Creating a lattice in Gmax, BAt

[Mary miller 40]

Im kinda lost. Took a look at the only tutorial on creating a lattice I could find. I get as far as creating my shape and showing the mesh. Either im not understanding the instructions or its missing instructions.  For the life of me I can not remember how to do it anymore. 

 

Can someone please help or point me in the right direction. Thanks.

[cogeo 960]

Don't know the tutorial you are talking about, but it shouldn't be very much different to what shown below:

- Create a shape and  convert it to a mesh.
- Open the Editable Mesh tree, go to the Edge selection and in the viewport select all edges.
- Click "Create Shape from Edges" and select the "Linear" option. This will create a new shape (the "lattice").
- Delete or hide the original shape (the "mesh"), if you don't need it.
- You now have your "lattice", in spline format. The lines are too thin; go to the "Mesh Settings" group and check "Display Mesh", also set the parameters (Thickness, Sides and Angle).
- Even so, splines aren't displayed in exported models, so you need to add an "Edit Mesh" modifier to your shape. This does nothing but causing BAT to really export your spline - you can still go to the Editable Spline tree and change the parameters.
- Your shape is displayed normally now, and can be further manipulated as usual, eg assigned a material, a UVW map etc.

Hope this helps
 

 

 

[Mary miller 40]

It is on the omnibus. Called a lesson on lattice. Thank you for the post above I will try it today. 

 

I went throug my old posts to see if I could find any of my old tutorials but could not find any. Thank you very much for your reply.

[cogeo 960]

I found the tutorial in the Omnibus, and did take a look. Sorry, I don't think it's missing anything, all needed instructions are there.

It's almost the same as mine. The only noticeable difference is that I suggested adding an Edit Mesh modifier instead of converting it to an Editable Mesh, and this is not significant, as the end result will be the same. The only difference it makes is that with the Edit Mesh technique, you can change the Spline's "Mesh Settings" (eg Thickness) even after applying the modifier.

Forgot to mention, if you want a lattice with a square, rather than a circular cross section (may prove useful in cases like a window frame, for example) you can take the following steps:

- In the spline's Mesh Settings, set Sides to 4 and Angle to 45°.
- On top of the Edit Mesh modifier, add a Smooth modifier (Modifiers=>Mesh Editing=>Smooth), without setting any of its parameters. As weird as this may look at first, it doesn't... smooth anything, it just causes hard square edges to be displayed!