Brushify

Brushify is a new geometry modifier to quickly make your objects brush-friendly. This modifier requires 3ds Max 2016 SP2/Extension 1 or later. Brushify now comes bundled in Wall Worm.

Brushify User Interface

Snap To Grid

Turn on to force all incoming vertices to snap to the world grid. The grid points snapped to are based to teh Snap Precision spinner. Generally, the precision should be set to 1.0.

Weld Close Verts

This will weld vertices that are within the Weld Threshhold distance.

Cap

When on, caps the incoming geometry where there are holes (borders). Note that there will be one and only one polygon per capped hole. This means that borders with more than 4 sides will not be accessible to the Turn Concave Polys function (below).

Cap Material

Sets the Material ID of the capped sides. Generally, you'd set this to the ID of a NODRAW material.

Select Cap Faces

When on, newly created faces (generated by Cap) are set in the object face selection for sending up the modifier stack

Turn Concave Polys

This important function will turn the triangulation of any quad polygon that is currently concave. Important Note

Only works on Quads, and only works on incoming geometry. This means it doesn't get applied to polygons generated with the Slice Planes (below).

Auto Edge

Use this setting to break non-planar polygons into separate polygons. A good Auto Edge value is generally around 2.0.

Auto Smooth

Generates smoothing groups for the polygons based ong adjacent polygon angles.

Keep Face Selection

When on, this will preserve the underlying face selection to send up the modifier stack.

Slice Planes

Slice Planes will slice the geometry into elements. The slice plane is derived from the slice plane object's pivot point, perpendicular to it's local Z axis. This means that any object is valid as a slice plane. When the Create button is pressed, Brushify creates slice planes from new Plane primitives.

Use Slice Planes

When on, breaks up geometry based on the slice planes.

Only Selected Elements

When on, only elements with at least one face selection in the incoming geometry will be sliced.

Create Slice Plane

When clicked, generates a slice plane. If there are not existing slice planes, links it as a child of the current node; if there are already slice planes, links the new slice plane as a child of the last slice plane in the list.

Pick Slice Plane

Pick an object in the scene to use as a slice plane. If you pick an object with a Brushify modifier, any of it's current slice planes get assigned to this object.

Slice Planes List

Lists all the slice planes assigned to the Brushify modifier.

Slice Plane Hints:

  • While Slice Planes are useful, they often generate extra vertices along the sliced borders. So you will often need to do some extra cleanup if you find the exported geometry not outputting as expected. See the utilities section.
  • You should not make any two slice planes interesct within the volume of your brushes.

Wall Worm Connection

The checkboxes in this field communicate with the Wall Worm VMF Exporter. Generally if you are slicing an object with slice planes or the object has multiple elements, you should remember to set the Tag as Concave Brush in order to tell the exporter to break the object into one brush per element.

Utilities

The utilities are functions to speed up extra cleanup when necessary.

Cap + Turn To Poly

When pressed, this button will apply a Cap Modifier and a Turn to Poly modifier onto this node (and all other nodes that are using an instance of the current Brushify modifier). Generally, this is useful if you are using Slice Planes because the breaks from slice planes do not get capped by Brushify.

Collapse and Clean

This button will run the Cap + Turn to Poly function as well as Reset the object's XForm, convert to editable poly and then run the Remove Isolated Vertices function if you also have Carver installed.

Changelog

Version 1.1

  • Added Slice Planes.
  • Added Utilities Rollout with a Cap and Turn To Poly function for objects using slice planes.

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