Refine For Poly's

[deecue]

i'm wanting a way to basically divide my poly faces in only its row or column directions.. kind of how the refine works with nurbs but somehow else since poly's dont have inherent UV's to actually determine rows and columns.

an alteration of the subd sop keeps coming to my mind.. because it seems to determine the needed information in order to properly subdivide each face.. but i'm wondering if it could have the option to only divide the face vertically or horizontally rather than both like it is now.

basically this issue seems to come up a lot when i'm needing to deform something in a certain direction, but not the other.. so instead of creating all those unnecessary poly's in a direction that doesn't need them becomes a waste and resource hog.

the options i see as of now are subdivide and then dissolve the edges you don't want. or polysplit each face till you get enough "rows" or "columns" until you are happy.. but both of these are somewhat tedious and very unprocedural.. (i was thinking that maybe if edges were supported group wise, there could be some workaround, but i dunno..)

thought i'd throw that out to you all to see if anyone has a suggestion or knows of something i'm missing..

[sibarrick]

Sounds like you are talking about the bricker option of the divide sop...

[Marc]

Or even better, the 'connect points' option in the Edge Divide SOP. Although don't try and use it on complex geometry, you might get some interesting connections.

M

[deecue]

hey guys,

thanks for the responses..

simon:

bricker works great in cases where things are aligned along a specific axis.. but if they aren't, then it doesn't help out like you would want.. a couple examples of what i mean:

1. lay down a torus and then subdivide it.. you get appropriate edges created that are based on it's neighboring edges' midpoints. now try and replicate that with it only going in one of the directions rather than both.. bricker will do it along a specific axis, but not based on the direction of the polys/edges that are there..

2. lay down a tube and bricker divide it in the Y axis to get nicely created new rows.. but if you insert a transform in between the tube and divide sop and rotate it, your divide stays in the Y axis and you don't get the "rows" you were expecting. (this is how the bricker should act, being down stream and all, but not what i'm wanting).

marc:

interesting.. never tried that out before.. but like you said, you can get some interesting connections.. looks like the close path option could use some work.. just for a poly tube with two rows (top, bottom) and an edge divide on the column edges, you get nicely created rows with connected points, but the close path doesn't seem to be doing what it should (i see my point numbers shift around but other than that, i dunno)..

i'm gonna keep searching to see if anything pops up.. plus any other thoughts you all might have would be great..

thanks again guys..

[Marc]

Hey Deecue

Yeah it's definitely a little funky in it's behaviour. I'm almost 100% certain that this is the tool that was built to do what you need to do though... So I'm not sure you're going to find much else that will help.

I always end up polysplitting a bunch of times and get it over with quickly .

M

[George]

...looks like the close path option could use some work.. just for a poly tube with two rows (top, bottom) and an edge divide on the column edges, you get nicely created rows with connected points, but the close path doesn't seem to be doing what it should (i see my point numbers shift around but other than that, i dunno)..

...

19416[/snapback]

Hi Deecue -- I tried it with a poly tube like you describe and it seems that the close path works as expected. It will join the last edge to the first edge. One thing to watch out for is that EdgeDivide needs the edges in the order you'd like them connected, so the order you pick the edges in is important.

Take care,

George.

[deecue]

grr..so much for box selecting. right you are george.. . thanks for the reminder..

and i think you're right marc about this being what i wanted in the end.. just slightly different from my initial thinking.. i suppose if it were a perfect world, i would love it if i didn't have to "work" so hard for it.. (so lazzzzy ) It would just be nice not to have to worry about selecting the specific edges and be sure to select them in the right order..and then lather rinse repeat for each row/column i would want.. and then after all that's done, manually editing those new rows/columns if i want them to be "smooth" based on the curvature of the model..

for the cost of time i wonder if the subd, edge dissolve method is better in the end.. the subd would be heavy, but atleast you wouldn't have a number of edge divide sops along with edits to get you where you want...

still, at the end of the day, i learned something new so i'm happy..

[edward]

What's wrong with "Close Path" + "Quad Strip" on the PolySplit again?

[deecue]

you mean what's wrong with it in the sense of why not just use that or what's wrong with it in the sense that it's broken? because i don't think anything's broken. i thought the `close path` + `connect points` in the edge divide was finicky but as george pointed out, i needed to select my edges in the correct order..

[edward]

I meant in the sense of why not just use PolySplit.

[deecue]

just pure efficiency in certain cases that a poly split would be more manual:

1. a large amount of a model where you would like to increase the number of columns or rows.. for example, you have a characters arms,hands, and fingers that could use more "rows" along it for better deformation..well you could poly split all the way down it as well as through the hand and each of the fingers. but wouldn't it be nice to have a single sop that would allow you select the faces you wanted this done to and have it end right there. as i was saying earlier, i keep thinking of something similar to subdividing it but only in the one direction and not the other.. that way you don't have unnecessary poly's going around the arm/hand/fingers but you would have more going down the arm/hand/fingers.. plus having the benefit of smoothing it slightly as well.

2. multiple geometries merged together in sops where you would like to have them all split a certain way at once.. with poly split, you'd have to do it to each individual geometry by hand.. with what i would like to see, lay down a single sop (like a divide or the likes) and have them all divided accordingly at once.. almost like the bricker option of the divide as simon suggested.. only instead of it being based on an xyz axis, it's based on the orientation of the poly's..

[sibarrick]

Isn't that what Edward is saying. With polysplit in quad mode I think you would only need to select the start and end edges and it would then find a path through the ajoining quads. If you are going the other way around an arm say you need only select the first edge and turn on close path.

[deecue]

here's a pic of what i'm trying to say (visuals always seem to work best )

example geometry with low "row" count:

same geometry with higher "row" count but exact same "column" count

now, as far as i know, trying to achieve this same thing with poly splits would require a good amount of manual work.. for me to get the poly split in quad mode and close path to work, i have to click on 3 column edges that are decently spaced around the "tube" in order for it to close a full correct path.. and that's just to create a single "row".. then i have to do it for each one until i'm happy.. not to mention that those new rows would be inline between it's neighboring rows and not take in to account the curvature of it..

even if i threw out the idea of it being able to smooth the rows based on the curvature of the "tube", that's still a lot of poly splitting unless i'm completely missing out on how you guys are saying to go about doing this..

[Marc]

convert to NURBS->refine SOP->convert back to polys

It might just work.... Other than that though, I think it's going to be painful no matter which method you use.

M

[deecue]

too bad that option doesn't always work so clean and pretty in some cases..

but you're right.. there are options and tools out there to get the job done.. it's not like and i'm gonna sit on my thumbs not working on a model because of it.. i'd just think it'd be cool too see alternatives at some point in the future.. it's not keeping anyone from doing something they can't already do, it just may make the process a little bit faster or more convenient if the option were there at some point..

thanks all for listening to my rant

[Marc]

I agree totally. The poly tools are great and I really love working with them, but there are a few things missing that would be nice to have.

Polyknit is my personal favourite. It's good at what it does, but to stitch two poly's together the last thing I want to do is click on each point I want to connect. It would be awesome to click on the two edges I want to connect and have it build the poly for me.

Basically it comes down to minimising the amount of clicks you need to do to get something done.

eh.. one day.