[Released] ManFriday's Mesh Grabber [Commercial]

ManFriday

barbult said:

V 1.1.0 Public Beta: The Mesh Grabber tool icon highlight is still not going away when a different tool in the toolbar is selected.

Thank you for pointing that out. I never use toolbars so I didn't see that. Will add it to the list!

Thank you all for testing! I'm glad the beta seems to work OK.

barbult

ManFriday said:

barbult said:

V 1.1.0 Public Beta: The Mesh Grabber tool icon highlight is still not going away when a different tool in the toolbar is selected.

Thank you for pointing that out. I never use toolbars so I didn't see that. Will add it to the list!

Thank you all for testing! I'm glad the beta seems to work OK.

I thought it was already on the list, since you acknowledged my report back in December.

ManFriday

barbult said:

ManFriday said:

barbult said:

V 1.1.0 Public Beta: The Mesh Grabber tool icon highlight is still not going away when a different tool in the toolbar is selected.

Thank you for pointing that out. I never use toolbars so I didn't see that. Will add it to the list!

Thank you all for testing! I'm glad the beta seems to work OK.

I thought it was already on the list, since you acknowledged my report back in December.

It is. My bad. 

lamoid_5f20d3e469

ManFriday said:

lamoid_5f20d3e469 said:

Just bought this. Very useful. It is great in many ways. Very close to excellent, in fact.

Problems I have with it: (1) sometimes I am unable to select an edge. It selects ones nearby but not the one I want. (2) Sometimes the gizmo appears far away from the features I have selected. Makes it difficult to use with precision when that happens. (3) Even when the gizmo is close to the selected region, it does not locate itself at the center of the action, but at vertex nearby. For example if I select one edge, it does not apear between the vertices that bound the edge. Same for faces or selections of multiple features.

1 + 3) I'm still working on a fix for vertex and edge selection, and it turns out to be a bit more time consuming than I thought. But I'm on it, and it will be fixed soon.

2) Is already fixed here and will be included in that updated.

lamoid_5f20d3e469 said:

Two things I want to be able to do but can't: (1) Modify the left suface of the left leg or arm and then transfer that mod exactly to the right surface of the right leg or arm. (2) Apply the same mods to new G8 figures without having to redo them by hand. Both may may be possible but I don't know how to do them.  Any suggestions?

I am planning future add-ons for symmetry features but I can't say yet how that will look like exactly. Regarding 2), I think what you want is to create a morph from the deltas in the mesh grabber by exporting it to OBJ and reimporting it with Morph Loader Pro. Then you can save that morph asset to make it available in all G8F or G8M figures, for example. I learned it with this great tutorial by Sickleyield: but the steps required here are simpler because you don't need Blender -- you just export the OBJ and reimport it with Morph Loader Pro. Maybe someone has a more specific tutorial handy for that?

Thank you very much, ManFriday. You are terrific!

I woder if there is anyway to transfer meshgrabber changes from on leg to the other (for symmetry) by operating on the obj file, say in hexagon or with directing text editing of the obj file?

barbult

I've run into something surprising about the gizmo size. When viewed from the camera in my scene, the gizmo was huge in comparison to the geometry it was applied to. When I switched to the Perspective view, the gizmo suddenly became much smaller. I am using the V1.1.0 Public Beta.

ManFriday

barbult said:

I've run into something surprising about the gizmo size. When viewed from the camera in my scene, the gizmo was huge in comparison to the geometry it was applied to. When I switched to the Perspective view, the gizmo suddenly became much smaller. I am using the V1.1.0 Public Beta.

Thank you for the report. The plugin needs to constantly resize the gizmo for painting in terms of scene coordinates for it to be of somewhat constant screen size, especially when you zoom in or out, and sometimes it doesn't recompute it correctly. I've see that too in some situations but haven't had time to come up with a scenario to reliably reproduce it. Do you have such a scenario that i can reproduce?

ManFriday

lamoid_5f20d3e469 said:

ManFriday said:

lamoid_5f20d3e469 said:

Just bought this. Very useful. It is great in many ways. Very close to excellent, in fact.

Problems I have with it: (1) sometimes I am unable to select an edge. It selects ones nearby but not the one I want. (2) Sometimes the gizmo appears far away from the features I have selected. Makes it difficult to use with precision when that happens. (3) Even when the gizmo is close to the selected region, it does not locate itself at the center of the action, but at vertex nearby. For example if I select one edge, it does not apear between the vertices that bound the edge. Same for faces or selections of multiple features.

