Triangles to quads

Started by TheBadger, March 15, 2014, 01:55:25 PM

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TheBadger

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.
It has been eaten.

zaxxon

Michael, what format is the object in? 3DS?

Kadri

#2

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.

Kadri


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.

TheBadger

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?
It has been eaten.

TheBadger

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.

It has been eaten.


Zairyn Arsyn

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.
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Kadri


Man is it on my side or is that site "SLOW" ?

Kadri

#9

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.

TheBadger

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]
It has been eaten.

TheBadger

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.

It has been eaten.

Kadri


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.

Kadri


For what are you trying to convert it by the way?
At the import state of the file?

TheBadger

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.
It has been eaten.