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[Released] ManFriday's Mesh Grabber [Commercial]

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  • L'AdairL'Adair Posts: 9,479
    Imago said:
    ManFriday said:
    barbult said:
    TheNathanParable said:

    Geometry Shells are supposed to match the shape of the source object, so i'm confused as to why you're trying to edit the shape of a Geometry Shell. What effect are you trying to achieve?

     

    I'm just trying to understand and test what it means to not crash with geometry shells. Is there functionality added to Mesh Grabber, or is it just that DS won't crash if you have one in your scene when you use Mesh Grabber tool. It seems to be the latter, but I originally interpreted it to mean that I could use Mesh Grabber on a geometry shell.

    As far as I understand, the geometry shell is a layer around an object with actual geometry and can't have geometry on its own except for the one that DS computed from the original object. Mesh Grabber had a bug that if an object had a geometry shell and you clicked on it, it crashed all of Daz Studio. So my change is that Mesh Grabber detects this case now and refuses to select the geometry shell.

    So it can't be used on Geoshells? sad

    I hadn't the chance to use the beta, I hope you mean I have to select the Geoshell shell from the Scene tab to "activate" it and grab ut with your tool.

    Geoshells don't have actual geometry. They don't, however, mimic the geometry if you change it after creating the shell.

    What you could do is select your object, use the mesh grabber and modify the object, (for example, add a set of horns,) create your geometry shell with those changes in place, then reset the mesh.

    I haven't tried this, (yet!) but I have had situations where I was using geoshells for adding snow, and when I moved trees, the snow didn't follow. I had to create a new geoshell for the changed mesh. Based on that experience, I do believe the above workaround will give you the results you're looking for.

  • barbultbarbult Posts: 24,240
    edited March 2020
    L'Adair said:
    ManFriday said:
    barbult said:
    ManFriday said:
    barbult said:
    I am wishing that the highlighted polygons were not so opaque. When correcting poke through, I can't tell when I have moved the mesh far enough.

    I'll lower the opacity a bit for the final release.

    Thanks, that will be helpful. Did you see the crazy issue with the tennis outfit? Any idea what is going on there?

    I watched the video but I haven't been able to reproduce that yet. I don't have that tennis outfit product myself so I'll have to do some testing tomorrow if I can find something else where I can see this problem. Thank you for reporting!

    EDIT: One thing that comes to mind, does the piece of clothing have smoothing enabled? Does the problem go away when you turn off smoothing on it? I'm not 100% sure how the smoothing modifier operates in Daz Studio but it seems to kick in after a certain amount of inactivity which looks like what's happening in the video.

    I've been seeing the same issue as barbult outlined for the Tennis Outfit on another product. I just loaded the scene and checked. The item did in fact have Smothing enabled, and when I turned Smoothing off, the strange behavior stopped. Hope this info helps.

    What product did you see the problem on? Maybe we can figure out what is similar about them. 

    Edit: Could it be as simple as everything with smoothing has this problem? If I turn smoothing off on the Tennis outfit, the problem goes away. Surely I must have used it successfully on smoothed items before???? I've been using it a lot to fix poke through.

    Post edited by barbult on
  • L'AdairL'Adair Posts: 9,479
    edited March 2020
    barbult said:
    L'Adair said:
    ManFriday said:
    barbult said:
    ManFriday said:
    barbult said:
    I am wishing that the highlighted polygons were not so opaque. When correcting poke through, I can't tell when I have moved the mesh far enough.

    I'll lower the opacity a bit for the final release.

    Thanks, that will be helpful. Did you see the crazy issue with the tennis outfit? Any idea what is going on there?

    I watched the video but I haven't been able to reproduce that yet. I don't have that tennis outfit product myself so I'll have to do some testing tomorrow if I can find something else where I can see this problem. Thank you for reporting!

    EDIT: One thing that comes to mind, does the piece of clothing have smoothing enabled? Does the problem go away when you turn off smoothing on it? I'm not 100% sure how the smoothing modifier operates in Daz Studio but it seems to kick in after a certain amount of inactivity which looks like what's happening in the video.

