topic Mass Tool & Triangulation in Libraries & objects

Mass Tool & Triangulation

Anonymous — Mon, 10 Mar 2014 19:37:17 GMT

When I create a mesh with visible ridges, and save it as object, open the object,
and change status code of ridges from s=0 (visible) to s=-1 (hidden), triangulation is broken.

I always found this feature tedious. Do I miss something ?

Re: Mass Tool & Triangulation

Barry Kelly — Tue, 11 Mar 2014 02:23:29 GMT

I would save it as a Morph, select and hide the edges that you need and then save as an object.
Barry.

Re: Mass Tool & Triangulation

Anonymous — Tue, 11 Mar 2014 13:43:35 GMT

Thanks Barry,
I tried to preserve the parametricity of a native GDL object (mass), vs a morph object.
I need to show or hide only top & bottom ridges.
Easy to script with mass tool, but never tried with a morph object.
I guess it will take some time to isolate the desired edges and make the status code parametric.
I will see which method is faster, thanks anyway.

Re: Mass Tool & Triangulation

Barry Kelly — Wed, 12 Mar 2014 02:30:36 GMT

I was thinking that you could just set the edges to hidden in the morph before you save it as an object.
This may help you find them in the script so you can make them parametric - could be tricky to work out which bits of the code they are otherwise.

I prefer to use RULED for this type of thing.
Basically just the co-ordinates for two polygons and you can specify the height difference between them.
Very easy to control the visibility of each of these polygons.
Then you just stack RULED statements together so that the next RULED uses the co-ordinates from the second polygon in the previous RULED statement.

Not as simple as creating a mesh and saving as an object but it is very easy to control visibility of edges and even adjust the heights (for example a basin depth).

Barry.

Re: Mass Tool & Triangulation

Anonymous — Wed, 12 Mar 2014 11:57:42 GMT

Barry wrote:
I was thinking that you could just set the edges to hidden in the morph before you save it as an object.

That's what I did. I kept only top & bottom ridges visible before saving the morph as object.
It was easier to isolate them among hundreds and make their status code parametric.

Barry wrote:
I prefer to use RULED for this type of thing.

I did use ruled tool for roof tiles, but did not tested for this shape. I will try.
I suppose you have to save the different ruled parts as a single morph to get smooth surface in vertical direction too.

Anyway your first suggestion works fine. Thanks for your help.

Re: Mass Tool & Triangulation

Anonymous — Wed, 12 Mar 2014 20:12:37 GMT

To clarify, I was afraid to get this with several ruled parts (attached image).
Done with mass tool (s = 0 : visible ridges, mask = 21+128)
An attempt with two ruled parts give me the same (bad) result.

I need a single object to get smoothness in every direction.
My best bet is the mass tool with a morph conversion, as you pointed.
I don't like these GDL morph objects (hudge size, too long scripts, difficult to add parametricity)
Pity that mass tool is half finished.