[Released] ManFriday's Mesh Grabber [Commercial]

ManFriday

barbult said:

I am using Mesh Grabber 1.9.3 Beta in DS 4.12.1.76 Public Beta.

• The "masking" with hiding polygons with the Geometry Editor is working great!!!! This is so helpful. I tested fixing a wonky belt loop on some pants without affecting the pants waistband. I tested moving the collar points on a shirt without moving the shirt body. 
• The polygon. vertex and edge selection are all working for the most part, but I had a couple problems:

1. Sometimes I can't select geometry behind the gizmo. I have to turn it completely off to select a polygon, edge or vertex.Otherwise it starts trying to move an already selected polygon. I don't remember having this problem before 1.9.3.
2. One time, after using the new feature of "masking", when I selected an edge, it would not highlight. It looked like it was not selected. But when I clicked Vertex, the two vertices of the edge were highlighted, so I think the edge was selected but not highlighted. I don't know if the masking had anything to do with it or not. I was selecting a visible edge.

• Ctrrl++ and Ctrl+- are working reliably for polygon selections. (If I have an edge or vertex selected, I get the popup message that they are not enabled for edges and vertices.)
• Gain is working for rotation and translation.
   

Thank you for testing, barbult! I'm glad that things have improved. Regarding 1), I had to shuffle a bit of code around to fix the vertex selection problems, so I can't rule out that I broke something else. I'll try to test this more.

Regarding edge selection, I will admit that I haven't spent as much time on edge selection as on vertex selection so I may have overlooked something. I'll have a look at this too.

Thanks for the thorough testing!

Imago

ManFriday said:

Imago said:

New bug found: As soon as I click on a Geoshell with the grabber, DAZ Studio brutally crashes.

I'm using the version form the store, not the beta.

I haven't seen this problem in the past, and I'm not seeing it with my current code. In fact the Mesh Grabber disables geografts when it is activated (like the geometry editor and weight maps tools do as well), for this very reason. Could you do me a huge favor and test whether the problem also occurs with the current beta code I posted at https://www.daz3d.com/forums/discussion/comment/5373996/#Comment_5373996 ? If so, please PM me with a test scenario I can try to reproduce on my machine. Thank you!

Geoshell not geograft! They are different things.

However I'll try with your beta and let you know.

ManFriday

Imago said:

ManFriday said:

Imago said:

New bug found: As soon as I click on a Geoshell with the grabber, DAZ Studio brutally crashes.

I'm using the version form the store, not the beta.

I haven't seen this problem in the past, and I'm not seeing it with my current code. In fact the Mesh Grabber disables geografts when it is activated (like the geometry editor and weight maps tools do as well), for this very reason. Could you do me a huge favor and test whether the problem also occurs with the current beta code I posted at https://www.daz3d.com/forums/discussion/comment/5373996/#Comment_5373996 ? If so, please PM me with a test scenario I can try to reproduce on my machine. Thank you!

Geoshell not geograft! They are different things.

However I'll try with your beta and let you know.

Oh sorry. I didn't pay attention. No need to test, I can reproduce the crash!

barbult

ManFriday said:

Imago said:

New bug found: As soon as I click on a Geoshell with the grabber, DAZ Studio brutally crashes.

I'm using the version form the store, not the beta.

I haven't seen this problem in the past, and I'm not seeing it with my current code. In fact the Mesh Grabber disables geografts when it is activated (like the geometry editor and weight maps tools do as well), for this very reason. Could you do me a huge favor and test whether the problem also occurs with the current beta code I posted at https://www.daz3d.com/forums/discussion/comment/5373996/#Comment_5373996 ? If so, please PM me with a test scenario I can try to reproduce on my machine. Thank you!

 

Geoshells are not the same thing as geografts, though. I'll see if I have the same problem later today.

Edit: I hadn't seen the reply above. No need for me to try to reproduce the problem any more.

ManFriday

ManFriday said:

Imago said:

ManFriday said:

Imago said:

New bug found: As soon as I click on a Geoshell with the grabber, DAZ Studio brutally crashes.

I'm using the version form the store, not the beta.

I haven't seen this problem in the past, and I'm not seeing it with my current code. In fact the Mesh Grabber disables geografts when it is activated (like the geometry editor and weight maps tools do as well), for this very reason. Could you do me a huge favor and test whether the problem also occurs with the current beta code I posted at https://www.daz3d.com/forums/discussion/comment/5373996/#Comment_5373996 ? If so, please PM me with a test scenario I can try to reproduce on my machine. Thank you!

Geoshell not geograft! They are different things.

However I'll try with your beta and let you know.

Oh sorry. I didn't pay attention. No need to test, I can reproduce the crash!

And it's fixed. Thank you for pointing that out! That really needed fixing. :-)

I'll put out another beta soon.

