ZBrushCentral

mesh clean up in MAX

ZBrush Usage Questions
#1

The last thing i want to do is come here and start asking stupid noob questions but…

I have spent all evening reading these forums and experimenting and I have a question. There are lots of OBJ models floating around the internet and these would be great starting points for me to practice.

I want to bring one of these OBJ models into MAX and check it for tri and ngons. I want practice creating and modifying meshes in MAX for use in Zbrush.

I read some about how to check the mesh in MAYA for ngons or tris but how can I do this in MAX? Is there an easy way to identify all of the ngons in a mesh in 3DS Max 8?

Thanks,

#2

max can’t select ngons

#3

Thanks for the answer. The Zbrush to 3DSMax pdf available here states in section 2.1.2:

“The mesh needs to be clean. By clean I mean it should be all quads or at least nearly all quads. Avoid tris, poles (points where 5 edges or more meet) and n-gons (faces with more than 4 edges). If you find you must have a tri, hide it in an inconspicuous area. Leaving in any of the above elements may cause artifacts at render time. You also want to ensure your vertices are all welded. All of these mesh issues can be resolved with the UnwrapUVW modifier in the Edit dialog”

This leads me to believe that the N-gons can be fixed (resolved) with the unwrap UVW modifier. It does not mention how to identify them or fix them.

If N-gons cannot be easily identified am I to manually search every poly in my mesh and count edges to determine if I need to fix the n-gon or tri?

Thanks,

#4

The PolyBoost plugin for 3ds Max has something that can select 3 or 5+ sided polygons in it. There is nothing in the default 3ds Max that allows you to find them as far as I know.