNC and engineering and gaming. Invalid normals/polygon topology can cause see-through textures and inaccurate clipping in the gaming world and real-life destruction in the world of engineers. Max’s Boolean function used to be "hit and miss." it was fine for simple shapes but multiple cuts or complex meshes were troublesome. nPowerSoftware’s Power Booleans was an advanced plug-in that dealt with Boolean operation much better than Max’s core offering. Starting in V8 and tweaked in V9, a default feature called Pro Booleans from nPower was integrated into the toolkit, which allows greater control over intersection/addition/subtraction at the base level of the geometry.
Here’s a sample cut of two 2,000 face complex entities mirrored on top of one another:
The subtracted entity is on the lower portion. Pro Booleans handled this subtraction well. All triangulation remains intact and there is no need to "cap holes" or to go in and manually edit vertex normals.
Conclusion
If you’re a high-end user, upgrading from V8 to V9 is a smooth move for the interactive performance increase and transition to a 64-bit compilation, which allows for greater memory access. The hair/cloth plugins are a significant leap forward; users who edit low-res scenes or wouldn’t use the new tools may want to re-evaluate. Any commercial user should appreciate the upgrade for its increased productivity and diverse feature set.
3DStudio Max V9 is $3,495 from Autodesk or $795.00 for those upgrading from V8. Prospective buyers wishing to evaluate more of V9’s new features should check out Author’s Opinion
I’d like to see Autodesk develop some uniformity regarding third-party plug-in migration for Max. It would be great if they would partner with developers to offer free upgrade packages for plugins in subsequent releases. I like how Pro Booleans is part of Max’ default toolkit; accurate topology is essential for users like myself who translate their models into real-world geometry. Low-poly enthusiasts and creators of high-end graphics will be pleased with this offering from Autodesk. For me, the speed improvements alone are well worth the upgrade.
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