[Bf-modeling] Modelling thoughts:

[Campbell Barton]

On Sun, Jun 16, 2013 at 9:02 PM, Michael Williamson
<michaelw at cowtoolsmedia.co.uk> wrote:
> When Campbell invited me to this list I had some thoughts on his topics and
> others.. No I'm subscribed I'll post them here too for further discussion:
>
> The following are what I sent him and his response:
>
> To your points above, snapping is quite powerful now.. I'd hate for it to
> become cumbersome!  If you can check out MOI
> If I recall right it had some great options as a set of checkboxes.
>
> Right, its already kindof cumbersome IMHO, useful options are a bit
> hidden and hard to extend.
>
> An important thing in snap in blender that no other package seems to do is I
> can hold down ctrl at any point during a transform and then snap...  Other
> packages I get really annoyed that I have to modify before i start a
> transform.. this is important because on heavy meshes it can be cumbersome
> to snap to what you want and in blender it's nice to move "into the
> ballpark" first.. other projections sounds good too..
>
> I have patch for shrinkwrap style projection (without using
> shrinkwrap), but I like to make UI good too.
>
> Shrinkwrap modifier is our *best* retopology tool , even in a point to point
> workflow.... but in use you often get terrible artefacts and at really high
> poly counts just a mess! Not sure exactly what goes wrong but it could do
> with some love, especially now Dyntopo is so amazing!
>
>
>
> I'm not sure it's a modelling tool strictly speaking but transfering
> attributes between topologically different but similar shape meshes is a
> feature I could really use...  We already have weight transfer but UVs and
> Vertex colours is needed too!
>
> This is a gsoc project, my student is working on it, its not such a
> complex project,
>
> Mirror editing...  because it doesn't work with everything most of us gave
> up on it and use the modifier in the workflow instead..
> Would be nice if it worked  very frustrating when it breaks!
>
> Yep, We could figure out if limited support is worthwhile or not.
> Having to write custom code for every tool to support this its really
> not great option.
>
> Proportional editing... silo had a great feature called Topology distance..
> where it edge walks the connection out....  so for example opening a closed
> mouth.. top and bottom lip are within the radius but the edges of the top
> lip are further away it looks like that's how Connected works now and I
> think it's a great feature.. but maybe the old behavior should be restored
> too.. so you could have  3 modes...  distance, connected distance and
> connected topological distance as the modes..
>
> Yes, ton wanted to kick out this behavior, but Im thinking it could be
> optional..... tho Im a but worried of just making everything optional
> too :S, we end up with even more buttons!
>
>
>
> Ok, so that was a kick start to many topics. Great to hear that there';s a
> gsoc for transfering attributes!
> On snapping.. I suppose i'm just used to it and how it works.. I know it
> often gets complained about.. maybe I'm too old school because it does what
> I need and I understand it..
>
>
>  have to disagree with Ton about connected mode behaviour I find that there
> are use cases for all three and they're not fringe cases either..
>
> I wonder if Nicholas bishop's symmetrize tool could work on parts of a mesh
> rather than the whole thing..  sounds complex and could be a can of worms
> but coders often surprise me with what is trivial or hard to them..
>
> I'm curious about your "shrinkwrap" patch..  not sure how that fits in with
> retopology:
> The use case I'm talking about is converting an arbitrary mesh to a multires
> object for further sculpt detailing (and/or displcacment/normal map
> generation and applying to a subdiv cage with a displace modifier.. as
> follows:
>
> create a subdiv cage around your dyntopo model by point by point modelling
> using surface snap (and or shrinkwrap modifier)  then apply..
> Add a multires modifier and subdivide..
> use shrinkwrap to snap the new multires verts back to the original mesh...
> then apply shrinkwrap.. the details are now embedded in multires modifier
> and can be sculpted/detailed further...
>
> The shrinkwrap modifier  can work in the modifier stack and so is viable...
> i'm guessing your shrinkwrap style snap is editmode only so won't work with
> multires as you only get the base cage in editmode since 2.5?
>
> Shrinkwrap is problematic.. hard to describe why exactly.. I'll probably
> need to get some screenshots here..  a "project" brush in sculpt mode may be
> a way to conform your multires to another model.. and by projecting into the
> screen may give better artist driven capture.. but is that beyond the scope
> of this mailing list?
>
> Finally, Blender's tool prompts and feedback can always be richer!!!

Hey Micheal, Id prefer to take these issues one at a time -

Really make sure everyone following the list understands each issue,
figure out a solution, apply the changes to the to blender... then
move on.
In a few cases we may end up with design docs for changes that are
longer term too.

Probably a few discussions can run in parallel, but I dont want to
flood everyone with too many different issues at once and loose focus.

Feature-discussions have a long history in blender of not going
anywhere, so I _really_ want to avoid that since its wastes everyones
time, often the people giving input loose interest too since devs
don't have time to address their requests.

I think the topics also need a an introduction, your reply is half way
through some personal mails we had...

Will  send out mail regarding PET changes next...

-- 
- Campbell