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MAYA
Cleaning Up Bad Geometry Using Maya's Cleanup Optionsby Shray
Khanna 12 Feb 2013
12 1 14
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Cleaning Up Bad Geometry Using Maya's Cleanup Options - Tuts+ 3D
& Motion Graphics Tutorial
http://cgi.tutsplus.com/tutorials/cleaning-up-bad-geometry-using-mayas-cleanup-options--cg-21861[9/19/14
4:25:09 AM]
Meshartifacts, broken verts, overlapping faces and other forms
of "Bad Geometry" are an
unfortunate part of building 3D models, we've all experienced
them at one time or another.
These errors can appear for anynumber of reasons and they're not
always easy to spot.
In today's tutorial, you'll get a detailed overview of Maya's
Cleanupoptions and how they can be
utilized to help get rid bad geometry that is sometimes hard to
fnd and will cause issues when
exporting meshes toreal-time game engines.
Step 1So we'll start with a simple polygon Sphere to test all
the bad geometry possibilities which can
be corrected using Cleanup.
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Cleaning Up Bad Geometry Using Maya's Cleanup Options - Tuts+ 3D
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Step 2Now to start with the cleanup go to Mesh>Cleanup... and
it will open a new window called
"Cleanup Options", which has a variety of options which I'll
explain as we move on.
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Cleaning Up Bad Geometry Using Maya's Cleanup Options - Tuts+ 3D
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Step 3
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Cleaning Up Bad Geometry Using Maya's Cleanup Options - Tuts+ 3D
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Now for our frst option, we need to create a type of bad
geometry onour sphere, as the
default one doesn't have any kind of artifacts present. So for
that simply select the "Split
Polygon Tool" and add a few cuts on some faces to make them
n-gons (faces surrounded by
more than 4 edges.)
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Cleaning Up Bad Geometry Using Maya's Cleanup Options - Tuts+ 3D
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Step 4
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Cleaning Up Bad Geometry Using Maya's Cleanup Options - Tuts+ 3D
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Now open the Cleanup window again, this time using Hotbox. Press
and hold Shift+Right-click
and select "Cleanup". As you see these bad sections of geometry
are easily visible on the
sphere, but what if you had created something complex, like a
"Roller Coaster" ride and some
of these bad sections are left. How are you gonna fnd them?
That's why "Cleanup" is there to
help you fnd them.
Step 5But frst let's take a brief overview of the "Cleanup
Effect" options. Under "Operation" if you
select "Select Matching Polygons" and apply it, this will select
only the affected area based on
what you havehighlighted.
If we choose "Cleanup matching polygons" it will automatically
correct the affected areas
without even showing that area. At frst it might seem like a
great idea to let Maya auto-correct
all the artifacts,but Maya actually does a pretty poor job fxing
your geometry. You should
(almost) always set this option to Select matching polygons. So
we can see what is wrong
with our geometry and decide how we want to fx it.
Now there is a "Scope" option, in which if you select Apply
toselected objects Maya will only
perform the Cleanup on the objects that are currently selected
in your scene. If you set it to
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Cleaning Up Bad Geometry Using Maya's Cleanup Options - Tuts+ 3D
& Motion Graphics Tutorial
http://cgi.tutsplus.com/tutorials/cleaning-up-bad-geometry-using-mayas-cleanup-options--cg-21861[9/19/14
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Apply to all polygonal objects, Maya will perform a Cleanup on
all the polygonal objects in your
scene.
It's always better to work on each asset at a time as it will
avoid any kind of confusion. It's also
always good to keep the "keep construction history" option on as
well, otherwise after using
cleanup, Maya will automatically delete your asset's
history.
Step 6Now we'll move forward to the "Fix by Tessellation" tab,
and select "Faces with more that 4
sides" (these are called "N-gons") which we've already created
on the sphere. So after this,
select the sphere and hit "Apply", and you'll notice it has
already selected the affected faces.
Now I haven't given a brief of the "4-sided faces" option as we
only use this one when we
need our mesh to be in Triangles only. As of now most of the
game engines accept quads,
so we really don't need that option because we don't consider 4
sided faces bad geometry.
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Cleaning Up Bad Geometry Using Maya's Cleanup Options - Tuts+ 3D
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Step 7
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Cleaning Up Bad Geometry Using Maya's Cleanup Options - Tuts+ 3D
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Now there are two different ways to correct this issue. One we
can simply use "Cleanup
matching polygons" in the Cleanup options and hit Apply and it
will connect the open vertices
automatically. But that gives us some extra triangles that we
don't want and may affect the
shading on our asset.
