3dsmax - radial symmetry
polycount lvl 666
Does anyone know of a plugin for max that would let you select and manipulate a single mesh (without modifiers) via radial symmetry? Basically what I want to do is be able to do is, based of the objects pivot, have a specified number of instanced invisible cursors that perform the same operations as the user with an exact radial offset from each other over a single axis. This has been done before in both sculpt and paint programs. Examples:
[ame]
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Vf56JstJxsY[/ame]
http://vimeo.com/13776640
Now the question is, why? Why would someone want to do things that way instead of using the already perfectly good symmetry modifier or rotated instanced objects instead? The answer is speed and accuracy.
Say you have a 21 sided cylinder and every 3 segments of that is unique:
- With symmetry modifiers you can stack them (3x) for 24 segments and add an Edit_Poly modifier at the top to remove the extra segments and the merge edges. But because symmetry modifiers work based off of mirroring your geometry along its xform axis, not only is the geometry offset extremely difficult to calculate if you wish to rotate the mirror into place (meaning necessary 'eyeballing'), but it being mirrored means every section of 3 will be upside down.
- Rotation offset for instances can easily be calculated (3 / 21 * 360), but now you have separate meshes which means the borders are all unwelded and you can't preview them subdivided to see how they flow together. You could write a macro to merge all identical instances weld them at the borders, and add a turbosmooth, but this would be both tricky and dangerous (incorrectly combines objects, merges the wrong verts, undo que fails afterwords, etc.).
An edit poly modifier could be used to duplicate, rotate, and merge the sections, and then the user would work on the base object. However anyone who has used the edit poly modifier knows this would not work well, as its not designed to handle this sort of tasks and glitches would occur.
So now that you understand the problem, and the potential solutions issues, whats your take on how to best achieve Radial symmetry?
Edit: Updated for clarity
[ame]
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Vf56JstJxsY[/ame]http://vimeo.com/13776640
Now the question is, why? Why would someone want to do things that way instead of using the already perfectly good symmetry modifier or rotated instanced objects instead? The answer is speed and accuracy.
Say you have a 21 sided cylinder and every 3 segments of that is unique:
- With symmetry modifiers you can stack them (3x) for 24 segments and add an Edit_Poly modifier at the top to remove the extra segments and the merge edges. But because symmetry modifiers work based off of mirroring your geometry along its xform axis, not only is the geometry offset extremely difficult to calculate if you wish to rotate the mirror into place (meaning necessary 'eyeballing'), but it being mirrored means every section of 3 will be upside down.
- Rotation offset for instances can easily be calculated (3 / 21 * 360), but now you have separate meshes which means the borders are all unwelded and you can't preview them subdivided to see how they flow together. You could write a macro to merge all identical instances weld them at the borders, and add a turbosmooth, but this would be both tricky and dangerous (incorrectly combines objects, merges the wrong verts, undo que fails afterwords, etc.).
An edit poly modifier could be used to duplicate, rotate, and merge the sections, and then the user would work on the base object. However anyone who has used the edit poly modifier knows this would not work well, as its not designed to handle this sort of tasks and glitches would occur.
So now that you understand the problem, and the potential solutions issues, whats your take on how to best achieve Radial symmetry?
Edit: Updated for clarity
Replies
Now on the other hand, if were to use rotated instances they would all be disconnected from one another, so you couldn't use something like a turbosmooth on them and see how they look when combined. And an instanced Edit Poly modifier lets you manipulate all objects it's applied to simultaneously, but doesn't let you merge them.