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[Released] ManFriday's Mesh Grabber [Commercial]

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  • LoonyLoony Posts: 1,817
    edited May 2020
    ManFriday said:
    Loony said:

    I had never there problems, when I select stuff with the geo editor, then does the MG it also select. I have it both on hotkeys (CTRl+E and CTRL+M GeoEditor+Meshgrabber).

    Maybe you can make a clip to show the problem?

    I didnt saw ManFriday in the last time, I hope he is okay, maybe working hard on new Stuff, I hope he didnt got some problems (fugg Corona..).

    So don't expect in the next time a answer from himself :)

    No need to worry, I'm fine personally, just not as productive as I'd like to be. But hopefully that will improve again soon! Hope everyone else is OK!

    Nice to see you back :D and you poor lion have also multiple threads with products, so a lot stuff on your table :D You should expand your team ;)

    And would be nice when you make it possible to save the last sued options and "we" still wait on the rotation tool :D

    Post edited by Loony on
  • L'AdairL'Adair Posts: 9,479
    edited May 2020

    It took me the better part of four days to recover from a problem of my own making.

    I haven't tested this to see if it's repeatable, but I wanted to let folks know what I did, as a warning to not try it themselves. Short story is, I used Mesh Grabber to modify an object. And then I used the Geometry Editor to delete some polygons. Something didn't look right, so I reloaded the scene, but managed to save it in the process. Whatever wasn't right, corrupted the file.

    Here's the long story:

    • DS has a history, (with me,) of crashing when I use the Geometry Editor tool. For that reason, I always save a scene before attempting to delete polygons from any object. This time was no different.
    • I had hidden all but the bit of mesh I wanted to modify and exported it as an OBJ.
    • I imported my new OBJ, and unhid things around it so I could make my modifications.
    • I used Mesh Grabber on the OBJ to "bend it to my will."
    • I then used the Geometry Editor to remove a ring of polygons.
    • The OBJ changed shape enough to be noticable, and I also noticed the mesh had "split." (That was due to the OBJ not being welded where it came together.)
    • I decided to revert back to my last saved version, went to File > Open Recent and selected the scene I was working on.
    • The dialog to Save the scene poppped up.
    • Normally, I press the N key first and then hit Enter.
    • This is where I screwed up: I hit the Enter key before the N key, and Daz Studio saved the scene.

    I could only guess that the code for the Mesh Grabber modifications included vertices that no longer existed. However, working with the uncompressed scene file in a json editor, removing all the code referencing that OBJ was not sufficient to remove the corrupted code. I ended up creating several scene subset files of various scene elements, all of which worked except for my attempts to extract the original mesh object my OBJ was created from. Fortunately, I had been creating morphs of my changes as I went along, so I was able to use the OBJs I'd made for the purpose, and recreate my morphs on a newly added copy of that mesh, and I've got the scene back to where it was before I screwed I up. (And have successfully made additional changes.)

    What I'm working on is a woven basket. I'm turning it from pristine new to weathered and broken from sitting out in the elements for who knows how long. There are 38 individual weavers, (the horizontal reeds—and I had to look that up, 'cause I didn't know what they were called,) and I wanted to break some of them and have fallen pieces below the basket. It was an OBJ of one of those weavers that caused all the problems. (Okay, I caused all the problems…)

    By the way, I sent in a feature request via the Contact Us link, asking for a Revert button in the file menu. If any of you think that would be a good idea, you could also request the feature. If enough of us ask for a one button solution that bypasses the save dialog and reloads the scene file we're working on, maybe it will happen.

    ETA: The moral of the story… Don't delete polygons after using Mesh Grabber.

    ETA2: This is specifically about DELETING POLYGONS after using Mesh Grabber!

    Selecting polygons, edges or vertices in the Geometry Editor then switching to the Mesh Grabber to manipulate them works exceptionally well, imo. And really speeds up my workflow.

    Post edited by L'Adair on
  • L'AdairL'Adair Posts: 9,479

    The MG Rotations Add On has finally made it to the store!

    Congratulations, @ManFriday!

  • NathNath Posts: 2,735

    I'm not seeing any download option though in my product library (yes, I bought it so fast it left scorch marks on the cart).

  • L'AdairL'Adair Posts: 9,479
    Nath said:

    I'm not seeing any download option though in my product library (yes, I bought it so fast it left scorch marks on the cart).

    The product page only indicates the Intstall Manager as the Install Type.

    You could download it via DIM and then install manually.

  • NathNath Posts: 2,735
    L'Adair said:
    Nath said:

    I'm not seeing any download option though in my product library (yes, I bought it so fast it left scorch marks on the cart).

    The product page only indicates the Intstall Manager as the Install Type.

    You could download it via DIM and then install manually.

