[Plugin][$] Curviloft 2.0a - 31 Mar 24 (Loft & Skinning)

[jgb]

Strange one here. It's a simple surface to form, I've done way more complex ones.
When I select all, and hit "Skin" the selects go white and nothing happens.

It does skin manually by joining the vertexes into triangles.
I have redrawn every line, there are no gaps, no fragments, nothing I can see.

If I join any 2 vertices, either side will skin. Remove the join and no skin.

What's wrong

BTW, at first I thought it may be an interference with the SimFonIA plugin I just loaded.
But Curviloft worked OK on other more complex surfaces in the same drawing that this shape originated in.
What's wrong here???

[Rich O Brien]

You need to add some 'breakers' to allow Curviloft to read your mind.

[pilou]

Ah damned someone send a similar trick in the same time!

Just divide this segment and all will works fine!
But that is not very normal

PS If you can save your file in v6, this will be very fine for nostalgic people who don't use V7, v8
(i must use some usb keys between computers

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[Dave R]

[off:3b3ctz5x]We should take up a collection for our poor friend, Pilou. He needs to move into the current century with his computer. I'll donate a graphics card. Does anyone have a spare motherboard? Memory? Hard drive? Etc. [/off:3b3ctz5x]

[jgb]

@rich o brien said:

You need to add some 'breakers' to allow Curviloft to read your mind.

If you mean those 4 lines at the vertexes, I just tried that, and Pilou's segment break, and still, no skinning. Don't understand why they did not work for me.

In that same model, I just did 3 more similar shapes and the same thing happened. But when I joined any 2 vertexes in those constructs, (as well as the original problem), they skinned normally. So I joined 2 vertices at 1 end to form a triangle, and the rest of the construct skinned when selected.

That made me think Curviloft can't handle 2 or more acute angles. Yep!!!
I moved 1 end vertex in at varying angles.
As soon as the angle was 90 deg or more the construct skinned.

Something for Fredo to look into.

[Rich O Brien]

Did you look at how i picked the profiles and rails independently?

[jgb]

@rich o brien said:

Did you look at how i picked the profiles and rails independently?

I noticed, but I never had any real success doing that, so I ignored it.

There is a whole lot about CL that I do not understand, particularly the toolbar.

Fredo really needs to define what the colors mean (red, magenta, etc) when the perimeter has a problem.
I tried playing with "errors" (gaps, fragments and double lines) but could not get consistent, if any idea of the feedback from CL. Same with the toolbar, changing parameters seemed to have no effect.
So now I just select a perimeter and hit either "skin" or "loft" depending.

On most of my complex surfaces (wing fairings, etc) I usually end up redrawing most of the skin to simplify (line reduction) the result, as I find CL tends to create far more small triangles than necessary, but at least it does a very good job of making the curves, that I know take would hours to tweak if done manually from scratch, having done many before I discovered CL.

It is one of the few core plugins that I could not live without now.

[pilou]

@unknownuser said:

I moved 1 end vertex in at varying angles.

But like this your surface result is not the same ?
With my method you keep the same surface!
Absolutly no idea why this not works for you ?
I tested on V7, on V6 (all with the divided segment)

But work also if I draw this triangle
Very curious

[pbacot]

JG,
This is a symmetrical shape and it's interesting that it skins quite well if a line is added at the center. I prefer to divide the end and center line for more subdivisions, but I don't really know if that is helpful. I often find that a shape works better (or at all) in Curviloft with a line or curve added across the center area. But I could use a full course on CL. I am usually shooting in the dark and can understand the purpose to few of the features, myself.

I couldn't get it to skin otherwise, nor follow Rich's procedure. Other curve arrangements would light up and I never got a setup as he shows. [edit: now I see what he did, but I don't know how he knew to do it--and the shape just skinned without me designating any edges--after adding edges at the ends of the shape]

Regards, Peter

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[jgb]

Pbacot; I did not try segmenting a line because CL does too much segmentation at best, most of which I end up tweaking out (as I mentioned above) to reduce the line count and surface complexity. Here I just needed a "flat" surface quickly, as a temporary separate group while I did some work behind it.

