General Category > Anim8or v0.98 Discussion Forum
Feature Request Thread
Steve:
I softened the color of the sub-mesh and added a single option to disable showing the edges. The smooth and flat shaded images are split-screen to show how it looks with and without the edges. I left the edges visible in wireframe mode because they don't interfere much at all and without them there is no hist as to what the object's shape is.
Raxx:
Looks good to me. Thanks Steve!
nemyax:
Am I missing something or is there no way to convert a subdiv back to an untessellated mesh?
Raxx:
Double click the subdivision mesh, set working divisions to 0, then convert to mesh.
Raxx:
I know that it's about time to focus on the other editors, but here's a feature for the object editor that I would find extremely useful, and I'm sure others would as well.
Clone Mesh
A clone is a duplicate of a mesh shape. It's basically just a copy. If the original gets edited, the copy updates to that version of the original immediately. A clone can be transformed (moved, scaled, rotated). A clone can have its own unique parameters (it copies the original's when the clone is first created, including the original's transform). For example, if it's a mesh, then the smooth angle can be customized. If it's a subdivision mesh, then the working/final divisions and smooth angle can be customized. And of course the layer. Also, clones can have unique materials assigned to them (only the base material--if specific faces have assigned materials, those remain the same as the original's). It's only the mesh structure that remains exactly the same as the original.
The mesh structure of a clone can't be edited. Therefore it'd be useful that if it's a subdivision mesh, that it doesn't show the control mesh whatsoever in any of the shading modes (unless give it an option in its dialog box?). However, a clone can be converted to mesh to "unclone" it.
There are a lot of uses for this. The user can make a clone of the mesh and scale it -1, creating a mirror and then be able to do mirrored modeling while being able to see the changes on the other side immediately without the control mesh getting in the way if it's a subdivision mesh. Things like eyeballs, mirrored accessories and clothing, etc., becomes easy to do. If an object needs lots of copies of a mesh, like for example a metal chain, these can all be cloned and then when editing the original chain link, all the other chain links become updated immediately as well. It also greatly reduces file sizes for things like this.
Copying and pasting a clone results in a clone with the same parameters as the copied clone. Deleting the original mesh deletes the clone (maybe autodetect if there are clones of that mesh, and then ask if the user wants to delete the clones or not. If not, then the clones get converted to meshes).
As for morph targets, I think it'd be interesting if it reflected the original's morphs as well when setting and animating, with an option in its dialog box to not copy it.
This isn't an original idea of mine. It's something I used a lot in XSI when I used it for modeling. I think it'd be somewhat easy (compared to the *ahem* mirrored modeling feature) to implement as well, since it's just running a copy method every time a cloned mesh is modified, and in figure/sequence/scene editors it can be treated like a transformed instance of the original mesh when building the list of geometry.
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