    Okay, found it!

  • ManFridayManFriday Posts: 560

    Hello everybody! I too am glad it's out. I started a new thread for issues specific to this add-on: https://www.daz3d.com/forums/discussion/406786/released-rotations-add-on-for-manfriday-s-mesh-grabber-commercial and will respond there.

  • joemiceli_af4eae92e1joemiceli_af4eae92e1 Posts: 8

    Okay, after spending a lot ot money and time on products that don't do what they say they do, it was a revelation to find Mesh Grabber! Worth every penny. The problem I'm having is that I don't know how to get the most out of it. Sure, I've got "poke through" solved (THANK YOU THANK YOU THANK YOU) but I have no idea how to get some of the other effects shown in  your vids, like smoothing clothing and extending the top of a tower. Are there going to be any youtube instruction tutorials? That would make this whole thing make sense for me. 

     

  • LoonyLoony Posts: 1,817
    joemiceli_af4eae92e1 said:

    Okay, after spending a lot ot money and time on products that don't do what they say they do, it was a revelation to find Mesh Grabber! Worth every penny. The problem I'm having is that I don't know how to get the most out of it. Sure, I've got "poke through" solved (THANK YOU THANK YOU THANK YOU) but I have no idea how to get some of the other effects shown in  your vids, like smoothing clothing and extending the top of a tower. Are there going to be any youtube instruction tutorials? That would make this whole thing make sense for me. 

     

    Well, I use it a lot times, I made simple videos who show examples. In the rotation thread did I showed what I made with the rotation.

    There can you see how I used it to make a pillow fit in the arms of the boy, but that was an old version with more struggles.

    Here I showed how to move the blanket over the teddy using the rotation + side moving features.

     

    I mainly recommend use the Linear function. I also use Meshgrabber to Model a bit, also to fit Clothes to my will.

    Here you saw a other thing I made:

    https://www.daz3d.com/forums/discussion/407321/making-a-morph-out-of-meshgrabbers-move

    If you set the Falloff Size from meshgrabber to 0, you can use it to move Objects who are inside other objects. It... give soo much examples, BUT.

    You should not try to find what others do and copy that, mainly I would say Meshgrabber comes TO YOU, when you need it, You have an object but you wanna change it, you pull out Meshgrabber and try to adjust it ;)

     

  • bnstone_stonebnstone_stone Posts: 79

    Love the addon and the rotation addon, however; I installed and found out that my version was still 1.0 not 2.0. Supposedly, this was to be updated in the download manager but it never did.

    Solution, went to my products and manualy downloaded and installed.

    Now all is good...

  • ManFridayManFriday Posts: 560
    edited May 2020
    joemiceli_af4eae92e1 said:

    Okay, after spending a lot ot money and time on products that don't do what they say they do, it was a revelation to find Mesh Grabber! Worth every penny. The problem I'm having is that I don't know how to get the most out of it. Sure, I've got "poke through" solved (THANK YOU THANK YOU THANK YOU) but I have no idea how to get some of the other effects shown in  your vids, like smoothing clothing and extending the top of a tower. Are there going to be any youtube instruction tutorials? That would make this whole thing make sense for me.

    I'm afraid I don't have the time to do extensive video tutorials... the five minute videos you see on the product pages were two days of work each, which I'd rather put into programming, to be honest. But the process is always the same:

    1. Select an object in the scene tree.
    2. Switch to the mesh grabber tool.
    3. Select faces (or edges, or vertices) in the scene. In the case of the growing tower, I selected the top of the roof.
    4. Use the mouse wheel to increase or decrease the falloff radius. In the case of the tower, it was fairly large to distribute the translation along the entire height of the tower.
    5. For rotations, you may want to drag the gizmo with the Ctrl key down first to find a suitable rotation axis, like Loony showed in his video.
    6. Drag, or rotate.

    It just takes trial and error to figure out what to select and where to drag or rotate. The more you do it, the better you'll get at it. The Mesh Grabber is really modeled after the Grab and Rotate tools in Blender, which is where i learned it, and it just helps to do it a lot there or in Mesh Grabber.

    Hope that helps a bit!

    Post edited by ManFriday on
  • 3Diva3Diva Posts: 11,291

    I LOVE this product! I use it pretty much every time I set up a scene.

    I posted this in the commons but it was suggested I post it here too.

    Here's a quick  "modelling" I did with the Mesh Grabber. I turned a sphere into an iceberg and a primitive plane into water - and it took less than ten minutes! :D Mesh grabber is SO COOL!

    From this:

     

    To This:

    ..in less than ten minutes. Mesh grabber is amazing! :D

     

    Thank you for such an incredible product, ManFriday! yes

     

  • LoonyLoony Posts: 1,817

    Good Job :D Its great what we can do with it :)

  • lilweeplilweep Posts: 2,261

    is the spawn morph still being worked on?

