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PolySmoother

polycounter lvl 6
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PolyTools3D polycounter lvl 6
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=depFDNRCPJs
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GlKcsMUuykc
PolySmoother is a professional tool to efficiently work with Smoothing Groups.

It allows you to visualize and manage the Smoothing Groups in a quick and easy way. You can set Hard and Soft edges, select edges by convexity, copy, paste, modify and optimize Smoothing Groups, as well as convert them from and to UV mapping, among many other features.

http://www.polytools3d.com

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  • Cathodeus
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    Cathodeus polycounter lvl 14
    Jorge i love you man !
  • Bruno Afonseca
    Jorge's tools are amazing :)
  • K-PAX
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    K-PAX polycounter lvl 7
    Finally a tool for hard edge~ Amazing~
  • _Shimmer
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    _Shimmer polycounter lvl 18
    does this work with 3ds max 2011 by any chance?
  • Michael Knubben

    Supported 3ds Max versions
    2014 - 2018

    It might still happen to work with 2011, mind. I'm just pointing out that it's not official supported.
  • chrisevansart
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    chrisevansart polycounter lvl 9
    yo man, your tools are great, but goddamn why so spencive? give a brother a coupon.
    P.S keep up the awesome tools!

  • PolyTools3D
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    PolyTools3D polycounter lvl 6
    @_Shimmer: The tools do only support the listed 3ds Max versions.
    @chrisevansart: What would a fair price be in your opinion?
  • chrisevansart
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    chrisevansart polycounter lvl 9
    @PolyTools3D
    I was thinking around 20-ish, and then I saw your bundle deal. Super awesome of you to do. Snatched it up! 
  • _Shimmer
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    _Shimmer polycounter lvl 18
    ah bummer. would love to use it but i guess ill have to wait for a news max release worthy of updating. keep up the cool work though!
  • PolyTools3D
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    PolyTools3D polycounter lvl 6
    PolySmoother v1.1.0 Update Released

    What's New:

    + NEW Selected edges are now displayed when Preview Edges is enabled
    + NEW Isolate now works in Vertex and Edge modes too
    - Improved Display Edges is now up to 300% faster
    - Fixed critical bug that would cause smoothing color to not update on Max 2018 Windows 10
    - Fixed blinking edges when first display Hard Edges
    - Fixed bug where undoing after disabling PolySmoother could crash Max
    - Fixed bug in converting specified edges for some imported models
    - Fixed several minor issues
  • snoops3d
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    snoops3d polycounter lvl 12
    this looks fantastic will be giving it a go today!!! thanks :):smiley:

  • snoops3d
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    snoops3d polycounter lvl 12
    so far man I love it... is there anyway you can have it open/enabled with unwrap modifier active,  would be nice to cycle through smooth group selections using your polysmoother interface then adjust uvs while in unwrap... 
  • beefaroni
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    beefaroni sublime tool
    Just purchased earlier today and installed. Works really well. Doing UVs from Smoothing Groups is much quicker now! Cant' wait to experiment with it more.
  • PolyTools3D
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    PolyTools3D polycounter lvl 6
    snoops3d said:
    so far man I love it... is there anyway you can have it open/enabled with unwrap modifier active,  would be nice to cycle through smooth group selections using your polysmoother interface then adjust uvs while in unwrap... 
    Currently, there is no way to support the Unwrap or any other modifier.

    What you would like is to select the UV Shells based on the Smoothing Groups using something like the PolySmoother list of Smoothing Groups?
  • snoops3d
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    snoops3d polycounter lvl 12
    Yeah, but I found easy enough work around..   In the unwrap I have everything smoothed based on UV islands then through your poly smoother I adjust the smoothing groups back to what I considering more ideal smoothing..

    Before using your script, this method  was a pain because I could never easily visualize the smoothing groups..   Now  its very efficient and easy thanks again man!! 
  • PolyTools3D
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    PolyTools3D polycounter lvl 6
    PolySmoother v2.0 Released

    What's New:

    + NEW Select Convex and Concave edges by angle
    + NEW Create UV Shells from Smoothing Groups
    + NEW Create Smoothing Groups from UV Shells
    + NEW Create Multi-Material from Smoothing Groups
    + NEW Now Smoothing Groups List update selected faces with Key imputs
    + NEW Select all faces using a given Smooth Group Bit
    - Improved Callback Mechanics for faster feedback
    - Improved Face/List syncronization up to 20 times faster
    - Improved Smoothing Groups list autoscroll
    - Improved buttons icons now display correct in Max 2017+ all buttons states
    - Improved Optimizer automatically switches to level 4 if some elements fails
    - Fixed bug in Convert Specified Edges
    - Fixed bug in Set Soft wedges where intersected hard edges would get smootheed
    - Fixed bug when setting sub-object level to 0 that left the scene redraw in an unstable state
    - Fixed bug when enabling caddies would constantly cast events


  • beefaroni
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    beefaroni sublime tool
    Loving the plugin so far.

