bf-blender / Windows (2004/05/19) w/ weighted creases

jasontally · Post by **jasontally** » Wed May 19, 2004 11:58 pm

Here's a windows build of bf-blender with Chris McFarlen's weighted creases subsurface patch.

blender-weighted-creases.zip
(Link removed because I'm using more bandwidth than I should be. PM me if you want it and have an email account that can handle 3.3 MB or if you have somewhere else I can upload builds to.)

Information on this patch can be found here.

yeonil · Post by **yeonil** » Thu May 20, 2004 12:29 am

Hmm... it seems that the http://www.o9studios.com/ domain is not working right now... I just can't wait to see the creases in action

Maybe someone will borrow you some webspace?

Thanks anyway for the patch!

Yeonil

gabio · Post by **gabio** » Thu May 20, 2004 5:22 am

weight? sweet! I'm part of the tester!

Monkeyboi · Post by **Monkeyboi** » Thu May 20, 2004 10:17 am

It seems really nice, but what happened to the view controls? I can hardly use it! Zooming in/out is a pain. What happened?

The weighting is a bit cumbersome to use, it's not easy to move it to 0 or 100%. Speaking of which, what is 100%? It seems that any value above 3 makes it comepletely sharp.

Oh, and I don't mean to be a pest, but the creases seem to only work well if you set your subsurf resolution really high. This is because the mesh doesn't actually become denser in creased areas, so it still smooths things out when using SetSmooth. One solution would be to fix the SetSmooth command to work per edge and not per face (this would be handy for many, many things!)

Another solution would be to add or move subsurf geometry so that it is denser around creases, but I imagine that might be hardish.

EDIT: Having just used it alot, I can tell you I really find it useful. I think it might work better if the weighting ammount was controlled like the Scale command (cursor close to the subject=Low value, cursor far away from subject=high value.), instead of this Y axis buisness.

Also, what happened to the wire colour changing dependant on the weighting? That looked great.

solmax · Post by **solmax** » Thu May 20, 2004 10:57 am

weighting - very good.
zooming - strange.

one hint - how about including the weights of selected vertices in the "N" panel, among position?

lucky3 · Post by **lucky3** » Thu May 20, 2004 11:16 am

the new weighting is really useful!
But a percentage to control the weight would be great, instead of the current value.
I like how the new zoom works.

infinder · Post by **infinder** » Thu May 20, 2004 12:09 pm

This is great! How about using values between 0 and 1. Seems to me more reasonable. Otherwise agree with monkeyboi.

pildanovak · Post by **pildanovak** » Thu May 20, 2004 12:20 pm

the weight is linked to the y-position of the wndow, so if I press shift+e the value jumps to an unwnted value. It would be really good if the value wuld start to change relatively from the value which was set before

chrismcf · Post by **chrismcf** » Fri May 21, 2004 3:26 am

Thanks for the feedback. I'll try to answer questions.

Yes, the way the crease weights are changed now is rather cumbersome. I'm playing with different ways to do it. I definitely don't like the way when
starting to change the weight it picks an arbitrary value. Thanks for the advice.

To get nice creases the subdivision level needs to be high. The
reason for this is the weight is the number of times the sharp rules
are used to divide vs. the smooth rule. So, if the weight is 3, and the
subdiv level is 6, the division process divides 3 times with the sharp rule
and 3 times with the smooth. If the subdiv level is 3, then the edge will
still look completely sharp. Actually, using a percentage [0..1] might be a better(more intuitive) way edit the weight. I'll give that a try.

I'm not sure about the zooming differences. I didn't try to make it
different

Can someone explain what this is about? Does this
binary also include meestaplu's zoom patch?

In my build, the wire color is changed if the edge is creased. Perhaps
if you select the "Draw creases" button?

meestaplu · Post by **meestaplu** » Fri May 21, 2004 4:07 am

Yes, my new zoom control is in CVS. If enough people don't like it, I'm working on making old vs. new a user preference.

Matt

M@dcow · Post by **M@dcow** » Fri May 21, 2004 6:04 am

The subsurf edge weighting kicks ass, no doubt about it.

However, the zooming is awful -- I used it for about an hour and I can honestly say that the old method is much more logical.

Any chance of a build with the subsurf creases that doesn't have this zoom behaviour?

dmao · Post by **dmao** » Fri May 21, 2004 9:28 am

Hi, thanks for the build!

I'm pretty much in agreement with everyone else- Subsurf Weights- good, Zooming- evil

One issue to report though- Edges associated with isolated vertices are permanently creased. To see what I mean, make a cube, turn on subsurf, and delete a vertex. These newly-creased edges can't be smoothed out.

Also, I'm sure you're aware, but there's a rather noticable "bump" when changing from smooth to sharp- especially with weights around 1. Regardless, this is a HUGE improvement in blender's modeling capabilites!

Thanks again

meestaplu · Post by **meestaplu** » Fri May 21, 2004 10:15 am

dmao wrote:I'm pretty much in agreement with everyone else- Subsurf Weights- good, Zooming- evil

Hey! I put a lot of good work into that zoom code!

On a more serious note, I guess it is time for me to code a user preference. I'll be occupied for tomorrow, and I don't know about the weekend, but I'll try to get a patch up as soon as I can.

dmao also wrote:One issue to report though- Edges associated with isolated vertices are permanently creased. To see what I mean, make a cube, turn on subsurf, and delete a vertex. These newly-creased edges can't be smoothed out.

Not to worry -- Chris McFarlen knows about these issues and is looking to fix them.

Matt

matt_e · Post by **matt_e** » Fri May 21, 2004 10:23 am

A preference would be bearable if it came to it, but what would be better is to fix it so there's no preference needed - I think most people would agree if we could keep the nice 1:1 mouse to screen movements, but without the flip-at-center bit, it would be a great improvement over the current zooming.

Monkeyboi · Post by **Monkeyboi** » Fri May 21, 2004 12:56 pm

About zooming:

Having used it a bit more it doesn't seem quite as bad as it was. BUT, if we are going to have a new way to zoom it has to CONSISTANT. In 2.33a and before you zoom in exact same way in the 3D window, the IPO window, the buttons window, the NLA window and so on. Breaking that consistancy is a very bad idea. So, either they should all zoom in the old way or they all zoom in the new way (possobly with a user preference).

I do think the old zooming method is faster though (you can zoom in/out very fast), and controlable (you can easily make it zoom slowly too)

meestaplu wrote:
dmao also wrote:One issue to report though- Edges associated with isolated vertices are permanently creased. To see what I mean, make a cube, turn on subsurf, and delete a vertex. These newly-creased edges can't be smoothed out.
Not to worry -- Chris McFarlen knows about these issues and is looking to fix them.

Good, otherwise it would a huge drawback. I often create Non-manifold meshes with subsurf. It is impossible to create a line of vertices with subsurf with this patch so far.

chrismcf wrote:In my build, the wire color is changed if the edge is creased. Perhaps
if you select the "Draw creases" button?

Where is it? I can't see it in the Edit buttons, and honestly, do we really need to turn that off? I can't see any drawbacks.