how would i make this shape? pic

Maya for 3D Printing - Rapid Prototyping

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# 1 29-12-2011 , 10:38 PM

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Was thinking of making a 5-sided plane and then rotating them and merging verts but that would get messy.

Ideas?

Thanks

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# 2 29-12-2011 , 11:13 PM

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What you want is a Dodecahedron. You can create it by going to Create>Polygon Primitives>Platonic Solids>Option Box. Set the platonic type to Dodecahedron, and click create.

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# 3 30-12-2011 , 12:34 AM

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yeah works ok but i wanted to turn it into a sub-d object and it doesn't seem to want to work

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# 4 30-12-2011 , 02:18 AM

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Of course, because Sub-D's work best with quadrilateral polygons. You would need to modify the mesh by hand to make it usable.

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# 5 05-01-2012 , 01:53 AM

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would just upping the divisions work?
i tried smoothing it and it just gets all blobby

"Those who would give up essential liberty to purchase a little temporary safety, deserve neither liberty nor safety." -- Benjamin Franklin

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# 6 05-01-2012 , 02:01 AM

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Use a polygon bevel.

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# 7 05-01-2012 , 10:38 AM

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To change to quads use the smooth mesh in mesh tab and change the continuity to 0.............dave

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# 8 05-01-2012 , 09:49 PM

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NextDesign has the best solution. Create a platonic solid dodecahedron and then do a poly bevel with a small offset and 2 segments. You can then render both unsmoothed and smoothed.

"If I have seen further it is by standing on the shoulders of giants." Sir Isaac Newton, 1675

Last edited by ctbram; 05-01-2012 at 10:05 PM.

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# 9 05-01-2012 , 09:54 PM

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Rick I don't do sudDs but if you just bevel that will still leave a ngon in each face is that OK user added image

...........dave

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# 10 05-01-2012 , 10:11 PM

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It will be all quads Dave. If you bevel with two segments it would be like manually putting a support edge on either side of the original edges with a little smoothing to boot.

The nice thing here is you don't really need to smooth afterwards and you get a very nice edges. But if you have to smooth it will work out as well and if you subd the 5-sided ngons of the main faces will be transformed into all quads.

Here is a quick video to demonstrate and you can see the corners are nicely quadrangulated....

https://youtu.be/kK3UT3eTPtg

PS - I did notice the main faces are indeed dreaded ngons (5 sides) but if you convert to subd the catmull-clark algorithm will convert them all to quads.

"If I have seen further it is by standing on the shoulders of giants." Sir Isaac Newton, 1675

Last edited by ctbram; 06-01-2012 at 01:24 AM.

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