Seems to me, that like That Expensive Modeller, Carrara had the ability to take a primitive mesh(cube, cylinder, or what have you) and divide it into multiple polys on an even, measured basis.(taking a rectangular plane and dividing it by three on X and Z axis resulted in 9 rectangles all the same sizeand shape).

I forget off the top of my head what that function is called, but I was sure Carrara had it, and now, after three hours cursing the day that the program was even considered, I figured I'd check and see if you all know what I'm on about, and maybe get a hand.

Not like the Carrara CD was much more than a nifty guided tour.

is the Tesselate function?

To be honest, I don't think so. In Max, Tesselation was separate. This was a couple of text input boxes that could be used to directly control the number of polys from a given surface.

You only can control this during creation of the primitive, using the + or - in numeric keypad.
Tesselationin Carrara dothe same as subdivide mesh, making it more dense.

Thank you!

Off to go try that, then :)

kk, I hate to seem beggy, but is there a way to take an existing object and mirror it?

Edit => Duplicate With Symmetry. Carrara has two functions in the Vertex room: Tesselate and Subdivide. They are not the same thing but both add polygons to your Vertex object or Vertex Primitive. Mark

Thank you, sir, that helps me immensely :)

Great, update us when done

Just about reeady, actually. Need to make a magazine for it, and bevel a couple of spots so Poser stops smoothing important edges into shallow craters. The stock might be a bit long, too.

Yep... Off to go look :)

Tesselate evil.

Neat thing about subdivision, is you can "freeze" or export and the increased-density model retains polygon and material groups, and even uv mapping.

Plus of course you can use the crease tool in conjuntion with subdivision.

Really just getting started with it, Muse. The Subdivision tool hates me, though... Did all kinds of weird things to that model

Speaking of, I wound up scrapping it. The mesh breaks badly in Poser, and it seems there were a lot of polys and loose verts hanging around providing substantial difficulties in getting things together. 

Worse, any attempt to fix it was only making it worse. So, after much gnashing of teeths, I grabbed another cube, and began again... Only this time more careful about what got extruded.

The mesh is almost certainly going to be higher-poly at this point, but it's a whole lot cleaner.

Keep your polygons 4-sided if you are going to smooth your object.  Poser will thank you also.

Duly noted... Unfortunately, this object seems to need the occasional Tri just to keep the planes flat. Not sure why, but convex polys don't sit right with me.

That, and I've heard Poser detests them when they're like that.

Suggestions?

Yah -- designing a mesh Poser likes is a chore in itself.  Another reason why the later incarnations of Carrara, with this growing "The application knows better than you do how to model," disturbs me.  Carrara's defaults are NOT Poser-friendly.  So I wish Carrara would just shut up with the warning boxes and get out of the way while I fix things.

Still working on the whole poser-friendly mesh thing. The new mesh is certainly more designer-friendly, regardless. 

Mind, it looks little like the old mesh, but at least it's clean.

Now it I can just find a way to make the n-gons wander off without splitting them into quads and tris, I'll feel a whole lot better.

Um...why not split them?

Quads are great.  Tris are okay, especially for non-organics (they don't have to bend).  Just avoid asterix's as they can sometimes show up in renders.

I should add -- quads whenever possible is good for Carrara, too.  As of version 6 (or was it 5?) when you increase subdivision it does so with quads.  But even more importantly, Carrara's line tools are not very smart about tris.  Make a bevel or just extract an edge and it may get "lost" around the corner of a narrow tri.  Quads don't have that problem.

It's another rifle, in this case. I still need one, and the first one won't work. This one is going to be more high-poly than the last one, though :(

If it were for a video game, this would be a problem, but since it's not, I can afford a couple of spares, if it keeps the mesh from coming apart.

The last one came apart when imported into Poser in several different places. The muzzle end of the barrel disappeared completely under poser's gentle ministrations, for example.

Although I wonder why it is the end of the barrel inside the weapon tore the mesh along the cylinder cap.

That happened before it ever left Carrara. No clue why.

This is...odd.  I'd like to see that mesh, try to understand what happened to it.

The major problems I've had with non-bending objects (like a gun) are reversed surface normals, the "marshmellow" effect mostly addressed by Poser 6 (with the ability to set creasing angle on a per-object basis), and a variation of the above present in Firefly renders that I call the "bagpipe" effect; where a long cylinder will "inflate" like the bag on an upright vacuum cleaner.

All of these have solutions, though some are more onerous than others.

Drop me a sitemail with an email address, and I'll email it to you. If you can fix it and tell me where I went wrong, I'd appreciate it.

You don't by some random chance happen to have the Aiko bunny ears you made for me, would you? I was working with that character again, and discovered that I don't have them anymore.

