[Plugin] Control points ver. 1.6.

kirill2008

Are you by chance creating a bezier control mesh to do the deformations?

Not exactly. Ctrlpnts.rb utilizes 2 different methods:

for curve shape changing: linear and cosine smoothed methods
for geometry group deformation: the same method as pnts2mesh.rb uses for creating terrain surface (when 'according to distance' z-calculation method is chosen)
The second method calculates offset vectors lengths of each vertex according to distances from it to all control points. The degree of influence of each control c-point depends on <1/(distance^power)>. Power is an adjustable value.

Currently I'm thinking about making a kind of substitute for nurbs surface (I don't know what will come of this). It is necessary to add possibility to adjust the slope of the surface area, which is under control of each c-point.
slope adjusting will look something like that
I guess it is possible after adding some linear terms to <1/(distance^power)>.

mitcorb

Ok. Just curious. And thanks for your reply.
Does the plugin operate on ungrouped geometry, or groups, or components? Or, how does it deal with these. Even though I watched the video, I am missing something.
I presume this is better for smaller models, because I was trying to deform a rather dense mesh ungrouped. I made a selection of a portion of the mesh and the control point was lost in the blue highlights. It took me a while to find it. And I know I did something wrong because I saw the prompt at the bottom of the screen but I got no results--no action.
Also, I noted that in the plugins menu are some interact commands. But because there is no identifier in the command, I wasn't sure if this was related to Control Points. Perhaps you could do something there to identify with the script.
I was just the other day wishing for an operation like this that would do "smooth mesh deformations" such as in your video. I am using currently Sketchup 6 free version in Windows XP.
Thanks again,
mitcorb

pilou

Sculpting in movement!

EarthMover

Kirill,

1.6 looks amazing!

I was wondering if it would be possible to add an option to lock the initial outer edges? To lock the edges from moving, but still deform the face would be a great solution for mounding surfaces.

d12dozr

@earthmover said:

I was wondering if it would be possible to add an option to lock the initial outer edges? To lock the edges from moving, but still deform the face would be a great solution for mounding surfaces.

That would also be nice for making cushions.

EarthMover

I agree Marcus...for me it would be great for terrains and mounding flower beds. I would love to be able to replace Soap Skin Bubble and get rid of that annoying time limit BS.

mitcorb

Kirill:
I think once you get this tool more or less finalized, you may want to have only one copy in the first post, and perhaps edit the post to reflect the current version number. You are probably already planning to do this.

I am still testing it.

mitcorb

Kirill:
While testing, I am seeing the commands Interact with cpoints and Deform face interactive. The selection of the points is difficult because all I have is a pointer. It would be good to do a small selection box on the point. Is the deformation guided by a single point or multiple points? I am using construction points from D. Bur's Projections Toolbar.
I think this ruby needs a parameters interface so that the degree of influence can be selected and or edited. Maybe a PDF of instructions or proper procedure if not the parameter interface.

Edit: Please note. Deleted erroneous Ruby Console excerpt. May have been a miss keyed right click context menu selection. If you viewed this post previously, please disregard those contents. Edit

kirill2008

@mitcorb said:

The selection of the points is difficult because all I have is a pointer. It would be good to do a small selection box on the point.

I was going to make a pointer apperture size bigger (don't know how yet) and process 'all_picked' entities instead of 'best_picked' method to find c-points. In short, I'm currently trying to make selection process easier.

@mitcorb said:

Is the deformation guided by a single point or multiple points? I am using construction points from D. Bur's Projections Toolbar.

Geometry group deformation takes in account all control c-points. Curve deformation takes in account the selected point and its 2 adjacent neighbours.
It is possible to select a set of existing construction points and then pick geometry group to make them control c-points for the picked group (Select c-points, right-click and choose 'Select a group to be under control...' command from the context menu).

@mitcorb said:

I think this ruby needs a parameters interface so that the degree of influence can be selected and or edited. Maybe a PDF of instructions or proper procedure if not the parameter interface.

