Hello,
Sorry, that's perhaps a beginner question, but I really started 3DS MAX some days ago.
I started luthery as a hobbyist 2 years ago, first with a bass electric guitar, then a so-called electroacoustic double bass ("so-called" as the chest is tiny), an electroacoustic cello and finally 2 electroacoustic violins.
Here they are:
(The first on the right the second on the left)
To craft the front and back plates of the soundbox, I use a homemade program to which I provide an image with the different outlines needed and some requested figures, and it computes 4 images (1 for the outside and 1 for the inside of each plate) that show the contour lines, then it is quite easy to carve the arches to the right shape:
Now, I want to improve that as I would like to be able to have a preview of the final aspect of the wood assembly and colors before starting a new violin. I heard about the fact that it is possible to code plugins for importing homemade formats to 3DS MAX, so I did that and it seems to work OK, but...
As my code generates a bitmap, what I import in 3DS MAX is something like a heightmap, so points (in a rectangular grid of which only the height is provided) that I connect as triangles like that:
The problem is that:
- in the middle of the plate, there are certainly way too many vertices for my needs (but that's not a real problem as my GPU seems to be able to manage that)
- at the edge, the shape is not smooth at all
Is there a way to programmatically smooth the edges of my shape without increasing the number of vertices inside the shape, please?
Second and third questions:
I would like to generate the whole soundbox of the violin with this importer so:
- Is it possible to programmatically give a 3mm depth to the shape (once the edges have been smoothed)?
- The sides of the soundbox are 3mm smaller than the front and back plates, so is it possible to programmatically take these smoothed edges and reduce their size 3mm in (Caution: this is not a scaling operation as I would like the shape to be shrinked in according the normals of the edges)?
Thanks a lot for your help
David
