[Released] ManFriday's Mesh Grabber [Commercial]

andya_b341b7c5f5

ManFriday said:

andya_b341b7c5f5 said:

Please can you explain what this provides that cannot be done with Dforms and weight maps?  The examples in the video could all be done by that means, so I am curious what else this brings that I may have missed.

I have used D-Formers many times, and I find them difficult to use, and the results hard to predict, especially if the figure in question is not in the zero pose. The first time I tried to use them it took me a day to accomplish what I was trying to do, and only after deleting the field and using weight maps only.

I would make the claim that the Mesh Grabber is very intuitive to use in comparison, with just a few minutes of trying: just click on some mesh and drag, and the results will be what you expected. And with a bit of practice, after getting a feel for how to best use the falloff radius and falloff mode, one can accomplish quite a lot. (For those who know Blender, the Mesh Grabber is imitating the Grab tool in Blender with proportional editing enabled. But you do not have to know Blender to use the Mesh Grabber.)

Hope that helps :-)

I am no fan of Dformers either, especially the need to have the target object at world center and figures in default pose.  Removing that problem is valuable.  I can also see this being attractive to those who are not familiar with a modelling app, and don't feel the need to get familiar. 

However, Dformers do allow spawning of morphs directly, and allow you to later tweak the amount of deformation, even without creating a morph.  Also deleting a Dformer removes the deformation: am I right in thinking that deformations by the Meshgrabber cannot be reversed except by standard Undo, which may wipe other changes to the scene you want to keep?  I think that for me adding morph spawning would make this a far more useful tool.

ManFriday

andya_b341b7c5f5 said:

ManFriday said:

andya_b341b7c5f5 said:

Please can you explain what this provides that cannot be done with Dforms and weight maps?  The examples in the video could all be done by that means, so I am curious what else this brings that I may have missed.

I have used D-Formers many times, and I find them difficult to use, and the results hard to predict, especially if the figure in question is not in the zero pose. The first time I tried to use them it took me a day to accomplish what I was trying to do, and only after deleting the field and using weight maps only.

I would make the claim that the Mesh Grabber is very intuitive to use in comparison, with just a few minutes of trying: just click on some mesh and drag, and the results will be what you expected. And with a bit of practice, after getting a feel for how to best use the falloff radius and falloff mode, one can accomplish quite a lot. (For those who know Blender, the Mesh Grabber is imitating the Grab tool in Blender with proportional editing enabled. But you do not have to know Blender to use the Mesh Grabber.)

Hope that helps :-)

I am no fan of Dformers either, especially the need to have the target object at world center and figures in default pose.  Removing that problem is valuable.  I can also see this being attractive to those who are not familiar with a modelling app, and don't feel the need to get familiar. 

However, Dformers do allow spawning of morphs directly, and allow you to later tweak the amount of deformation, even without creating a morph.  Also deleting a Dformer removes the deformation: am I right in thinking that deformations by the Meshgrabber cannot be reversed except by standard Undo, which may wipe other changes to the scene you want to keep?  I think that for me adding morph spawning would make this a far more useful tool.

When the Mesh Grabber tool is active, you can right-click into an object's mesh and there's a menu item "Reset mesh grabber (clear all deltas)" which will delete the deltas of the mesh grabber for the selected object only.

Morph spawning will come in a future add-on!

Kev914

So how do I install Mesh Grabber? There is no Daz Connect installer. It won't come over to DIM. Products never seem to come over to DIM by themselves anymore. When I use the Download & install button, I just get an error. So I tried the manual install. It installed, but no where in Daz studio do I see it. Maybe it's there and I just don't know where to find it. In the video I see that it is on the tools panel, but when I open that panel, it is not listed as a tool. Maybe I didn't install it to the right place. If I have to install manually, where exactly do I tell the installer to put it?

I can see where it created an uninstaller under Daz on the start menu. But that's all that I'm finding.

ManFriday

KevinH said:

So how do I install Mesh Grabber? There is no Daz Connect installer. It won't come over to DIM. Products never seem to come over to DIM by themselves anymore. When I use the Download & install button, I just get an error. So I tried the manual install. It installed, but no where in Daz studio do I see it. Maybe it's there and I just don't know where to find it. In the video I see that it is on the tools panel, but when I open that panel, it is not listed as a tool. Maybe I didn't install it to the right place. If I have to install manually, where exactly do I tell the installer to put it?

I can see where it created an uninstaller under Daz on the start menu. But that's all that I'm finding.

Plugins like the Mesh Grabber must be installed with DIM. They cannot be installed with Daz Connect. The product should appear in DIM when you log into your Daz account with your email and password, and install from there. Quoting my own post from above:

Plugins are a little different from other products, they install into your Daz Studio program directory, not the content library. You must use DIM to install it, and best make sure that Daz Studio is not running when you run DIM (it sometimes malfunctions otherwise).