1 + 3) I'm still working on a fix for vertex and edge selection, and it turns out to be a bit more time consuming than I thought. But I'm on it, and it will be fixed soon.

2) Is already fixed here and will be included in that updated.

lamoid_5f20d3e469 said:

Two things I want to be able to do but can't: (1) Modify the left suface of the left leg or arm and then transfer that mod exactly to the right surface of the right leg or arm. (2) Apply the same mods to new G8 figures without having to redo them by hand. Both may may be possible but I don't know how to do them.  Any suggestions?

I am planning future add-ons for symmetry features but I can't say yet how that will look like exactly. Regarding 2), I think what you want is to create a morph from the deltas in the mesh grabber by exporting it to OBJ and reimporting it with Morph Loader Pro. Then you can save that morph asset to make it available in all G8F or G8M figures, for example. I learned it with this great tutorial by Sickleyield: but the steps required here are simpler because you don't need Blender -- you just export the OBJ and reimport it with Morph Loader Pro. Maybe someone has a more specific tutorial handy for that?

Thank you very much, ManFriday. You are terrific!

I woder if there is anyway to transfer meshgrabber changes from on leg to the other (for symmetry) by operating on the obj file, say in hexagon or with directing text editing of the obj file?

Sorry, no built-in symmetry yet, it's on the list for future add-ons. There are probably ways to do that in an external modeler but that kind of defeats the purpose of the mesh grabber, doesn't it. If anyone has an idea for a quick workaround, please post!

Imago

ManFriday said:

Sorry, no built-in symmetry yet, it's on the list for future add-ons. There are probably ways to do that in an external modeler but that kind of defeats the purpose of the mesh grabber, doesn't it. If anyone has an idea for a quick workaround, please post!

May I ask if those add-ons will be a paid separate product or an update of the original one?

ManFriday

Imago said:

ManFriday said:

Sorry, no built-in symmetry yet, it's on the list for future add-ons. There are probably ways to do that in an external modeler but that kind of defeats the purpose of the mesh grabber, doesn't it. If anyone has an idea for a quick workaround, please post!

May I ask if those add-ons will be a paid separate product or an update of the original one?

I will keep fixing the original product and make improvements to it, but major new features like rotation, scaling, morphs and symmetry are a substantial amount of work and will be new add-on products.

barbult

ManFriday said:

barbult said:

I've run into something surprising about the gizmo size. When viewed from the camera in my scene, the gizmo was huge in comparison to the geometry it was applied to. When I switched to the Perspective view, the gizmo suddenly became much smaller. I am using the V1.1.0 Public Beta.

Thank you for the report. The plugin needs to constantly resize the gizmo for painting in terms of scene coordinates for it to be of somewhat constant screen size, especially when you zoom in or out, and sometimes it doesn't recompute it correctly. I've see that too in some situations but haven't had time to come up with a scenario to reliably reproduce it. Do you have such a scenario that i can reproduce?

I might be related to the camera being far away and zoomed in with a high focal length. Here is a very simple scene I created from the original, to demonstrate the problem. It uses only a primitive cube and a camera. Just select the cube and then select a polygon on the cube with the Mesh Grabber. Then switch between the Default Camera and the Perspective View to see the gizmo size change dramatically. Similarly, if I select the cube and use the Mesh Grabber to select a polygon and then use the magnifying glass control (in the upper right corner of the viewport) to RMB Focal Zoom the scene, the gizmo size grows and shrinks as the focal length changes. 

 

barbult

Here is the scene that I have been working on, where I used Mesh Grabber extensively. I used it to fix lots of poke through problems on the shirt, because it was not designed to be tucked into these pants. I puffed out the right pocket of the pants to make it look like it was stuffed with stuff. I moved the pants waistband and belt out to make room to tuck in the gun. I added battle damage dents to two of the bots. It worked great! 

RGcincy

barbult said:

Here is the scene that I have been working on, where I used Mesh Grabber extensively. I used it to fix lots of poke through problems on the shirt, because it was not designed to be tucked into these pants. I puffed out the right pocket of the pants to make it look like it was stuffed with stuff. I moved the pants waistband and belt out to make room to tuck in the gun. I added battle damage dents to two of the bots. It worked great! 

