[Released] InstaEdit - Edit instances in your viewport with a single right click [Commercial]
Callidus Simia
Posts: 132
Hi everyone,
Did you ever need to edit an object in your scene quickly from Daz Studio's viewport, like grass poking through a prop or a foot but could not because it was an instance or a group of instances?
InstaEdit is a power tool for Daz Studio users that allows them to right-click on an instance in the viewport and either convert it into a node or edit its geometry using either the plugin Mesh Grabber or the inbuilt tool dFormer.
The Daz Studio script provides users with the following features:
- Edit an instance
- Edit a specific instance that is inside a group of instances without breaking the rest of the group.
- Break a group of instances into separate instances, and then edit any one of those instances
- Edit instances that are generated using UltraScatter.
- Detect if Mesh Grabber is installed and allow you to use it for editing instances
(Note : If the plugin Mesh Grabber is not installed, the tool will default to using the inbuilt dFormer tool)
I've attached the manual in case people want to have a look
Store is here : https://www.daz3d.com/instaedit
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Comments
hm... does this also work with proxies (instances nit visible in the viewport)?
and if an instace is edited, is it still a copy for th vram while rendering?
Hi,
1. When editing the instance, it becoms its own self contained object, and not a pointer to the original node.
2. Yes it will work with proxies. It works perfectly fine with Ultrascatter proxy instances
Hope this makes sense.
If I understand you correct that means that we can manipulate with InstaEdit Ulrascatter proxy instances. That would be a great improvement.
1) Will an Ultra Edit Instance after the edit be again an Ultrascatter Proxy Instance (not visible in the the viewport)?
2) Can we also move items in the Ultrascatter Proxy Instance? A common proble is, if I scatter grass over an UVM, the grass will go over the seam of the UVM. It would be vey usefull if I could finetune this with InstaEdit and move singe grass instances to a better position.
3) What is about the perfomance? Let's say I have a Proxy Instance with 5.000 grass items. If they are editable and visible in the viewport of DAZ3D... will the viewport still be ususable?
No. After the instance is edited (i.e. the mesh is deformed in some way) it will become a node.
Yes you can move an instance inside an group of instances because the tool allows you to detach the instance away from the rest of the group. From that point onwards you can move it around to any position you wish. It will no longer be part of the group and will be a 'standalone' instance
That depends on the polygon count of the instances, but 5000 is cutting it a bit close to making the viewport weep. The tool has the option to set a warning threshold value for the number of visible instances and will warn you if you are about to overstep that point
All this information can also be found in detail in the attached pdf manual btw.
Cheers
Aaaand its now released for you all ....
Just bought it and tested it.
I think this tool can be very usefully in edge-cases.
Only thing which I'm missing is to bring an extracted instance back to the proxy, after I just repositioned it.
Thanks!
)
That feature will most probably be added in the near future (if I added all the features i had in mind I would have never finished it
This looks like it could be really useful, especially when kit-bashing. :-)
A question:
You mention that the instance becomes a node. I'm still not quite sure of what a node is in relation to other options. Can you retexture the seperated instance? Or does it still act like an instance in relation to the original object, but with a different mesh shape than the original object (and freedom to move around as a single instance)?
Could somebody, who bought it, post some renders or make an explanation when this tool is really needed.
Yes, one can retexture the seperated (node) instance. It is a single independant object, whereas instances inherits whatever is applied to the master node.
I was about to say the exact same thing only in a bit more detail :)
Let's say your scene contains a tree and 15 instances. As the instances inherits the main tree's characteristics, they will look all the same. Now you want one of the instances to have different texture, maybe autumn preset. So you select that instance, change it to a node and apply the autumn preset.
That's a very good example!
I will also point out that there is a pdf manual attached to the top of this thread that gives you information on why, when, and how to use the tool in detail.
Hope this helps
Ooo... this makes the idea even more appealing. Thanks for the clarifications! :-D
Thanks for including the PDF. :-)
To make sure I'm understanding it right, it is possible to select a single instance from an Ultrascatter group, but to do so, you'll need to break it into multiple instances first to avoid having them turn into higher poly versions, and then you would take that single instance and convert it to a node?
What I'm picturing is using Ultrascatter to quickly populate a scene, and then using InstaEdit to selectively move or alter a few of those instances where they might have been inconveniently placed or look too similar (while not necessarily making all of the instances super resource intensive). Would this be a possible use of the tool if the right steps are followed?
Also, when you convert an instance into a node for editing, does it remove the original instance from the group of instances?
InstaEdit was an InstaBuy.
