- [Instructor] In the previous movie,
we created a boolean compound object
but it had some issues.
And those arose because the original courtyard wall
opera end, did not have sufficient polygon detail.
I'm going to use the quick slice tool to chop some new edges
and create some new polygons on that object.
And that will prevent some of the issues
that can crop up with a boolean.
This object is an editable poly already.
I'll select it,
go to the modified panel.
And I want to show you what the problems are with this object.
Go into polygon sub object mode
and then maximize the perspective view with alt w
if we select one of these outer surfaces here
we'll see that these are giant polygons.
So on this wall here, I've got a huge giant polygon.
That's all one polygon.
And then we're trying to cut four holes
in that single polygon
and that's not going to work terribly well.
Additionally, there are actually some technically
illegal polygons here on this object.
So if I select this top polygon here,
that's all one polygon
and that's actually really illegal,
for two reasons.
One, it has holes in it.
We can see that there's a giant hole
in that polygon here in the center of the courtyard.
There's another hole over here in the hot tub area
and that's technically not legal.
Additionally, this is a concave polygon.
And by that we mean that the exterior angle
is less than 180 degrees.
So if we get in close here,
control alt middle mouse.
So this is an exterior angle between two edges.
So these two edges meet at a point.
And if we measure at this angle,
it should be 180 degrees or greater,
but it is not, it is less than 180 degrees.
This is a 90 degree angle here.
So this is what's known as a concave polygon
and that is technically illegal.
And it's going to cause problems in many different situations.
Now you may be wondering, well why did the 3DS Max
create this illegal polygon structure in the first place?
And I do not have an answer for that.
When we extrude this editable spline
we actually get illegal geometry.
And in a lot of cases, it's going to be fine.
This will actually render okay as it is.
But if we try to perform a boolean on it
we will see then we have some problems.
So we're going to correct some of those problems.
Firstly, by using the quick slice tool.
I'll exit out of polygon sub object mode,
because we don't need to be in a sub object mode
for quick slice.
We can actually just slice through
the entire object all at once.
And I want to enable edge faces so I can see this better.
So I'll press F4 on the keyboard.
And now I can see the edges.
I'll go back to a four viewport layout with alt w.
The quick slice tool is found
in the edit geometry rollout.
So we can enable quick slice.
Now we need to click twice in any viewport to define a plane
which is exactly edge on to that viewport.
So we will never see the plane.
We will just see a line that extends a plane infinitely
into the current view port.
Okay, so I'll go over to the left view just to illustrate.
Click once to define one of the points on this line
and then move the mouse cursor around.
And we can see a preview of that plane
that's going to slice through the entire model in this case.
Okay, and it doesn't matter whether we're inside the object
or outside the object, because that plane is infinite.
So I can just click anywhere to define a plane
and we see we've now chops some new edges
through that model.
Okay, that's just to illustrate how quick slice works.
I'll undo that with control Z.
I actually want to create a very precise
quick slice through this model horizontally here.
Exactly at the same elevation as the tops of these portals.
Okay, so I'll get in close in this left view
with control alt middle mouse.
And I've already set up the grid precisely
so it lines up with those objects.
So we can and enter into either 3D or 2D snaps,
it doesn't matter.
But we do want to make sure
we're only snapping to grid points,
so you might want to right click on that snap icon
and just check to make sure
you're only snapping to grid points.
Okay, so with snaps enabled
and quick slice still on
we can go ahead and click on the top
of one of these boxes and then just move the mouse over
and click at the same elevation.
And now we've just chopped a new edge loop
through the entire model precisely at that elevation.
Okay, now we need some more detail as well.
We need some edges running in between each one
of these portals and that's to make sure
that we don't get any long thin skinny triangles
in our boolean.
And that's best accomplished in the top view,
so I'll go out to top view and just frame this up.
I want to create some new edge loops running
on the outsides in between each one of these portals.
Okay, just like that.
And we can see we've chopped through the whole model.
Likewise, in between these two.
I also want to chop right through the center
of each portal to create some detail there,
so I'll just continue that process.
We want to chop in between each one of these portals
and also right through the middle of each portal.
So we'll do that for the east and west walls.
And now we can see the results here.
That looks pretty good.
We also want to do the same for the north and south walls.
So we'll go up to, in our top view
we want to chop through the outside,
also through the center.
We don't want one here just yet.
We've got a pretty good structure there, so that's fine.
But we also need new edge loop
on the outside of that portal,
and also right through the center of the portal.
We can see the result that we've got here
in the south wall as well.
We also need some more detail up here
in this area that's going to be the hot tub.
So we'll create some more edge loops there
also running through the center and likewise,
over here running through the center
and on either side.
So that's pretty good.
And then we also actually want to prevent this problem here.
We've got some concave polygons here in this area,
so we'll just create a couple more edge loops there.
Chopping very precisely through.
And that's resolved that issue,
those are all conducts polygons.
So we've got a pretty good structure here
on our north east and west walls.
On the south wall, I do want to cut a couple more
edge loops through here and in order to do that,
we can go into polygon sub object mode,
so we're only cutting through the selected polygons.
Okay, so I'm going to exit out a quick slice,
just click that button.
And then go into polygons sub object mode.
And I want to select the polygons here on that south wall.
I can click and drag to make a polygon selection,
so only those are selected.
And then I can go back into quick slice,
reenable that.
Go back to the top viewport and pan around.
Let's go down.
We can dolly back with control alt middle
and we can dolly forward with control alt middle.
Right now what we're seeing
is what's called shade selected faces.
And all the selected polygons are shaded.
That makes it a little hard to see these edges,
so we can turn shade selected faces off in any view port
with a keyboard shortcut, which is F2.
All right, and then we can just chop through
the selected polygons.
So we still got quick slice enabled.
Click once to create a single point,
click a second time to define that plane.
And we'll do the same over here as well.
And we just created some more detail there.
And we didn't cut through the north wall,
'cause those polygons weren't selected.
Okay, cool I'll exit out a quick slice,
go back to object mode
and we've got a pretty good structure for the walls
but we still haven't dealt with the top and bottom
of the walls and quick slice
isn't really going to help us for that.
In that case, we're going to want to use the cut tool.
We'll take a look at that in the next movie.