ATI N-Patch Plug-in for 3D Studio MAX R3
Introduction
N-Patches are a higher-order surface primitive developed by ATI for DirectX® 8. N-Patches are Bezier triangles whose control meshes are derived from the position and normal data associated with a given triangle. On implementations which support N-Patches, the tesselation is done on-chip.
This 3D Studio MAX Plug-In gives the artist the ability to create a viewport for previewing objects using N-Patch tesselation rules. This gives artists the ability to gain familiarity with the look of N-Patches. In this version, the tesselation is done in software whenever the tesselation level is changed with the pop-up menu. When N-Patch hardware becomes available, we will provide an update to this plug-in which uses the hardware tesselation.
What's New
- The N-Patch plugin has been updated to include many new options and provide support for R4.
Below is the comprehensive list:
- Smoothing group - supportPlugin now obeys Max's smoothing groups when calculating vertex normals
- Crease insertion - Plugin will automatically create creases at smoothing group boundaries
- Multiple object - viewing Plugin now allows loading multiple nodes
- Vertex normal visualization - Plugin draws vertex normals to illustrate curve tangent planes
- Source code - Project and source code files for Max 3 and 4
Installation
To install the plug-in, exit MAX, place the NPatch_Viewport.gup file in your Plugins directory and relaunch MAX.
This will give you a new extended viewport type as shown below:
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Select a viewport to use as your N-Patch preview viewport. One possible layout is shown below:
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Viewing Modes
Once you have an N-Patch viewport created, note that there are two pop-up menus you can use to control the viewport and the plug-in's viewing modes.
- The regular viewport menu is available by clicking on the ATI icon in the top left corner of the N-Patch viewport.
- The Options pop-up menu in the top right corner of the viewport can be used to control the viewing modes of the N-Patch preview plug-in.
The Options menu looks like this:
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First, select select the object to be previewed (in another viewport), then select 'Reload Object' from the Options menu. This will cause the selected object to be rendered in the N-Patch viewport. The object can be rotated, scaled and translated for easy viewing. You must select 'Reload Object' from the Options menu each time you make a modification to an object in MAX and wish to preview the effect in the N-Patch viewport.
- A variety of options exist to for viewing the N-Patched object:
- Different Render modes can be set
- Solid (Default)
- Wireframe
- Hidden line
- Overlaid wireframe
- Overlaid control mesh
- Tesselation level can be set.
- A split-screen mode can be toggled for comparing original and subdivided meshes
- Line antialiasing can be toggled (useful for wireframe render modes)
- Normal interpolation can be toggled between linear and quadratic
- Texture mapping can be toggled.
Render Modes
A sample mesh is shown below using the various render modes:
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Tesselation level
The sample mesh is shown below using several different tesselation levels
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Split Screen
Split screen mode is useful for comparing the mesh with and without N-Patch tesselation.
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Texture Mapping
Texturing can be toggled
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- References
Downloads
The N-Patch Preview plug-in, along with a copy of this document can be downloaded here:
NPatch5-11-01.zip
If you would like the source code for this plug-in, please contact devrel@ati.com
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