Optimizing Crates

Hello in this blog post I will be talking about optimizing crates which my class mates had modeled in class. This week we were put into groups in which we tried to optimize each other’s crates that we had been working on in class. Using a feature in 3Dx Max called xView you can locate a lot of problems which occur when modeling in 3D. The problems which I focused on mainly were Overlapping faces, Overlapping vertices, and Open faces. I also made sure that no polygons consisted of more than 4 faces.

Viktor’s Crate:

The fruit crate which I got from Viktor was already pretty optimized. There were no real problems which I had to fix. All I had to do was a little bit of optimizing.

Ahmed’s Crate:

This model was a bit more problematic than Victors Crate. It had problems with overlapping faces which needed to be fixed. There were also a few overlapping vertices.

I used xView to find out which faces were overlapping. To fix the overlapping faces I deleted the entire face to see if there were two identical faces on top of each other. Sometimes no matter what I did I couldn’t get the faces not to overlap. I ended up having to delete them all together and use the cap tool.

To fix the overlapping vertices it was as simple as just to weld them together.

The crate which Ahmed tried to fix:

This was the crate which Ahmed had tried to fix but he didn’t manage, I butchered it pretty badly when I first tried to make it.

I kinda messed up my crate pretty bad while working on it. I accidentally moved a bunch of faces over a little bit while trying to select multiple faces, unfortunately I didn’t notice this until sometime later and by then it was far too late to ctrl-z it away. The crate ended up very wonky. It had open faces, overlapping vertices, overlapping faces. It was not very optimized either.

After some time trying to fix the endless problems which the crate had I ended up just creating a new one. Now, since I knew how to make a crate, it didn’t take long at all. All I had to do with the new crate was to do some optimization.

My crate/chest:

I had only had a few problems with my chest. The main problems where overlapping faces, and overlapping vertices. It took me some time to fix this. To fix the overlapping vertices it was as simple as just to weld them together. Most of the overlapping faces fixed themselves once I had applied the weld to the vertices. I also made sure that no polygons consisted of more than 4 faces. There were multiple places where this was a problem, especially in the lid. The main thing that took time was the optimization.

Before:

After: