Soft blending between boolean meshes like Modo Meshfusion

[OccultMonk]

Modo Meshfusion can create topology based chamfers between boolean polygonal meshes. The current boolean implementations in 3ds Max are only useful as either a starting point for modeling in combination with Quadify or Quad Chamfer To simulate rounding. However these last options only work on quite simple and mostly flat meshes.

The main code of an Autodesk alternative to Modo's MeshFusion could also re-used in for example Maya. This is the main advantage of Modo over 3dsmax and Maya at the moment (for me).

[Kranos_Orphydian]

I would be so skeptical as well if only Booleans and Volumes wouldn't be on the roadmap. Judging how they continue to refine and improve the new features they are adding I would not be that surprised to witness it.

[s1dK]

Yeah, but I don't know if the modifier + volume is what we wanted. What bothers me the most is that nPower Software made the nPower plugin like many years ago and was such a great plugin for 3ds max. So if they managed to do such a powerful plugin I don't see why max devs don't do it. That was like having fusion 360 in max with output to polygon mesh.

[markus]

I had Npower plugins for Max many years ago too, but it was buggy and expensive, so I decided not to pay for upgrades to keep up with new Max versions. 

If you want good, cheap Nurbs modeling I would recommend Rhino 3D instead. They even implemented their own subdivision to Nurbs conversion in recent versions, after Autodesk bought T-splines. If you want to learn Nurbs modeling it's a good place to start, and they used to have a very generous trial period as well.

Rhino can output directly to FBX as well, so you can avoid using Max's limited CAD import options (as in limited tesselation options if you choose mesh, and buggy if you choose body objects).

[s1dK]

@markusYou are right, it was buggy and slow but I could get the job done faster then polygonal modeling. But now with Zbrush I can do it 10 times faster and in a non destructive way.

The idea on this feature is not about having to go to other program like Rhino or Fusion 360, it's about having something like that in 3ds max because was done before by 3rd party. Everything that we want from this is an easy way to make booleans and to be able to fillet/chamfer the resulting intersections, just like with CAD solids.

Right now ALMOST anyone who is working in gaming and do  hardsurface models they either do the high poly in Fusion360 and also use Zbrush to smooth out ( fillet ) small edges or they do their basic shapes in max or any other program and do the boolean in Zbrush and apply a global smooth modifier to have their shapes smooth so it can look nice when baked down to a low poly. 

I don't care if the solution is CAD in 3ds max if I can output the final result in polygon mesh as nPower plugin did. I don't want to go to 2 other programs to get 1 job done when I can have 3ds max do that for me.

[TomaszG84]

Yes, years of chamfer improvements, new boolean, retopology, smart extrude and still 40$ blender addon destroys max at modeling. Such a simple solution like offset cut in meshmachine.

[Kranos_Orphydian]

This idea should be merged along with its votes to this more recent and better illustrated one:

[Boolean Mod] Smooth transition Fillets with variable width (Like Modo Meshfusion) - Autodesk Commun...