Maya 2020 fundamentals - modelling the real world
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# 1 01-09-2005 , 06:31 PM
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Join Date: Aug 2005
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Booleans Union Problem

Well, let me get straight to the point. I'm following the four video free tutorial concerning creating a cartoon dog, and so far everything is going relatively well, except for one issue. I just finished converting the leg from a Nurbs cylinder to polygons, and after shaping it correctly and merging the 6 or so polygons that were on the tip of the toe, I attempted to boolean --> union the leg with the body/head (both were already merged succesfully). Unfortunately, every time I did this, the leg and the body would dissappear (not get hidden, but turn into a new polygon shape in the outliner and dissappear completely in the windows. I then cleaned up some of the polygons that made the leg connect to the body (after undoing the union) and then attempted to union again. This time the two parts merged, but the tip of the toe magically was attached to the middle of the dog's torso. I can't understand why this happens, but it always does happen. I attached an .mb file that shows the problem if that may help someone figure out whats wrong. Help would be greatly appreciated here, as I can't continue on in the tutorial without figuring this out.

PS I am also unable to ever have wireframe on shaded in effect, I click it in the shading menu, but it never does anything. Not a huge issue, but still quite annoying.

Thanks so much.

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# 2 26-09-2005 , 01:31 PM
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I can´t really tell what the problem was because I had no state-before booleanoperation. I too usually never use poly boolean operation. my only guess is that your model wasn´t cleaned up from non-manifold geometry (normals are all in the same direction, no doubled edges or verts). the other thing is history. before performing a boolean operation I´d very much advise to delete history.

I cleaned the geometry by hand, it wasn´t a big deal. but to tell something informativ I´d need the file before you performed the boolean operation.

about the wireframe on shaded - it´s working fine on my machine here. toggled it on and off with your file - no problem.


kind regards!

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everything starts and ends in the right place at the right time.
# 3 09-10-2005 , 04:56 AM
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I'm having a similiar problem. How does one check the normal orientation? I'm attempting to union a body and head ... and *poof* gone. I deleted the history of both objects and even merged everything i could think of... nothing.

# 4 09-10-2005 , 04:24 PM
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Display -> Polygon Components -> Normals


everything starts and ends in the right place at the right time.
# 5 10-10-2005 , 07:10 PM
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Yeah, my machine f*cked up on booleans before, and all of my eometry was quads, all normals facing outwards, no history... etc...
Thing was when I would click on the Boolean Union button it would do the Boolean Difference and vice versa! Really queer, and since then I just did merge edges and stuff to stitch body parts together :p

Cheers, user added image
,Matt user added image

# 6 30-11-2005 , 06:28 PM
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I think that for any boolean functions NOT to zap your polys, you need to have the poly objects intersect whit eachother.
user added image
For mixing up the difference/intersection bit, it's all down to the order of selection.
For making a cylinderical hole in a cube, first select the cube (the part you want to dig into) and then select the cylinder (the part wich inverse shape you'd like to carve out)

If I have two poly objects I need to hook up to eachother, I usually dont use the boolean union, but I use the polygons->combine and then just merges the vertices that need merging.
I usually have a hole in the meshes where they meet, so the resulting model are completely hollow, and have no internal compartments.
user added image


-DX-

Last edited by DukerX; 30-11-2005 at 06:32 PM.
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