    I've been seeing the same issue as barbult outlined for the Tennis Outfit on another product. I just loaded the scene and checked. The item did in fact have Smothing enabled, and when I turned Smoothing off, the strange behavior stopped. Hope this info helps.

    What product did you see the problem on? Maybe we can figure out what is similar about them. 

    There were more than one, but the one I can positively identifiy is the coat from the Desperado HD Clothes set. I did a lot of tweaking of poducts for the kit-bashed outfits on the two characters in this image.

    As I look at the image, I realize I had the same problem with the scarf, (from Traveler for G3M,) and the sweater, (from Winter Dweller for G8M.)

    (Edit: Changed image link from DA to Daz Gallery.)

    Post edited by L'Adair on
  • barbultbarbult Posts: 24,240

    I don't see a description of "Lock in Place" in the Mesh Grabber manual, except in the change log section. I think a description of what it does should be added.

  • RGcincyRGcincy Posts: 2,834
    L'Adair said:

    Geoshells don't have actual geometry. They don't, however, mimic the geometry if you change it after creating the shell.

    What you could do is select your object, use the mesh grabber and modify the object, (for example, add a set of horns,) create your geometry shell with those changes in place, then reset the mesh.

    I haven't tried this, (yet!) but I have had situations where I was using geoshells for adding snow, and when I moved trees, the snow didn't follow. I had to create a new geoshell for the changed mesh. Based on that experience, I do believe the above workaround will give you the results you're looking for.

    In the case of Mesh Grabber, the geoshell follows changes as they are made. If you reset the mesh, the geoshell follows. At least in the experiments I've tried. That makes sense as the geoshell is like instances, not real geometry but a reflection of the base mesh,

  • barbultbarbult Posts: 24,240

    I've noticed a couple things with 1.9.4 Beta:

    1. When I move the gizmo to translate some polygons and then hit Ctrl Z, the polygons return to their unmodified location, but the gizmo does not return to the original location. If I move the camera with the little cube control in the viewport, the gizmo jumps back where it belongs. I do not have Lock in place checked.
    2. At first I thought Z to camera gizmo orientation wasn't working correctly. I was wrong. When I select Z to camera and then move the blue translation handle, the polygons appear to go off at an angle, instead of straight toward my camera. The issue is that my camera has Perspective ON in the Parameters pane. That is the default. Turning Perspective OFF or looking at the viewport with one of the orthogonal views shows that Z to camera is moving the polygons in the correct direction, I believe.
    3. The "incredible growing gizmo" happens most often when Z to camera is selected. The gizmo doesn't seem to grow out of control with other Gizmo orientation choices. This is most evident when the camera has been zoomed (large focal length). (We have discussed the growing gizmo issue, but maybe not the affect of Z to camera on that gizmo growth.)
  • L'AdairL'Adair Posts: 9,479
    ManFriday said:
    barbult said:
    I am wishing that the highlighted polygons were not so opaque. When correcting poke through, I can't tell when I have moved the mesh far enough.

    I'll lower the opacity a bit for the final release.

    Not that there aren't enough options already, but maybe this could be user adjustable? (Or not. It was just a fleeting idea…)

  • ManFridayManFriday Posts: 568
    edited March 2020
    Imago said:
    ManFriday said:
    barbult said:
    TheNathanParable said:

    Geometry Shells are supposed to match the shape of the source object, so i'm confused as to why you're trying to edit the shape of a Geometry Shell. What effect are you trying to achieve?

     

    I'm just trying to understand and test what it means to not crash with geometry shells. Is there functionality added to Mesh Grabber, or is it just that DS won't crash if you have one in your scene when you use Mesh Grabber tool. It seems to be the latter, but I originally interpreted it to mean that I could use Mesh Grabber on a geometry shell.

