Qustion related to inset.

[bioclone_ax45]

Hello, Im getting this (see above image) "problem", I guess Im missing something but Im not sure on what, maybe you could point me the problem.

I am modeling a basic drill head, and I want to use Inset on multiple faces at the same time, using it on "by polygon" however, as you can see on the image, even if the selected faces are the same size, the inset creates a different result depending on the face. Im not sure why this happens or if there is a way or procedure to avoid this. Any tip?

thx 4 your time reading this anyways ^^

[10DSpace · Accepted solution]

@bioclone_ax45 

What does your stack look like? Do you still have a boolean operation in it or something else? When I quickly modeled something similar to yours from a cylinder, convert to edit poly and then do inset with 2 similar polys selected, i get the expected result (see below). You have superfluous geometry in the surrounding planes that made me think something in the stack. Try collapsing to editable poly if not already or getting rid of superfluous plane elements or just starting with a cylinder to begin with and convert to editable poly. Took me under 3 minutes and I am sure you could do better with a little more care. Hope it helps.

[bioclone_ax45]

Hey thanks for the fast reply!

The piece itself, yes, suffered a probolean operation in the beggining, but it was colapsed even before I started to work on the piece (the probolean was made with a basic cylinder piece to create splines on the plane.

You people always impress me when you even develop a similar model to give a reply!

I should have do it before, but Im going to post the file with the minimal pieces related...

I had this kind of problem multiple times... on this case I could just use array to make sure every face gets the same size, but im more interested on realize why this could happen so I can prevent it. If you have the time please take a look on the file.

[bioclone_ax45]

* I just noticed there are some problems on the object topology (that im not sure how that happened) so Im redoing it again to make sure that was not the reason.

Ok, so Im very sorry but it ended being a topology problem, now I did a totally new obj it ended fine. 😛

Thx again for the replies, and sorry again for wasting forum space for this kind of dumb question.

[10DSpace · Accepted solution]

@bioclone_ax45 

...but im more interested on realize why this could happen so I can prevent it.

Very simple.   The model was non-uniformly scaled at some point during it's creation.  In your case, it was scaled by 238% in Z axis and 100% in other 2 axis. 

This is very simple to fix.  With your mesh selected, go to the Utilities Panel, choose Reset XForm and then "Reset Selected". If you have no stack to preserve as in your case, you should then choose Collapse from the Utilities Panel and then "Collapse Selected."  Now your mesh will be scaled 100 % in all 3 axis and will behave properly with inset and other functions. 

   When modeling it is considered best practice to not scale object whole objects at all, because it changes the scaling of the object as in your case..  However if you go to the Sub-Object level like polygon for example, select all polys and then scale, Max automatically adjusts the scaled object to 100% so you don't have to worry about resetting Xform and collapsing (not that it is particularly hard).    So there you have it, the cause of the problem and the solution.   

By the way you should check all of the meshes in your file as the several I checked were not 100% scaled correctly in all 3 axis.  But be careful with Collapse if you have selected multiple objects at once -- it has choices for both collapse to a Single Object and to Multiple Objects.  If you want to keep the objects separate after applying xform reset to them, then collapse with the Multiple Objects option selected. 

Hope this is clear.

[bioclone_ax45]

thanks for the very informative message, I heard a bit about X-form and why it is used, sometimes fixed my problems (because yes, I have bad habits when resizing things) however I tried X-form on said object and it caused some kind of deformation? (also, I noticed the gizmo was not exactly "good" what maybe was the cause)

Thanks pointing to me the "non-uniform" scaling and how to notice it, as I never realized that could be a way to do such thing (I was using randomly X-form when some weird thing happen)

However, just to be 100% sure... if I apply X-form and I then "convert the prop into a editable poly" instead use collapse... would it be the same? or in that case the X-form is ignored? Juat wondering if both ways work or I must get used to collapse at all cost on this kind of modifier.

"By the way you should check all of the meshes in your file as the several I checked were not 100% scaled correctly in all 3 axis.  But be careful with Collapse if you have selected multiple objects at once -- it has choices for both collapse to a Single Object and to Multiple Objects.  If you want to keep the objects separate after applying xform reset to them, then collapse with the Multiple Objects option selected. "

Yeah, I am aware of this, now Im just on some design steps but I already noticed it when trying to do some rough animation examples, Im going to need definetely the X-form on multiple ones. so thanks again for incluiding such info about how to do it on multiple polys at the same time, that will save a lot of time.

*note, I just realized that the modifier X-form... seems like works like **** to me? however the reset x-form from the utility tab works perfectly

Here working all as expected ^^, I cannot thank you enough the nice answers, have a good day!