topic Re: Conformed Decal on Curved Surface is Folded Rather than Curved in 3ds Max Modeling Forum

Conformed Decal on Curved Surface is Folded Rather than Curved - 3ds Max

schaferb24 — Wed, 19 Nov 2025 15:04:00 GMT

I've created a plane, created a standard material (legacy), and used a bitmap of the label as the diffuse color. I then assigned the material to the plane, conformed it, added a shell, and it creates this series of rectangles rather than a singular curved label. I have facets set to 100x100, and I've tried subdividing both the fire extinguisher and the label. I also tried smoothing (and TurboSmooth) on both assets. So far nothing has resolved this issue, any help would be appreciated.

This post has been edited due to: @heather_tracy added the product to the title to help more community members find this topic.

Re: Conformed Decal on Curved Surface is Folded Rather than Curved

schaferb24 — Wed, 19 Nov 2025 01:02:42 GMT

I would like to include this image, taken in performance mode

Re: Conformed Decal on Curved Surface is Folded Rather than Curved

MartinBeh — Wed, 19 Nov 2025 10:03:09 GMT

To me this looks like the actual polygons (without smoothing) of the fire extinguisher are too low.

Conform does not consider the visual-only smoothing - it will place all vertices directly onto the actual surface (as can be seen in "Surface" viewport mode).

Attached is a .max (for 3ds Max 2026) file that illustrates this phenomenon.

Solution: Increase the mesh density of your fire extinguisher; a Relax modifier on your "label" mesh might also be of help.

Re: Conformed Decal on Curved Surface is Folded Rather than Curved

schaferb24 — Wed, 19 Nov 2025 16:51:54 GMT

Turns out all I needed was to Quadify followed by a Turbosmooth! I had no idea that Quadify was a feature (I've stuck to Inventor for a long while), and this helped tremendously. I will say that my model, which was imported directly from an Inventor assembly and kept as a body, did have some weird spaghettification once I used the Turbosmooth after the Quadify, but this was fixed by separating it from the parent assembly, so only the body received the modifiers. I will experiment with the fifth solution, as it seems to be the most efficient workflow. Thank you very much!

Re: Conformed Decal on Curved Surface is Folded Rather than Curved

schaferb24 — Wed, 19 Nov 2025 16:52:53 GMT

Turns out I needed to Quadify, and my count was way too low. Thank you! I didn't know that it was different visually. I didn't know the body was so low-poly.