I expect the value to me of this tool to far exceed the price. I have spent so much time in scenes where I've created instances, only to find I want to make changes to one of them. That has meant duplicating the original, or adding a new object, positioning it where the instance is, (easier said than done,) moving or deleting the instance, and then being able to make my changes.
That the tool does so much more is just frosting, from my perspective. Thank you for this.
Not quite. First you convert it to a normal high poly version group of instances using the tool itself, then you can extract one instance from it and turn it into a node.
There is no need to break the group up into indiviual instances.
Yes that is correct
Correct. The node replaces the instance.
I hope my explainations make sense
You're welcome!
I've run into a problem on my first try. I got an error trying to convert UltraScatterPro instances. I had the Translate tool selected. Can you give me some advice? Since this is my first attempt and I've only skimmed the PDF, I probably did something wrong.
Edit: I stumbled upon a workaround. If I try the conversion a second time on the same group, it works. So, Is there something wrong with the tool, or am I doing something wrong?
I have another problem with breaking up an UltraScatterPro instance group. (I had to break up the UltraScatterPro instances group twice. The first time it just broke into a regular group and then the second time it converted it to individual instances.) The individual instances that were created lost all of their UltraScatterPro rotation and scaling. Is there a way to retain the look of the UltraScatterPro instances after breaking the group?
So, based on the problems with breaking the UltraScatterPro instance group into individual instances, I tried stopping after the first break up and editing an instance in the group. I added a null and moved it to the center of one of the instances. As soon as I chose the option to edit with Mesh Grabber, the instance lost all of its scaling and rotation, just like when it converted to an individual instance.
I'm brand new to this tool, so I hope there is a technique I am overlooking that will allow the converted instances and nodes to retain their UltraScatterPro appearance. If not, I think this problem is a deal breaker for me.
Before breaking up the UltraScatterPro instances
After Breaking the UltraScatterPro group into a regular group
After breaking the instances group into individual instances
Thank you for buying the tool and I'm sorry that you ran into issues whilst using it. I'm sure that you did nothing wrong and you simply encountered an edge case which the tool currently does not handle.
Lets look at the first issue that you flagged and I will ask a few question to try and determine how to reproduce this error:
The only reason I can think that is causing this is that the origin of the node and the origns of the instances in the group are not in the same position. Therefore, when the translations and rotations are applied to the nodes which will replace the instance, they end up in the wrong position.
Under the hood, the tool uses exactly the same action as what is found under Edit > Object > Instances > Break Instances Group. In order to test my theory, could I ask you take an UltraScatter group that loses its position when broken up via InstaEdit, and apply the Daz Studio equivalent to it ?
If you get the same results, then the problem lies with the group. If that is the case then i need to find a workaround and implement my own version of "Breaking up bad instances" and ensure that origins line up.
I totaly agree with your reasoning, however workarounds should be done by the tool, not by you
. I will try to get to the bottom of this issue hopefully berfore your timeframe to return the purchase runs out.
Could I also ask you to send DM the scene that you have screenshot above ? It would help me when trying to find said workaround
Thank you for your patience.
I only have a few minutes right now, so I can't try your whole list of suggestions until later. I don't know how to attach a file to a private message, but I'll attach a couple scenes to this forum message. They might help you identify the problems. I'll do more experimentation later today. Each of these scenes uses primitives and UltraScatterPro, so you shouldn't need extra content to test them.
InstaEdit Edit with Cube.duf is an example of a scene that causes the error message when breaking the group with InstaEdit. I did not see the error with the built in Daz instance breakup. I do not see the error with every UltraScatterPro group I try to break with InstaEdit. The problem MIGHT have to do with the original object being moved below ground to hide it from the render, before UltraScatterPro is run.
InstaEdit Before.duf is the scene that causes all the instance scaling and rotation to be lost when the UltraScatterPro instances are converted to nodes after breaking the group with InstaEdit.
I am back home and can now respond to your individual comments:
When I break the UltraScatterPro instance group with Edit>Object>Instances>Break Instances Group, it splits them immediately into separate instances. There is no intermediate group like there is with InstaEdit. But every one of the individual instances is invisible in the scene, even though the eyeball is on. The UltraScatterPro proxies are visible, but if I turn the proxies off or delete them, no instances can be seen in the viewport. Strange! Maybe they were invisible because the UltraScatterPro proxy was bounding box.
If I break the UltraScatterPro instances group with InstaEdit to turn the group into a regular group, and then I split that group with Edit>Object>Instances>Break Instances Group, the individual instances appear to have retained their position, scaling and rotation!
When I convert the instances to nodes, they seem to retain their scaling and rotation, but their position changes. It should not change, of course.
