Triangulation - I'm stumped

[TheOptimist]

Hello again.

Have finished all of my landing gear bits and bobs, and am finally left with the gear doors to construct.

The gear wells are really quite detailed. The gear doors are split into two sections - each with about 46 vertices in each.

The first thing I though of was to make a 46 poly cylinder with the thickness I wanted for the doors (one for each segment). Then I just used the snap function to snap each vertex of the cylinder onto the edge of the gear well. It gives you a perfect seal of course. Unfortunately the triangulation was HORRIBLE. There was no consistency whatsoever.

Deleted this and started again. This time I thought I'd make a series of rectangles and triangles, and one by one manipulate them to fill the gap, using the snap tool. Then at the end I could remove the door and weld all the triangles and rectangles together. It took sodding ages and the triangulation was even worse.

Deleted this and started again. This time I selected the faces on the inside of the gear well and cloned them. I then used the 'cap hole' modifier. This produced the best results so far, but I'm still unhappy with the triangulation.

Is there a secret to this? I've worked tirelessly to get a perfect wing fillet so I can't let all my smoothness go out of the window. Somebody must have a solution.

Using Gmax.

Thanks!

 

[hairyspin]

Can't claim any expertise here, but how did you cut the wells into the wings/fuselage in the first place?

IIRC, I cut the door outline into the wings/fuselage first with a boolean op and detached the cut polys as door skins, then extruded to give some thickness. There are two doors per wing wheelwell, 48 and 75 vertices per door respectively and triangulation is acceptable, imo.

 

[lionheart]

I wonder if you mean 'Triangulation'....

If so, you can Edit Triangulation in Polygon mode in an Editable Mesh. Convert part to Editable Mesh, then go to Polygon mode, and usually use WireFrame view mode, and at the bottom of the Polygon mode slider will be 'Edit Triangulation'. There, click the button and the model will explode into triangles view. You can then select Vertice to Vertice points, realigning Triangle edges to the points you want and need.

Great for doing fuselages and wings, having all edges going into the same flowing directions. Really looks better in FS.

If this isnt what you were looking for, sorry.



Bill

 

[TheOptimist]

I wonder if you mean 'Triangulation'....

If so, you can Edit Triangulation in Polygon mode in an Editable Mesh. Convert part to Editable Mesh, then go to Polygon mode, and usually use WireFrame view mode, and at the bottom of the Polygon mode slider will be 'Edit Triangulation'. There, click the button and the model will explode into triangles view. You can then select Vertice to Vertice points, realigning Triangle edges to the points you want and need.

Great for doing fuselages and wings, having all edges going into the same flowing directions. Really looks better in FS.

If this isnt what you were looking for, sorry.


Bill

Yes Bill, I definately do mean triangulation . I'm going to try to edit the triangulation just now. Have had a crack already but with so many vertices to be messing about with it's tricky.

This is what I'm starting with;



And this is the effect it's having on my shading;

 

[Heretic]

Avoid narrow triangles as they will negatively affect shading.

You could try and split your gearbay doors up along the X axis (serveral times) via "Slice Plane" to break up those narrow triangles and improve their shading.

I used to have a shading problem on round surfaces with cutouts on my model (cabin windows). I didn't want to sacrifice accuracy by greatly reducing the windows' vertex count (and thus turning many narrow triangles into fewer wider ones), so I went on a "Slice Plane" frenzy and practically cut around the windows in 45° steps. This, coupled with a very, very careful welding of window vertices (threshold of about a cm or so) didn't completely eliminate the problem but it made things a lot better!

So give that method a try. As long as you adhere to the 64k vertex limit per material, FSX doesn't give a rat's arse about how many polies your model has anyway.

 

[jetwelder]

doors that fit

i had a few problems with doors that need to fit.....i discovered that building
doors after making cutouts made fitting them impossible.also moving them for modelling purposes,or texturing purposes was a bad idea...this is where saving a copy of each change is a good idea....i use the easy method because this is my first build...once my basic wing is built, i dont move it into
position until i need to,and then i make sure that i move everything attached to the wing at the same time...then i save the scene, then i save every component...this allows me to load each component seperately for further mods,as long as i dont move it it will always merge nicely back where it came from....using my bottem view, i make a boolean doors shape,cut the hole...

tidy up,new save.....poly the hole,new save..slice to make the doors, tidy up ,save each one...delete new doors,i can merge them back in,they will fit..

poly the hole again...extrude inwards...tidy up..as long as i dont alter the hole
in the wing,the doors will fit....perfectly...this is the beginners method..the gurus on this site use sophisticated methods ive yet to learn..spline cuts etc

see images...jim...i also export constantly to test it sometimes looks different in the sim,you can export single components,a wing on its own..what looks iffy in gmax
sometimes looks perfectly acceptable in the sim..and can avoid overmodelling.......by not altering the hole,i mean the hole in the wing skin not the internal well..