ManFriday

Status update:

• Fixed in 1.9.3 at above link: edge and vertex selection. (Confirmed by barbult.)
• Fixed here (not released yet): crashes with geometry shells. The Mesh Grabber didn't handle those well at all, it crashes as soon as you click on a geoshell with the mesh grabber active.
• Not yet fixed: slightly erratic gizmo (varying sizes, jumping about). I think this occurs mainly when multiple viewports are active at the same time because the gizmo caches some geometry data for itself but does not take multiples views into account. I have some ideas how to fix this but unfortunately it's a slightly bigger change.

ManFriday

Mesh Grabber 1.9.4 public beta

Available at this link: https://mega.nz/#F!n3ARECLC!5viItcscww3VbicPaXUkNA

The folder contains two DLL files, both of which you can copy to your \Program Files\DAZ 3D\DAZStudio4\plugins directory (or wherever your Daz Studio is installed). The directory should have an existing MF_meshgrab.dll file.

Like the previous 1.9.x betas, the two files are an update to the existing Mesh Grabber with more fixes, plus a first beta of the upcoming "Mesh Grabber Rotation Add-On". If both files are in the plugin folder, the rotations should work seamlessly in the Mesh Grabber.

Important notes:

1. Please make a copy of the old DLL before copying the new ones over it.
2. You will need Windows administrator permissions to replace the DLL because the plugins directory is protected. You cannot download the files directly into that directory, so please save the files to "Downloads" or some other place and then copy them using Windows Explorer.
3. The new DLL is time-bombed and will stop working four weeks from today to make sure I don't get bug reports for it two years from now. The Tool Settings dialog will have a heading with the version number and a "TEST" marker. When the DLL stops working, please copy back your backup, or reinstall the product via DIM.
4. This is beta code. It hasn't gone through Daz testing.
5. The DLL is for 64-bit Windows only.

What's new since the previous 1.9.2/.3 beta:

• Fix crashes with geometry shells.
• Fix gizmo position and sizing problems when more than one 3D viewport was visible. Some of the gizmo state is now maintained separately for each 3D viewport and no longer shared.
• Do not clear entire selection if Ctrl is currently held down. This makes accidental mis-clicks while trying to select multiple vertices less annoying.
• Fixed vertex and edge selection regression, which broke again with 1.9.0 probably. (This was in 1.9.3 already which i did not announce very loudly).

If nobody finds anything serious in this, this completes my to-do list before submitting this thing to Daz!

Thank you all so much for testing!

L'Adair

Thank you.

(And this time, I read the entire post, word for word! lol)

RGcincy

I have figured out a procedure to create a symmetrical morph from a one-sided mesh grabber change. I created the temple protrusion on the left, then created a mirror morph to get the same on the right. I can write up a tutorial if anyone is interested.

Daventaki

Very interested @RGcincy!

L'Adair

Daventaki said:

Very interested @RGcincy!

+1

(Even when we want asymmetry, it's easier to start with symmetry and then further modify individually.)

tkdrobert

RGcincy said:

I have figured out a procedure to create a symmetrical morph from a one-sided mesh grabber change. I created the temple protrusion on the left, then created a mirror morph to get the same on the right. I can write up a tutorial if anyone is interested.

Ah yes, yes. yes.

barbult

RGcincy said:

I have figured out a procedure to create a symmetrical morph from a one-sided mesh grabber change. I created the temple protrusion on the left, then created a mirror morph to get the same on the right. I can write up a tutorial if anyone is interested.

Are you using the Morph Loader Pro mirror technique (about minute 3 in the Josh Darling tutorial ) or is there an additional way?

RGcincy

It used a different method that requires an outside program, so Josh Darling's method is better. I'll write it up using his approach but include the prepartory steps and have it in a written form.

ETA: here is the tutorial

barbult

I am using Mesh Grabber 1.9.4 Beta in DS 4.12.1.76 Public Beta.

1. What exactly is Mesh Grabber supposed to do with Geometry Shells? Just not crash if one is the selected item in the Scene pane??? I can't select any polygons, edges or vertices on a Geometry Shell, so I can't grab and move anything on a Geometry Shell. This leaves me a little confused.
2. I'm having a big problem with previous Mesh Grabber changes getting (temporarily?) cleared in the viewport when I try to do an additional mesh grab movement on dForce Tennis Outfit for Genesis 8 Female(s). What happens is that as soon as I click on one of the translation or rotation handles, the selected object changes back to the un-mesh-grabbed shape, If I move the handle, the previous mess grabber changes suddenly appear again and additional changes seem to be made. If I click on one of the handles and DON'T move the handle at all, when I release the mouse, the selected object stays in its original unmodified shape and it looks like all my mesh grabber changes are lost. But if I click another handle and move it, the prior changes seem to come back again. I recorded two videos. Video 1  I click on the handle and then after a short pause I drag the handle. In video 1 I had Lock in Place activated.  Video 2 In some cases, I click on the handle and after a short pause, I release the mouse without moving the handle. The mesh stays in its reverted to original shape. In video 2, I deactivated Lock in Place, in case that had anything to do with it, but it doesn't appear to be related. I closed Daz Studio and started over and the same problem occurred with that product.
3. The Ctrl key when selecting polygons is successfully preventing other objects from being selected.

