Yet another SphereTool

thomthom

Does your code currently generate true native quads? (planar)

driven

It is just a 'followme' sphere, so I assume yes, I can only show the diagonals by distorting after completion.
john

thomthom

Basically, a QuadFace compatible quad is either:

a native quad (face with four vertices)
two triangles made to act as one unit (separated by an edges that is soft+smooth and cast_shadow: false)

The reason that cast_shadow needs to be false for the diagonal is that in case the whole mesh is made soft+smooth there needs to be a way to detect what is the diagonal - and since cast_shadow is on by default and it appear most people don't use this property I made that the "magic marker" for the diagonal. This allowed for non-planar quads in SketchUp.

driven

@thomthom said:

Basically, a QuadFace compatible quad is either:

a native quad (face with four vertices)

So, it should be ok as is?

thomthom

It would work. But maybe Rich has hoped for a triangulated version so things can be manipulated without ending up with the edge that SU's AutoFold feature adds. But then again, QuadFace Tools had a function to add triangulation and there is my recent AutoSmooth plugin that both addresses this.

driven

@Rich

is this what you mean? edges as per 'quadface tools' definition
@TT... does this look right, I applied to all edges, but could just do the diagonals if that's better.

Rich O Brien

@John

Thomthom nailed it. I triangulate everything using the QuadFace tools.

It will make for a better exchange of data from on app to another.

driven

@Rich
would this do what you need
just an off axes sphere, with tri's

Rich O Brien

There's something funky with that because none of Thomthom Ring Select/Loop Select are finding the edges.

Even trying to convert it doesn't work.

Thom can help here more than me. I do understand the property needed but generation of that property through code is not my bag....

Unless I am missing the obvious

thomthom

@driven said:

@TT... does this look right, I applied to all edges, but could just do the diagonals if that's better.

No - just the diagonal should have cast_shadow set to false. Cast Shadows set to false is what marks an edge as separating the two triangles of a quad. The border edges should not have this set.

Also, I see that lots of your edges are 1 segment Curve entities. Why is that?

Rich O Brien

D'oh....

missed the edges that parallel

driven

@thomthom said:

No - just the diagonal should have cast_shadow set to false.

I'll exclude the original edges...

@unknownuser said:

Also, I see that lots of your edges are 1 segment Curve entities. Why is that?

It's a rotated arc so before I split them with the diagonals, you can scale using 'move-tool' on the cardinal points.

for uv is it better if I explode the edge first?
john

thomthom

For UVs I won't matter. It was just odd to see a one segment Curve. I noticed it because the Smooth and Sort property was gone in the Entity Info when I selected one of them.