They work better than the ones from BunnyGirl for Catgirl :D

Got them somewhere.  I'll take a look when I get my brain together.  And you can use the internal mail here.

Oh, there they are -- still have a copy in my locker here.  http://www.renderosity.com/mod/rrfilelock/download.php?fileid=24504&key=389823

Thanks, man :)

You'll have an email in ten minutes.

Quote - Duly noted... Unfortunately, this object seems to need the occasional Tri just to keep the planes flat. Not sure why, but convex polys don't sit right with me.

That, and I've heard Poser detests them when they're like that.

Suggestions?

You can also use 3-sided polygons in your object to assist with edge flow and what not.  But then all smoothing becomes null and void, for you now have crossed deep into hard edge modeling.  You probably won't be smoothing anyway if your importing into Poser.

Really, in the end, this particular object doesn't actually need any smoothing. It's a weapon, and they're not supposed to be pillowy-soft ;)

Hrm.  Yes, and no, to several above comments.  I'm actually not so sure about how Poser 6 and Firefly does their new smoothing, but I've experienced in various models in various renders that although a cylindrical or spherical surface may appear smooth as silk, the edge -- and shadows -- give it away with ugly facets.

My feeling is that it is wortwhile putting sufficient polygons in any curving surface to make a smooth edge at the like render resolution.  As such things go, I don't think it adds so greatly to the polygon count as to make the models implausible.

(I may think second of that once the highly-detailed drum kit I'm working on passes the 20 meg download size!)

Heh... Now rifle's nearly done, and it looks like it'll be about 600 polys total. If this were a video game, I'd be hosed.

But it's not, so I shalt happily weld the tow halves together and carry on :)

Of course you could render it in Carrara since it does a far better job at it than Poser does.

600?  Piker!  As of this render -- http://www.renderosity.com/mod/rrfilelock/download.php?fileid=32625&key=6117 -- I'm up to 60K.

:)

(I will say that for most items I build I am much more careful to keep the polygon count low.)

I'm expecting the mag to run another 30, on the high side. I'm also going to make rounds for it, so I can properly size the magazine.

On a better note, this rifle worked beautifully in Poser- No breaks in the mesh, and when the smoothing was turned down, it took on the form we see in the modeller.

Scaled to 45%, it fit Aiko beautifully, with only minor adjustments to the pose I made for it from my last posekit.

This makes me very happy indeed.

kk, nomuse, I tried to send you that .obj via Rendomail, and got the email back for some reason.

Attached Link: Link to Mk 30 Rifle.

http://www.renderosity.com/mod/gallery/index.php?image_id=1603804

I've been thinking of doing a sniper rifle, actually. Was wondering how I was going to get the scope done, preferably without having to tesselate some poor cylinder and create a horde of polys I don't need. The original rifle mesh is hopelessly snarled(at least right now), so it's going to be awhile before it again sees the light of day. 

I have a lot more to learn before I can fix what my inexperience shredded in the first place. Was still a solid first effort, but I feel it could be far better than it is. 

I made a second rifle for the kit, although I still have yet to make a magazine for it. Just figured out how to UVMap at all, so I'm still a little rough around the edges. 

I'll have to try the Spline modeller when I do start in on that sniper, though. Methinks the lathe will help matters considerably.

Now that I think about it, I'm going to need it sooner than that... I still need to make rounds for the existing weapons.

Welp... Off to do some damage.

My own modeling suffers from some weird prejudice against sticking primitives into the sides of other primitives.  I keep struggling to make smooth welds between objects that shouldn't have been welded.  That might save a poly every now and then, but for the most part it means more polys -- and a lot more modelling time.  A bad habit I wish I could break.

That's pretty much what killed the first rifle, pretty though it may be. I made the mistake of trying to weld a few of the extruded parts together, and left polys where I shouldn't have... Then got way past too weld-happy trying to get rid of them. I got the email I sent you with the mesh for that rifle back, nomuse... Need another one if you want to see how bad I slaughtered it.

Well, it seems that you've solved you mesh issues for the nonce.

Emailing obj is a dicey thing.  Zip them, and they should send okay.  Better yet is a link to a site.  That's why I love having that bit of space Rendo makes available to merchants.

I zipped it up all nice and pretty for the email, but the address I put in rejected. The Mailer-Daemon said there wasn't such a person/place/thing. 

No clue what that was about.

I didn't fix the mesh, it's still sitting here. Knowing what I did wrong doesn't help me on that project, it just tells me what not to do next time, sadly.

That at least worked... The second rifle's mesh is solid. No breaks in Poser, it even behaved nicely. I still like the look of the first one, however, so eventually it will have to be fixed. I just don't know if I'm up to the challenge at this point.

Maybe after the first pack releases, I'll go back and revisit it.