Combine Polygons

[tpitman]

I am getting there. Rather than trying to recombine the polys I made my box with 9x9, then manually selected the outer 2 rows of faces on all sides and did a linear subdivide until they were small enough to match the ball poly size (or close enough).

Then I did the boolean and this looks really good:

https://drive.google.com/open?id=0B3P6IntD-KkaTHlzQi12UVVQZFE

 

[frank beckmann]

Try to lower the Smooth angle to get a better shading at the edges.

Cheers
Frank

 

[tpitman]

I am sure by this time you can tell I am really new to this.

I have been doing game dev and programming for over 30 years, but modelling, I don't spend much time on.

I guess I am not really new. I have been doing modeling as part of my game dev for the same 30 years.

I just don't do enough of it to be very good at it.

By putting the poly count back down really low and then changing the smoothing angle lower, it looks AWESOME and it very low poly.

You are like magic...

 

[tpitman]

I am almost there. Now I need to make the dimples for the dots on the dice.

2 ways come to mind:

1. Add another small ball at each place I need a dot and do another boolean.

2. Do a catmull divide at each square I want a dot until there are several faces inside. Then take the very center vertex and drag it towards the center of the box. The question I have on this method is how do I add some magnetism to the dragging so that the vertices around the center dot move with it?

The benefit to #2 is that the edges of the dot will be more curved where as with #1 it will probably be a sharp edge. I would rather have the smooth edge.

 

[frank beckmann]

Just a question: Do you really need geometry or could a bump+diffuse map work for you?

Cheers
Frank

 

[tpitman]

I prefer geometry because it makes it more portable on platforms that might not have good performing shaders, but shaders would obviously be simpler

 

[frank beckmann]

2. I copy&paste the polygons where the dots should appear - split them to have an extra mesh. Take a particle mesh and add a squashed ball to it and set the "Type: to Polygon - then go Tools->Particle->Particle->Polygon and put this result to a Boolean modifier to subtract it from the dice:

Cheers
Frank

 

[tpitman]

I will give that a try. Thanks again.

 

[Helmut]

* As per Frank, but a bit simplified.
* Who needs 3 dimensions in flat universe, anyway?

* Red: set of original 4 dimples
* Grey: Boolean
* Green: Collapsed + colours
* I guess you could set the spherical params to <32 / <16, depending on the required smoothness.

* Also, have a look in the help menu, v7 / Booleans. You can stack Booleans, but I don´t know if this would work in this type of hierarchy.

Servus from Vienna

 

[tpitman]

Thank you for your examples. This is really helpful. Both point to me doing this via the boolean and that was my main question.

Boolean or drag the vertices. boolean wins!

 

[podperson]

I don't think your other question got answered: to upload images straight from your desktop, click the Manage Attachments button.

For super clean geometry, you can boolean a spherized cube with a cube.

 

[tpitman]

Thank you for the tip on images.

I am having trouble figuring out how to do the right boolean to get the dimples.

I already have the rounded box the way I want it.

I add another ball and rotate it 90 degrees. I then make it the smaller size and position it about half way inside one of the faces.

I then select both the box and the ball and hit boolean.

No matter which way I position or select stuff or which boolean I choose I never end up with what I want.

Can someone please tell me the exact positioning, steps and choices in order to get a dimple like on a dice?

Sorry I am not better at this...

EDIT: I figured this one out. I was selecting the box and ball and lining them up and trying to right click select a boolean operation. In this way I didn't have very much control over what the result was.

Then I decided to look up the help. That is when I realized I needed to add an actual boolean object to the scene and then add the box and ball to that. Then you can play around with them.

I am so used to old school tools where you just manually messed with the vertices. I still forget that all the current tools have this interactive type way of doing things with operations.

EDIT2: Well that worked until I tried to apply different materials to the dimples from the main dice and export to Unity. The whole thing is just showing up as the same material. So I am back to needing help. Sorry. How do I do the dimples and have them with their own material when I save it for Unity?

 

[tpitman]

I have a related question.

If I am in polygon vertex mode and select a single vertex. If I then drag that vertex there seems to be a radius around that vertex that other vertices also get dragged a little bit.

How can I control that radius and also how those other vertices are dragged along? If I want them to be dragged most or less close to the one I am dragging.

I think this is called magnetism in some polygon tools...

 

[frank beckmann]

I have a related question.

If I am in polygon vertex mode and select a single vertex. If I then drag that vertex there seems to be a radius around that vertex that other vertices also get dragged a little bit.

How can I control that radius and also how those other vertices are dragged along? If I want them to be dragged most or less close to the one I am dragging.

I think this is called magnetism in some polygon tools...

I think it´s "Soft-selection" you´re talking about and it´s falloff radius is adjustable in the Selection tool.

Cheers
Frank

 

[frank beckmann]

EDIT: I figured this one out. I was selecting the box and ball and lining them up and trying to right click select a boolean operation. In this way I didn't have very much control over what the result was.

Then I decided to look up the help. That is when I realized I needed to add an actual boolean object to the scene and then add the box and ball to that. Then you can play around with them.

I am so used to old school tools where you just manually messed with the vertices. I still forget that all the current tools have this interactive type way of doing things with operations.

EDIT2: Well that worked until I tried to apply different materials to the dimples from the main dice and export to Unity. The whole thing is just showing up as the same material. So I am back to needing help. Sorry. How do I do the dimples and have them with their own material when I save it for Unity?

1. Check the attached file please:
2. You need to bake the material or generate a simple diffuse color.

Cheers
Frank

 

[tpitman]

Ok. So in my object I have the rounded cube as its own polygon.

I have a set of small balls along with my cube both under a boolean subtract to get the dimples.

If I want the cube to be red and the dimples to be white, both simple difuss colors, what are the steps?

Thanks for the model example. That helps a lot too.

 

[Helmut]

* You can´t apply >1 material to a parametric object.
* Procedure:
1 make Boolean editable
2 select the dimply indentations
3 apply colour whatever (presumably white)
4 inverse selection
5 apply colour whatever (presumably red)
* You can apply 24 shading spaces to an object in C3D V7. Shading spaces are incremented automatically by C3D, but you can select the index from the pop down menue.

* Depending on your prefs, you may want to split the dimply indentations from the “box” of the die so you get two separate disjunct objects. In this case dimples are white and the box (with holes) is red.
* Again, you can only split a given subselection when an object is editable.
* It makes sense in this case to collect the two submeshes (holy box and dimples) into a group, in case you want to animate the hierarchical object, eg by rolling the die.

 

[tpitman]

If I do split the 2 will I most likely end up with artifacts where you can kind of see between them at just the right angles or should they look solid?

Do a lot of people split things like this and it works out ok for rendering?

 

[frank beckmann]

If I want the cube to be red and the dimples to be white, both simple difuss colors, what are the steps?

Give both meshes the colors and use the Boolean-tool (Tools->Polygon->Boolean subtract) and it will maintain material assignments:

Cheers
Frank

 

[Helmut]

* C3D creates construction lines - normally invisible - in the case of an applied Boolean (and many other transformations). These become visible if you switch to global wireframe.
* They remain after a split.
* A C3D render shows no artifacts, but I have no idea what Unity / Unreal / etc does with these, be it a simple Boolean or a split.