When it refused to surface I did it manually (triangulating the vertices) as I had no time then to play. Later I extracted the perimeter to see what was wrong, which led to my post.

My supposition about 2 or more acute angles may be wrong after thinking about it and later I will try a few edits to prove me right or wrong.

[Rich O Brien]

@Joel

Try watching this...

http://www.screenr.com/XnF8

[Dave R]

Rich, that explains it very well. Thanks from me even though I wasn't having any problem with it.

[fredo6]

@jgb

Curviloft works with 4 contours (what is called a coon).
When you have a single continuous contour, you need to define these 4 contours. As highlighted by Rich, one simple way to tell Curviloft is to put Break points, with small open segments. Then, you can Select All and proceed with Skinning.

Fredo

PS1: another way is to use the Edge by Edge selection, and press Return between each of the 4 contours.

PS2: colors have no special meaning except to differentiate the selected contours

PS3: error handling is not complete yet. This is why the plugin is still in Beta

[pilou]

Aaah OK !
All is clear now!

[ivreich]

How to soft/hide diagonals only??

How does one generate a lofted surface with only the diagonals soft/hidden? This is useful if you want to use the loop/ring selection tools that come natively with thomthom's Quadfacetools...

Currently you have to do it manually, generating two sets of intermediate profiles (in both U and V directions) and merging it with the quadface surface.

joel

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[pilou]

Have you the Skp (V6) ?

[thomthom]

@ivreich said:

How does one generate a lofted surface with only the diagonals soft/hidden? This is useful if you want to use the loop/ring selection tools that come natively with thomthom's Quadfacetools...

CurviLoft can generate Quad meshes for you if you just enable the option:

It generates smooth meshes though, so if you want the grid type you have in your screenshot you need to use QuadFace Tools to unsmooth the CurviLoft surface.

[jgb]

@rich o brien said:

@Joel

Try watching this...

http://www.screenr.com/XnF8

Ah IZ simply blown away by this..

I tried segmenting at the same corners, but it didn't work for me, and now I know why. But this and TT's explanation to Ivreich and Fredos "How-to" reply opened my eyes to why I found CL a bit unresponsive to many of my skinning attempts.

Simply a lack of a basic tutorial for Curviloft left me without the tools needed to use CL effectively.

Fredo, that really needs to be addressed. CL is NOT a simple intuitive tool to use.

[jgb]

Fredo; That explanation really opened my eyes. I NEVER knew the toolbar functions were only active in "blackface". I thought they were presets, and that is why it never worked for me.

One question though, when you added the 4 breakpoints (as also shown by Rich) it skinned when you selected all. This object is an extract from a drawing that had lines emanating straight up/down from each point, effectively each being a breakpoint. Many times in the past, if I had an extraneous line or fragmet in the perimeter selection, CL would go RED and not skin till the line was removed. Yet here you show they are included. When I tried this with the original model (a sink base) selecting 4 lines as breakpoints, again nothing happened.

Here is a series of screenshots of what happened.

Overall view of the sink, with the problem area in the base highlighted.

And a closeup....

Skin area removed to redo solution.

Perimeter only selected. No skinning.

Added 4 breakpoint lines to perimeter selection. Again, no skinning.

Selected 3 lines using CL Select, and

VOILA, a skin.

So now I know a whole lot more about Curviloft, but my question now is why did my selection of breakpoint lines NOT work, but worked for you, and not cause an error with CL

[fredo6]

@jgb
It depends on your settings in the button palette

• the mode of selection (Follow <-->)
• the Break at Crossing button must be ON
  The small segments must also be 'plain' edges.

Anyway, selecting each of the 3 or 4 contours is a good method too.

Fredo