export polygon with maxscript ?

I have a lot of experience with Maxscript, but I''m afraid I can''t answer your question. I don''t think I understand what you''re asking here. What do you mean by export the polygons? The faces are the polygons.

-John

Hmm, if that''s the case then I don''t think there''s really a straight-forward way to do it. Max handles it''s meshes in two forms: TriMeshes and Poly nMeshes. The TriMeshes, of course, store everything as triangles. The other version uses the winged-edge system, if I remember correctly, and allows for polygons of any number of edges.

So, the problem then is that neither of those force a quad representation. I suppose you could try to combine tries and/or split n-sided polys into quads, but it''s pretty likely that at the end you''ll end up with an odd number that don''t convert to quads.

So, I guess the better question then is what exactly are you trying to accomplish here? In other words, what is your end goal once you get this data out of Max?

-John

It is not generally useful to get a mixture of quads and triangles from the program, because you''d have to have two separate methods of geometry processing, and this in turn would break many things (strip optimization etc...). I suppose that''s why most programs do not export quads out-of-the-box.

Why wouldn''t triangles do? Is there a very good reason to specifically use quads?

kind rgds,
-Nik

quote:

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Original post by Anonymous Poster
You would think 3dsmax by now (version 6) would make it easier for people to get quads or a mixture of trigs/quads out of it. This is so convoluted.

I don''t want to build edge data, look at edge visibility, combine triangles, etc...
Just give me the damn quads, max!

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Actually, no I wouldn''t think that. There are basically two reasons why it hasn''t gotten easier to get quads out of Max:

1. Almost nobody uses quads for rendering. The fast way to render in real-time is tri-strips, or triangles that use vertex index arrays. For non-real-time rendering you tend to use either triangles or a higher-order surface(SubD''s, Patchest, NURBS)

2. It''s almost impossible to build anything, except maybe a terrain grid, out of nothing but quads. You''re always going to have some areas where you need to patch it up with one or more tri''s.

I believe that reason #2 above is why Max stores it''s data the way it does. Having a format that only supported quads would get in the way of the modeling process.

Seriously, what are you actually trying to do once you get this data out of Max? We can probably give you more useful advice if we know what you''re trying to do

-John

thank you, i found how i can do. there''s a methode for the editable poly named : polyOp.getFaceVerts, its reurn the number of each vetex in the face (not triangle)