Newbie trying to taper an object

[Anonymous]

Hi, I have next to no experience with 3D modelling, so there may be an easy answer to this but I can't find any specific to what I need.

I recently bought a high poly raptor model online with the intent to edit it slightly before printing. The idea was to make the neck fatter, which I've managed by splitting it and widening one plane with transform but in doing so, there's now a gap. What I'm wondering is, is there a way to taper the neck to meet the head?

[MagWeb]

Let's say the neck is a kind of wrapped cylinder with a more or less planar top and bottom.

Go to SELECT and select the top region roughly.

That selected run Deform/SoftTransform.

The selection will expand. The difference between the former selection and the selection now is the region of transition. You can grow or shrink it via the FallOff value (if IgnoreGroups is active).

Now you can scale down via the square handles in the widget to taper in an elastic mode. That should do it.

If I look at your current state. There's a pair of open boundaries. This needs to be repaired first.

[Anonymous]

Dear sir, 

I have downloaded netfabb 2018.. I am unable to see simulation tabs any where..I have gone through videos how to use netfabb simulations for checking distortion.. I am unable to find the same any where in netfabb tool.

Can you please guide me how to use the tool. Could you please also send me one model which was used in demo ..

Regards, 

Dr. joel daniel

[MagWeb]

@Anonymous Sorry, seems you posted in the wrong forum. This is the Meshmixer board.

Please ask your question about Netfab in the Netfab forum

[Anonymous]

After a bit of messing, that worked, thanks. I've done a bit more work to it and I've managed to create two shells. Is there a way to combine them?

I want to eliminate the mess in the middle in the second picture and seal them together. The Combine option doesn't seem to do that. Then I'll mirror everything and seal it again and I should be good to go.

[MagWeb]

Combine doesn't weld surfaces but joins them to a single object of several not connected surfaces.

Instead BooleanUnion gives a single "outer" surface while deleting the interior intersection. 

To run BooleanUnion you should mirror both the head and the neck first to have watertight objects.

To get a precise position of the mirror plane run EDIT/CreatePivot first. Set its PlacementMode to SnapToBoundaryCenter. Now double-clicking on the active object drops a pivot right on the plane described by the open boundary.

If you run Mirror now and click on the pivot the mirror plane snaps to the pivot. If its axis orientation isn't right click on the pivot again until the Mirror is orientated as desired. Maybe you need to change the mirror direction by clicking the transparent blue arrow in the widget.

Do this for both objects.

Check if both results are watertight using ANALYSIS/Inspector.

Now activate the second object with Shift+click.

You find BooleanUnion in  EDIT as soon as there are two activated objects. Run it to get a single surface object.

BooleanUnion might fail due to the uneven surface of the skin (maybe there are to many intersections).

If it fails you might Combine both watertight objects and run EDIT/MakeSolid instead. Most likely you need to set a high SolidAccuracy and MeshDensity (and hit Update) to get all the details in the solidified result.