[Plugin] Stick groups to mesh ver. 1.2.

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

ken28875 · 26 Feb 2010, 20:49

Awesome, Kirill! Just what I was looking for.

Thank you.

EarthMover · 27 Feb 2010, 04:06

Driven,

Wouldn't it be a lot faster to just use the "Drape" tool to drop 2D shapes onto a "curtain" like surface?

driven · 27 Feb 2010, 04:34

@ EarthMover

I was doing a lot of testing on TIGs EE tools at the time and Mac de-bugging with Kirrils on another machine and thought I try some combinations.

It's a bit subtle in a still but if you animate the curtains you can see the difference this methods gives..

I'm actually putting 3D text onto curved pipe and kirril's is as fast as any method I've found so far....

john

tibet · 18 Mar 2012, 13:34

hi,

because videotut aren´t working, i´ve found some for those, who aren´t familiar with the plugin like me.

cheers!

http://www.sublog.net/archives/41441

kirill2008 · 10 Jul 2012, 20:26

I just live it here...
[flash=530,315:fkl0g14l]http://www.youtube.com/v/gT-8NyvR3D0?version=3&hl=ru_RU[/flash:fkl0g14l]

ivreich · 11 Jul 2012, 07:04

Hi Kirill

Thanks so much for your amazing work...

I'm trying to find a download link for your complete LSS Toolbar set...had a look on your blog but can't seem to find it anywhere. Could you tell us where to get it pleaaaasee???

Joel

Rich O Brien · 11 Jul 2012, 09:20

@ivreich said:

I'm trying to find a download link for your complete LSS Toolbar set...had a look on your blog but can't seem to find it anywhere. Could you tell us where to get it pleaaaasee???

Dropbox - 404

(dl.dropbox.com)

Ben Ritter · 11 Jul 2012, 14:08

Kirill, thank you for your generosity.

kirill2008 · 11 Jul 2012, 15:01

Here is an archive with currently implemented stage:
lss_toolbar_2_0_pre_alpha_9.zip
(Just in case if drop-box link does not work...)
NOTE: it is not a complete set yet, since it is still under construction (it is 'pre-alpha' version), so use it at your own risk.
'Stick Group' tool is the last one in 'LSS Toolbar 2.0', so now I started testing and documenting the whole thing. It will take some time to complete this stage and publish 'beta-version', so I plan to disappear for a while (I mean I won't broadcast new hilarious demo videos for a while).