Well, yes, actually script became a bit more complex and unfortunately less intuitive, so I agree it requires now some kind of documentation or more detailed instructions.
Currently it is possible to affect the degree of influence of geometry group control c-points while 'Interact with control points...' command is active by hitting <up-arrow> and <down-arrow> keys, when the c-point is selected or under cursor.

mitcorb

Kirill:
You wrote "Geometry group deformation takes in account all control c-points." This says that I must group the cpoints. You further suggest that the construction points I was using are not the source. I am getting no prompt to input any other cpoints, and I am unable to influence more than one poly at a time during deformation.
Does the entire mesh need to be peppered with cpoints? In your video, I don't see this, and yet you are able to affect the whole mesh?
I cannot access curve deformation?
I cannot adjust power, as seen in the bottom line prompt.
I am obviously doing something wrong, or missing a prompt.

xrok1

just noticed 1.6
i agree about locking edges, BTW.

kirill2008

The new idea came, what if we use control boxes instead of control points.
It will allow scale and rotation changes tracking (construction point gives possibility to track only offset from its previous position).
Set of videos shows beginning of mentioned idea implementation (scale tracking doesn't work yet):
[flash=480,385:s0yxbjzt]http://www.youtube.com/p/E7A33957B617B9AF&hl=ru_RU&fs=1" type="application/x-shockwave-flash" width="480" height="385" allowscriptaccess="always" allowfullscreen="true"[/flash:s0yxbjzt]
I think it will be more 'natural' and easy to use interaction way. I think, I'll add 'power' value of control boxes adjustment in the context menu maybe.
I also agree about edges locking and I think it's possible.

jason_maranto

Whoah --you are definately way too good at this... can't wait to play with that.

best,
Jason.

EarthMover

Great Idea with the boxes Kirill! The point painting is also really cool and I expect lots of colorful posts from Pilou using it! Also good to hear you are working on an outer edge lock.

malakon

Hi,

I'm having problems with this plugin and it seems that is not only me, here is a link to a user in the forum with the same problem

http://forums.sketchucation.com/viewtopic.php?f=323&t=25722&p=222893#p222893

Control Points causing SU 7 to crash

Postby aswiger on Tue Feb 02, 2010 4:20 am
I am using the Control Points plugin, and there seems to be at least a couple issues when following along in some of the youtube videos posted by the plugin's creator. First, whenever I add control points then use the move tool to move one of the points, SU will give me an odd error message: "most probably geometry group was erased", then crash.

Also, when I draw to circles and select both, the blend option is not visible on a right click. I've restarted my machine, re-installed the plugin, tried using both 1.6 and 1.7 to no avail. I'm using SU 7.1 pro on Windows 7. Any advice? Thanks!

Aaron

apple85

@kirill2008 said:

@wind-borne said:

i am having a strange problem, plugin only shows up on initial opening drawing. If I open a new one without closing Sketchup completely, no plugin.

As I can see on attached picture the whole face is selected, but current version of the script (ver. 1.1.) actually processes only curves. So try select only boundary curve without face itself (you may deselect face by pressing shift and single-clicking on face). Make sure that only boundary is selected. Of course script processing does not depend on opened file (old or new). It depends on what entity is the first one selected: if it occures that curve edge is the 1-st item of selected entities collection, then everything works, if the 1-st item is face, then the command does not appear within context menu.
So I'll try to make the script more tolerant to the selection in future versions .
Speaking of copy-paste behaviour, I'll try to find out why it processes so strange (don't know why yet).

I got a similar problem to the above - i try selecting the lines around a simple 2d shape like a circle, triangle (like in the original first video at the beginning of this thread) - just the lines and not the 2d face but when i right/control click i do not get the 'Add control points to the curve' option to start off the whole process with this plugin. I think my sketchup knows that it exists as as another user on this forum pointed out to me, in the 'plugin' menu there are 4 modify options to do with this plugin, i just can't use them until i have figured out how to add the control points. i've tried selecting the both 2d and 3d shapes and right clicking but there is still no control point option.

if someone could point out where i'm going wrong or give me a brief step to step on how to add the control points to both 2d and 3d shapes, it would be a massive help!

curve control points.pdf

xrok1

well this deserves a bump anyway but also i have a problem. if i draw a cirle, right click add cpoints every 3rd, now when i go to move a point up iget this message followed by a bug splat everytime.

August

I'm having no luck getting started with this. I suspect that I'm missing some changes in the directions for how to get started, but I'm pretty sure that I at least skimmed the whole thread.

Download and install the v1.6 script from the first post.
Open SU, create a test object (3D text my favorite for testing this kind of thing).
Plugin Menu has four new items, but they all appear to need c-points already added.
Right click (context click) on the group --
No new menu items, nothing mentioning c-points, the options suggested at various points in the thread (I don't know for sure that I've found the most recent) are not there.

Any pointers to what steps I'm missing?

Thanks,
August

P.S. Windows 7, SU 7.1.6860

xrok1

right click on a group (has to be a group)

August

@xrok1 said:

(has to be a group)

Thanks. I "thought" it was, but 3D text gets created as a component, not a group. Explode and regroup and the menu options are are there!

Thanks,
August