Tesselation in Carrara on an abritrary position like in Heyagon?

yandrisyandris Posts: 93
edited December 1969 in Carrara Discussion

Hello,

How can I insert another line (edge) at an arbitrary position on an object? In Hexagon this goes with Free Tesselate, but when I pick them in Carrara Tesselate is always selected only the center, so no arbitrary position.

I added an Image to clarify how it should work (from Hexagon).


Yandris

Comments

  • DUDUDUDU Posts: 1,945
    edited December 1969

    I think that you can create points with the feather+ (1/2, 1/4, 1/3) and then to move them…

  • DiomedeDiomede Posts: 15,026
    edited December 1969

    Also, and this might only be in the pro version, there is an icon along the top menu of the vertex modeling room that looks like a sideways H with a skeleton inside. If you hover your mouse over it, it will say quick filet. There is a little triangle on the icon. If you click the triangle you will get four choices for manipulating lines. One of them will allow you to choose a line and then create a new line and drag it anywhere along the polygon of the line it was copied from.

    Not sure if that made sense, but play with the choices in the quick filet menu, if you have the pro version.

  • yandrisyandris Posts: 93
    edited December 1969

    Yes, have the pro, but the "Fillet tool" or the "Extract ... tool" will only work on simple meshs like the cube, but if i have a mesh that is not symetric and have different sides or whatever, than i have no lines to select to duplicate and move along. in Maxon C4D there was a Tool "Knife" or "Cutter" (can't remember) for this.

    Thanks

    Yandris

  • DiomedeDiomede Posts: 15,026
    edited December 1969

    yandris said:
    Yes, have the pro, but the "Fillet tool" or the "Extract ... tool" will only work on simple meshs like the cube, but if i have a mesh that is not symetric and have different sides or whatever, than i have no lines to select to duplicate and move along. in Maxon C4D there was a Tool "Knife" or "Cutter" (can't remember) for this.

    Thanks

    Yandris

    Ah, yes, the cut tool, or lack thereof. The real experts will now have to weigh in.

    To your first question, if you don't want to use the 1/2, 1/3, 1/4 position choices when adding a new vertex for a new line, there is a checkbox in the properties tray (upper right) where you can change the setting for add vertex from "constrain position" to "free position." You can then add a series of vertexes wherever you like.

    As for a cut tool, you will not be as satisfied with the choices in C8.5 compared to Hex. You can select a line and use the filet tools as discussed above. You can also be creative, such as try to use a temporary mesh as a boolean and cycle through the boolean choices until you get the line option, instead of the union/intersection type choices. What might work depends on the characteristics of the mesh that you are trying to cut.

    I will also anxiously wait to hear what the real experts have to say.

  • evilproducerevilproducer Posts: 9,040
    edited December 1969

    Maybe I'm missing something because I consider myself a bit of a novice in the VM, but I'm pretty sure there's a cut tool. Whether it's the same function as Hex, I can't say. I'm doing a test render at the moment, but I'll look into it when it's done and post what I find, then you all can let me know if I'm misunderstanding what the cut tool does.

  • DiomedeDiomede Posts: 15,026
    edited December 1969

    Yes, there is a cut tool and I am posting some pics.

    Use the polyline in one of the directional camera so you get a flat drawing plane. Draw the cut. the cut tool and the boolean tool are under the same tab in the vertex modeling room menu. The choices of how the cut works are in the properties tray on the right.

    You won't be as satisfied as with Hex, so the Hex people keep saying.

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  • DiomedeDiomede Posts: 15,026
    edited December 1969

    Note the choice on the far right is split surface. it is the choice that will simply add lines to your mesh. Always confirm that you have not inadvertently split the mesh. Check in the lower right area of the properties tray where it says how many vertexes there are. It should still say 1 mesh.

    If I understand the critique by users of other programs, the cut tool is again limited by instances in which you intend this "through the mesh" cut, which is why I mentioned other creativity.

  • DiomedeDiomede Posts: 15,026
    edited December 1969

    diomede64 said:
    Note the choice on the far right is split surface. it is the choice that will simply add lines to your mesh. Always confirm that you have not inadvertently split the mesh. Check in the lower right area of the properties tray where it says how many vertexes there are. It should still say 1 mesh.