Edted for typos.

TheNathanParable

Geometry Shells are supposed to match the shape of the source object, so i'm confused as to why you're trying to edit the shape of a Geometry Shell. What effect are you trying to achieve?

barbult

TheNathanParable said:

Geometry Shells are supposed to match the shape of the source object, so i'm confused as to why you're trying to edit the shape of a Geometry Shell. What effect are you trying to achieve?

I'm just trying to understand and test what it means to not crash with geometry shells. Is there functionality added to Mesh Grabber, or is it just that DS won't crash if you have one in your scene when you use Mesh Grabber tool. It seems to be the latter, but I originally interpreted it to mean that I could use Mesh Grabber on a geometry shell.

Imago

TheNathanParable said:

Geometry Shells are supposed to match the shape of the source object, so i'm confused as to why you're trying to edit the shape of a Geometry Shell. What effect are you trying to achieve?

Some times you wish to give a different shape to the Geoshell. Let's say you want an aura arond your char (Dragonball-like) that has a wider zone on the upper part of the body.

Or simply model an "inner demon" for a char, giving horns to the Geoshell.

Also, you could like to sink some areas of it for a "magic hand" or.... Well, just use your immagination!

barbult

I am wishing that the highlighted polygons were not so opaque. When correcting poke through, I can't tell when I have moved the mesh far enough.

RGcincy

Two things I would like to see after using this tool for a while:

1. I like the range of Falloff Radius (very low values (0-5) are good for figures, very high values (900-1000) are good for large terrains and objects) but the slider is frustrating to set at the low end. I find I pretty much have to drag the slider to the lowest value (0.5 or 0.0 depending upon the beta version) and click the tiny + sign multiple times to adjust it. Having a checkbox that changed the range by 10 would be very helpful (e.g. instead of 0-1000 it becomes 0-100). An alternative approach would be a way to type in the value.

2. I would value having one more variety of Falloff Type and that would be an S-curve. The current choices all result in a hard kink at the edge of the falloff ratio which can be hard to eliminate. An S-curve that eases you in and out of the transition would be very helpful. 

BTW, I appreciate the effort you are putting in to improve this tool and keeping us up to date with the betas. This is such a valuable addition to Daz Studio and it keeps getting better.

 

ManFriday

barbult said:

TheNathanParable said:

Geometry Shells are supposed to match the shape of the source object, so i'm confused as to why you're trying to edit the shape of a Geometry Shell. What effect are you trying to achieve?

 

I'm just trying to understand and test what it means to not crash with geometry shells. Is there functionality added to Mesh Grabber, or is it just that DS won't crash if you have one in your scene when you use Mesh Grabber tool. It seems to be the latter, but I originally interpreted it to mean that I could use Mesh Grabber on a geometry shell.

As far as I understand, the geometry shell is a layer around an object with actual geometry and can't have geometry on its own except for the one that DS computed from the original object. Mesh Grabber had a bug that if an object had a geometry shell and you clicked on it, it crashed all of Daz Studio. So my change is that Mesh Grabber detects this case now and refuses to select the geometry shell.

ManFriday

barbult said:

I am wishing that the highlighted polygons were not so opaque. When correcting poke through, I can't tell when I have moved the mesh far enough.

I'll lower the opacity a bit for the final release.

ManFriday

RGcincy said:

It used a different method that requires an outside program, so Josh Darling's method is better. I'll write it up using his approach but include the prepartory steps and have it in a written form.

ETA: here is the tutorial

This is great, Richard! Thank you!

barbult

ManFriday said:

barbult said:

I am wishing that the highlighted polygons were not so opaque. When correcting poke through, I can't tell when I have moved the mesh far enough.

I'll lower the opacity a bit for the final release.

Thanks, that will be helpful. Did you see the crazy issue with the tennis outfit? Any idea what is going on there?

ManFriday

barbult said:

ManFriday said:

barbult said:

I am wishing that the highlighted polygons were not so opaque. When correcting poke through, I can't tell when I have moved the mesh far enough.

I'll lower the opacity a bit for the final release.

Thanks, that will be helpful. Did you see the crazy issue with the tennis outfit? Any idea what is going on there?

