How do I attach this to an item, but not merge the stacks?

[Eznaex]

I know I have posted alot of questions regarding this particular model, but its my most detailed piece yet. I am trying to attach the cog to the base of the eyepiece, however using the turbo smooth set on the base would increase the poly count far too much when I merge it with the cog. I tried collapsing the stack first, then merging, however it seems that they need to have the same amount of edges in order for me to connect it to the base using the bridge. (I want it to look attached to it) Is there a way to do this?

[Fadhil_Farook]

I made a screencast based on what I understood from your post. Hope that helps. If it doesn't, post screenshots highlighting the area of interest and please further explain what it is that you want to achieve.

[Eznaex]

No, sorry maybe I didn't explain clearly enough. I know how to connect the cog to the base of the eyepiece. Although thank you very much for that screencast, a lot of useful information there. The way I went about creating the shape was cutting around a cylinder, your way was much more efficient. The problem is that there is a turbo smooth on the base of the eyepiece with 4 subdivisions (Yes it's very high poly), and if I were to attach the cog, then that piece also has 4 subdivisions which give the cog about 400k polys. So I want to be able to attach the cog to the base of the eyepiece, without it using the turbosmooth? If that makes sense. There is a way to do this, If I collapse the stack prior to attaching the 2 objects then it doesn't use the turbo smooth, however, they then both have a different amount of vertices, so it's impossible to bridge the two. I know this is confusing, sorry for the poor explanation. Looking at the model, I think I already messed up because I created the hole already and my cog piece has bad geometry. I have attached the file, maybe that will help? 

[Fadhil_Farook · Accepted solution]

The Star001 was 36K triangles before attaching it to the base (Cylinder001). I applied an Edit Poly modifier on very top of the Base (Cylinder001) and then attached the Star001. The star001 is unaffected in terms of tri count. See attachment. 

Still willing to help if that's not the one you're looking for.

EDITED : I forgot to attach the Max doc. I've attached it now.

[Eznaex]

ohh it was as simple as adding another edit poly -.- Im so stupid I was using the editable poly underneath the turbosmooth. Didn't realise that the attach only merges the modifiers on top... thank you very much

[Eznaex]

Can I just ask, why does adding an edit poly on top of the turbosmooth modifiers decrease the polycount?

[Fadhil_Farook]

The tri count can vary between the types of objects.

When you create a Box, plane or any other PRIMITIVES, you'll have the maximum polycount and tricount showing in the statistics. (See attachment - 1st picture). 

When you convert it to an EDITABLE POLY, you'll notice that the number falls by 50% (See attachment - 2nd Picture). This is what you noticed when you added the edit poly modifier on top of the turbosmooth. This doesn't not affect the geometry in anyway though.

From what I understand, polycount, takes into account the edges that're visible as well (triangles if you will). You can try connecting two vertices of a Quad and make it two Triangles, and this will increase the polycount immediately. (See attachment - 3rd picture)

* I see you're using up to 2 turbosmooth per object sometimes. You can just increase the iterations of just one turbosmooth modifier to get the same effect.

** Triangulating certain parts of the mesh is necessary for proper rendering, especially within game engines, so that it can understand whether a geometry is concave or is convex.

*** Also I noticed that there are many Ngons in your model. It's best to avoid them.

Hope this answers your question.

[Eznaex]

Ok thank you. There are two turbo smooth stacks because the first one uses the smoothing groups to produce sharper edges. There aren't an ngons on my model? most of it is quads with a few triangles

[Fadhil_Farook]

Check out the attachment to this post. I've made that to show how to find or select the N-Gons (Non-Quads) automatically without manually hunting for them.

[Eznaex]

I already know 😛 Despite the rookie questions, Iv been using Max for a long time. Like i said 😛 I have 0 Ngons, only triangles. But thanks.