    As far as I understand, the geometry shell is a layer around an object with actual geometry and can't have geometry on its own except for the one that DS computed from the original object. Mesh Grabber had a bug that if an object had a geometry shell and you clicked on it, it crashed all of Daz Studio. So my change is that Mesh Grabber detects this case now and refuses to select the geometry shell.

    So it can't be used on Geoshells? sad

    I hadn't the chance to use the beta, I hope you mean I have to select the Geoshell shell from the Scene tab to "activate" it and grab ut with your tool.

    I don't think there is a way for mesh grabber to change the geometry of a geometry shell. The shell's geometry is generated automatically by Daz Studio from its source object. You can change the geometry of the source object with Mesh Grabber, but not of the geometry shell.

    What went wrong previously was that Mesh Grabber tried to change the non-existing geometry of the shell when you clicked on it, and crashed. That's fixed now.

    Post edited by ManFriday on
  • ManFridayManFriday Posts: 568
    barbult said:
    L'Adair said:
    ManFriday said:
    barbult said:
    ManFriday said:
    barbult said:
    I am wishing that the highlighted polygons were not so opaque. When correcting poke through, I can't tell when I have moved the mesh far enough.

    I'll lower the opacity a bit for the final release.

    Thanks, that will be helpful. Did you see the crazy issue with the tennis outfit? Any idea what is going on there?

    I watched the video but I haven't been able to reproduce that yet. I don't have that tennis outfit product myself so I'll have to do some testing tomorrow if I can find something else where I can see this problem. Thank you for reporting!

    EDIT: One thing that comes to mind, does the piece of clothing have smoothing enabled? Does the problem go away when you turn off smoothing on it? I'm not 100% sure how the smoothing modifier operates in Daz Studio but it seems to kick in after a certain amount of inactivity which looks like what's happening in the video.

    I've been seeing the same issue as barbult outlined for the Tennis Outfit on another product. I just loaded the scene and checked. The item did in fact have Smothing enabled, and when I turned Smoothing off, the strange behavior stopped. Hope this info helps.

    What product did you see the problem on? Maybe we can figure out what is similar about them. 

    Edit: Could it be as simple as everything with smoothing has this problem? If I turn smoothing off on the Tennis outfit, the problem goes away. Surely I must have used it successfully on smoothed items before???? I've been using it a lot to fix poke through.

    I'm glad that we have identified the smoothing modifier as the cause. Both the smoothing modifier and the Mesh Grabber are geometry modifiers and compete in changing the mesh, but the smoothing modifier seems to do it with a delay, which makes it less predictable. I'm suspecting the difference between various sets of clothing probably lies in the defaults in the "Smoothing" section of the parameters, so some items may behave more erratically than others.

  • ManFridayManFriday Posts: 568
    barbult said:

    I don't see a description of "Lock in Place" in the Mesh Grabber manual, except in the change log section. I think a description of what it does should be added.

    Thank you! Will add.

  • ManFridayManFriday Posts: 568
    L'Adair said:
    ManFriday said:
    barbult said:
    I am wishing that the highlighted polygons were not so opaque. When correcting poke through, I can't tell when I have moved the mesh far enough.

    I'll lower the opacity a bit for the final release.

    Not that there aren't enough options already, but maybe this could be user adjustable? (Or not. It was just a fleeting idea…)

    For a future version maybe. :-)

  • ManFridayManFriday Posts: 568
    edited March 2020
    barbult said:

    I've noticed a couple things with 1.9.4 Beta:

    1. When I move the gizmo to translate some polygons and then hit Ctrl Z, the polygons return to their unmodified location, but the gizmo does not return to the original location. If I move the camera with the little cube control in the viewport, the gizmo jumps back where it belongs. I do not have Lock in place checked.

    Thank you. I just fixed that too in my code.

    barbult said:
    1. At first I thought Z to camera gizmo orientation wasn't working correctly. I was wrong. When I select Z to camera and then move the blue translation handle, the polygons appear to go off at an angle, instead of straight toward my camera. The issue is that my camera has Perspective ON in the Parameters pane. That is the default. Turning Perspective OFF or looking at the viewport with one of the orthogonal views shows that Z to camera is moving the polygons in the correct direction, I believe.

