Sculpt - Training videos
The below videos show some Sculpt features in short-burst 60-second samplers.
Using the Sculpt 3ds Max plugin, select the geometry you want to conform to a surface below. Tick conform to surface and the software will deform the mesh to follow the surface. To move objects to a surface make sure you uncheck 'conform geometry'.
If you work with messy surfaces, especially imported into 3ds Max from CAD and 3rd-party geo-survey terrain software, you may find you want to retopologize it to create a clean quad mesh. Using the IgNite Sculpt plugin, first select the objects you want to create a new mesh from. Click on Use Selected Objects and adjust the grid size. Click Retopologize Plane to create the new surface.
Imported BIM models in 3ds Max often have double faces, which given the popularity of real-time rendering and exporting to game engines may cause co-planer flickering on export or within 3ds Max at render time. To check and remove these, use IgNite Sculpt. In Sculpt, the first thing you should do is attach your model. Select your preference i.e. Attach By Material or Attach by Layer. Next, select the model and click Detach Double Faces.
If you import architects massing models from Sketchup, BIM or other CAD software, you are reliant on the quality of 3D models you've been given. Often, these have been modelled in a CAD way. Stacked blocks, triangulated, or simply messy. To fix these use the IgNite Sculpt 3ds Max plugin. Select the 3D objects you want to fix, open Sculpt and click on Retopologize Massing. Check the Delete Original box. Click on Retopo BLD Massing and it will build new models. The grid distance is used to tighten the accuracy of the rebuild in Z orientation. The default is 1 and usually does a good job.
There are several methods to weld vertices using the 3ds Max plugin Sculpt. By default when you select the Attach Objects functions, the Weld Objects is checked. Alternatively, if you just want to weld selected objects use the Weld Verts functions. On both, you can adjust the Weld Threshold parameters.
If you attach multiple objects in 3ds Max, use the Sculpt plugin. We recommend unchecking the Weld Attached checkbox and do this separately on complex tasks. Select the objects and click on one of the Attach Objects options. (This process takes a few seconds as it uses multi-threading). Next, reselect the objects and click on Weld Vertices. Sculpt displays the before/after results before you click the Weld button.
The Sculpt plugin for 3ds Max has a few tools to fix flipped normals. The first option shows a cube with flipped faces and uses a unify to fix it. The second option uses an algorithm to flip the normals towards or away from the pivot point position. This is useful on problematic objects and planes. To move the pivot point we use the pivot graph located in IgNite Springboard or as a standalone on the Toolbar. Once the object is fixed, reposition the pivot point to its original position.
The Sculpt plugin for 3ds Max includes View Diagnostics which inspects selected objects and returns results displayed as colours; Red = error. There are 3D geometry issues. Green = good. No issues.
