[Plugin] Stick groups to mesh ver. 1.2.

kirill2008 · 24 Dec 2009, 09:27

Now making Dali's like watches will be very easy .

Well, actually the initial idea of the script was to stick some master plan elements (paving, roads, grass etc) to the terrain surface (

boring, isn't it?), but why not stick watches too?

I think it is necessary to make some enhancements to the script (materials support, optional sticking direction etc) to make it more flexible than just master plan elements 'sticker'.

mitcorb · 24 Dec 2009, 15:50

Kirill:
Your openness to suggestions is a wonderful trait, which seems to be shared by all of the Ruby masters in this forum.

May you and all here have a joyous season!
mitcorb

EscapeArtist · 24 Dec 2009, 19:51

To sum up:

Dude, you rock! What a great plugin.

EDIT: I seem to find a way to break your plugins! Same as my comments about the "add control points" plugin, I applied the plugin, undid the action, and then tried to reapply it. Now I have the rapidly scrolling error messages in the Ruby window the don't stop, and a pop-up error dialog that says "It is necessary to select some groups of faces before calling the command".

Only fix is to restart SU.


Error; #<TypeError; reference to deleted Group>
L;/Modeling/Sketchup Google/Plugins/ctrlpnts.rb;214;in `entities'
L;/Modeling/Sketchup Google/Plugins/ctrlpnts.rb;214;in `deform_group'
L;/Modeling/Sketchup Google/Plugins/ctrlpnts.rb;213;in `call'
(eval);892
Error; #<TypeError; reference to deleted Group>
L;/Modeling/Sketchup Google/Plugins/ctrlpnts.rb;214;in `entities'
L;/Modeling/Sketchup Google/Plugins/ctrlpnts.rb;214;in `deform_group'
L;/Modeling/Sketchup Google/Plugins/ctrlpnts.rb;213;in `call'
(eval);892
Error; #<TypeError; reference to deleted Group>
L;/Modeling/Sketchup Google/Plugins/ctrlpnts.rb;214;in `entities'
L;/Modeling/Sketchup Google/Plugins/ctrlpnts.rb;214;in `deform_group'
L;/Modeling/Sketchup Google/Plugins/ctrlpnts.rb;213;in `call'
(eval);892
Error; #<TypeError; reference to deleted Group>
L;/Modeling/Sketchup Google/Plugins/ctrlpnts.rb;214;in `entities'
L;/Modeling/Sketchup Google/Plugins/ctrlpnts.rb;214;in `deform_group'
L;/Modeling/Sketchup Google/Plugins/ctrlpnts.rb;213;in `call'
(eval);892
Error; #<TypeError; reference to deleted Group>
L;/Modeling/Sketchup Google/Plugins/ctrlpnts.rb;214;in `entities'
L;/Modeling/Sketchup Google/Plugins/ctrlpnts.rb;214;in `deform_group'
L;/Modeling/Sketchup Google/Plugins/ctrlpnts.rb;213;in `call'
(eval);892
Error; #<TypeError; reference to deleted Group>
L;/Modeling/Sketchup Google/Plugins/ctrlpnts.rb;214;in `entities'
L;/Modeling/Sketchup Google/Plugins/ctrlpnts.rb;214;in `deform_group'
L;/Modeling/Sketchup Google/Plugins/ctrlpnts.rb;213;in `call'
(eval);892

PS: I love watching these scripts work, it's like watching Jeff Bridge's character get digitized in Tron.

charly2008 · 24 Dec 2009, 22:55

Hi Kirill,

What a great plugin. An incredible tool. But it doesn't work in Sketchup 7.

Karlheinz

Chris Fullmer · 25 Dec 2009, 04:58

Awesome Kirill, glad you wrote this. This script has been the "next script" on my list to do for a long time, and I have just never quite got around to figuring it out. Saved me a lot of headaches

Seriously, very cool script!

Chris

kirill2008 · 25 Dec 2009, 07:08

@chris fullmer said:

Saved me a lot of headaches

I must say, that the most brain-damaging part was addition of edges projections of 'ruling' surface to the group

. Finaly I recalled, that sketchup API has the very powerful built-in method (it actually has a plenty of) for entities collection 'entities.intersect_with'. The rest part was more or less obvious.
So actually almost all 'housekeeping' details SU handles itself .

pp1357pp24 · 25 Dec 2009, 13:20

thank you,I need for my model

kirill2008 · 25 Dec 2009, 15:26

@escapeartist said:

EDIT: I seem to find a way to break your plugins! Same as my comments about the "add control points" plugin, I applied the plugin, undid the action, and then tried to reapply it.

