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Old 19th June 2006, 10:44 AM   #21
dehkah
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Default Re: Surface / Divide

Hi,
I am just new to AC3D but one thing I came accross that was missing for me is a quick and easy-to-use knife-tool.
Yes, I have read the discussions about the AC3D knife tool and have tried both existing plugins (the more complex and the more simpler variant) but both are still too mouse-click-intensive to be a helpfull tool for quick detailing.

In my eyes the existing knife tool is excellent for complex cut operations. But just for adding some additional rows of points/edges to a mesh it consumes far too many clicks.

If I look to other professional 3D modelers - most of them have knife-tools simply working "on screen". Meaning: you have one (or more) objects in a view, click somewhere outside the object you want to knife and drag accross it until you reached the desired position. Release the mouse-button finishes the knife operation and additional points and edges are added to the mesh imediately.
In most 3D modelers this works dependent on the view direction and often you are able to press and hold [shift] or [crtl] to go into a orthogonal mode only allowing vertical or horizontal cuts related to the view.

Another variant of this tool is to do the cut with a poly-line. Cut is done immediately after the last point of the poly-line has been set.

Examples are:
1. Variant: Lightwave, Metasequoia
2. Variant: Blender, Lightwave (also possible with a spline)

The simpler variant of the knife-tool is half-way there. It would be really usefull if you could knife by drawing the poly-line - a kind of "knife-poly-line".
Selecting the knife, then selecting the object and finally selection the knife direction are too many clicks.

Is it possible to implement something as described above?

dehkah

Last edited by dehkah; 19th June 2006 at 10:53 AM.
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Old 19th June 2006, 02:11 PM   #22
Dennis
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Default Re: Surface / Divide

Quote:
Originally Posted by dehkah
Is it possible to implement something as described above?
It would take a change to the AC3D code --- there's just no practical way to do it in a plugin. When I did the Ortho-Knife, I was going for the simplest approach possible, but, as you describe, it's no substitution for a "real" knife tool.

Would love to see this in a future version of AC3D...
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