In Development: Subdivide and Smooth

Whaat

What I would like is a script that could take the high poly extreme detail model and reduce the detail and make it smaller in poly's. It would be fantastic to be able to use percentages like 25% poly reduction or 50% reduction.

I don't understand this workflow. How do you create your high-poly models in the first place? If you are creating them with software other than SU, it only makes sense to use the same software to reduce the poly-count prior to bringing the model into SU. I am sure Max and Blender can both do this.

To me, the logical workflow would be to model everything in SU as low-poly. Now you have your low-poly model. Next add one level of subdivision. Now you have your medium detail model. Add one more level of subdivision and you have your high-poly model.

Of course, the option to reduce poly-count would be useful as well, but it seems rare that someone would want to reduce the polys of a model that was originally made in SU.

Maybe you could give a more detailed example of your workflow that would require such as feature.

solo

Maybe this would help:

http://developer.valvesoftware.com/wiki/LOD_Models

jeff hammond

whaat up..

i'm very much interested in the script and waiting anxiously for it to go public..

can it work on sections of a drawing instead of the entire shape? in the example i'm posting, i'd like to see if the ridge can be knocked down using your script while the rest remains intact.. i've exploded and erased much of the drawing so if you need more of the geometry in there, let me know..
thanks
jeff

forwhaat.skp

Whaat

@unknownuser said:

can it work on sections of a drawing instead of the entire shape? in the example i'm posting, i'd like to see if the ridge can be knocked down using your script while the rest remains intact.. i've exploded and erased much of the drawing so if you need more of the geometry in there, let me know..
thanks
jeff

Hi Jeff,

The script will not be able to do what you suggest. The problem with your model is that the geometry is very messy at the interface where the ridge is. If you feed garbage geometry into the plugin it will give you garbage in return. However, the script WILL allow you to create a model like you have shown from scratch in about 30 seconds simply by subdividing a low poly version of your model. AND, the geometry that it gives you will be clean (which is good if you intend to import it into another app for instance...)

kwistenbiebel

@whaat said:

However, the script WILL allow you to create a model like you have shown from scratch in about 30 seconds simply by subdividing a low poly version of your model. AND, the geometry that it gives you will be clean (which is good if you intend to import it into another app for instance...)

The question remains though, how the hell we can model the simple geometry in sketchup in the first place

Whaat

@kwistenbiebel said:

The question remains though, how the hell we can model the simple geometry in sketchup in the first place

remus

can the plugin do selected geometry as well as whole models?

jeff hammond

@kwistenbiebel said:

@whaat said:

However, the script WILL allow you to create a model like you have shown from scratch in about 30 seconds simply by subdividing a low poly version of your model. AND, the geometry that it gives you will be clean (which is good if you intend to import it into another app for instance...)

The question remains though, how the hell we can model the simple geometry in sketchup in the first place

for me, that can sometimes be a big problem.. the example i posted above is one clean piece of geometry (true radii in both directions) which intersects with three separate soap skins.. the skins are the only way (well, by far the fastest and cleanest way) i'm able to fill in certain holes...

i'll post another example which has the hole left open.. this is a much simpler version than what i've posted earlier but i honestly can't figure a way to fill this cleanly or simply.. it involves two different radii which terminate at different angles up top.. this is a very real situation that i face in my work and i do have methods to deal with them but trust me, they're neither quick or easy..

i'd love for someone to show me the way on this.. especially the 30 sec clean method that whaat is talking about..

thanks for any input,
jeff

hmmm.skp

boofredlay

@whaat said:

I don't understand this workflow. How do you create your high-poly models in the first place? If you are creating them with software other than SU, it only makes sense to use the same software to reduce the poly-count prior to bringing the model into SU. I am sure Max and Blender can both do this.

To me, the logical workflow would be to model everything in SU as low-poly. Now you have your low-poly model. Next add one level of subdivision. Now you have your medium detail model. Add one more level of subdivision and you have your high-poly model.

