Hi,
I have spent more than a few days attempting to recreate the Corinthian capitals of the columns at the US capital building. I made some progress but did not end up with the results I wanted. So in the end I manged to find a pretty nice Corinthian capital for free on line and fit it to my column.
My problem is that the capital is all triangles.
I have an option in Maya to translate triangles to quads, but it fails to do a nice job most of the time.
Do any of you have access to a good algorithm that could fix this up for me? I believe the original model was done in Hexagon2.
Any one interested in a challenge to try and deal with this model? Fresh eyes and mind may help. I'm pretty exhausted from own attempts, thus I gave up and downloaded.
If all else fails I may buy one in quads from squids. But that would really make me even more frustrated. I'm pretty disappointed in my self for not being able to model the Corinthian the way I intended. Its probably the hardest thing I have tried to do. I tried it both as one piece and also as many... Its a tough job... Easy enough to do a Corinthian style, but to do something as specific and complex as the US capital Corinthians is really something! IF you happen to be into masochism, you should try it ;D
If it matters, the reasons I want to try and get rid of the triangles are: Because they don't smooth well. All my other geometry is quads. And I may want to map it if I don't use or don't like coloring procedurally, so that I can paint everything in Mud (mudbox is a quad workflow tool, at least for sculpting and I think painting too).
And lastly, I only have ever modeled and worked with quads, I don't know anything about dealing with these triangles, except that the geometry looks a mess as triangles, quads are much more orderly I feel.
Any help would be very good
Cheers.
Michael, what format is the object in? 3DS?
Not sure Michael if it is in general so but if i remember right
triangles are mostly not wanted in Lightwave when you do animation.
If this isn't any concern-and i think it isn't here- if you can get good smoothing
i wouldn't much bother except if it is too high triangulated maybe.
At the opposite side, are there enough triangles to convert it in an acceptable quality to quads?
If not you may not have a good model at all after the change.
I will look at Lightwave i think there is an option or plugin for this.
I found the plugin Michael.
https://www.lightwave3d.com/assets/plugins/entry/mergetrigonsx/
I don't know if it will work or not but if you want i can help too.
It came as an obj.
Its a free model from sharecg.com
I would post a direct link but their site is not opening for me right now. If it will open for you just search "Corinthian capital". You will see it, its the best one there.
Kadri,
I get really bad smoothing from it in MAya. I believe it is because of the triangles. It may have other issues, but I don't think so.
Yeah I keep trying but the web site won't open right now. maybe maintenance?
Hey kadri, that looks like a nice little plugin. I don't have lightwave though. But per our previous conversations and all that I have been seeing, its near the top of my list when it comes time to buy a permanent package.
Up here it is
http://www.sharecg.com/v/68677/browse/5/3D-Model/Corinthian-Column
http://www.sharecg.com/v/72425/browse/5/3D-Model/Square-Corinthian-Column-and-Corinthian-Pilaster
blender 3D has a tool that converts tris to quads i use it from time to time, ususally when i import a model to sculptris.
Man is it on my side or is that site "SLOW" ?
Michael i looked at the object.The triangles aren't excessive.
When i try to change them to quads some unwanted changes does occur obviously.
They can be worked out probably but i think using this object as it is would be much better or easier.
If it is possible of course.
I looked at the read me file and changed the smoothing to an 45 angle.
Here is it how it looks with that smoothing only, unchanged at it is in Lightwave with triangles.
QuoteI looked at the read me file and changed the smoothing to an 45 angle.
I dont know what this means.
Here is what the smooth ui looks like in maya. Im not sure how to apply the instructions in the read me here.
I dont think the model looks bad just because it uses triangles. I just want to make it quads. IF I can do that, then maybe I could go in and make it more like the source I was trying for. And I will be able to paint it in mud too.
[attach=1]
hmmm, hang on. I may be able to get this conversion to work. As you said Kadri, the triangles are very clean, and that seems to be important when trying to convert.
Hmm...I don't use Maya.
But are you sure this is only for standard surface smoothing.
This looks more like to use polygon subdividing (tessellation ?)
Do we speak about the same things here Michael?
Have a look at the surface options of the object in Maya too Michael.
For what are you trying to convert it by the way?
At the import state of the file?
Does this look like the angle setting the .doc was talking about to you Kadri? :
[attach=1]
I have mostly only used Walli's objects, or objects from people here in this forum, and I always want to make my own objects. So I have not really ever had to delve into these deeper settings before.
Thanks for helping to talk me through the trouble shooting Kadri.
Quote from: Kadri on March 15, 2014, 06:45:58 PM
For what are you trying to convert it by the way?
