Less polys on a curve

#1 I don't know how it works in Max, but in Silo, you can select entire loops and delete them, causing the adjacent edges/vertices to take up the slack. It's pretty cool, no holes in your geometry.

If that doesn't work for you, I might be able to pare it down to a reasonable number of rings for you. Just send it or host it as an .OBJ with no triangulation (that seems to work best for me).

Actually, I can think of two more ways to fix this in Silo. But since I don't know how Max operates, I wouldn't have a clue what to suggest.

#2 @Aaron - thanks for the offer but this one of those things I'm going to need to know how to do as it'll crop everytime I need to make a curved surface

#3 Did you use the arch tool create your spline? If so you might have to edit your arch spline properties to drop the number of created vertices before you lathe it. I haven't done extensive work in 3DS, but I do remember something like this.

Dustin

#4 Yea I used the arc tool. I'm not in front of my computer but I'll check it out when I get home. thanks

#5 Got it - select Arc then under interpolation change the number steps. I think you can also change the number of sides under rendering as well.

#6 Double post - my bad

#7 Look over to the right where it says edge then select all the edges you want removed, then right below where the modifier list is in the button panel it says "Remove" click that and they'll start going away.

#8 Just looking at the picture it seems like you took the long way around. Not in a bad way. There is always different ways of doing things. It seems to me that the shape you are trying to get is a capsule. There is an extended primitive that will give you the same result and you can select how many cap segments you want when you create the shape. When I look at the picture above I can see many extra faces and some overlapping edges around the red highlighted areas. It can be grueling to remove these as it requires a lot of selecting, deleting, and re-creating to get the look you want. Sometimes you'll have to use a symmetry modifier to make sure that the faces you created are equal and then you have to make sure all the polys are closed so that things don't get soured later on.

If it were me I would recreate the shape using the extended primitive > capsule.

Bobby had a good idea as well. you can select the edges of each ring that you want to remove, delete them, and then recreate the faces that you want.

Hope this helps. Let us know how it goes!

Mike

#9 I guess that essentially it is a capule except that the ends have a raised edge around the circumference. ie. the circumferece of the ends is greater than the circumference of the cylinder

#10 Using extended primitive/ capsule won't get you that flat edge , but you can do it with ChamferCylinder

STEP 1: Create/ extended primitive/ ChamferCylinder
STEP 2: Draw it out on the Top view
STEP 3: Increase the Fillet Segments in the Mody. Pannel.

10 Sec of work,
I hope thats what you want to get.

Enjoy Mathew Walles

#11 I did not realize, from looking at the picture, that you wanted the ends to be flat. If this is the case, then Mcrazer is right in using the chamfered cylinder. With this shape you can control the radius of the flat surface, the number of fillet segments, the size of the fillet, without doing anything complicated.

Mike

#12 Here's the results so far. There's still a few artifacts with the transparency due to the fact that the top and bottom are concaved. Once I've fixed these I'll probably post it up in freebies.