Undo performance correct handling is my headache

. I promiss to fix it.

@escapeartist said:

PS: I love watching these scripts work, it's like watching Jeff Bridge's character get digitized in Tron.

A kind of retro-futurism

UPD: I mean real-time sticking would look much more impressive, of course. Just imagine: you see neither '>' sign moving left-to-right, nor Jeff Bridge's digitizing characters after picking a surface, just immediately sticked geometry group. It is possible for sure (and maybe already exist in some other modeling soft), but demands a bit low level coding, I guess.
I believe, SU developing team will take in account an interest of SU community and will add similar tool in future versions of SU (at least in pro version).

a bit off-topick: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jz8QWDBYn5w

jerome · 26 Dec 2009, 01:20

@charly2008 said:

Hi Kirill,

What a great plugin. An incredible tool. But it doesn't work in Sketchup 7.

Karlheinz

Dear charly2008
It's work fine in my sketchup 7.1.

driven · 26 Dec 2009, 02:43

Merry Xmas, New Year, etc...

Kirril, works on OSX10.5.8 + 7.1, however, 3D text needs to be exploded and regrouped, and it seems to prefer, grid patches made with sandbox, or I get issues.

but that's fine because it is so neat (and I don't mean in the corny American way), it is tidy, precision engineering tidy, 3D stainless steel printing tidy, fantastic, I certainly hope Santa bought you something nice.

Anyway heres my test, on a torrus, with a material I made using blend(dot)rb, I'll put a You tube Texture anim up tomorrow. I want to make fire in sketchup... for some reason.

all the best

john

notareal · 26 Dec 2009, 09:33

Really cool plugin! Happy holidays!

charly2008 · 26 Dec 2009, 12:16

Hi Jerome,

You're right, it works. It was my fault. But I noticed the changing of the selection frame.

Karlheinz

fredo6 · 26 Dec 2009, 15:33

Kirill,

The plugin seems very powerful, but I can't make it work on SU7.
The progress bar appears but seems to block (at 12%).
I am just trying to stick a cube on a dome.

Fredo

driven · 26 Dec 2009, 16:55

Fredo,

I had to zero out smoothing on the recipient mesh first, and on some of the SU shapes, I also found using 'add-detail' from sandbox seemed to make a difference.

don't know why it worked, but I've been trying to apply 3D text to curved tubes for ages and kept at it till it worked.

Oh, I also grouped a much smaller patch, just bigger than the text footprint. as the recipient and that speeds it all up.

on the mac with 7.1 it was slower than the video implies and I don't seem to get as much shown on screen, but the end result is great.

I need this to be 'watertight' for STL export and I had very little internal clean-up to do.

cheers again Kirill

Any chance of utilising this method in a booleen tool, I can't get as clean an intersection with anything I've tried on a mac

kirill2008 · 26 Dec 2009, 19:28

@driven said:

Anyway heres my test, on a torrus, with a material I made using blend(dot)rb, I'll put a You tube Texture anim up tomorrow.john

Actually I'm surprised a lot that it works for torus. The 1.0 version does not check if each face of ruling surface is the first one intersected by 'sticking' ray (but it has to perform such checking for the surface that is not terrain-like, I'm on my way to implement the mentioned checking).
So the only explanation is that torus faces near the text group were occasionally processed before other torus faces and other faces were occasionally ignored, or maybe a part of torus surface that is the most close one to the text was grouped and used as a ruling surface, as in the following video:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8EB68JdEJSo

So the sticking result does not depend on smoothing, but on surface geometry.

