Hi.

I am just learning 3ds Max 2009 and I stumbled over a strange problem I can’t solve. I don’t even know how to search for a solution. Probably its easy to fix, but I haven’t found a solution so far.

To reproduce:

Just fire up 3ds Max (units set up to generic units) and create a plane with length 100, width 100, length segs 100, width segs 100. Convert it to editable poly. Enter Paint Deformation mode with push/pull and set push/pull value to 10, brush size to 10, brush strength to 1. Then just paint something. Maybe the letter “3”. When you render it. You have many facets at the top of the “hill” and the base of the “hill”.

I played with the Edit Normals modifier and in fact by slightly adjusting the normals, I can fix this problem. But it certainly isn’t the solution to adjust each of the 10000 normals to make the hills smooth. I also tried relaxing and Mesh Smooth but it only helps a little bit but this can’t be the solution as well. A image is attached to this posting.

Help would be greatly appreciated.

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In polygon sub-object mode, select all polys, and in the modifier panel go to Smoothing Groups and click the auto-smooth button - should solve everything :)

EDIT - ok so that might not solve everything - try Turbosmooth
EDIT 2 - yup that did the trick (2 iterations for me 1 might do though)
EDIT 3 - a good pounding with the relax brush on a low setting and 1 turbosmooth

Max 2009, 2010 32/64
VistaP 64 SP1
Intel Q9550 8GB
ATI 4870x2
Patriot 128GB SSD

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Oh sorry I forgot to mention that I already tried it as well. Attached two pictures. One with “Clear all” (which I assue set all auto smooth to 0) and the second with auto smooth to 180, which should smooth anything. In fact the edges aren’t visible anymore, but I think the problem has to do something with the shading of the light.

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See how the “square” mesh isn’t square in places. Using TurboSmooth basically divides up the squares, which reduces the stretching, using the relax brush or mod can further reduce the stretch.

Max 2009, 2010 32/64
VistaP 64 SP1
Intel Q9550 8GB
ATI 4870x2
Patriot 128GB SSD

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Thank you for your help. Yes but isn’t there a more economic solution than boosting the polys that much? For example just tesselating the polys where it makes sense without selecting all problem points per hand.... maybe MeshSmooth->MultiRes? Or some better solution?

Yup, you can select only the polys that make up the “3” and apply MeshSmooth - in the mod panel uncheck apply to whole mesh.

Max 2009, 2010 32/64
VistaP 64 SP1
Intel Q9550 8GB
ATI 4870x2
Patriot 128GB SSD

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Hm ok I think thats the only solution as long as the renderer cannot handle curved faces. I tried with MeshSmooth with 3 iterations (got a 3 mio poly object) and then Optimize. Finally a stack collapse and all was fine. Except that before collapsing the stack, 3ds Max needed 2 GB of Ram.... I still wonder if there is some better solution. I think about a on-the-fly smoothing edges having more than a certain amount of “chaotism” in them. Hm.

I don’t know what your working with or on - but lower the mesh/turbosmooth iterations and apply a Relax modifier with a few iterations - there is no need to go through all that I’m sure.

1) Apply MeshSmooth to selected faces 1-2 iterations
2) Apply Relax mod as many iterations as it takes
3) Be happy

Max 2009, 2010 32/64
VistaP 64 SP1
Intel Q9550 8GB
ATI 4870x2
Patriot 128GB SSD