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Cleaning Up Bad Geometry Using Maya's Cleanup Options - Tuts+ 3D
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Step 8
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Cleaning Up Bad Geometry Using Maya's Cleanup Options - Tuts+ 3D
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Or two, you could simply use the "Split Polygon tool" to connect
the open edges where you
want.
Step 9Now for our next Fix "Concave faces", simply move the
vertices and create few concave
faces.
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Cleaning Up Bad Geometry Using Maya's Cleanup Options - Tuts+ 3D
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Step 10Now under "Cleanup Options" select "Select Matching
Polygons" and "Concave Faces" and hit
"Apply" and it will select the affected faces only.
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Cleaning Up Bad Geometry Using Maya's Cleanup Options - Tuts+ 3D
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http://cgi.tutsplus.com/tutorials/cleaning-up-bad-geometry-using-mayas-cleanup-options--cg-21861[9/19/14
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Step 11Now we can simply correct it by moving the vertices to
make the shapea convex face. or if our
model doesn't allow us to do that, we can simply break the quad
into 2 triangles using the
"Split Polygon Tool".
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Cleaning Up Bad Geometry Using Maya's Cleanup Options - Tuts+ 3D
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Step 12Now to show you guys what "Faces with hole" is, we have
to create one. For that create a
cylinder shape intersecting with the Sphere, and then Boolean it
with the sphere using
"Intersection".
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Cleaning Up Bad Geometry Using Maya's Cleanup Options - Tuts+ 3D
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Step 13
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Cleaning Up Bad Geometry Using Maya's Cleanup Options - Tuts+ 3D
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Now Delete the remaining faces of the Boolean intersection. This
lastremaining face with the
hole in it, in which all the vertices are open (not connected),
is called a Face with a Hole.
These will give you terrible results when smoothed out and
should always be taken care of.
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Cleaning Up Bad Geometry Using Maya's Cleanup Options - Tuts+ 3D
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Step 14
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Cleaning Up Bad Geometry Using Maya's Cleanup Options - Tuts+ 3D
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http://cgi.tutsplus.com/tutorials/cleaning-up-bad-geometry-using-mayas-cleanup-options--cg-21861[9/19/14
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Now using the Cleanup Settings, select "Select Matching
Polygons" under the Cleanup Effect
options and set the "Fix by Tessellation" option to "Faces with
Holes", you'll get the affected
face highlighted.
And again if you set the Cleanup Effect to "Cleanup matching
polygons" it will connect all the
open vertices automatically, but you also do the same thing
using the "Split Polygon Tool" if
you want to control the smoothing group manually.
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Cleaning Up Bad Geometry Using Maya's Cleanup Options - Tuts+ 3D
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Step 15
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Cleaning Up Bad Geometry Using Maya's Cleanup Options - Tuts+ 3D
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Now for our next artifact "Non planar Faces" just select any one
vertex, and move it inwards,
and this has created 4 Non-Planar faces surrounding that vertex.
Non-planar faces are
polygons with at least four vertices that do not lie on the same
plane. In other words the
vertices of a Non-planar face no longer create a fat surface in
3d space. As we can see in the
second image below.
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Cleaning Up Bad Geometry Using Maya's Cleanup Options - Tuts+ 3D
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Step 16
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Cleaning Up Bad Geometry Using Maya's Cleanup Options - Tuts+ 3D
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So applying Cleanup with "Non Planar faces" it will highlight
only the Non Planar faces, and
automatic Cleanup will connect the diagonal vertices so that the
quads have now changed
into triangles. A triangle is always a Planar surface in
whichever form you place it or move the
vertices. Manually you can also move the vertices and change the
face from Non-Planar to
planar, obviously only if your model allows it.
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Cleaning Up Bad Geometry Using Maya's Cleanup Options - Tuts+ 3D
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Step 17
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Cleaning Up Bad Geometry Using Maya's Cleanup Options - Tuts+ 3D
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Now we'll move on to "Lamina faces", which are actually 2 faces
whichshare the same vertices
and sit on top of each other with merged vertices. These kinds
of faces are very hard to fnd
as they blend in pretty well, you can only spot it if you fnd
unusual smoothing on any part of
your mesh, where smoothing groups wont work, and applying
subdivision also will create
some artifacts in this area. Now to have this shown as an
example, duplicate an existing face
over another and merge all 4 vertices.