Everything is more or less obvious, but demands a bit of additional work to make the result of script processing more expected one, you know principle of least surprise (POLS)

.

driven · 26 Dec 2009, 19:58

@kirill2008 said:

torus surface that is most close one to the text was grouped

Kirill
Exactly, on the mac I also re-surfaced the mesh and added detail with sandbox first, my model torus is 128 segments x 32 sides, so making a small patch is essential, experimenting with tube intersections now, had a couple of crashes, but I'm just playing around between domestic chores today, so maybe I'll have more luck later on.

john

driven · 29 Dec 2009, 05:27

actually, I can report there's some sort of issue if I've used blend before trying to use this,

it's as if blend hold's on to a required file or path or something

if I quit and retry it works fine, only seems to be blend, but it may of been the problem the other day after I'd used CLF_SimpleLoft and 2Faces+path

I wasn't looking for a clash, but this is repeatable... nothing shows up in ruby or mac console, and I can't read the SU logs although I do have them.

cheers

john

driven · 2 Jan 2010, 02:02

Hi Kirill,

1.1 is even better, but I guess that's the point... well done.

I think anyone on the mailing list may have not know about the update yet because your edit of the top frame doesn't appear to send a 'new message' notification and I got a you tube 'new movie' email and came looking for it.

been playing with using it to apply decals, etc to objects. You can sort of do it with photo textures, but grouped or imbedded geometry is way nicer, and easier to change materials, so I'm very happy.

The text is single surface, no thickness
On my first test, which I binned (because it had a typo) I used- Yes check for non terrain, Front and Super, when it was cooked (much faster now) I exploded both groups, smoothed, softened and textured. I then did a volume check and there were no holes at all, perfect first time, except for the typo.

I binned it, changed the font and size, same settings. When cooked it sat off the surface (.25), with one end further away then the other? so I went though everything I could think of until I eventually got one that was almost right, added .002 thickness and merged that.
Nowhere near as nice as the first so I tried scaling down the text used the original settings and ended up with a perfect profile sitting exactly in the other surface, but I couldn't the two to intersect, so this one is actually .00025 in front off the drape ( so that you can see ti from all angles) and it's still grouped separately unlike the first.

if you want to have a go at merging these two here's the file

kirill2008 · 2 Jan 2010, 21:46

@driven said:

Nowhere near as nice as the first so I tried scaling down the text used the original settings and ended up with a perfect profile sitting exactly in the other surface, but I couldn't the two to intersect, so this one is actually .00025 in front off the drape ( so that you can see ti from all angles) and it's still grouped separately unlike the first.

Hi, Driven.
It is strange, but I did not provide processing of the group with zero thickness, but it is necessary to do it.
In the current version (1.1., 1.2.), it is possible to process zero-thickness groups, but bounding boxes of such groups has to have a non-zero thickness (it is possible if rotate a bit a flat group, then explode it, then regroup again).

mentioned above model
I promise to fix the problem to stick flat groups without any additional labor.

driven · 2 Jan 2010, 22:48

hi Kirill,

1.2, when did you post this? I can't keep up... looks even better, but I quickly downloaded and tried it on the curtain skp and it's not recognising the group that I was using with 1.1 so I explode, re-grouped added a second group, and still get the message to choose groups? I had this with 1.1 but can't remember the work around...

I'll have a play

john

sorted, DrivingDimensions was interfering so I disabled it and 1.2 appliqué is 'part of the fabric', literally. very, very nice...
after having a play your skp I noticed I already had a slight rotation on the group from 1.1 test and I must of done it to get it to run...
it seem to be what was causing the lifting at on end, so I re-aligned it and added a single square at right-angle to the text face (out of the way) and it processed fine.

Tips for anyone giving '2D' text a try-
leave the 'square' till last to avoid needing to use outliner to select the text group
apply material to recipient mesh first, so you can you 'select face material' and ' erase co-planer', to aid clean-up of mesh
I found, using cut, paste in place, explode into the mesh group gave a very clean join.
leave the back of the mesh default to aid changing the face colour texture, (or hide a flat colour swatch in the group)
Tips for playing around with my skp-
each side is now 3 groups on separate layers, so you can toggle front, back, or thickness independently to have a look.
these 6 group are inside 2 groups, so you can use 'scale' tool to open and close the curtains.
if I was to use it in a model I would delete the front and thickness groups and apply 'fabric' to both remaining faces(less polly's)

Now I'm off to 3D Warehouse to find a car to stick 'DECALS' all over...

cheers again Kirell
[attachment=1]

EmbroidedCurtainAnyone-1.2.skp