At the import state of the file?
Im not sure what your asking.
I can tell you that I deleted all but the capital part of the model. I then fit that to my own columns and base that I made and which I like better. My modeling is all quads from the start. So Im trying to convert the Corinthian cap to quads, to attach to my column. Does that make more sense now Kadri?
You are trying to convert it then.
What i made was only a basic change of the normal smoothing option of the surfaces in the file.
So there aren't real polygon changes from triangle to quad etc. or the number of poly's in the object.
The last image looks closer, but i am not sure Michael.
If that is only for normal surface smoothing without polygon changes , yes that might be it.
In Lightwave it looks like this.
The "Smoothing" option with the "Smooth Treshold 45.0* .
I just tried to convert it with what I have. It did not work. Also I just found a bunch of Ngons. Look at the flower at the very top Kadri. Do you see that? Baaa! I dont think this can be fixed any faster than it would take to make a new one
I took a closer look and used Poseray too.
It changed a little.
But yes there are some problematic parts as it looks.
Will you go so close to these columns Michael?
Well, I had wanted every single model I'm making for this scene to be photo real even up close. Perhaps not necessarily more than a foot or two. But close. I'm working pretty hard in that respect so it would be unfortunate to have a great building with bad capitals... I don't know though. The columns are such a huge part of any Greek or roman scene I don't want to skimp on it.
Was thinking about buying this one http://www.turbosquid.com/3d-models/3d-corinthian-capital/655780
I like this one best, but it says that it uses Ngons http://www.turbosquid.com/3d-models/corinthian-cap-3d-model/776022
What do you think? Fix the one from the op, buy, or try again to make my own? What would you do?
LOL! Oh man. I wish I was faster. I really want to make everything my self, but this scene I'm working on is so big it already has taken a long time. Loosing more days on this capital would suck. But maybe that's just life.
Looks like as we spoke earlier that you make your life harder then it needs to be.
If you want to make a Colosseum scene will you make the upper row who is shown with only 2 pixels like a high quality object?
I would make a storyboard and make the objects only so good as how close they will be shown in the image or video.
But that is me of course.
I think otherwise you will end up with a scene nobody will see the real dept of the work.
I would only make every object in high quality
if you want to show your modeling skills and each object will be shown in a demo real in closeup.
Depends on you in the end Michael.
QuoteLooks like we spoke earlier that you make your life harder then it need to be.
If you want to make a Colosseum scene will you make the upper row who is shown with 2 pixels like a high quality objects?
;D ;D ;D
Yeah I know. I'm a little bit of a freak. But I do have a reason.
I want to have the assets of each model to use in multiple scenes. So in one it would just be in the background and you will not see all my work, but in image two I may be at that building, or use the building in another context. And I don't want to have to make 3 versions of each model.
So I'm trying to do a lot here as usual Kardi, which is a big reason it takes me forever. But I promice you, when you start to see images from this, you will like it!..I hope :-\
With this high quality approach i think i will like it Michael :)
And yes if you will use them later in another scene that might be not so much a loss of time at all in the end.
Unless anyone has better advice I think what I will do is make several copies of the OP capital and rip each one apart down to the individual parts, then retopo them in quads, and in this way I can make the leafs like I want them.
Make it like this example:
[attach=1]
I'll try the blender idea tonight too. Thanks Z. I actually read about that option today while searching for info. But since you mentioned it I feel better about trying.
Wings 3d has 2options of untriangulating a mesh.I tried them both over the
years and found them to be rather problematic especially when you want to
untriangulate the whole object at once.Triangulating complex models works
better with smaller portions of a mesh generally.
So split it up into workable portions and try to find parts that are used repeatedly
over the model and untriangulate only one and then copy it and replace the
others and so on.
It's tedious,yes,but you learn while doing that and you'll get faster.
No way around gathering practical experience oneself,I'm afraid.
SO ripped that thing apart. Turns out I was pretty close to a good solution on my own model, just gave up before I should have.
By stripping the OP model down I was able to see how I can make my own model work. I was really only having problems with the scrolls and getting some object surfaces placed in a good way.
I, like the the op modeler, went with multi objects to make up the complete form. That is after trying for a good long while to make the capital from one single mesh... Still tempted to buy one of those other models I mentioned to see if anyone out there made their capital from a single mesh.
Cheers
See, not as bad as I thought ;D Thanks for helping to talk me through the problem guys! Im good to go on this again.
I think I'm just going to make my own again now that I have the OP model scrolls to guide me. But Im going to fix this model up too, just in case, so I at least have something no matter what.
[attach=1]