how to fill THIS hole

# 1 03-07-2012 , 03:30 AM

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Join Date: Jul 2012

Posts: 17

How would i fill this hole? the orange selected edges...polygon tool is rubbish and hasnt worked for me

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# 2 03-07-2012 , 06:27 AM

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Join Date: Feb 2010

Location: Australia

Posts: 4,255

append to poly tool is fine...you just use it similar to the bridge tool...or use the bride tool first then append to poly to fill in wierd corners etc.

cheers bullet

bullet1968

"A Darkness at Sethanon", a book I aspire to model some of the charcters and scenes

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# 3 03-07-2012 , 07:02 AM

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Location: Michigan, USA

Posts: 2,998

You can use mesh>fill hole and then split polygon tool to add the cap edges.

However, I can see from your screen shot that you have nonmanifold geometry and this is not advisable as it is going to cause you problems with many of the maya modeling tools as well as rendering down the road.

You cannot have three faces that share a single edge (that is geometry that forms a T shape). This is called "nonmanifold". But that is just a $50 word that really means nothing more then you will have normals that will be facing the wrong way on one of the faces.

See the two attached images below. I have two-sided lighting turned "off" so any face with it's normals facing away from the camera will be black.

As you can see from the left 3/4 view the face normals are okay; however, from the right 3/4 view the vertical polygon's face normal is facing the wrong way. This is "nonmanifold" and is BAD. It is most likely that this geo is what is causing the problems you are having with the append to polygon tool.

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"If I have seen further it is by standing on the shoulders of giants." Sir Isaac Newton, 1675

Last edited by ctbram; 03-07-2012 at 01:31 PM.

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# 4 03-07-2012 , 01:24 PM

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You can automatically check for and fix nonmanifold geometry using mesh>cleanup and check the box for nonmanifold. I also check for edges with zero length and faces with zero surface area and lamina faces and click the normals and faces radio button.

I like to highlight affected geo first to see the problem bits and then run again with repair.

"If I have seen further it is by standing on the shoulders of giants." Sir Isaac Newton, 1675

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# 5 03-07-2012 , 01:31 PM

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There are three basic types of nonmanifold geometry -

1. three or more faces share a single edge
2. two faces share a single edge but have their normals in opposition
3. two or more faces are connected by a single vertex

Don't do any of them or you will have problems.

NOTE: In case 2 I model with highlight border edges turned "on" this thickens border edges which are by definition unattached. However, note example 2 - the edge connects the two faces (that is both faces share the center edge) however maya shows that center edge as a border edge. When you are modeling and you see faces that share an edge but the edge is displayed as a border edge this is a sure indication of flipped normals.

Hope this helps,
Rick

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