DIM should install exactly two files: the PDF readme to C:\Program Files\DAZ 3D\DAZStudio4\docs\Plugins\Mesh Grabber, and MF_meshgrab.dll to ...DAZStudio4\plugins. If all went well, you should be seeing "ManFriday's Mesh Grabber" listed in Help -> "About Installed Plugins".

Kev914

Thanks. It finally showed up. I went in and checked all the versions of DAZ Studio under the download options and then I searched for it and it finally showed up. I was able to install it. And now it shows up on the Tools Settings Panel.

algovincian

This looks fantastic - soft selection (around selected geometry) with control over falloff is a huge improvement over dFormers.

I have 2 questions:

1. Will scaling/rotation be added to the gizmo as an update, or an additional paid add-on?

2. How is performance in a complex scene? Basically, I'm wondering if it can be used easily on a posed/clothed figure in a loaded environment without bogging down severely?

Thanks in advance for any information you can provide.

- Greg

ManFriday

algovincian said:

This looks fantastic - soft selection (around selected geometry) with control over falloff is a huge improvement over dFormers.

I have 2 questions:

1. Will scaling/rotation be added to the gizmo as an update, or an additional paid add-on?

I'm thinking about making separate add-on products that will require this base product, but I haven't decided yet.

algovincian said:

2. How is performance in a complex scene? Basically, I'm wondering if it can be used easily on a posed/clothed figure in a loaded environment without bogging down severely?

I have regularly tested it in complex scenes, and the plugin tries to use multiple cores as much as possible within the framework that Daz Studio provides. I have a fairly beefy machine and I tried to max out all my CPU cores as much as possible. The biggest factor impacting performance is not the size of the scene, but the no. of polys in the selected object, and the most computationally expensive step is not applying the deltas within the modifier but changing the falloff radius or falloff mode because then the tool needs to recompute distances between all vertices of the object. It's hard to make exact measurements about the performance since in a typical Daz scene there are many variables involved, but from my gut feeling the plugin is normally faster than what Daz's smoothing modifier does.

algovincian said:

Thanks in advance for any information you can provide.

- Greg

 

algovincian

Thanks for the prompt response. I think I'll grab it - cheers!

- Greg

innes53_4e67625942

Works like a charm and for me is a game changer...I have fussed with this process for years with other apps and then reimporting back into Daz...

Love it...absolutely love it...

Thank you...

ManFriday

Thanks everybody for the kind remarks. I am very happy and grateful!

algovincian

Bought it, DLed and installed with no problems, and fixed some pokethrough in a real usage situation quickly. Performance is OK on an old 4-core i5 system with 32GB, and a 6GB 1060. 

One thing that would definitely help is the option to use an average of the selection for the gizmo axes. Consider a bump on the head: If some sort of average for the selected faces is used for the axes, then the portion of the meshed grabbed can be moved outward (ie: normal to the selection of faces).

- Greg

 

johranshadi

That's very helpful. I wonder if symmetrical drag would be possible to implement in future updates. This would be amazing.

Blind Owl

This is great! Already I'm finding it much easier to use & more intuitive than DAZ DFormers, and no doubt practice will make perfect.

And you can add me to the list of those who would like to see a scale/rotate addon...along with whatever else you can dream up.

[ edit/afterthought: Another very useful change/addition would be giving us the ability to enter numerical values in the Gizmo size, Gain, and Falloff Radius areas. Those sliders aren't really suited to finicky detail work. ]

mcorr

ManFriday said:

inquire said:

Well, hope you do add a version for Mac.

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. :-)

why don't you get a MAC-guru PA to help you to port it to MACs. I'd snap this up so fast it would give you whiplash =) ... as I am sure many other MACers would too. Please seriously consider doing so.

Xenomorphine

I, too, am interested as to whether both sides of a model are automatically selected or, if you want to apply the same change, whether you have to manually select both?

nicstt

This is brilliant; I used it to produce a simple morph as a test (posted in th Commons Forum).

I agree with Zev0; it is an essential item. Love that even after dforce, if one isn't quite happy, it can be used there too.

JOdel

Add another to the Mac user list.

Q: is manual download an option? Or is that up to DAZ marketing?

Richard Haseltine

andya_b341b7c5f5 said:

ManFriday said:

andya_b341b7c5f5 said:

Please can you explain what this provides that cannot be done with Dforms and weight maps?  The examples in the video could all be done by that means, so I am curious what else this brings that I may have missed.

I have used D-Formers many times, and I find them difficult to use, and the results hard to predict, especially if the figure in question is not in the zero pose. The first time I tried to use them it took me a day to accomplish what I was trying to do, and only after deleting the field and using weight maps only.