  • ManFridayManFriday Posts: 560
    lilweep said:

    is the spawn morph still being worked on?

    It will probably be the next add-on for Mesh Grabber, but I'll probably do a different product first.

  • LoonyLoony Posts: 1,817
    edited May 2020

    Please don't forget to put the smooth modifier thing also on the high Priority :D

    And share early previews ^_^

    Post edited by Loony on
  • AngelikMAngelikM Posts: 104
    edited May 2020

    Well, hope you do add a version for Mac.

    ManFriday said:

    It's not that I don't like Macs. In fact I much prefer MacOS to Windows from a user perspective. But developing for Macs has much different parameters, and I've never done it, and I have no idea how big the market is with respect to Daz and whether the considerable effort would pay off. One of these days I will sit down and do it and boom! all my plugins will be available for the Mac. :-)

    Really really really hope that day is coming sooooooon...wink

    Fingers crossed...(edited, the emoticon does not load over here)

    Post edited by AngelikM on
  • barbultbarbult Posts: 23,436
    edited May 2020

    Code66 and HowieFarkes are successful Mac developers of Daz scripts. Maybe you could just team with one of them. I don't know if they do plugins, though.

    Post edited by barbult on
  • nicsttnicstt Posts: 11,715
    Loony said:
    Fixmypcmike said:

    What's the minimum version of DS to use this?  I still use 4.8.0.59.

    Why do People use the old versions?

    Some plugins don't work on newer versions.

    Features get added that make some users nervous.

    The features offered don't appeal to the user.

  • lorraineopualorraineopua Posts: 627
    edited May 2020

    One thing I discovered yesterday was that when working at one side of a large model one can inadvertently mess up something far away. My solution (cos I shut down the computer in disgust with myself) will be to break the large model into smaller pieces using geometry editor and recombine as a group thereby ensuring MeshGrabber doesn't grab a vertex miles away. One lives and one learns :)

    Post edited by lorraineopua on
  • L'AdairL'Adair Posts: 9,479
    lorraineopua said:

    One thing I discovered yesterday was that when working at one side of a large model one can inadvertently mess up something far away. My solution (cos I shut down the computer in disgust with myself) will be to break the large model into smaller pieces using geometry editor and recombine as a group thereby ensuring MeshGrabber doesn't grab a vertex miles away. One lives and one learns :)

    @lorraineopua, I posted this a few comments above, but it bears repeating: Do Not Alter Mesh with the Geometry Editor AFTER making changes with Mesh Grabber!

    I managed to completely corrupt a scene file and was only able to extract the other items from the scene by editing the DUF file in a JSON Editor, (Notepad++). I assure you, that route is not for faint of heart, but I had too much time invested, (two weeks,) to throw it all away or start over. Although I was using an object created from a product for my changes, every copy of the original product, duplicates, object created via export, etc, were unrecoverable. Fortunately I had been exporting my changes to OBJ files and creating morphs, so I was able to recreate the corrupted object.

    Based on that experience, I recommend breaking that larger model into smaller pieces in a series of separate files. You can merge those fiiles into one, and then create your group. Make sure you have a copy of the group saved as a backup, too. Later you can merge the group with modified objects into the scene file. I would not wish the angst and frustration I went through on anyone else!

  • LoonyLoony Posts: 1,817

    @ManFriday could you please (again) tell me where the Manual PDF should be placed that it works with the "?" button? I have it just in my 3D Folder, I did manual install Meshgrabber, so no idea where to place it :/ But I wanna do it correct.

    Thanks.

  • fixmypcmikefixmypcmike Posts: 19,565

    In your DAZStudio4 folder (the application, not the content folder) "/docs/Plugins/Mesh Grabber/Mesh Grabber Manual.pdf"

    (and the corresponding folder for the Public Beta if you want to use it there)

  • LoonyLoony Posts: 1,817

    Thanks

  • ManFridayManFriday Posts: 560

    The easiest way to get to the manual is to press F1, then look under "Plugins" in the tree on the left side of the help window, then "Mesh Grabber".

  • lorraineopualorraineopua Posts: 627
    lorraineopua said:
    be to
    L'Adair said:
    lorraineopua said:

    One thing I discovered yesterday was that when working at one side of a large model one can inadvertently mess up something far away. My solution (cos I shut down the computer in disgust with myself) will be to break the large model into smaller pieces using geometry editor and recombine as a group thereby ensuring MeshGrabber doesn't grab a vertex miles away. One lives and one learns :)

    @lorraineopua, I posted this a few comments above, but it bears repeating: Do Not Alter Mesh with the Geometry Editor AFTER making changes with Mesh Grabber!

