1. Make a Box for the wall.
2. Draw the Shape for the shelf.
3. Edit > Clone: Copy the Shape.
4. Sub-object vertex, Scale on Selection Center to the size of the intersection on the wall.
5. Select the Box and go to Create > Compound Objects > Shape Merge. Pick the larger Shape. Set to Cookie Cutter.
6. Select the original Shape and add an Extrude modifier. Set the Amount.
7. Convert the extruded shape to an Editable Poly.
8. Go to Polygon sub-object level and select the polygon facing the Box.
9. Attach the Box to the Editable Poly (Attach function in the Edit Geometry rollout).
10. Go to Border sub-object level. Select the two borders: one is the opening in the wall, the other is the open end of the shelf.
11. Click on the Bridge Settings. Inrease the Segments to 4.
12. In the Left (or side view of the wall) select the middle column of vertices created by the Bridge and Scale on Selection Center. Repeat for the other columns of vertices to create a smooth curve transition.
13. Repeate step 12 but in the Top viewport working of the rows of vertices.
14. Set the Smoothing Groups for the polygons as desired.

What’s with the Cube I see in your Viewports. ;)

OK, so it looks like I was wrong about needing to use Bevel… apparently Chamfer can do what you wanted OP.  Sorry if I misdirected you.

View Cube, for viewport navigation.

New in 2009.

Maneswar_Cheemalapati - 14 May 2008 08:10 PM

What’s with the Cube I see in your Viewports. ;)

(It’s the Borg! Run!  *freaky borg queen appears* “resistance is futile.” heh, heh )

lol… hehe too

Sorry Tim, yeah, I know… but with all the reports on this site listing problems with the view cube, I was surprised to see it still enabled in your Max install.  I renamed the AutoCamMax.gup as soon as I could, and renamed the CommCenter for info center as soon as I could.  That only to try to avoid the massive delay when opening Max.

Josh, that’s probably exactly what’s happening.  Mind meld with the wrong sorts… by the way, she wasn’t weird looking, she was HOT. ;)

Tim_Wilbers, thanks for that, it’s an eye opener. I’d use the more naturalistic analogy for what that technique did for me, for it is way more accurate, but they might ban me probably :p .

The cube is quite pointless, imo. Keyboard shortcuts are the fastest and easyest for me personally. But there is a sweet navwheel with a cool option for “walking”, you can make it move very smooth and take virtual tours with a simple mouse. Wonder if it can be mocapped?

----

Anyway, i came to another brickwall, a brickwall with a big sign on it - 2008: A Space Chamfer Odyssey:

click on the link

See those openings? I need to make them round and sweet. I tried to select the inner polys that make the window, deatch, chamfer to make them round and sweet. But that produced many details and i found it a pain to attach it later - the geometry of lamp body got affected very badly and all was just a dead end, and a lot of irrational welding, i am confident that even Darth Plagueis wound’t have managed the mess i produced. I also tried to chamfer them while the openings sit on the body, but that also affected the geometry, while trying to clean up afterwards, it actually became harder and harder, imagine doing that on all openings, i realised that i was doing something wrong. I am attaching few photos of the lamp and the scene model, it’s made on max 2009.

click on the link
click on the link

I presume it was something i had to address early on, in the begining.

I would also really appreciate any input on the geometry of the model. Like, what is good and what is bad. It was generaly made that way:
1. Head of lamp: loft trought the needed shapes along a path; edge deletion on the long straight paths; shell modifier to make the inside; poly deletion on the inside where geometry won’t be needed, left geometry only about where the side holes begin, to block the light;
2. Base of lamp: Cylinder with a shape merged *circle* for the neck of the lamp
3. Neck of lamp: Bevel/Extrude until the flexible part
3.1 Flexible part: Maaad Beveling; copy/paste of the same element; welding
4. Connecting the head with neck: Detach the top of the neck; Boolean opration with the head; attaching the neck back with booleaned head.
5. Across all of the model - mad chamfering to make round edges so they can catch nicely the light, produce highlights. On this forums i saw that suggestion. The chamfering also includes the flexible neck, which produced lots of detail.

Which brings me to the point - is it sane to do all this?

Update. So this is where i can take it, trough a lot of time spent into: detach, chamfer, extrude border areas, sliceToFormRectangle, excess geometry removal, attaching to main lamp, welding together, re-allign the window opening so it is centered…

click on the link

However, there is something wrong with geometry when rendered:

click on the link

And all that jazz just for one opening. And if pretend that those geometry problems don’t exist, still it is very unaccurate, because i have to pay personal attention to every opening and allign it against the irregular form by hand after the welding process, and in the end it most probably will look very irregular.

(Pardon, I missed your reply Maneswar   .  But, I have created ‘dragon atonement’ art for it! )

Pixel Ugly, I hope this helps (and I agree, that is a bit of a longer workflow to get your results, -which is not always a bad thing.  Tim does brilliant work! ).  I looked at the area where you created the rounded hole in your mesh, -there are a ton of ways to do this, & this is just my ‘fast’ attempt at creating that oval hole (feel free to rip / hate this approach );

I deleted the polygon squares on both sides, -just to get a ‘clean’ start at the mesh in that spot.  When I did I noticed there were some ‘extra’ verts on the open edges of the newly created square hole.  I think this happens since there was/is not enough geometry around your oval hole to really make it work well (since it’s not on a completely flat surface).  Another tricky item is, the inside & outside parts of your lamp mesh do not line-up exactly (this is really a very minor detail, especially since it’s only noticeable on a very, very zoomed in view).  I removed the extra verts on the open edges, then in loop sub object mode > selected both inside and outside loops > hold down shift + scale the edges in > this clones the edges to move in, making the hole smaller -I used Local mode- (and this lets you work on both the inside and outside geometry at the same time) > hold down the ctrl key + select vert sub object > gives you a quick selection of the verts on both inside and outside edges > select Chamfer > use a small value to create the chamfer > go back to loop sub object mode > use Bridge to connect the inside and outside holes > select one of the newly created inside edges from the Bridge > Ring > hold ctrl+polygon sub object > I now have the inside newly created Bridge polys selected > MSmooth apply twice > selected the entire Element in sub object mode > then I applied the Auto Smooth at 45.  It’s not the ‘cleanest’ approach, but hopefully it’s a somewhat ‘auto’ aligned method for creating the rounded hole (<--my apologies if you’ve already done this / know this approach).

And now, introducing the Maneswar Dragon! (heh, heh, heh, I agree the Borg Queen was freaky sexy )

Edit:  The Maneswar Dragon is animated, -click on the attached pic for full dragon effect (ha! ha! ha!)

So it was that easy?Now i am feeling ashamed for asking such questions. Thanks.

But i can’t agree on the “hotness” of the alien chicks you _humans_ are talking about. Maybe they are working it for the borgs or Kerrigan for the zergs, but that stuff ain’t doing it for a geek_ish-pale Homo sapiens boy like me. I am into Barbarella.