Hey, I'm modeling a head in 3ds max 8 and I need to weld some verticies togehter. I have been using the weld tool many times in this same model. I have now gotten to use the weld tool just about 20 times now and it randomly stopped working. I'm working in editable poly and not even the target weld works. My tolerance I usually set to about 10000000 or something around there because I have no clue what tolerance does, so i've always made it high. When I started welding (early in learning how to model) I did this because every time I wanted to weld something it would say that I had to raise my tolerance and it worked for the time so I've used it since. Now I'm having troubles, no error messages, just it won't weld. ANY suggestions, help, corrections, or leads would greatly help. Thanks a lot!

try converting your mesh to editable mesh, then welding the verts. When I have had problems welding that has always worked.

Also about tolerance, it has to do with the distance apart your verts are. If you snap the verts on top of each other then a tolerance of .01 (default) is fine. This is good if you have something lined up exactly then you can select a whole batch of verts and it will only weld the matching verts to each other. But if you have a group of verts that are 1 unit distance apart you can set the tolerance to 1 and all selected verts within 1 unit distance will weld.

hope that helps

I have thought about converting to editable mesh, but I have a reason against it. When you convert from Poly to Mesh, it will divide all the edges in half. So if I have two parallel edges, when I convert it will make another edges dividing those two edges. This of course rasises the poly count, which I obviously don't want, this is a game model. Nevertheless, thank you for your ideas! Sorry I didn't include these details in my first post.

No, it doesn't. Right click and do "Convert to Editable Poly"

Quote: Original post by mntlinstituteflr
I have thought about converting to editable mesh, but I have a reason against it. When you convert from Poly to Mesh, it will divide all the edges in half. So if I have two parallel edges, when I convert it will make another edges dividing those two edges. This of course rasises the poly count, which I obviously don't want, this is a game model. Nevertheless, thank you for your ideas! Sorry I didn't include these details in my first post.

it does not, what you're seeing is the actual display of the triangles in edit mesh, where edit poly only shows full polygons when it can (meaning two triangles is a polygon). this does not raise the final poly count of your mesh, although if you use 7 to see your polycount as you work, you will see the number go up because normally that counter only counts polygons if in edit poly but if in edit mesh it will give you your true polygon count by counting triangles.
in max, in the polygon counter in the tools tab, you will see options for polygons and triangles, always go off of the triangle count. traingle count will give you your true poly count, where the polygon count will throwout any triangles that don't make polygons therefore giving you a lower total polycount, evne though it is higher. so this might be why you think edit mesh increases the polycount, be it does not.

Yes, that did answer my question. Thank you Jarrod. I was confused by the triangles in the polygons itself.