    However, is there any way to Enable polysmoother when using modifiers in the stack? I seem to only be able to use it with an editable poly and nothing else.
  • PolyTools3D
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    PolyTools3D polycounter lvl 6
    beefaroni said:
    Loving the plugin so far.

    However, is there any way to Enable polysmoother when using modifiers in the stack? I seem to only be able to use it with an editable poly and nothing else.
    Currently modifiers are unsupported, as mentioned here.

    If you need to preserve the modifiers stack, you could clone and collapse your object. When you are done setting the Smoothing Groups in this new object, you could transfer them to an Edit Poly modifier on the original object with the help of a script.

    That's the best I can think of right now.

  • beefaroni
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    beefaroni sublime tool

    If you need to preserve the modifiers stack, you could clone and collapse your object. When you are done setting the Smoothing Groups in this new object, you could transfer them to an Edit Poly modifier on the original object with the help of a script.

    That's the best I can think of right now.

    Yep I've been making a reference and the applying modifiers to that instead. Works pretty well.

    Thanks for the reply!
  • PolyTools3D
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    PolyTools3D polycounter lvl 6

    In the next update I will include a function to copy the Smoothing Groups to a new EPoly modifier, so once you are done with the collapsed object you simply click on a button and then drag/drop the new EPoly modifier to the original object.

    Or perhaps it will have a feature to decide to which object to add the EPoly modifier, and so avoiding one step.

    That would help to keep the original modifiers stack and simplify the process.





  • PolyTools3D
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    PolyTools3D polycounter lvl 6
    PolySmoother v2.1 Released

    What's New:

    - NEW Select Edges by Convexity now can select both Concave and Convex Edges
    - New optional Angle Range can be provided to Select Edges by Convexity
    - NEW Send Smoothing Groups to a new Edit Poly Modifier
    - NEW Check for Updates
    - Improved code to work with Referenced nodes
    - Added icons to Select Edge by Convexity buttons
    - Fixed "blinking" dialog when opening PolySmoother
    - Fixed bug in random seed
    - Changed Clean up undo stack when PolySmoother is disabled
    - UI redesign

  • PolyTools3D
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    PolyTools3D polycounter lvl 6
  • snoops3d
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    snoops3d polycounter lvl 12
    Jorge I love this plugin, its a huge time saver on a couple projects I'm on right now..   One question every so often when working on a mesh I start getting a message saying "map channel already in use" I'm not sure how to rectify this issue? any help would be greatly appreciated!
  • PolyTools3D
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    PolyTools3D polycounter lvl 6
    snoops3d said:
    Jorge I love this plugin, its a huge time saver on a couple projects I'm on right now..   One question every so often when working on a mesh I start getting a message saying "map channel already in use" I'm not sure how to rectify this issue? any help would be greatly appreciated!
    Thank you snoops, I am glad you find PolySmoother useful.

    The problem you see if that for some reason (a bug that I have not been able to fix yet), the channel used for the colors is not released. This happens randomly and I suspect it is caused but some undelivered notification.

    There will be an update soon that includes the option to always overwrite the channel used for colors, but meanwhile you can go to the Channel Info utility and delete the channel you used.

    By default the channel is set to Color Channel, but you can specify any other channel up to 99, or let the program find the first available one.

    If you find a solid procedure to reproduce this problem, please send me an email with the details. I will greatly appreciate it.
  • snoops3d
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    snoops3d polycounter lvl 12
    excellent will I will give that  a go thank you Jorge!!
  • slizgi
    Looks very nice, any chance to be able to run it under max 2012 maybe? Or link to trial/demo to first check if it works and how it performs overall?

    Best Regards!
  • PolyTools3D
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    PolyTools3D polycounter lvl 6
    slizgi said:
    Looks very nice, any chance to be able to run it under max 2012 maybe? Or link to trial/demo to first check if it works and how it performs overall?

    Best Regards!
    For now there are no plans to support older 3ds Max versions.
    A new demo version will be available with the release of the next update.

    Regards

  • hansolocambo
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    hansolocambo polycounter lvl 8
    slizgi said:
    Looks very nice, any chance to be able to run it under max 2012 maybe? Or link to trial/demo to first check if it works and how it performs overall?
    Are you caught in some kind of a Return to The Future Loop ? Not so many jobs evolve as fast as 3D, it might be a good idea to begin to follow the flow.
    -------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
    Thanks PolyTools3D for this outstanding tool. I've been crying (not the only one) for years (maybe more than 15) waiting for something like that. But Autodesk isn't Pixologic or Allegorithmic : they don't give a shit about their customers.

    I had a few times the "map channel already in use" bug mentionned above. Not sure yet when or how it does happen. I'll be sure to let you know if I figure that out.
    Utilities -> Channel Info -> Right Click "clear" does the trick. It's a little cumbersome because it does happen often, but hey, smoothing groups is only the step just before baking MikkTSpace normals. It's not like it was the most time consuming step of all. And Polysmoother makes that smoothing groups hassle step so much more intuitive than it ever was before that it's ok ;)  Sure an upadte which auto-cleans the Channel Info would be much appreciated.