    The "Z to camera" is really designed for rotating around the Z axis. It's not really useful for dragging along the Z axis. I should hide the Z axis and the X and Y rotation controls in that mode even.

    barbult said:
    1. The "incredible growing gizmo" happens most often when Z to camera is selected. The gizmo doesn't seem to grow out of control with other Gizmo orientation choices. This is most evident when the camera has been zoomed (large focal length). (We have discussed the growing gizmo issue, but maybe not the affect of Z to camera on that gizmo growth.)

    Right now I don't seem to be able to reproduce it, but I'm going to have to have another look at this.

    Post edited by ManFriday on
  • tkdroberttkdrobert Posts: 3,543

    I baught this on Sunday.  I played around with it a bit last night.  Pushing in the geometry of a model is a lot more tricky that pulling out.  I have very little experience in modeling so I'll have to practice.  One thing I can say from my little time playing around, creating battle damage is going to be fun.  I'll probably pop in here from time to time and ask stupid questions.  Later this week, I'm going to try and great a crash trench on a primative plane.

  • ManFridayManFriday Posts: 568
    RGcincy said:
    1. I like the range of Falloff Radius (very low values (0-5) are good for figures, very high values (900-1000) are good for large terrains and objects) but the slider is frustrating to set at the low end. I find I pretty much have to drag the slider to the lowest value (0.5 or 0.0 depending upon the beta version) and click the tiny + sign multiple times to adjust it. Having a checkbox that changed the range by 10 would be very helpful (e.g. instead of 0-1000 it becomes 0-100). An alternative approach would be a way to type in the value.

    Just a quick note that I have figured out how to make the text of the slider editable. :-) That will be in the next update.

  • ManFridayManFriday Posts: 568
    tkdrobert said:

    I baught this on Sunday.  I played around with it a bit last night.  Pushing in the geometry of a model is a lot more tricky that pulling out.  I have very little experience in modeling so I'll have to practice.  One thing I can say from my little time playing around, creating battle damage is going to be fun.  I'll probably pop in here from time to time and ask stupid questions.  Later this week, I'm going to try and great a crash trench on a primative plane.

    Thank you for your purchase! I am no experienced artist, but I find 3D modeling a bit like learning a musical instrument. Even if it seems incredibly hard at the beginning, the more you practice, the better it gets.

  • barbultbarbult Posts: 24,240

    If you eliminate the Z to camera translation, 

    ManFriday said:
    RGcincy said:
    1. I like the range of Falloff Radius (very low values (0-5) are good for figures, very high values (900-1000) are good for large terrains and objects) but the slider is frustrating to set at the low end. I find I pretty much have to drag the slider to the lowest value (0.5 or 0.0 depending upon the beta version) and click the tiny + sign multiple times to adjust it. Having a checkbox that changed the range by 10 would be very helpful (e.g. instead of 0-1000 it becomes 0-100). An alternative approach would be a way to type in the value.

    Just a quick note that I have figured out how to make the text of the slider editable. :-) That will be in the next update.

    Yes! That will make it easier to use. Thanks.
  • tkdroberttkdrobert Posts: 3,543

    I wish this had a semetry tool.  I made fins on the head of a robot.  I couldn't get it to look the same on both sides.  I came real close.  I'll have to practice more this weekend.

  • RGcincyRGcincy Posts: 2,834
    ManFriday said:

    Just a quick note that I have figured out how to make the text of the slider editable. :-) That will be in the next update.

    Good news, that will be a big help

  • RGcincyRGcincy Posts: 2,834
    tkdrobert said:

    I wish this had a semetry tool.  I made fins on the head of a robot.  I couldn't get it to look the same on both sides.  I came real close.  I'll have to practice more this weekend.

    Follow this tutorial to create a mirror morph from the changes you made on one side. 