The UltraScatterPro settings rotated the cube around its center. InstaEdit may not be taking all of the UltraScatterPro options into account.
I performed this group of tests with the scene InstaEdit Before.duf, which is attached above. You can see if you can reproduce these results.
Barbult,
Thank you for this detailed anaylsis.
I have successfully reproduced the first error you posted and I have traced it to the fact that the group instance called "UltraScatterPro [S] Cube 1 Proxies" had its property Instance Target set to None. This should have been set to "UltraScatterPro [S] Cube 1 Proxy" so I suspect that you might have accidentalty changed it ? The tool did not cater for the edge case that the Instance Target was set to none and had a hissy fit. (All my experiments with UltraScatter showed that the property is filled in hence why I asked if you changed it)
Changing the property as indicated above made the tool work fine. I have also added additional logic to safeguard against this rare(?) situation
A point to note ... If you select "Yes" when the popup asks you what to do when it detects a UltraScatter group of instances, the instance is only converted into a normal grouped instance (the steps are : remove low polygon proxies, everything is made visible, remove bounding boxes,)
If you select "No" then it will also convert the group into a bunch of single instances. This is mentioned in Page 15 of the tool's manual. Perhaps the wording on the popup is not clear enough and I might reword it in the next release.
With regards to the second issue that you have flagged, it turns out after speaking with a few people in the know, there are a few edge cases that were not considered when desigining the tool such as scattered instances that are translated, rotated and scaled (the order in which this is done matters) by the UltaScatter Pro which means that the orign ends up somewhere else.
The sets that I had with scattered instances had none of these cases so everything worked fine during testing (i refer to Soggy Bottom, Willow Creek, and a few more which escape me at the moment) .
But no matter, I will go back to the drawing board and see how this part can be improved further.
Unfortunally I am unable to give you a timeframe when a new release will be pushed out as we are in March Madness and there is a backlog of products slowly going through Daz's QA process. To give you perspective on time, a product usually takes 2 to 3 weeks to end up in the store after submission. Please factor that into your decision if you would like to wait for an update or if you would like a refund.
Either way, I do really thank you for your patience and help with this
Sorry, to bother you.
Could you please describe the steps, to removing just one instance from the UltraScatter created group,
for further editing.
I hope, that the other UltraScatter objects will not be affected at all by such operation.
Hi Artini,
At present the tool only allows you to explode a UltraScatter created group into indiviual instances. I will, however be releasing an update that will allow you to also edit a single instance inside a UltraScatter group (i have discovered a bug that at times does not detect converted UltraScatter instances correctly). Stay tuned!
I didn't change the Instance Target of the UltraScatterPro [S] Cube 1 Proxies.
These are the steps to create a simple scene that causes the error:
I didn't remember that detail of the manual.
When the dialog popped up, I incorrectly assumed that clicking No would be like cancel and do nothing. It seems like there should be a cancel option in the dialog, because what if I changed my mind and didn't want to break the instances at all? Right now, there is no way to back out.
Clicking No in the popup dialog does indeed create individual instances and no error message pops up.
The instances I created for the second issue were translated, rotated and scaled by UltraScatterPro, based on selections I made in the UltraScatterPro dialog. There are lots of options! I am an UltraScatterPro super fan. I use it a lot, and I have probably tried almost every option in it. I beta tested it quite extensively for the artist before release.
If you wish, I will beta test updates before they are released. I do that for several PAs.
I will send you a DM
Here's another mystery I just stumbled upon. Please take a look:
I loaded a box prop from Everyday Gifts. It turns out that the lid is a child of the box. I used UltraScatterPro to scatter the box (with child lid) on a plane. Then I broke the instance group directly into individual instances with InstaEdit. So far so good; every box instance has a lid and no error messages. Then I selected one individual instance and converted it to a node. The box converted, but the lid disappeared. So, I opened InstaEdit settings and checked the box to Copy child nodes when converting to node. But that made no difference. The lid still disappears when converting to a node. The individual instances themselves don't have any children. The box and lid must be part of the same instance after breaking the group, so I don't know how the box and lid get separated during conversion to node.
I repeated the same test without UltraScatterPro. I used the Daz Studio command to Create New Node Instances. Converting one instance to a node with InstaEdit also results in no lid on the box. I tried just creating a singe instance with Daz Studio command Create New Node Instance, and the same problem happened when converting to node.
That is very curious indeed.
I will try to replicate this with something similar (a box with child lid) and add the patch to the existing one i just finished. Another edge case to add to the list
I just finished this render. This is "The Old Barn", which has a tree instance in it. I used InstaEdit to change the tree instance on the left to a node and then applied the alternate autumn texture to the node.