[Plugin] Probes (1.2.1) —07 May 2010

thomthom

Will use this plugin as a collection of various tools to query and probe a model. For modelling and development purposes.

Normals
Version 0.1.0a
Plugins->Probes->Normals
Probe - Normals
Mouse over a face or edge to see the normals.
When hover over a face you will also see its edge's normals.
When hovering over an edge a purple point will indicate the start vertex of the edge. (The Blue axis will point from start to end.)
Click on a face to flip its normal.
Version 1.1.0

Ctrl+ click will swap frontface and backface materials while flipping normals.
Version 1.2.1
End-point on Normals indicating if the edge is reversed if the end-point is a circle.

UVQ Values
Version 0.2.0b
Plugins->Probes->UVs
Probe - UVs
Displays the UVQ values of each vertex for the face that the mouse points at. This returns the values that the UVHelper class returns.
Version 0.3.0b

Ctrl toggles front-face or back-face probing.
Shift toggles drill-down mode. In drill-down mode the probe picks faces inside groups/components.
Version 1.0.0
Tab toggles between real UV values and raw UVHelper data.
Note: Values are rounded to 3 decimals. Rounded numbers should be denoted by an ~.
Version 1.2.0
F2 will display the PolygonMesh and it's UV values and vertex indexes.

Count CG Materials
Version 0.4.0b
Plugins->Probes->Count CG Materials
Counts and select all groups and components with materials applied - ignoring V-Ray objects.

Version 1.2.1

Ben Ritter

28 September? Back to the future!

thomthom

@ben ritter said:

28 September? Back to the future!

jedi mind trick You saw nothing...

Pixero

I dont suppose you've found a way of setting the normal of a face to a certain value?

thomthom

No such control from the API.

TIG

@pixero said:

I dont suppose you've found a way of setting the normal of a face to a certain value?

Wouldn't that be equivalent to rotating it until it's face.normal==new_normal - face.reverse! is the extreme version where it's rotated 180 degrees but keeps its edges unchanged ?? Since setting a face.normal affects all connected geometry - edges and other faces it seems nightmarish ???

Pixero

Im not talking about rotating the face.
In many3d apps you can use normal maps to change how a surface looks at rendertime. Realtime or software rendered.
I'm looking for a way of setting the face normal to a custom value like [0,0,1].
That would mean the face reacts to light as if it was pointing straight up in the z direction, giving us the possibility to overcome things like imagesplane grass or trees having a different lighting than the ground.
Hope I make myself clear.

remus

I think the point TIG was trying to make is that if you want to change the face normal in SU youd have to rotate the face, and thus most likely mess your model up.

Chris Fullmer

But Jan's point is that other software let you force a normal direction - one that is not phyiscal, only interpereted by the renderer (SU internal renderer and external ones too). So it does not mess up the geometry, merely assign a new normal for shading.

But no, its not possible to do in SU.

But an external renderer could implement it if they saw the reason for it (which I admit that I do not fully understand).

Chris

thomthom

New tool: UV values - displays the UVQ values the UVHelper class returns for the front side.

thomthom

Updated the UV probe to pick back-face values and allow it to digg into groups/components.

thomthom


# 0.4.0b - 11.09.2009
#		 * Count Group & Components with applied materials.
#
# 1.0.0 - 20.10.2009
#		 * Count Group & Components ignores V-Ray objects.
#		 * UV Probe displays real UV coordinates.

tomasz

Hi Thomas,
Thanks for helpful tool and an example of 'SU Tool' as well. I propose a small modification to UV probe which displays order of vertices.

					# Iterate each vertex and display UV values
					vertices=@entity.vertices
					for i in 0 ... vertices.size
						v=vertices[i]
					#@entity.vertices.each { |v|

					.....


						# (!) Output real UV data.
						if @real_UV
							view.draw_text(xy, "#{i} UV; #{TT_Probes.format_float(uv.x/uv.z,3)}, #{TT_Probes.format_float(uv.y/uv.z,3)}")
						else
							view.draw_text(xy, "#{i} UVHelper Raw Data; #{TT_Probes.format_float(uv.x,3)}, #{TT_Probes.format_float(uv.y,3)}, #{TT_Probes.format_float(uv.z,3)}")
						end
					end

thomthom

I'll update the plugin tomorrow. Thanks for the suggestion.

thomthom

Updated!

thomthom

Added Ctrl+Click to flip front/back materials while flipping normals.
Bug fix to drawing info in drill-down mode.

thomthom

Added indication in the edge normals if they are reversed_in? the face the cursor is over.