  • tkdroberttkdrobert Posts: 3,543
    RGcincy said:
    tkdrobert said:

    I wish this had a semetry tool.  I made fins on the head of a robot.  I couldn't get it to look the same on both sides.  I came real close.  I'll have to practice more this weekend.

    Follow this tutorial to create a mirror morph from the changes you made on one side. 

    Thank you.

  • BratpiperBratpiper Posts: 47

    Bought this last week and finally found time to play with it. Tried to download Beta 1.9.4 today, 11th March, and am getting message from mega.nz that file is no longer available?

  • ManFridayManFriday Posts: 568
    Bratpiper said:

    Bought this last week and finally found time to play with it. Tried to download Beta 1.9.4 today, 11th March, and am getting message from mega.nz that file is no longer available?

    Thank you for buying! Yes, the betas are out of date. I have submitted an update to Daz, and it should show up in your DIM once it's through testing!

  • lukon100lukon100 Posts: 803

    Do these beta updates fix the problem of the gizmo being too far from the selected geometry?

    I just got around to using Mesh Grabber a few days ago. And I find that more often than not, the gizmo is too far away from the selected geometry. So I'm wondering what that status is on fixing that.

  • PaintboxPaintbox Posts: 1,633
    ManFriday said:
    Bratpiper said:

    Bought this last week and finally found time to play with it. Tried to download Beta 1.9.4 today, 11th March, and am getting message from mega.nz that file is no longer available?

    Thank you for buying! Yes, the betas are out of date. I have submitted an update to Daz, and it should show up in your DIM once it's through testing!

    Will this one come with the rotation tool or will it be an add-on?

  • ManFridayManFriday Posts: 568
    lukon100 said:

    Do these beta updates fix the problem of the gizmo being too far from the selected geometry?

    I just got around to using Mesh Grabber a few days ago. And I find that more often than not, the gizmo is too far away from the selected geometry. So I'm wondering what that status is on fixing that.

    Yes, that will be fixed.

  • ManFridayManFriday Posts: 568
    Paintbox said:
    ManFriday said:
    Bratpiper said:

    Bought this last week and finally found time to play with it. Tried to download Beta 1.9.4 today, 11th March, and am getting message from mega.nz that file is no longer available?

    Thank you for buying! Yes, the betas are out of date. I have submitted an update to Daz, and it should show up in your DIM once it's through testing!

    Will this one come with the rotation tool or will it be an add-on?

    The rotations will be a separate add-on product. All the other fixes and updates from the betas will be a free update in your DIM.

  • kaotkblisskaotkbliss Posts: 2,914

    I will be watching Dim and this thread in hopes Daz pushes the update live real soon. I picked this up a few weeks ago and just went to use it but can't because the gizmo is too far from the item I want to adjust. 

  • barbultbarbult Posts: 24,240

    I found a new use for Mesh Grabber in my render today. I've been using it mostly to fix clothing poke through or to squish down chair cushions, etc. Today it came in very handy to push hair back behind some fingers. Before Mesh Grabber the hair was running through the finger flesh, and I couldn't find a morph that would move it back out of the way.

     

    Carina_Default Camera.jpg
    2000 x 1500 - 1M
  • Callidus SimiaCallidus Simia Posts: 132
    barbult said:

    I found a new use for Mesh Grabber in my render today. I've been using it mostly to fix clothing poke through or to squish down chair cushions, etc. Today it came in very handy to push hair back behind some fingers. Before Mesh Grabber the hair was running through the finger flesh, and I couldn't find a morph that would move it back out of the way.

     

    Another good use for Mesh Grabber is to tuck hair natuarally behind ears. Sometimes hair just  does not follow through on the ear mesh so a little "grabbing" helps

  • DripDrip Posts: 1,191

    For those interested: I just noticed an update to Mesh Grabber in my DIM.

    I guess you'd see it anyway once you buy something new from the store, but just in case that doesn't happen for a while, you may want to just run DIM for the update now.

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