Spitfire tute Pt. 3 Boolean problems

# 1 16-01-2007 , 06:44 AM

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Join Date: May 2005

Location: Melbourne, Australia

Posts: 26

Hi All!

Tried posting this thread yesterday but after spending half an hour getting my screenshots and typing done, half the state was blacked out with a power failure for 2 1/2 hours [1 second before I clicked "submit new thread"!].

Here's the problem I'm having:

When I use the Boolean Union function to connect the wing to the fuselage, the fuselage is removed instead of the intersecting geometry. I've tried nudging the wing a bit so the poly edges in the red circled area [see "Before" in image] aren't touching, but that had no effect [I'm historically a Lightwave user - nudging the geometry will usually fix a similar glitch with Lightwave's notoriously crap Boolean tools]. Does anyone know any ways of getting this to execute correctly? I don't think i'll have any problems manually doing the costruction, but I need to familiarise myself with Maya's toolset in the next 4 weeks for work!

Any help would be much appreciated! [A big CHEERS! to Kurt for the very cool tutes too!]

Cheers! priimate.

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# 2 16-01-2007 , 07:28 AM

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Join Date: Oct 2006

Location: Melbourne

Posts: 313

'Ello!

Ahhhr! They're enoug to make you pull your hair out at times eh? Have had a similar problem in the past from time to time, though never with geometry so simple. It really is a little perplexing.

I note that the fuselage has no history, how about the wing? It's had it's history deleted too?

One time I've even had the boolean operations 'switch' with the functions not doing their own operation, rather one of the other two ops. Very weird.

I can only suggest a few things to try.

No doubt, you've resaved the file and tried again. How about exporting all the objects in your scene? Turn off texture refs and history and all the rest of the jazz, and just export the wing and the fuselage. Load the new file and try again. If it works, just move the fuselage and the wing in the original file off to the side then import the newly created file with this combined part in it. Though I've only had this method help me once.

Other times, I've had the hypergraph filled with all kinds of junk that didn't need to be there. All looked fine until I hit the Show All Conections button, whereupon all hell broke loose.

To be honest, I think that this last trick is your best bet.
1)Select the 6 faces on the fuselage that the wing intersects.
2)EditPolygons->Extract
3)Select wing, shift select this new object of only 6 faces, hit boolean again.
4)Polygons->Combin booleaned geometry with rest of fuselage
5)Select all verts in the object and do Polygons->Merge

Just make sure that the merge tolerance is set nice and low, 0.01 or so and you'll have no trouble with unwanted merging. On the other hand you could merge the verts pair by pair if you'd prefer to do it that way.

S.

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# 3 16-01-2007 , 06:45 PM

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Join Date: May 2005

Location: Melbourne, Australia

Posts: 26

Cheers enhzflep!

Tried the whole "Exract Polys" method, with the same result and then tried the other Boolean functions, one of which worked the way Union should have! [lucky you mentioned that yours had switched once, 'cos I probably wouldn't have tried that, it's so simple!]

user added image

Cheers! priimate.

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# 4 16-01-2007 , 07:29 PM

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Join Date: Oct 2006

Location: Melbourne

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No worries mate, you know it's funny that this was the method that worked. To be perfectly honest I kinda just chucked it in as a bit of trivia related to booleans.

Glad it worked for you.

Simon.

- nice avatar, btw. I like.

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# 5 16-01-2007 , 08:44 PM

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Join Date: May 2005

Location: Melbourne, Australia

Posts: 26

Thanks alot Man! I love when sheer flukes like that happen!

Funny you mentioned my Avatar - I'm was just thinking of doing a new one! [Fluke #2].

I think this forum might be built on an Indian Burial Ground or something, 'cos aside from the above coincidences, we are both in Melbourne [Fluke #3] and my name is Simon too [Fluke #4]! [Cue Twilight Zone theme music!]

Cheers for your help!

See you "Out There"!

priimate.

Last edited by priimate; 16-01-2007 at 08:46 PM.

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Spitfire tute Pt. 3 Boolean problems

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