I would make the claim that the Mesh Grabber is very intuitive to use in comparison, with just a few minutes of trying: just click on some mesh and drag, and the results will be what you expected. And with a bit of practice, after getting a feel for how to best use the falloff radius and falloff mode, one can accomplish quite a lot. (For those who know Blender, the Mesh Grabber is imitating the Grab tool in Blender with proportional editing enabled. But you do not have to know Blender to use the Mesh Grabber.)

Hope that helps :-)

I am no fan of Dformers either, especially the need to have the target object at world center and figures in default pose.  Removing that problem is valuable.  I can also see this being attractive to those who are not familiar with a modelling app, and don't feel the need to get familiar. 

If you are using a weight map the dFormer's target does not need to be zeroed.

andya_b341b7c5f5 said:

However, Dformers do allow spawning of morphs directly, and allow you to later tweak the amount of deformation, even without creating a morph.  Also deleting a Dformer removes the deformation: am I right in thinking that deformations by the Meshgrabber cannot be reversed except by standard Undo, which may wipe other changes to the scene you want to keep?  I think that for me adding morph spawning would make this a far more useful tool.

 

Toonces

If you turn on Sub-D for an object, does mesh grabber let you grab the individual subdivided faces? I'm guessing no, unless there's a way to 'bake-in' the subdivisions.

TheNathanParable

I was very lucky to have been able to test this before its release, and it really is a massive gamechanger!

Here's a couple of pictures of one of the first things I did while testing this addon; flesh pressed against glass.

Leonides02

TheNathanParable said:

I was very lucky to have been able to test this before its release, and it really is a massive gamechanger!

Here's a couple of pictures of one of the first things I did while testing this addon; flesh pressed against glass.

This is exactly the kind of thing I think it will be so useful for. 

Platnumk

Would love to have this but alas another cool plugin that is not Mac compatible 

marble

I got excited when I saw this because exporting to Blender is a bit tedious and dFormers are a bit tricky and limited. But then I saw the limitations of this tool and the promise of add-ons in the future to address those limitations. So will they be updates or extra add-ons at a cost? I think a morph creation option should be standard, for example. In fact I doubt that I'll buy this until and unless that is included. Same goes for symmetry. Masking would also be essential if we are to avoid grabbing mesh that we want to stay put.

 

kimh

This is way cool! That's all I am saying. Thank you...Now you made me spend more money

ManFriday

mcorr said:

ManFriday said:

inquire said:

Well, hope you do add a version for Mac.

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. :-)

why don't you get a MAC-guru PA to help you to port it to MACs. I'd snap this up so fast it would give you whiplash =) ... as I am sure many other MACers would too. Please seriously consider doing so.

I'll give it a shot. Will take a while though!

Midnight_stories

ManFriday said:

Midnight_stories said:

I'm going to have to put in a helpdesk request I've installed it 3 times and doesn't show up in the tools drop down nor does it work with DIMs, I can get the exe file download but I think it's install to the wrong place.

DAZ 3D\Installed Content\Mesh Grabber for DAZ Studio 4.5+ (Win 64-bit) I have no idea where that is. I'm off to bed so will report it tomorrow.

Cheers

Plugins are a little different from other products, they install into your Daz Studio program directory, not the content library. You must use DIM to install it, and best make sure that Daz Studio is not running when you run DIM (it sometimes malfunctions otherwise).

DIM should install exactly two files: the PDF readme to C:\Program Files\DAZ 3D\DAZStudio4\docs\Plugins\Mesh Grabber, and MF_meshgrab.dll to ...DAZStudio4\plugins. If all went well, you should be seeing "ManFriday's Mesh Grabber" listed in Help -> "About Installed Plugins".

The only thing I can think of is that my DIMs file is corrupt so I will contact Daz to see if the can give me a new file or the .dll file to manually put it in the plugins folder. I guess this will take a while being Xmas. Thanks for confirming the directories, that where I thought they should be. I will let you know what happen . 

The Inner Circle

Great work ManFriday as always. WIll pick it as soon as pay day rolls around. I am just curious - I know hair poke through on hats etc can be fixed with the geometry tool but would this also do the same thing - select the hair in scene - tag the poke through parts then use the mesh grabber tool to pull them inside the hat ? Is this a feasible use of the tool ?

David

Hylas

This looks very cool. Would love to see more experiments and results here!

I'm a Mac user, too, so for now my money is safe... *relieved*

Zan Oliver

Add another Mac user. I was so excited when I saw this, I nearly bought it before I realized it was only for windows. This looks so cool!

FP

How is it different from this?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7SEBV2GHJHA