    If I understand the critique by users of other programs, the cut tool is again limited by instances in which you intend this "through the mesh" cut, which is why I mentioned other creativity.

    I am giving all sorts of bad info today. It does split the mesh. You may have to weld the result. Been a while.

  • tbwoqtbwoq Posts: 238
    edited March 2014

    The vertex 'Cut' tool is the same as the regular boolean function except that it uses polyline/closed polyline to boolean a polymesh volume(as seen in diomede64's screen shots). Carrara doesn't have an automatic loop slice or loop tesselation. It has to be done manually by selecting edges and subdividing or linking vertices etc.

    Post edited by tbwoq on
  • evilproducerevilproducer Posts: 9,040
    edited December 1969

    I guess I mis-read the name of the tool I was looking at. It's the little scissors icon and it's called the Delete tool. I can use it to make clean holes in a mesh without booleans though.

    I started with a vertex cube and deleted points to make larger oplygons for the doors and windows. I then selected the polys for the doors and windows and selected Empty Polygon from the Construct menu. I then added thickness, but it made the outer walls puffy looking so I tried creasing the polys first. It was a bit better, but still a bit puffy around the corners. I have an idea I want to try to get rid of the issue.

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  • DiomedeDiomede Posts: 15,026
    edited December 1969

    and here is an example of using boolean, because you can get more creative in 3D space then with the simple polyline. Hopefully you can see the yellow line on the sphere. With the boolean, you might have more exact ability to include or exclude sections of the first mesh by manipulating the shape of the second mesh compared to if you used the polyline tool.

    There is a whole backstory of to the cut tool conversation that we shouldn't go into here. Suffice it to say that you can get creative with boolean to try to address asymmetrical meshes or complex selection areas, but the cut tool itself gets a lot of grief.

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  • evilproducerevilproducer Posts: 9,040
    edited December 1969

    tbwoq said:
    The vertex 'Cut' tool is the same as the regular boolean function except that it uses polyline/closed polyline to boolean a polymesh volume(as seen in diomede64's screen shots). Carrara doesn't have an automatic loop slice or loop tesselation. It has to be done manually by selecting edges and subdividing or linking vertices etc.

    Listen to this guy. He knows his Carrara VM! If 3dage should poke his head in here, he also is a VM Guru!

  • tbwoqtbwoq Posts: 238
    edited December 1969

    Hi evilproducer. Thanks for the VM compliment, I'm still learning. :)

    The Bridge tool can also punch holes similar to a boolean, but with options to twist and use segments etc.

    Insert a vertex cube with at least an object definition of 3. Select a similar number and shape polygons on opposite sides. Then use the bridge tool. It should make a hole through the cube by connecting the polygons. Good for making some windows and doors where theres polygons to bridge.

  • tbwoqtbwoq Posts: 238
    edited December 1969

    Hi yandris.

    Extract Along/Around are probably the closest for getting loop type edge slices, but as you mentioned, it probably doesn't work very well for non-symmetrical polymeshes. Heres one way for creating a loop slice(s) on a non-symmetrical vertex polymesh in Carrara.

    -Select a ring of polygons around the mesh you want to loop slice.
    -Then delete them to cut the model into two separate polymesh sides.
    -Now select the outer edges on both sides made from the delete cut. Hold down the Shift key and loop select the edges(upper right panel 'Loop' button).
    -Use the Bridge tool which will reconnect those edges and add as many slices/segments("+" plus symbol) as needed.

    Its not a free tesselate method, but it might setup slices you can use the other line tools with. Hope this helps.

  • 3DAGE3DAGE Posts: 3,311
    edited December 1969

    another thought which may help is,.. to use the Scale tool,... to temporarily change an irregular line to a straight line

    If you have non symmetrical / irregular edge,. and you want to create a new edge,..
    you can select, then scale the edge to make it Flat (see pic) (this is also handy for straightening edges/poly's/vertices)
    then you can extract an new flat edge,. then reselect and rescale the original edge, back into it's starting shape.

    tbwoq's method of using the bridge tool, to add edges is also very nice, and possibly less sloppy than mine :)

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  • Two years later I wanted to add...