    Something else : the colors auto applied are very similar to each other which is quickly confusing. Given the 16million colors potentially available it's frustrating to cycle with what feels like 5 or 6 colors. To compensate for this, one can of course modify the color applied on a smoothing group using : Editable Poly -> Polygon : Vertex Colors -> Color       but then the Smoothing group Color visible in Polysmoother's interface doesn't correspond anymore to the one in the viewport or in the sub-menu I just mentioned. It's still great and manageable. But if there was a was in your UI a way to modify the color applied for each group or at least if the colors in the "smoothing group" panel of PolySmoother could grab and display the color that corresponds to the Polygon vertex color defined in the Edit Poly modifier, it would be : awesome.

    Thanks for eventually considering what I just mentionned.
    I just finished baking my Fortnite inspired 4400 polys' gun and your tool's been very helpful. Cheers.
  • PolyTools3D
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    PolyTools3D polycounter lvl 6

    @hansolocambo
    Thank you for your comments and feedback.

    Having the possibility to modify the color palette is absolutely useful, not only because the colors may be too similar, but the artist should have the possibility to work with the color palette they like, moreover when the same color palette might be used for other purposes like the material's ids. I will add it to the TODO list for the upcoming release.

    Regarding the issue with the mapping channel being already used, the option to force the channel has already been implemented and will be part of the next version.

  • PolyTools3D
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    PolyTools3D polycounter lvl 6
    PolySmoother v2.3 Released

    What's New:

    + NEW Added Support for 3ds Max 2019
    + NEW Optimize Smoothing Groups you can now decide to clear Isolated faces or not
    + NEW Set Hard/Soft Edges you can now decide to clear Isolated faces or not
    + NEW Set Smoothing Groups from UV Shells you can now decide to clear Isolated faces or not
    + NEW Optimize can now work on the selected elements only
    + NEW Previewing Channel can now be forced
    + NEW Support for modifying Edges Weights
    + NEW Support for modifying Edges Crease
    + NEW Colors for single Smoothing Groups can now be customized
    - Changed Color Palette has been optimized for 128 colors
    - Fixed bug Deleting faces and issuing an undo would throw an exception
    - Fixed bug in Set Soft Edges where faces with more than 30 neighbors would fail

  • PolyTools3D
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    PolyTools3D polycounter lvl 6
    PolySmoother v2.5 Released

    What's New:

    + NEW Added Support for top modifiers (experimental)
    + NEW Added Support for Vertex Weights
    + NEW Optimize SG when Creating SG from UVWs is now optional
    - Improved performance of Optimize Selected Elements for large faces selections. Up to 200 times faster for 20K faces elements (exponential)
    - Fixed bug closing PolySmoother while previewing would not release the preview channel
    - Fixed bug that could save the toolbar position out of screen size
    - Fixed set Edges and Verts Weight lower limit to 0.0001
    - Fixed Create UVW Shells from Smoothing Groups where objects with dead verts would produce corrupted UVWs

  • musashidan
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    musashidan high dynamic range
    @PolyTools3D The auto-update feature isn't working. It says I'm using the latest version 2.1. Love this and polyunwrapper so much. :)
  • PolyTools3D
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    PolyTools3D polycounter lvl 6

    Thank you for reporting this. I am aware there are issues with the servers but they should eventually work. I'll check it out and see what's going on.

    Haven't you received the latest update email? Could you please email me so l can send you the latest update?

    Thanks,
    Jorge



  • musashidan
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    musashidan high dynamic range
    Hey man, sorry, but I did receive the 2.5 update. I have a second email for PayPal that I rarely check and I just found it today. I got it on 28th Nov. Thanks.
  • hansolocambo
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    hansolocambo polycounter lvl 8
    "The selected Previewing Channel '0' contains data. If you continue, the current data will be erased"
    I define all my smoothing groups. Export as fbx. Re-import the same fbx object. Then if I try to edit the smoothing groups again, to modify something, I get the aforementioned error message and all my smooth groups are erased if I press "Yes" to be able to use Polysmoother again O.o

    It's been like that for ages. Would there be a way to code a wrokaround that issue to provide a less destructive workflow ? I mean 3DS Max smoothing groups sucks for decades, but at least I can define smoothing groups without any weird "channel" error that reset everything. 

    What does channel '0' mean anyway ? Material channel ? Map Channel ? I don't see any "channel" in the 3DS Max 2021 manual when it comes to smoothing groups ?

    Can I manually set this "channel" to something else than "0" in order to further edit my smoothing groups using Polysmoother without loosing them all ?

    Please advise.

    EDIT Solution : Damn... It's a Vertex "Channel". 
    Enabling, in Polysmoother Settings, the "Force Channel" option fixes that issue. 
    This option should be ON by default as I don't really see how setting it OFF could be useful to anyone.
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