Great example of how helpful this tool can be

lamoid_5f20d3e469

ManFriday, I greatly appreciate all the work you are putting into this product!  I downloaded your new dll renamed the old one and put the new one in C:\Program Files\DAZ 3D\DAZStudio4\plugins in its stead. when I resptarted daz studio (4.12 Pro) and loaded the figure I had been working on, all the MeshGrab tweaks were gone. All the objects in the scene reverted to their default meshes. So I reverted back to the old dll, restarted studio, and reloaded the same scene. All the MeshGrabber modifications are still gone! If they are gone for good, I've lost hours of work. Do you have any idea what could have happened?  I did not save the scene file with with the disappered mods. It appear to me that something in the new dll permenantly deleted the old mods. Now. even with the original dll reloaded, I have lost every mod in every character in every scene that I have built since starting to use your product. What has happened? Is there anyway to recover the many hours of work I put into modding?

lamoid_5f20d3e469

To follow up on my last note: I completely uninstalled MeshGrabber then reinstalled it using the install manager. Now my mods are back. They were not lost forever. But your beta dll made the mods unreadble -- even with the old dll reinstalled by hand. (Just FYI)

L'Adair

After seeing @barbult's work using these pants/trousers, I thought I'd share my own experience using Mesh Grabber on these.

I used the "wrinkles" morph, but in this pose, you could see poke-though inside the front pockets. Other issues included the width of the belt varying, belt loops buried in the front fabric, and the waistband intersecting the belt in several places. I was able to quickly fix all the issues with Mesh Grabber. (Image links to the full-size image and opens in a new window, if anyone wants a closer look at the belt and waistband.)

ManFriday

lamoid_5f20d3e469 said:

To follow up on my last note: I completely uninstalled MeshGrabber then reinstalled it using the install manager. Now my mods are back. They were not lost forever. But your beta dll made the mods unreadble -- even with the old dll reinstalled by hand. (Just FYI)

The deltas are stored with each object with geometry in the scene file. So the deltas should not get lost unless you re-save the scene with the broken setup, which would probably overwrite the scene file with a new one without the deltas.

Why the beta did not work on your system escapes me. I have changed nothing in it regarding the loading or saving of files. My suspicion is that the beta plugin did not load at all on your system for some reason, and then Daz Studio ignored the mesh grabber deltas from the scene file. If this happens again, you can check "Help" -> "About installed plugins" whether "ManFriday's Mesh Grabber" appears in the list and has loaded correctly.

ManFriday

Barbult and L'Adair, thank you so much for posting these examples! I'm glad that you're finding all kinds of ways how the tool can be useful.

barbult

I had difficulty getting Windows 10 to actually copy the Beta DLL into the correct folder. I was puzzled about why Mesh Grabber didn't show the new version in the plugin Tool Settings, until I figured out that the new DLL wasn't really there. Program Files is a protected folder, and downloading the file straight into the folder failed silently and didn't overwrite the original. I had to download to my desktop and copy it to the correct location and answer prompts to give it permission. Maybe something like that happened to @lamoid_5f20d3e469, and there was no Mesh Grabber DLL in the folder after the original was renamed.

lamoid_5f20d3e469

ManFriday said:

lamoid_5f20d3e469 said:

To follow up on my last note: I completely uninstalled MeshGrabber then reinstalled it using the install manager. Now my mods are back. They were not lost forever. But your beta dll made the mods unreadble -- even with the old dll reinstalled by hand. (Just FYI)

The deltas are stored with each object with geometry in the scene file. So the deltas should not get lost unless you re-save the scene with the broken setup, which would probably overwrite the scene file with a new one without the deltas.

Why the beta did not work on your system escapes me. I have changed nothing in it regarding the loading or saving of files. My suspicion is that the beta plugin did not load at all on your system for some reason, and then Daz Studio ignored the mesh grabber deltas from the scene file. If this happens again, you can check "Help" -> "About installed plugins" whether "ManFriday's Mesh Grabber" appears in the list and has loaded correctly.

I must have done something wrong. I'll try it again and let you know if there is something that might be of interest to you. Thanks again!

Havos

I have had the chance to try out the beta, and so far I am very impressed. Not only is the gizmo appearing in the right place, but more important for me is the improvements to vertex and edge selection when using a modified mesh. It was almost unusable before for that, but the beta is much, much better. It pretty much selected every vertex/edge as I wished. Thanks ManFriday.

