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Spline Combiner Booleans: Limitations & Workarounds

Boolean operations involve complex math. Boolean engines are very complicate pieces of code and there is no perfect algorithm for this task.

Spline Combiner uses 3dsMax’s ProBoolean engine to perform boolean oprations between splines. This functions work generally very good, but there are some exceptions.

There may be occasions in wich Spline Combiner‘s Boolean Splines tool cannot resolve the boolean operation properly. For example, in some cases after the process, all the shapes disappear or the resulting shape is wrong. Don’t panic! This is not an error. It’s a known limitation and it happens just in particular cases. We will point those cases and show you how to solve them in a few steps.

The image above shows 3 cases in wich the Boolean Union operation fails and how to use Spline Combiner’s Detect Intersections tool to workaround this.

The most problematic situations, as you can see, are those involving overlapping vertices and lines between shapes.

As a general rule, to overcome these cases, you can use the Detect Intersections tool. The steps are the following:

  1. Select the shapes
  2. Open Detect Intersections rollout
  3. Tick ‘Between different shapes’
  4. Choose ‘Split’ option and ‘Detach elements’
  5. Press ‘DETECT INTERSECTIONS’ button. The plugin breaks the splines apart by intersections, detaching all curves.
  6. Delete the unwanted parts manually
  7. At the Tools rollout, press ‘Attach Selected’ and ‘Weld Vertices’

Ready!

This method and works for almost all the cases, since the algorithm Spline Combiner uses for detecting intersections is very accurate and effective.

Try it! If you have any doubts or consultations please leave a comment down here or write us through this Contact Form.

Cheers!

 

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Spline Combiner: Shape Cutter tool

Hi guys!

In this tutorial we want to show you how to cut 2D shapes in 3ds Max, in a clean and easy way, using the Shape Cutter tool from Spline Combiner 3dsMax plugin to make the logo in the image above.

In the case of this 3D logo, the three different color regions were required to be separate meshes, to animate them independently.

3ds Max natively comes with a tool for cutting 3D objects called ProCutter (located in Control Panel > Geometry > Compound Objects). You could use this tool to cut an already extruded logo, but that way you end up with an Editable Mesh (or Poly) with a collapsed modifiers stack. You loose the advantage of keeping the extrusion parametric as a modifier.
Using this plugin, you work in a non-destructive way, so you can go back and edit the original shapes/splines if you need to.

Let’s start. Make a new scene in 3ds Max and do the following:

1. With the Text shape tool, type “Rainbow” (or whatever you like) in a viewport, give the text a reasonable size and assign a nice font to it.

2. Draw an arc through the whole word. Then make a copy, using SHIFT+move, and place it below it to build a rainbow arc, like in the first step at the image below.

 

3. Open Spline Combiner.

4. First, you need to attach both arcs together because Spline Combiner requires the cutter object to be a single shape. So, select both arcs. Then go to the Tools rollout (in the plugin’s UI) and press Attach Selected. Now you have a single shape containing both splines.

5. Go to the Shape Cutter rollout. Press the button  Pick Cutter Object and click on the arc shape. Its name appears in the button text.

6. Leave all the checkboxes on. The options Cookie cut for closed shapes and Detach all elements are exactly what we need to get extrusion-friendly shapes.

7. Select both shapes, the rainbow arc and the text. The press APPLY CUTTER.

8. The plugin will take a little time to perform the action. As a result, you will get many single spline shapes (3 or more per each letter). Like in the 2nd step at the above image.

9. Now you need to attach all the shapes by region, considering the 3 regions delimited by the arc shape: top region, middle region and bottom region. So, select all the shapes in the top region, go to the Tools rollout again and press Attach Selected. Repeat the same procedure for the shapes in each region. You will end up with only 3 shapes, like in the 3rd step in the image above.

10. At this point you can delete the cutter object. Delete the arc shape then.

11. Now try to assign an Extrude modifier to the top shape of the logo. If the shape does not extrude well, it means there are some open splines. You need to weld all the vertices properly to get closed splines for the extrusion. So, at the Tools rollout, use the Weld Vertices tool for that. Repeat the process with the other shapes if necessary.

12. To make a 3D logo from a vector shape, you can use either the Extrude or the Bevel modifier. The one in this tutorial was made with Bevel.

13. You should have a now a beautiful 3D logo, composed of 3 meshes. Assign a different colored material to each one and you are ready!

We hope you enjoyed making this practice. If you have any doubts or consultations, you can post a comment down here or write us through the Contact Form.

Cheers!

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