Subdividing faces for displacement plugin
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Try thomthom's Edge-Tools - search the Plugins-Index...
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I already use Edge tools. You mean Divide face tool? It is too manual. It would took me ages...
I was thinking about more automotive work flow.
1 Input - one or more materials (for example stone)
2 Output - All the faces with stone material applied are subdivided evenly (more or less). This is what displacement needs.Wright now I do it this way:
Make raster with sandbox tool parallel to the surface I want to subdivide.
Project this raster onto the surface.
This works for the terrain. But if I want to subdivide all walls (and ceilings) in the house?This is kind of reversed "remove collinear edges" command - Add collinear edges
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Can you show an image of your preferred subdivided mesh?
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@unknownuser said:
Can you show an image of your preferred subdivided mesh?
It should be anything that resembles the sandbox from scratch. Ideally dividing the face into squares (maybe also option for triangulation).
Problem with Thea's native subdivision (and most of the subdivision tools available) is that it subdivides faces based on equal subdivision of the edges - i.e. when a face is not square, the subdivision will not be squar-"ish" either. But this is the ideal subdivision for displacement.
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Tgi3D Amorph upsample feature produces this result. Give it a try
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Nope. As I said, these plugins divide each bounding edge equally. So there are no squares but longish rectangles only.
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I see
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Bonzai3D contains a native "meshing" feature that does exactly this -- the idea is you simply tell it how large you would like the squares to be (in whatever units you are working in) and it will re-create the meshed faces.
That is a really nice feature of their package -- other nice features are: they have much better import and export capabilities and Nurbs tools built in... all for the same price as Sketchup Pro. I hope Sketchup is feeling the pressure applied by Bonzai3D and will begin to more seriously develop similar tools for Pro users.
Best,
Jason. -
Actually there is a way for Tgi3D Amorph to subdivide with more regular rectangles (I mean closer to squares or whatever you need) just divide the bounding edges first - then it will use those endpoints as well to upsample the face.
But then it's again some manual fiddling around with the edges/faces...
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So, a tool that draws Divided Edges
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Well, not really. A tool that subdivides faces with rectangle as close to squares as possible.
I would not connect it to a certain material however (as opposed to the original request) One may want to slightly bevel some edges - those should only be subdivided in the longer direction of the very narrow rectangles (those are not favourable at all).
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Also, look at Pixero's excellent mini-tut over the Thea Forums about modelling a hedge. In this case, some similar subdivision would be a god-send.
http://www.thearender.com/forum/viewtopic.php?p=42727#p42727 -
Maybe this plugin could work like this:
1 Take the regular mesh Gai presented.
2 Align and project it to every selected face (with filter for selecting faces with the same material -
How about using Soap Skin & Bubble, but just using the "skin" button to generate the even subdivisions? It works well as a subdivision skinning tool. Double click the face, hit skin, set the subdivisions, let it process, then explode the group.
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Who could thought of this? Interesting method. It riches the half of the job.
Still is not automatic for more than one differently oriented faces. -
Yes, SSB would do the trick - at least the "manual subdivision part".
With a hedge like in Pixero's tutorial, it could still be laborious.
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@srx said:
I was thinking about more automotive work flow.
1 Input - one or more materials (for example stone)
2 Output - All the faces with stone material applied are subdivided evenly (more or less). This is what displacement needs.This is kind of reversed "remove collinear edges" command - Add collinear edges
srx, The attached plugin is my attempt to automate the sub-dividing of faces with a given material. For reasons I have yet to figure out, it sometimes has a problem around window openings if the grid happens to fall a certain way. I hope you find it helpful.
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Thanks Sam. Good tool. It seems you have to select all faces by material and then also choose the material in the drop down for it to work properly. Might make more sense to just have it either divide the selected faces, or allow you to run the plugin with no selection and then divide by material. Current method seems a tad redundant. Either way it is a time saver and much appreciated!
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Thank you Sam!
I love this forum.
The plugin should have its own topic. It's very useful.
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This is super, Sam.
Thanks a bunch (still before trying...)Could you also post the plugin in the Plugins forum, with the
[Plugin]tag? That's how the plugin index is being updated.(And maybe instead of the plugin attached here directly, just a link to that post. See, folks are already requesting changes so I can imagine some further versions).
And thanks again!
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