Even when you look dead on through the gap: I find the pretense of solid mass here much less immersion breaking, even though the unintended faces are minimally texture. The result when looking at the messed up seam: If I were making lightmaps, I'd try to minimize all these faces to a combined pixel or so as well. I unwrapped the UVs on these faces and shrunk them to a tiny dark spot in the corner of the map. In this case, after extruding the top and bottom edges and creating the rear face, I created an N-gon in each side loop and then triangulated it for a minimal fill.
It does cost some extra polygons, but I find I much prefer making a backing hull for this kind of mesh:
#Edgecam preference backup software#
The problem with this design, is that each tiny error in meshing by the map designers can cause a huge immersion-breaking mess for the users:įrom my experience wandering artificial environments, these errors, like software bugs, are not so much a 'if' as a 'how many, how bad, and where' situation. (In these examples, presume that the giant yellow UV map is some ugly/error texture that the users are hopefully never to see, and the other three colors are proper textures) When making environmental static meshes for games and such, some designers go for designs like this to save polygons: If you were to fill the hidden area with an N-gon or an efficient triangle spread, you wouldn't be able to loop select anymore, which I find kind of annoying. One more thing to note about open edges like this: you can actually loop select them. In this case, users probably aren't going to be able to get close enough to the object that modelling any more detailed connections between things would be meaningful. Also you can see that the sidelights also have open edges sticking into the head mesh, and that the grate-things are protruding into the head a little too despite being closed objects. There isn't actually a inside-rear to this part. If we hide the back one with the hatches, we can see: The front iPhone-colored-specular-map-showing one is protruding into the rear cargo unit so that no gaps are visible. Here is a device I've been working on for a modding project: This is probably mostly useful for lowpoly modelers, though I use it with solid subsurf stuff sometimes as well. NOT making an object that's expected to hold up in simulation by itself.NOT making an object that's supposed to be transparent, translucent, refractive, or have other internal light effects.Ok, I haven't found any uses for interior faces or overlapping edges, but I find open ended meshes and intersecting ("sunken") sub-meshes to be useful in some situations, provided you are: When Non-Manifold Geometry is Useful or OK Since a common cause of non-manifold geometry is lack of thickness, the solidify modifier can also be useful. W > Specials > Remove doubles Doubles, (multiple vertices in the same place) are usually non-manifold (not always). This is often useful in combination with Select loose and Select similar to select all geometry connected to the selected geometry. This is often useful to select vertices with only one connecting edge, etc.Ĭtrl L ( Select Linked). Other useful tools for repairing non-manifold geometry: Note that it only selects vertices, edges, and faces depending on the current selection mode. Loose geometry (elements without any other connecting elements) can be selected with 3D view > Header > Select > Loose geometry. Internal faces can be selected by pressing 3D view > Header > Select > Internal Faces in edit mode.
You can select all non-manifold geometry with Ctrl Shift Alt M. paper, leaves, etc.) Common causes of non-manifold geometry: You might want non-manifold geometry in some kind abstract model (as non-manifold geometry cannot exist in the real world), or as an approximation of a very thin object (e.g. Non-manifold geometry can be problematic, because it complicates some tools & operations: However it will often cause the same issues as non-manifold geometry, i.e. Non-manifold geometry is essentially geometry which cannot exist in the real world (which is why it's important to have manifold meshes for 3D printing).Īs JulianHzg points out in the comments, intersecting geometry (faces sticking through other faces) is not technically non-manifold geometry on it's own.