 

[Deleted member 1281]

Yes it's likely the narrow triangles that cause these shading artefacts, and it's a good idea to use as many rectangular polies as possible plus well-proportioned triangles where necessary instead.

You should find a way to add explicit edges to your mesh that accomplish that. Slice is one of them. Deleting and rebuilding polies is another. I see you are working in editable mesh mode, which is not an ideal choice for slice (you get a surplus of unneeded vertices, again creating those darn snall triangles).

I work in editable poly mode exclusively. Almost anything you can do in ed mesh you can do in ed poly (often better in the latter), and some things you can do in ed poly you can't do in ed mesh.

In editable poly, you can divide and create new edges ad lib. You can also install an excellent script package called MeshTools (search here for pointers to it), which allows you (among much other useful stuff) to divide several edges into evenly spaced poly segments, all at a simple press of a button. Ideal for what you need above. Well worth exploring...

Now, you CAN convert your ed mesh to ed poly, BUT, and this is a hefty downside, the conversion rarely runs smoothly in my experience, so I do mesh-poly conversion and very occasionally vice versa only as a last resort.

 

[Heretic]

doors after making cutouts made fitting them impossible.

Not impossible at all, just extremely tedious.

All you need is a pen and paper and the coordinates of the gearbay's vertices.

I've used that manual method on more than one occasion. *Cough*

You should find a way to add explicit edges to your mesh that accomplish that. Slice is one of them. Deleting and rebuilding polies is another. I see you are working in editable mesh mode, which is not an ideal choice for slice (you get a surplus of unneeded vertices, again creating those darn snall triangles).

Yep.

I work in editable poly mode exclusively. Almost anything you can do in ed mesh you can do in ed poly (often better in the latter), and some things you can do in ed poly you can't do in ed mesh.

I found the vertex welding of EMesh easier to handle.

But...

Now, you CAN convert your ed mesh to ed poly, BUT, and this is a hefty downside, the conversion rarely runs smoothly in my experience, so I do mesh-poly conversion and very occasionally vice versa only as a last resort.

...I usually don't have any problems with the EMesh <-> EPoly conversion (you should see my modifier stacks...EMesh, EPoly, EPoly, EMesh, UVW Unwrap, EPoly, EPoly, EMesh, EMesh...).

Then again, I'm a Max 9 user so it might do things a bit better than the older GMax.

 

[jetwelder]

Not impossible at all, just extremely tedious.

All you need is a pen and paper and the coordinates of the gearbay's vertices.

I've used that manual method on more than one occasion. *Cough*




aha, so once again i mistake my lack of patience for the impossible..

this forum is teaching me many things,and patience...but my pilot built with
great tedium and patience, still looks like mr potato man...jim

 

[Heretic]

this forum is teaching me many things,and patience...but my pilot built with
great tedium and patience, still looks like mr potato man...jim

So does mine, but I've started out with an entire mesh offered for free on Turbosquid.

(Doesn't say it was easier. Try making him sit, hold a yoke and throttle lever *and* cut down his polycount (from ~6000 to ~1800). Once you got that, clone him but try not to make his clone look like him...

...I hate modeling humans. )

 

[lionheart]

For making pilots, you could use the Poser human mesh creation program. Great thing. But plan on using only 4.0 or earlier mesh. 5.0 will be some hurrendous amounts of triangles. 4.0 basic and lower is quite nice.

They approved use of Poser models in Flight Simulator models so long as you do not distribute 're-workable' model mesh, only mesh that is 'locked' in and not able to be reworked, as like a regular FS airplane MDL file.


Bill

 

[lionheart]

Yep, lots of very thin triangles can be your enemy on a curved surface. Flat surfaces usually you can get away with it.

Just adding a few Vertices onto an Edge will help brake them up. I dont know if I would use Slice Plane, as you will end up with a ton more vertices. Just a few break-up Vertices along the middle should probably do it, I would think.

Also, what you can do is keep 'checking' the mesh in 'non-wireframe' mode to see your progress on how the smoothing is going.

Is that a Me-109 Wheel Well opening?

Bill