Hi everyone! Im trying to carve a piece out of this gals head (P4 Nude Woman) and recover the pieces by doing a series of Boolean unions and differences on the individual body parts as necessary and saving the pieces as .vobs. When I assemble them together, what I get is utter garbage, as you can see. Id like to avoid doing a series of renders and composting them, but I cant think of any other way at this point. Yeah, Im ready to carve a piece out of her head all rightwith an axe! Anyone have any ideas? Thanks, Rich

I don't know Rich. Vue seems to only like it's own primitives and other simple shapes for boolean unions. I have tried the same thing in the past and gotten some pretty funky results like you have here. I don't think it's possible, really. That looks painful---why you want to hurt this gal like that? ;) Sorry I couldn't be more helpful though; maybe someone else has some better insights.

That does look painful indeed! Avoid unions whenever possible, particularly on mesh objects. The results can be unpredictable (as you've found!) and the added computation time can become horrendous. Also, unions are really only useful if you're using a transparent material (like glass or water), to eliminate any "seams" between grouped objects. One of the main problems with carving a chunk out of the pretty girl's head is that her head is not a solid object, but hollow and empty. After all, she is a blonde... Okay, this blonde will now go sit in the corner over there ---> ;)

Awwww....Varian, you are so, SO bad!! LOL!! Laurie

heyas; do we want to know WHY you are taking her apart just to put the pieces back together?? you trying to make her explode, or what? use the original figure as the 'whole,' then do some transparent trickery with the pieces that fly out.

What I want to do is have a piece of her face cracked off and holding the piece in her hand. Rich

Attached Link: http://www.varian.net/dreamview/dreamdesign/evd/glass/index.html

You can try the method at this URL. :)

Uhh, that's where I got the idea from and what I'm trying to do. I like your tutorials though. ;) Rich

Well, now I'm confused because there's no boolean union in those directions! =:o Are you blonde, too? grin Just kidding...!!!

OOPS!!! I meant to say boolean 'intersections and differences'. My wife is blonde. I think it's rubbing off. lol Rich

Uh-oh...many things are contagious around here. ;) Okay, this trial used the P4Male. First, I eliminated every object I didn't absolutely need to show this -- which you wouldn't do; he would still have shoulders, in other words. ;) I selected just the Head, copied it, then pasted it. I called the copy HeadIn. I then made the copy slightly smaller globally. Select Head. Select HeadIn. Make Boolean Difference. Now the head is hollow in a way that gives some actual depth to its "shell." I named the difference HollowHead. I generated a Rock (Vue 4 sure made that easy! ;) ) I lined the Rock up where it would look like a nice place. Select HollowHead. Select Rock. Make Boolean Difference. I named this difference BrokenHead. Render preview. Head is broken. But -- and this is what you were running into also -- the broken section extended well beyond the Rock boundaries. I don't know why this is. :/ Select BrokenHead. Copy. Paste. Ungroup the pasted copy. Make sure its parts (HollowHead and Rock) are still selected (should be automatic), then make a Boolean Intersection. Name it HeadChunk. Move HeadChunk to the desired position. This render shows BrokenHead and HeadChunk.

The Rock wasn't positioned beyond the mouth. The mouth should still be visible as well as the upper neck and chin. As I look more at this, I'm thinking of a couple possibilities: Like... The hair is visible through the inside of the head. It shouldn't be, so apparently the hair object is intersecting the head object, and that might be messing up the booleans of the head object. Or... The area around the Rock broundaries looks good, has depth on the "shell", but the missing portions across the mouth and into the chin and neck don't have the same kind of shell depth. This may be caused by HeadIn being not precisely centered with the interior of Head. Heh. And you thought you were confused before? ;)

I think Bloodsong had the right idea by using trans-maps, but thanks for looking into it. If you ever do figure it out I'd like to know how you did it. Thanks, Rich