[REQ] "Easy Outer Shell"
-
Now we have the "Outer Shell" tool of the Solid toolset (even for the free version). However as these new solid tools are kind of "strict" in only working on "real" solids, sometimes one would wish to have a more "forgiving" tool.
What I have in mind...
I mostly work on rather complex models (details from outside and inside) however never take care of using only solids (just think of a window for instance, unless you have very special purposes in mind, you would not model the glass thick).Nevertheless I would like to get some of my models to be a certain "empty box" models - even for the "price" that it has some missing faces (I can heal them later) like an open window or similar. Use them as backdrops in other projects or even to upload them to GE or similar.
So this tool would basically create an outer shell of all the contained geometry if possible without (un)necessarily making life hard with obviously not solid parts.
OR: even better: the tool could select all these outer shell faces, get them out of existing groups and all and make them a single group (which I can then put on a separate layer).
Extra bonus could be to have certain variations based on complexity...
-
You want fries (chips) with that?
-
Not necessarily but those might come handy too, when I am hungry.
-
Good idea, Csaba. I think this could be useful in producing 'live' boolean tools as well....
-
Off hand, sounds difficult. How would the app. know when if it's "a hole for a window" to a room, or "a recessed cavity" viewed from the outside? Perhaps by user response to the app. as it checks the model to close temporary holes? But there are some brilliant guys here who might know how to solve that.
-
Yes, I now, I have also been thinking about this (without any good result of course). Let's take a colonnade/porch for instance - how could the plugin know if I needed those in 3D or should it close the gaps?
-
PFM
-
-
"PFM" is "Please Forgive Me" or "Pure F***ing Magic".
Knowing Rich I suspect that it's the latter!
It would have to be 'magic'...
At first I thought that we iterate through the faces in the group and raytest each casting a ray outwards along the faces normal from say each vertex and the center. If any of the rays fails to hit something within the group itself then the face is on the 'outside' so we keep it, or else its 'internal' so we erase it. BUT reentrant faces in alcoves, colonnades, and inner courtyards etc would all fail and be erased when we actually want to keep them... The 'magic' of your brain is that you know which should go
- I can't envisage a way of doing this - a simple 'Solid' form will 'shell' BUT even one loose inner bit if edge will mess it up... -
@unknownuser said:
"Pure F***ing Magic"
Advertisement