    I managed to completely corrupt a scene file and was only able to extract the other items from the scene by editing the DUF file in a JSON Editor, (Notepad++). I assure you, that route is not for faint of heart, but I had too much time invested, (two weeks,) to throw it all away or start over. Although I was using an object created from a product for my changes, every copy of the original product, duplicates, object created via export, etc, were unrecoverable. Fortunately I had been exporting my changes to OBJ files and creating morphs, so I was able to recreate the corrupted object.

    Based on that experience, I recommend breaking that larger model into smaller pieces in a series of separate files. You can merge those fiiles into one, and then create your group. Make sure you have a copy of the group saved as a backup, too. Later you can merge the group with modified objects into the scene file. I would not wish the angst and frustration I went through on anyone else!

    Thank you very much for the advice. I've ended up back at square one every day this week but it's been because I'm trying to do things on a low powered laptop and, poof!, DS 'encounters a fatal error' and I'm finished for the day. I'm hoping another stick of RAM will solve that problem. 

  • DigitalSteamDigitalSteam Posts: 299

    I'm very upset about this product!

    No, wait... That's not right.

    I'm very upset I didn't know about this product until yesterday!

    Yeah... That's better.  ;)

    Seriously.  I spent most of yesterday and the day before exporting zeroed items, building custom morphs in Blender, and importing them as morphs, just to have the items in question get all deformed when I posed the character, and then hours adding d-formers, making them tiny enough to try to un-deform the product components, adding another one or more for every element (like a dozen button-like discs that became weird ovals when the character was posed) trying to get them to look natural, then, on looking for more tutorials on d-formers, I get the promotion video for this in a search result.

    So, I came to the marketplace, did a search, and grimaced that grimace unique to someone who knows DAZ's sale roller-coaster, but needs something, at full price, today - Bought it, installed it, tried it... I could have gotten it for 75% off if I'd known about it ten days ago, and you know what? I'm not even mad. Hell with it. It's worth it. Keep the money, with my thanks.

  • ManFridayManFriday Posts: 560
    edited May 2020
    DigitalSteam said:

    I'm very upset about this product!

    No, wait... That's not right.

    I'm very upset I didn't know about this product until yesterday!

    Yeah... That's better.  ;)

    Seriously.  I spent most of yesterday and the day before exporting zeroed items, building custom morphs in Blender, and importing them as morphs, just to have the items in question get all deformed when I posed the character, and then hours adding d-formers, making them tiny enough to try to un-deform the product components, adding another one or more for every element (like a dozen button-like discs that became weird ovals when the character was posed) trying to get them to look natural, then, on looking for more tutorials on d-formers, I get the promotion video for this in a search result.

    So, I came to the marketplace, did a search, and grimaced that grimace unique to someone who knows DAZ's sale roller-coaster, but needs something, at full price, today - Bought it, installed it, tried it... I could have gotten it for 75% off if I'd known about it ten days ago, and you know what? I'm not even mad. Hell with it. It's worth it. Keep the money, with my thanks.

    Oh wow, thank you :-D

    Post edited by ManFriday on
  • mcorrmcorr Posts: 1,066
    ManFriday said:
    mcorr said:

    How are we doing with getting a MAC version of this out? Are we working on it? Do we need a mac developer/expert to port the Windowz version over to MAC? Anybody willing to do that? What is being done, or what is in the offing, to get this thing running on both platforms

    The Mac versions are on the list of things I want to do, but it's a long list by now. I can't give a specific timeline, nor would another developer be useful. Sorry!

    I hope in your long list of things to do, you’ll remember mac users and prioritize them. I have a long memory. FK didn't make stuff for daz, only poser. I refuse to buy stuff from her because we daz folks were treated as second rank citizens. I feel the same way about people who ignore the needs of the mac community, or engage in other acts of inequality ... no love ($$$) from me ... it goes both ways.

  • ManFridayManFriday Posts: 560
    edited May 2020
    mcorr said:
    ManFriday said:
    mcorr said:

    How are we doing with getting a MAC version of this out? Are we working on it? Do we need a mac developer/expert to port the Windowz version over to MAC? Anybody willing to do that? What is being done, or what is in the offing, to get this thing running on both platforms

    The Mac versions are on the list of things I want to do, but it's a long list by now. I can't give a specific timeline, nor would another developer be useful. Sorry!

    I hope in your long list of things to do, you’ll remember mac users and prioritize them. I have a long memory. FK didn't make stuff for daz, only poser. I refuse to buy stuff from her because we daz folks were treated as second rank citizens. I feel the same way about people who ignore the needs of the mac community, or engage in other acts of inequality ... no love ($$$) from me ... it goes both ways.

    If you want the Mac port to happen, then don't post things like that please.

    Post edited by ManFriday on
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