Anyone familiar with Geo poly from polyboost? You select a face, of any number of sides, hit it, and it makes the poly perfectly planar and equi-angular. So an 8 sides face becomes a perfect octagon. This is handy for extruding perfect cylinders that will smooth into perfect cylinders.

But, I want a geo loop tool. Let's say you have a tree branch, and you create it out of an 8 sided cylinder, but you want the tip to be 4 sides, and have it taper down in between. After collapsing edges, you're left with an odd cross section that isn't as round as it could be. I want a geo loop tool that let's you select an edge loop, and it will make it planar and equi angular.

Does one exist? If not, will a kind soul attempt to create one?

would you mind making a screenshot for this, i dont get it

Yeah I think I know what you mean, but a quick screenshot/paintover would definitely help illustrate what you want out of this.

I thought you were a technical artist anyway, can't you script this?

In Maya, sure - piece of cake. (you didn't mention what software....)

Originally Posted by MoP

Yeah I think I know what you mean, but a quick screenshot/paintover would definitely help illustrate what you want out of this.

I thought you were a technical artist anyway, can't you script this?

Not anymore, I'm a level artist, and the second my title changed, all my skills disappeared!

Wharghoul, in Max.

Originally Posted by Whargoul

In Maya, sure - piece of cake. (you didn't mention what software....)

Polyboost is a Max exclusive plugin.

While I can't speak much to the script you are looking for and far be it from me to teach the poopmeister, I can say that I might approach this differently...?

I would remove the faces of your branch cylinder so that you only have the two end-cap polygons, then border select them and use the bridge tool. From here you can use the bridge options to modify segments, taper, bias, etc to get a really nice transition from an 8-sided polygon a 4-sided one, that has a good organic curve to it and everything. You can even throw some twist in there if you like.

Depending on your branch you might do this in two sections or per sub-branch or something, but using this basic technique and some soft-select afterwards I'd think you could get some decent results pretty quickly.

also HELL YEAH LEVEL ARTIST WELCOME TO THE CLUB BUDDY.

I need to post an image, I'll do it shortly. That would work Cman, but it would take a lot longer than having a script.

Yeah, I was just being an ass. Most people don't say what they want it for (even though it's assumed it's Max). I just like quoting "what software" because so many noobs some in here and ask a question, and people always have to ask what software in the next post. And poop is such a noob

Also, he could have been referencing a tool, and asking for something like that, ie. XSI has this cool mumbojumbo tool, I want something similar in Lightwave, can anyone help?

But the idea is cool, and I probably will make one for Maya - the math seems fairly easy, except for a little bit of "best fit" stuff. I already have one I wrote for fitting things to the best plane (great for capping off a wrist for example) - but adding something to "cylinderize" it shouldn't be too tough.

Gotta run, but here's what I mean:

Does loops set flow work? I know I have had some luck and also not so much luck with that method.

Something my counterpart here at SD wrote for Maya was an "un-bevel" script which you'd use instead of Collapse in this case - basically it finds the incoming edge angles of the edge you're trying to collapse, and reconstructs the "correct" vertex position from this, and collapses to that position, retaining the volume of the shape.

It's a python script, so maaaaybe portable to Max fairly easily, but I dunno if I have the time/inclination to look into that yet

Geo Loop? That would be handy. +1

That would be a nifty tool. Sometimes I will ask our artists to up res a cylindrical model like a barrel which looks too faceted. It would be great if they could just add the extra edge loops click the button and have a perfect cylinder at a higher res. Cody let me know when you have finished writing this.

If you maya users get this before me when I went and made that jpeg, i will shake my fist at you over the internet SO HARD!!!!

Originally Posted by malcolm

That would be a nifty tool. Sometimes I will ask our artists to up res a cylindrical model like a barrel which looks too faceted. It would be great if they could just add the extra edge loops click the button and have a perfect cylinder at a higher res. Cody let me know when you have finished writing this.

you can already do that with polyboost in max... it is very handy indeed...

How do you want it to work? I'm figuring out the logic and came to a couple of questions:

Is every vertex in the edge loop modified to fit the regular shape, or is there a fixed point and the other just slide around? I guess it's easier to have a fixed point to start the calculation. How do you like it? Do you want to take the radius form the average distance from loop center, or prefer to take it from the chosen fixed point?

What if vertexes in the loop don't lie on a plane? Do you want them to be flattened on the average plane, or do you prefer them to keep the same projection distance from the average plane?

I may code such tool in forthcoming IC.Shape 2.

I'd prefer to take from loop center, and to be flattened to an average plane. It would probably need to be made planar first, or I imagine the angles would be really difficult to figure out.

To get the average plane I think to get the average center, then edge by edge do a cross product between edge vector and the vector from the center to the edge, then get the average normal from all cross products, it should be the average plane normal, the same used in flatten. I'm not completely sure, haven't tested it yet, but should work. I'm just asking myself how is calculated the average plane between bare verts...

(after a quick test...)

...Well, it seems it's not calculated at all. If you try a "Make Planar" on bare isolated verts it makes them planar in X.

EDIT
(after other quick tests...)

It seems "Make Planar" fails badly even on an edge loop in a cylinder. Again it makes verts flat along one axis.

It works if you cap it first.

Edit: So what i thought was actually true. Once you collapse vertices the original center of the circle is lost. The center calculated from all vertices at least. How do you construct a cicle without knowing the correct centerpoint? Some testing code:

(
    --If there is anything selected?
        local sel = getCurrentSelection()
        if sel.count != 0 then
        (
            --Get the current modifier.
            local theObject = modPanel.GetCurrentObject()
            
            if(classof theObject == Editable_Poly)then
            (
                if(subobjectlevel == 1)then
                (
                    local verts = (polyOp.getVertSelection theObject) as array
                    
                    if verts.count != 0 then
                    (
                        local amount = verts.count
                        local centerpos = [0,0,0]
                        for i in verts do
                        (    
                            centerpos += polyOp.getVert theObject i node:$
                        )--end for
                        
                        centerpos = centerpos / amount
                        
                        message = ""
                        message += "---Centerpos is:" + centerpos as string
                        print message
                        
                    )--end if
                )--end if
            )
        )
)

I think the fastest way, without fancy math would be to collapse edges and spherify the ugly loop as selection. I'm not sure if you can do that without adding a modifier though...

EDIT: Never mind that doesn't work that well at all.

simple and dull algorithm
1. get average center point
2.get average plane
3. get average radius
4.create n sided circle with radius and center point
5 move vertexes to their counterpart in the circle
6.delete circle
7. rotare vertexes relative to the centerpoint until the hull is convex

even easyer script way slice edgeoop, cap edgeloop,geopoly, delete cap, move ugly verts to beaty verts and collapse

Originally Posted by poopinmymouth

If you maya users get this before me when I went and made that jpeg, i will shake my fist at you over the internet SO HARD!!!!

we already have it, i use it all the time...

http://www.creativecrash.com/maya/do...e_version=2009


the example pic is doing it a different way, but it also has the functionality your looking for, if you select a loop is going around the tube and not down it.. it basically spaces everything out equally, so if you do it to a round loop it becomes a circle..

SHAKE IT!!!

Geo poly will equalize this stuff in max if you have it capped, but not for edges. I'm trying to see if the new tools in max 2010 will do that same thing. I know it's polyboost, but maybe something will work.

I realize I could cap, geopoly and reweld, but sometimes I'm wanting to do this on several edges down a tube, like on tree branches or tentacles, and it's just not as efficient as a script, which is why I asked. I already have access to the cap/geopoly method now.

*shakes fist at arshlevon*