Meta Mesh & Internal Profile

[DHawgood]

Growfx v1.9.9 SP5 for 3dsMax 2018

 

Hi, I'm new to Growfx and just familiarizing myself with functionality.  I'm building a detailed plant and wish to control the internal profile of the stalk so that it isn't simply cylindrical, and instead uses a custom shape.   I'm aware of  'Affects' and have also experimented with Mesh Builder> Surface Displace Map, but neither seem to do what I need.  I have attached an image of the stem I'm looking to replicate, along with a screen shot of my approach for controlling a cylindrical profile within 3dsmax, using a displace mod with gradient ramp.  I assumed I might somehow use a similar method in Growfx, however it's not possible to control a gradient ramp in my version, only select it (a possible issue?... or I'm not doing something right?).   If anyone has any advice it would be much appreciated, it seems there must be a basic Growfx control I'm overlooking, or I'm not approaching this in the correct way.   

 

Thanks!   

[Eduard]

Hi DHawgood,

 

To change the map settings, just drag this map from Surface Displace Map slot to the material editor, and select Instance during cloning. After that you can open the parameters of this map for editing.
Or you can create and set up the Gradient ramp in the material editor, then drag it onto the Surface Displace Map slot.

Thanks!

[DHawgood]

Hi Eduard, thanks for the fast reponse!  The instance in material editor worked as you suggested, and seems to react best when being applied to a cylinder mesh.   I was requiring the stitching ability of metamesh, but this seems to mix quads and triangles.  I was wondering if there was a way to work only with quads only in Growfx ?  With your knowledge of the software, is the use of a gradient ramp the best approach for replicating the reference stalk, which has a defined structure?  Thanks!     

[DHawgood]

If anyone's interested... I solved what I needed to do in ZBrush.  I processed each branch path as a cylinder mesh, exported the whole plant out of 3dsmax as an .obj and into ZBrush.  I ran Dynamesh which fused the mesh together, and then ran Zremesher to turn the whole object into quads and clean up geometry .  I also did the same with a Metamesh model and got similar-ish results, but with a lot more weird and unwanted bumps.

           

[Mario]

Thanks, good to know zbrush can do this, but I would have to buy zbrush just for making foliage pretty much.

[Eduard]

On 06.02.2018 at 1:00 AM, DHawgood said:

Hi Eduard, thanks for the fast reponse!  The instance in material editor worked as you suggested, and seems to react best when being applied to a cylinder mesh.   I was requiring the stitching ability of metamesh, but this seems to mix quads and triangles.  I was wondering if there was a way to work only with quads only in Growfx ?  With your knowledge of the software, is the use of a gradient ramp the best approach for replicating the reference stalk, which has a defined structure?  Thanks! 

 

Hi DHawgood,
If you see quads, it means at this place a simple cylinder mesh is used.
We can implement a simple displacement of vertices in the metamesh, as an option.
But in any case, there will be triangles in the branch area, because metamesh will be used there. Here's what I mean:

 

 

But in ZBrush it looks better.

Thanks!

[DHawgood]

Thanks @Eduard for looking into that.  There's one difference between your version and mine which is quite important for what I'm doing, and I wondered if you might able to explain, because it will save me time in Zbrush, and make my geometry cleaner overall.  Your stalk has a profile with tri's only at the join, whilst my stalk had a profile which seemed to force metamesh to create tri's down the entire length as you can see from my initial post.  There must be a setting I'm not using here?        

[Eduard]

4 hours ago, DHawgood said:

There must be a setting I'm not using here?

No, this is a new option that has not been implemented yet. I just plugged it in algorithms.
Just wondering, Zbrush created it automatically, or did you manually modify something?
 

Thanks!

[DHawgood]

Hi @Eduard , the meshes I exported from 3dsMax were plugged straight into ZBrush without anything altered prior to that.  The issue created by not having the metamesh create tri's and quads like in your example, was that  I had to use Dynamesh in Zbrush to connect the stem joins.  To retain the stalk/stem form Dynamesh resolution had to be cranked up high, creating excess geometry, with Zremesher cleaning things up further .  If the new option you mentioned was implemented, only the Zremesher would need to be used, and this would result in a more accurate lower poly model.

[Eduard]

11 hours ago, DHawgood said:

Hi @Eduard , the meshes I exported from 3dsMax were plugged straight into ZBrush without anything altered prior to that.  The issue created by not having the metamesh create tri's and quads like in your example, was that  I had to use Dynamesh in Zbrush to connect the stem joins.  To retain the stalk/stem form Dynamesh resolution had to be cranked up high, creating excess geometry, with Zremesher cleaning things up further .  If the new option you mentioned was implemented, only the Zremesher would need to be used, and this would result in a more accurate lower poly model.

Ok, thanks for the info!