I watched the video but I haven't been able to reproduce that yet. I don't have that tennis outfit product myself so I'll have to do some testing tomorrow if I can find something else where I can see this problem. Thank you for reporting!

EDIT: One thing that comes to mind, does the piece of clothing have smoothing enabled? Does the problem go away when you turn off smoothing on it? I'm not 100% sure how the smoothing modifier operates in Daz Studio but it seems to kick in after a certain amount of inactivity which looks like what's happening in the video.

ManFriday

RGcincy said:

Two things I would like to see after using this tool for a while:

1. I like the range of Falloff Radius (very low values (0-5) are good for figures, very high values (900-1000) are good for large terrains and objects) but the slider is frustrating to set at the low end. I find I pretty much have to drag the slider to the lowest value (0.5 or 0.0 depending upon the beta version) and click the tiny + sign multiple times to adjust it. Having a checkbox that changed the range by 10 would be very helpful (e.g. instead of 0-1000 it becomes 0-100). An alternative approach would be a way to type in the value.

2. I would value having one more variety of Falloff Type and that would be an S-curve. The current choices all result in a hard kink at the edge of the falloff ratio which can be hard to eliminate. An S-curve that eases you in and out of the transition would be very helpful. 

BTW, I appreciate the effort you are putting in to improve this tool and keeping us up to date with the betas. This is such a valuable addition to Daz Studio and it keeps getting better.

Thank you for the kind words, Richard. I'll have a look if I can add a way to manually type in values with the sliders. A logarithmic slider would probably be the best solution but that would be quite a bit of work. Regarding the S curve, that's an interesting idea but I'm not sure I'll have the time to implement that in my current cycle. There will certainly be more updates later. :-)

RGcincy

ManFriday said:

but I'm not sure I'll have the time to implement that in my current cycle. There will certainly be more updates later. :-)

Not a problem, just wanted to get them in as feature requests.

I did forget to add one:

3. Is there a way to recover the last selection? I don't know how many times I've gone to select a gizmo handle and accidently click off and lose the selection and have to try and reselect what I had. If there was a right-click menu command to use the last selection that would be awesome.

ManFriday

RGcincy said:

ManFriday said:

but I'm not sure I'll have the time to implement that in my current cycle. There will certainly be more updates later. :-)

Not a problem, just wanted to get them in as feature requests.

I did forget to add one:

3. Is there a way to recover the last selection? I don't know how many times I've gone to select a gizmo handle and accidently click off and lose the selection and have to try and reselect what I had. If there was a right-click menu command to use the last selection that would be awesome.

Not at this time. What most 3D modeling software does is to push selection changes to the undo stack so you can just press undo to go back to the previous selection. But that's a bit of work and I haven't gotten around to doing it. It's on my list too. :-)

L'Adair

ManFriday said:

barbult said:

ManFriday said:

barbult said:

I am wishing that the highlighted polygons were not so opaque. When correcting poke through, I can't tell when I have moved the mesh far enough.

I'll lower the opacity a bit for the final release.

Thanks, that will be helpful. Did you see the crazy issue with the tennis outfit? Any idea what is going on there?

I watched the video but I haven't been able to reproduce that yet. I don't have that tennis outfit product myself so I'll have to do some testing tomorrow if I can find something else where I can see this problem. Thank you for reporting!

EDIT: One thing that comes to mind, does the piece of clothing have smoothing enabled? Does the problem go away when you turn off smoothing on it? I'm not 100% sure how the smoothing modifier operates in Daz Studio but it seems to kick in after a certain amount of inactivity which looks like what's happening in the video.

I've been seeing the same issue as barbult outlined for the Tennis Outfit on another product. I just loaded the scene and checked. The item did in fact have Smothing enabled, and when I turned Smoothing off, the strange behavior stopped. Hope this info helps.

Imago

ManFriday said:

barbult said:

TheNathanParable said:

Geometry Shells are supposed to match the shape of the source object, so i'm confused as to why you're trying to edit the shape of a Geometry Shell. What effect are you trying to achieve?

 

I'm just trying to understand and test what it means to not crash with geometry shells. Is there functionality added to Mesh Grabber, or is it just that DS won't crash if you have one in your scene when you use Mesh Grabber tool. It seems to be the latter, but I originally interpreted it to mean that I could use Mesh Grabber on a geometry shell.

As far as I understand, the geometry shell is a layer around an object with actual geometry and can't have geometry on its own except for the one that DS computed from the original object. Mesh Grabber had a bug that if an object had a geometry shell and you clicked on it, it crashed all of Daz Studio. So my change is that Mesh Grabber detects this case now and refuses to select the geometry shell.

So it can't be used on Geoshells? 

I hadn't the chance to use the beta, I hope you mean I have to select the Geoshell shell from the Scene tab to "activate" it and grab ut with your tool.