I did spot a minor buglet, you may not have seen. If the object is posed, or morphed whilst the MeshGrabber is selected, then the gizmo again is displaced to a bad position. Deselecting the object and reselecting did not fix this, nor did deselection of the mesh grabber tool, and then reselecting. The only fix I found was to locate the gizmo and move it very slightly (which snapped it back into the correct place), and then press ctrl Z to undo the change to the mesh done when I moved the gizmo. A strange bug you might want to look at, but the workaround was not too bad.

barbult

My biggest wish for an addon or additional product is a mesh smoothing brush - something that works similar to the smoothing in the Blender sculpting.

L'Adair

I've got another example for the thread. This is the Vintage Leather Jacket, and the changes took me about an hour to do, but this was my first real test of the tool, and there were a lot of little tweaks… and some do-overs. These images were created for this thread, with before and after comparisons in both viewport Smooth Shaded draw mode and Iray renders. All image link to the full-size image and open in a new window/tab.

Here are the Before images:

And here are the After images:

The original image is here, and the followup image is here.

In the original scene, I added a dark gray to the shirt materials, but left it off for these comparisons, so it's easier to see the changes. The three biggest problem areas were

• the right bottom of the jacket where it intersected the leg instead of bending with it. I used MG to move it to the side. (Where it looks awful, to be honest, but isn't in the camera view.)
• the left side where the jacket intersected the weapon, rather than conforming to the shape.
• and on both sides, where the arms of the jacket intersected with the sides of the jacket.

One of the reasons it took so long to make changes with MG is I had to raise the arms in order to move just the sleeve or just the side of the jacket. So I'd move the arm up, tweak, then move it back down. I did that repeatedly until they didn't intersect. I also had to make very small adjustments to remove any stretching/contracting of the zipper. Had this been the central character of the original scene, I probably would have spent twice as much time, doing a lot more small tweaks.

This jacket is a perfect example of something that will be faster and easier to modify when rotate and scale are part of the tool.

ManFriday

Havos said:

I have had the chance to try out the beta, and so far I am very impressed. Not only is the gizmo appearing in the right place, but more important for me is the improvements to vertex and edge selection when using a modified mesh. It was almost unusable before for that, but the beta is much, much better. It pretty much selected every vertex/edge as I wished. Thanks ManFriday.

Thank you for testing! I'm glad these two problems are fixed then. I'll try to fix barbult's icon problem too, which I can reproduce, and then hopefully I can push an update out soon.

Havos said:

I did spot a minor buglet, you may not have seen. If the object is posed, or morphed whilst the MeshGrabber is selected, then the gizmo again is displaced to a bad position. Deselecting the object and reselecting did not fix this, nor did deselection of the mesh grabber tool, and then reselecting. The only fix I found was to locate the gizmo and move it very slightly (which snapped it back into the correct place), and then press ctrl Z to undo the change to the mesh done when I moved the gizmo. A strange bug you might want to look at, but the workaround was not too bad.

Ah, very interesting. I probably fixed the origin problem in place and forgot about the other, when the gizmo gets updated. At this time the gizmo position is fully automatic: the plugin looks at all the selected vertices, finds the one that is closed to the camera and puts the gizmo there always. This is why the gizmo can jump about with larger selections when you rotate the view or expand the selection. This is probably not going to work for rotations any more anyway, but I'll have a look. Thank you!

DoctorJellybean

@ManFriday Maybe you could look at the questions in your other thread

Loony

Hey ManFriday,

I have the problem here on the socks, that the green slider is kinda missing, its very low visible bot not useable, any idea why? I wanna fix this socks :/

I made a quick video.

↓

 

barbult

Maybe it is pointing inside the sock. Maybe the sock normals are backwards.

Loony

Did you checked the video? :) I did rotate the camera there :) the green arrow is not useable :/

Loony

I flipped the camera more around and... *magic* the green arrow did now appear O_o...

Maybe also a MeshGrabber bug?

barbult

MrDarck said:

Did you checked the video? :) I did rotate the camera there :) the green arrow is not useable :/

Yes, I did watch your video.

barbult

@ManFriday is there way to remove all Mesh Grabber changes from an object, to restore its original shape?