Compare two meshes and highlight the differences?

thomasp

Hey, at work I sometimes get slightly tweaked assets based on submissions of mine thrown back at me to continue working with. Is there a way to compare one model with another one and highlight/isolate the differences? Like running 'diff' over two files.

Based on vertex positions with a tolerance setting would be best I imagine. The geometry is usually very complex and made up of lots of floating parts: the differences can be very minor and thus hard to spot with the naked eye.

Is there any function/software for that? All I can find is references to some Autodesk CAD tool that doesn't look very applicable for my kind of meshes.

Neox

how would that diff of vertex positions with tolerance work? how would know which vertex to compare to another? does this mean the 2 meshes need to have identical vertorders?

V!nc3r

Maybe this kind of trick could help? Using Blender, I've applied a VertexWeightProximity modifier, allowing to see some meshes variation:

thomasp

V!nc3r said:

Maybe this kind of trick could help? Using Blender, I've applied a VertexWeightProximity modifier, allowing to see some meshes variation:

Nice one. That does the job - and in the software I already work in. Perfect! 

thomasp

Neox said:

how would that diff of vertex positions with tolerance work? how would know which vertex to compare to another? does this mean the 2 meshes need to have identical vertorders?

I was just looking to find vertices that had changed position, including ones that were added. V!nc3r 's solution makes it easy.

Neox

I ask because we have a screenshot tool (and another data analayser) for that. Those make comparison easier, but not completely fool proof, this type of heatmap is actually really handy.