Of course, the option to reduce poly-count would be useful as well, but it seems rare that someone would want to reduce the polys of a model that was originally made in SU.

Maybe you could give a more detailed example of your workflow that would require such as feature.

For me, and the reason I posted This Thread, I would like to be able to reduce the polygon count for something I created with Soap Skin or even the sandbox tools. As I don't use any other modeling program (well I use Revit but for a whole different thing) I would like to see this ability.

Maybe it would be as simple as adding a + or - value when running the script. If that makes sense.

Thanks again for this and I await it being public, even if it won't work both ways

Whaat

@unknownuser said:

i'd love for someone to show me the way on this.. especially the 30 sec clean method that whaat is talking about..

thanks for any input,
jeff

Hey Jeff,

It looks like the type of work that you are doing requires a fair bit of precision with respect to exact radii and tangents, etc.

This plugin is not designed for precision. It is more useful for conceptual or organic stuff. I think you might find the plugin useful for quickly playing around with concepts. You can model your surface in very low-poly without using soap-skin and then use the plugin to smooth it out.

This is the method I am referring to. I modeled the surface in very little time (ok.. a bit longer than 30 seconds... ). You can see how the surface flows seamlessly after applying the plugin.

However,

jeff hammond

wow, you got That from That.. great..

most of the stuff i do is wooden structure but i also do some concrete work.. i try to use each medium to its advantage which in turn leads to different style designs.. your plugin will be excellent for the concrete stuff where organic shapes are much more manageable...

do you have an e.t.a. by any chance?

thanks

fwiw, i was able to fix that bad spot in the first picture i posted here.. i managed to ditch 2 of the three soap skins and the rest of the model is moving along nicely now..

kwistenbiebel

Hi Whaat,

As you asked in the Indigo forum, I upload the 'naked running man' SU model that was made in 'Make Human' so you can test it with your S'nd S project.

(The complete scene was way too big to upload).

Cheers,
Kwistenbiebel

loper2.zip

Marian

I can see this plugin being very useful to me helping with my car and ship modelling.
Is this going to be a free plugin or commercial?

notareal

@fletch said:

wowwwww Whaat... you are incredible!

can it reduce the polygon count of a hi-poly mesh (work in reverse) too?

I think this would be good feature too, if do not consider it too difficult to implement.

notareal

@whaat said:

I don't understand this workflow. How do you create your high-poly models in the first place? If you are creating them with software other than SU, it only makes sense to use the same software to reduce the poly-count prior to bringing the model into SU. I am sure Max and Blender can both do this.

Some free models, for example 3d scanned ones, do have really high poly-count. I can imagine using some of those in SU, but after some scale down.

notareal

What about components made of 1/4 parts, like this glass. Object has parts that are not wanted to subdivide and also open edges of sub-components needs to be left without subdivision.

Glass_A1.skp

Whaat

@notareal said:

I think this would be good feature too, if do not consider it too difficult to implement.

Since so many people are asking for this poly-reduction feature , I will try to create a plugin to do this. However, this will not be until after the subdivision plugin is released.

I have no idea when I will release it. There's LOTS of work left before I would be comfortable releasing it.

Pixero

What about a "non destructive" subdivision?
Meaning: the possibility to go back to a lower subdivision for further modelling.
Then go back to the higher subdivision for rendering.

boofredlay

@whaat said:

@notareal said:

I think this would be good feature too, if do not consider it too difficult to implement.

Since so many people are asking for this poly-reduction feature , I will try to create a plugin to do this. However, this will not be until after the subdivision plugin is released.

I have no idea when I will release it. There's LOTS of work left before I would be comfortable releasing it.

Thank you.

Fletch

@pixero said:

What about a "non destructive" subdivision?
Meaning: the possibility to go back to a lower subdivision for further modelling.
Then go back to the higher subdivision for rendering.

oh no... sub-object modeling in SU like in VIZ... ... too complex for my little brain to handle...

just kidding! I would like that too, but let's let him get this thing done first, shall we?! We don't want to sound ungrateful...