Is it possible to create topographical lines from a model in 3d studio max?

What I currently have is a plane converted into an editable mesh and I made a sort of rolling topography with it. Can I extract contour lines from this model? Thanks in advance.

Convert the plane mesh into Editable Poly.
Select the Element sub-object.
In the Edit Geometry rollout, turn on Slice Plane.
Move the slice plane to the lowest elevation you want a contour line.
Press Slice
Move the slice plane up in elevation to the next level.
Press Slice.
Keep moving the slice plane up and pressing Slice until you are past the top elevation.
Switch to Edge sub-object. All the edges you just created are selected.
In the Edit Edges rollout, press Create Shape From Selection, and choose Linear from the pop-up menu.

All your contours are now in one Editable Spline object.

There may be an automated way of doing this, but I can’t think of any at the moment.

Tim Wilbers [FA]

College of Arts and Sciences
Department of Visual Arts
University of Dayton
http://www.udayton.edu/
3ds Max: 7.5, 8, 9, 2008, 2009, 2010

	Attachment

oh my gosh, this is the best thing since sliced bread! thanks tim, i really appreciate this.

Indeed, cool!  Thank You Tim :) .

I believe you can also use the Section Compound Object to do something quite similar… that also has a feature that converts to splines, but it may require repeated application instead of just moving the slice plane… I don’t recall.

As for automated… if the lines are already part of the model, no need to slice or section, you can just select them and create shape from selection.  Any edges can be made into splines, basically.

Maneswar Cheemalapati [FA]

in the shapes section of the command panel there is an object call “section” below all the procedural spline objects.  It make a spline out of what ever it cuts.  The tricky thing about the interface us that is has a button to cut so one would think you have to move the slice hit cut and repeat that as many time as you need slices. This is not the case. what you want to do is actually really easy.

1.Create a section object
2. Array it up as many times as you need section
3. select all the section objects
4. right click and “convert to editable Spline”
5. you’re done.

The vertices i believe are not welded by default so if you need that just apply an edit Spline modifier and weld them with a .01” value.

Hope that makes sense let me know if it’s not clear.

Oh, and the create shape in the editable poly tools is awsome! it works even better with patches (you keep the bezier handles)

Dave
Design ReFrom - My Tutorials