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Cleaning Up Bad Geometry Using Maya's Cleanup Options - Tuts+ 3D
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Step 18
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Cleaning Up Bad Geometry Using Maya's Cleanup Options - Tuts+ 3D
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So applying cleanup will highlight that one extra face over the
otherone. And if auto cleanup is
applied, it will directly delete this extratop face. Auto
Cleanup works best for the Lamina faces
issue.
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Cleaning Up Bad Geometry Using Maya's Cleanup Options - Tuts+ 3D
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Step 19
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Cleaning Up Bad Geometry Using Maya's Cleanup Options - Tuts+ 3D
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Now we'll have a look at the last case of bad geometry which
consistsof 3 types of them. First
"Nonmanifold Geometry" is when 3 or more faces share the same
edge on an object, for this
simply select any edge and make an extrusion out of it. There
are now 3 faces all extruding
from one single edge.
Step 20Now to clean this up if we use "Select Matching Polygons"
it will select the two vertices through
which these faces are connected. And if you do Auto Cleanup it
will simply split these two
vertices and hence split all three faces altogether.
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Cleaning Up Bad Geometry Using Maya's Cleanup Options - Tuts+ 3D
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Step 21
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Cleaning Up Bad Geometry Using Maya's Cleanup Options - Tuts+ 3D
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You can simply check this auto Cleanup by selecting the extruded
faceand moving it in space.
An alternative and the best way to get rid of this kind of
Nonmanifold geometry is to delete it
directly, or simply separate that particular face.
Step 22The second type of Nonmanifold Geometry is where two or
more faces share the same vertex,
yet they share no edge. Just like in the previouscase, if we
collapse that same edge then we
have a face that is connected to numerous faces with just one
vertex on the same object.
Now if we do an Auto Cleanup it will again split that vertex and
all the connected faces will
separate from that vertex, but yet again the best solution in
this case is to Delete off that extra
polygon face or simply separate it.
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Cleaning Up Bad Geometry Using Maya's Cleanup Options - Tuts+ 3D
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Step 23
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Now the third and last type of Nonmanifold geometry, is when two
or more adjacent faces
have opposite normal directions. To test that, simply select a
few faces and then go to
Normals>Reverse, and you'll notice the hidden faces on the
object. Generally these kinds of
faces are pretty visible on the object, but on some bigger
assets they're really hard to fnd and
that's when Cleanup is there to help.
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Cleaning Up Bad Geometry Using Maya's Cleanup Options - Tuts+ 3D
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Step 24
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Cleaning Up Bad Geometry Using Maya's Cleanup Options - Tuts+ 3D
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In this particular case Auto Cleanup is also the best thing to
do as it will automatically select the
minority faces which have opposite normals and apply the Reverse
normals to them.
Step 25Now there are three more kinds of bad geometry according
to Cleanup, but in reality they're
not harmful or not acceptable i.e. "Edges with Zero Length",
well technically it's not zero but it's
close to "0" like "0.01 or 0.001". Selecting this option will
highlight the edge that falls into this
criteria, and Auto cleanup will simply collapse this edge.
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Cleaning Up Bad Geometry Using Maya's Cleanup Options - Tuts+ 3D
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Step 26Same goes with the "Faces with Zero Geometry Area", it
doesn't hurt having them if required.
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Cleaning Up Bad Geometry Using Maya's Cleanup Options - Tuts+ 3D
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Step 27And The last one in Cleanup is "Geometry with Zero Map
Area" that means the UV space of
any particular face is near to zero, and that won't happen if
you have done proper UV
mapping. But just in case you need to fnd out if you've missed
any faces on any asset, this
can be a very helpful way to fnd out.
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Cleaning Up Bad Geometry Using Maya's Cleanup Options - Tuts+ 3D
& Motion Graphics Tutorial
http://cgi.tutsplus.com/tutorials/cleaning-up-bad-geometry-using-mayas-cleanup-options--cg-21861[9/19/14
4:25:09 AM]
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ConclusionI hope this will give you a very clear picture of what
kinds of bad geometry there can be in an
asset and how we can rectify them, either manually or using the
cleanup command of Maya.
Difficulty:
Beginner
Length:
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Cleaning Up Bad Geometry Using Maya's Cleanup Options - Tuts+ 3D
& Motion Graphics Tutorial
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4:25:09 AM]
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About Shray Khanna
Iam a Game-Artist from India, been working on Several AA and AAA
titles for PC/PS3/X-box. I've always loved playing games since I
was in School, so it's been a dream come true for me to now working
in this industry :)
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