    I think the free tessalation (knife) tool in Hexagon 2.5 IS what causes it to crash a lot.

    Having used Metaseqoia, Ray Supreme (favorite prior to finding Hexagon), Silo 2 and Hexagon 2.5 I've come to find they

    will all crash intermittently if the modeling gets a bit too sloppy. The more non-linear the tools the easier it is to drop

    yourself to desktop.

    Having said that though; freedoms like the tesselation toolset in Hexagon are why it's enjoyable to use - it also speeds things up.

    All Hexagon is really missing is an autosave feature. I still use Hex and just got used to saving manually every five minutes but I've lost

    a good accumlative five hours of work in Hex.

    Ultimately what I would like to see is DAZ meld Hexagon into Carrara.

  • TangoAlphaTangoAlpha Posts: 4,584

    Carrara is also missing an autosave feature.

    (Spot who just lost a chunk of work to "I'm sure I already saved that") sad

  • be very carefull what you wish for guys

    iClone 6 has an autosave and recovery feature that very quickly uses up all my C drive space esp if using nvidia physX

    I almost crashed my whole computer a few times from it before I found out where over 100GB of space was eaten away

  • TangoAlphaTangoAlpha Posts: 4,584

    I know - my promo projects are close to 2 GB, with a few figures & props in them (and they take forever to save - 20+ minutes sometimes, which is how I get to the state of not having saved something, when Carrara crashed.

    last night: "How was your day, hun?"

    "Well, I saved my work a few times, moved a camera position, adjusted some lights, discovered those shoes were actually heels not flats, which meant the foot poses were up the spout, and the 2 hour render that had just completed was junk, redid that, *thought* I'd saved it, kicked off another render, cancelled it cos I spotted a bad light effect, put some money in the swear box cos Carrara locked up solid, put even more money in the swear box cos the project now complains about 70 missing textures, and Daz still hasn't fixed the bug that means it doesn't tell you the name of the file it's looking for, and checked up on the Iray render in progress-30% after 24 hours."

    "So basically you did nothing."

    "Yup."

    BTW, I kicked off a file save 10 minutes before starting to write this post. It's still saving . . .

  • DUDUDUDU Posts: 1,945
    BTW, I kicked off a file save 10 minutes before starting to write this post. It's still saving . . .

    And you want an autosave feature ?frown

  • TangoAlphaTangoAlpha Posts: 4,584
    edited February 2016
    DUDU said:
    BTW, I kicked off a file save 10 minutes before starting to write this post. It's still saving . . .

    And you want an autosave feature ?frown

    Yeah I know. To be fair, the really long save times only really apply when I've got big scenes with 4 or 5 Genesis 2 characters in them. Mostly what I want is "That last  thing I was working on just before it crashed" or "I really didn't mean to click on 'don't save' just before I quit". I don't really care how it does it.

    It could keep a cache of things that changed since the last save - much like an undo trail. It doesn't need to spend the whole day writing the same stuff out over and over.

    Post edited by TangoAlpha on
  •  

    Having used Metaseqoia, Ray Supreme (favorite prior to finding Hexagon), Silo 2 and Hexagon 2.5 I've come to find they

    will all crash intermittently if the modeling gets a bit too sloppy. The more non-linear the tools the easier it is to drop

    yourself to desktop.

    Nope, not really true for Silo, sorry, been using Silo since it's conception (was beta tester as well), knife tool was bit buggy when they introduced it first in both versions (like many other tools in early development), but never caused forced exit or chrash, be that in XP, Vista or Win8, however, Silo 1 probably would if you tried to use it on accidently created non-manifold surface (Silo has no automatic detection/protection-from-creating-one here), but that's probably true for more then few other tools designed for SDS modelers smiley

  • IKtorIKtor Posts: 44
    yandris said:

    "Hello,

    How can I insert another line (edge) at an arbitrary position on an object? In Hexagon this goes with Free Tesselate, but when I pick them in Carrara Tesselate is always selected only the center, so no arbitrary position.

    I added an Image to clarify how it should work (from Hexagon).


    Yandris"

    In Carrara  when we press to use ADD points ,on right TAB apears for we chose Constrain or Free position auto LINK or not also as we want is the Free Tessalate of carrara

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