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Old 10th May 2006, 06:33 PM   #1
luuckyy
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Default Surface / Divide

I'm always in need of slicing adjacent surfaces, sometimes it's for slicing all adjacent surfaces wrapped all around a model, sometimes ...

So I usually insert a vertex on each edge and then slice the surfaces.
It sometimes takes a lot of time.

I was thinking that maybe you could add an option to the divide surface feature :

1 - divide the same as today (widths and heights)
2 - divide only the widths
3 - divide only the heights
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Old 11th May 2006, 02:44 AM   #2
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That would be a handy alternative, to your method or useing the Knife plug in as I normally do.
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Old 11th May 2006, 07:00 AM   #3
luuckyy
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Definitely handy yes

I have no clue if that would be hard to implement, but I guess no (?).

Andy ?
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Old 11th May 2006, 09:53 AM   #4
Dennis
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I can see where this would be handy. I did some looking into this, and saw where the problems might arise. Just to make sure I understand though - you want a function that would do something like this for you, based on a "slice direction"?



If so, how would shapes like these be sliced?



If it's only against edges that are aligned to an axis, that should be fairly straightforward, but once you throw in an odd angle, it starts to get complicated,

However, I could see some opportunities for a function that cut across selected, contiguous surfaces. In other words, say you have a cylinder where the caps are facing +y/-y, and you want to slice it in two along the X/Z axis (creating 2 short cylinders), like so:



You could go into Surface mode and select only the surfaces on the "sides" of the cylinder, and this function would create a new slice point only on edges between which both surfaces were selected. It would ignore edges in which one surface was selected and the other was not.

This approach would require you to go into Surface mode, and would require you to select the surfaces between which you wanted a slice. However, the angle of the object/edges would no longer be an issue. Plus, with the new select loop functionality coming up in version 6, it would be very trivial to perform such an operation...

I'm still winding up another project, but I may end up writing a plugin for this soon --- it's the best alternative to the Knife plugin I've seen yet --- I'd definitely get use out of it.

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Old 11th May 2006, 12:59 PM   #5
luuckyy
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Ha Dennis thank you very much for your help.

There are indeed cases where it's a little more complicated than just a few adjacent quads ...

I think this tool should work with at least 2 contiguous surfaces selected (to have the direction of the slice process), and only if these surfaces are quads (?).

Some pics here too :



Selecting contiguous surfaces :



And then the result after the tool has been applied :



Do you think it would not be possible to insert a vertex at A and B ?



If both beginning and end selected surfaces are contiguous, I suppose we will have an "unwanted" vertex. I don't know if the plugin would delete it or if we would have to do that ourselves.

Here's a picture of selected surfaces which could maybe cause a trouble (??) :




Again Dennis, thanks for your help.
I keep reading this topic for more.

Ho and Andy, thanks for the free update (for users who purchased after November 2004), very appreciated.
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Old 11th May 2006, 01:13 PM   #6
Dennis
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Hi luuckyy

We could add an option to insert a vertex at the "end of a chain" of selected surfaces. This will require that the end surfaces must be quads (rectangles). Also, the vertices would not be added if the outer edges were connected to yet another (unselected) surface.

The only obstacle now is handling slices where more than one edge of a selected surface is connected to another selected surface.

Of course, we could make this tool only work on 3 or 4 sided polys. It would make a lot more sense that way, give more predictable results, and would be much easier to code .
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Old 11th May 2006, 03:50 PM   #7
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Dennis,

so for you with these selected surfaces :



we couldn't have this result (surface A sliced) ?



By "insert a vertex at A and B" I meant slice both beginning and ending surfaces ... You seem to think that this would not be possible, I suppose there are good reasons for that (unfortunately I know nothing in TCL programming :roll: ).

But even in that case, it would save a lot of time inserting vertices, selecting vertices, slicing surfaces

I think I only need this kind of plugin for quads ...
I can't imagine how it would work with triangles.

I've played a bit with your 2 models coming with version 6 ... very very nice job you've done.
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Old 11th May 2006, 06:20 PM   #8
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Quote:
Originally Posted by luuckyy
By "insert a vertex at A and B" I meant slice both beginning and ending surfaces ... You seem to think that this would not be possible, I suppose there are good reasons for that (unfortunately I know nothing in TCL programming
Well, the only problem is, suppose you had another "row" of surfaces above the selected "row" that was connected --- how would we know that we weren't supposed to insert a vertex there as well? In this example, we could take the direction of the selected surfaces, but what if we had a grid of surfaces with intersecting selections? We basically need to come up with a set of rules to meet the functional needs of any geometry/selections we can think of...

Quote:
But even in that case, it would save a lot of time inserting vertices, selecting vertices, slicing surfaces
Agreed - if done right, you will be able to get what you need done without a lot of hassle...

Quote:
I can't imagine how it would work with triangles.
It may work with triangles. Imagine if we'd selected the top of the cylinder in the image a couple of posts up and run this function --- it would create a circular slice along the edges... of course, I haven't put too much thought into that, so...

Quote:
I've played a bit with your 2 models coming with version 6 ... very very nice job you've done.
Thanks!
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Old 12th May 2006, 01:23 PM   #9
luuckyy
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Quote:
We basically need to come up with a set of rules to meet the functional needs of any geometry/selections we can think of...
Agreed. Intersecting surfaces selection should be detected and not allowed ... (?) ... now is it easy or hard to implement that ... I really don't know
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Old 12th May 2006, 04:05 PM   #10
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Quote:
Originally Posted by luuckyy
Agreed. Intersecting surfaces selection should be detected and not allowed ... (?) ... now is it easy or hard to implement that ... I really don't know
Thankfully, very easy.

Now to find the time to implement this .......
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