Mesh Tool - A Mesh Editor

[JoeWintergreen]

Awesome

One of the issues with a TB-style interface for mesh editing is you tend to end up with a lot of interior faces; Quake-lineage games have compile tools which cull these out but you’d probably need a real-time method.

[unit23]

@;733311

Hi unit23, there’ s currently no plan to add skeletal mesh support. For Mesh Tool 1.x releases, I would like to focus on Staitc Mesh editing and the workflow/UX improving. That been said, I might do some experiments see if it’s feasible to do basic skeletal mesh editing after 1.x release.

Cool, I would be happy to have such a feature where i am able to delete different parts of a s mesh. Most edits I do with 3rd party software (Bolender and Max) evolve around editing out weapons for instance, which are tied to a s mesh. Static edits are less common, but I will stick around here, since your solution offers what seems a nice way to introduce more varieties on the fly.

[OptimisticMonkey]

Thanks @ - Shift-Drag to extrude is faster

2 more questions:

1. I am confused about smoothing groups - sometimes when I assign on the mesh seems to become faceted, but other times not. Also - why are there so many different smoothing groups? Finally, is it possible to remove smoothing group after assigning it?

2. In the “manual inset” video, there seems to be some kind of “edge bevel” and “edge fill hole” options… but I dont seem to have these in 1.0.5? What key are you using to fill in?

Thanks again!

[Nate]

@;733536

1. I am confused about smoothing groups - sometimes when I assign on the mesh seems to become faceted, but other times not. Also - why are there so many different smoothing groups? Finally, is it possible to remove smoothing group after assigning it?

Each Static Mesh face has a SmoothingMask flag (Smoothing Group), which can has value from 0 - 31.

The way normals get computed is that, if two faces having same SmoothingMask value (excpet 0) will have smooth shading (normal blended); if they having different SmoothigMask value, they will have facet shading (unique normal).

The SmoothingMask is stored as an uint32 flag which can store total 32 flags, that’s why there can be 32 smoothing groups.

Since SmoothingMask info is stored inside StaticMesh for each face, there’s no way to remove a smoothing group, but you can always assign it to 0 as default value.

SmoothingMask value 0 has special meaning in normal computation, faces with 0 SmoothingMask will always be considered as in different smoothing group, so always have facet shading.

To display smoothing group of faces, select faces first, check “Display Selected Face Info” on in Display category:

Then you can see Face Index [F], Smoothing Group [S] and Material Index [M] of selected faces.

Assigning smoothing group to faces while been flexible but can be tedious, so in next update, I plan to add Auto Smooth option to compute normal base on Hard Edge Angle.

2. In the “manual inset” video, there seems to be some kind of “edge bevel” and “edge fill hole” options… but I dont seem to have these in 1.0.5? What key are you using to fill in?

Those are WIP features which are disabled in distributed build. You can enable them by update “MeshTool.h” to change

#define MESHTOOL_WIP 0

to

#define MESHTOOL_WIP 1

But it’s not recommended to use any WIP features in production as those features might not even working or simply experiements I used to test out ideas.

[anonymous_user_a89abdb9]

Awesome!!! Any news on marketplace release date?

[Stiffy360]

Is it possible to do an edge split like this?

Insert edge loop does 90% of what I want, but it doesn’t split the other faces (where the red lines are) so it becomes detatched. If I split the edge it doesn’t work properly either.

Also when I extrude edges, not all faces have the correct normal

And one last thing, Is it possible to snap vertices to UE4’s gridpoints?

[Nate]

@artistic.coding;735566

Awesome!!! Any news on marketplace release date?

Mesh Tool was submitted to marketplace on Mar 2, and passed all review on Jun 15, but haven’t got a release date from marketplace team yet.

@Stiffy360,

You are right, Insert Edge Loop currently only split edges in-between, so the edge on other face won’t get splitted. It’s designed that way to simplify the topology:

Prototype modular wall with window and door

I’ll will option to split edges on other faces too in later version. For now you should able to split the edge manually then weld it to “stitch” them together:

Mesh Tool - Insert Edge Loop with Split Edge

Please note if you found that “Turn” edge won’t work, that could be there’re invalid faces in mesh, you can use “Delete Invalid” in Face category to delete invalid faces first.

To snap vertex to UE4 grid, you can select the vertex first, then click “Grid” in Vertex category to align selected vertex to current grid size.

When Extruding edge the faces normal is generated base on current view (always facing towards you). While the view base method works most of the time, but not so great if extruding border edges (e.g. 4 edges form a box). I’ll see if I can add more intelligent way to deal with border edges extrusion.

[Stiffy360]

Ah cool those all work.

One other thing would be, could you add an option so that when you drag select you select any (face/vert/edge) that touches the selection box? As it works currently it’s only stuff that fits inside the entire bounding box.

[Nate]

@Stiffy360;736550

One other thing would be, could you add an option so that when you drag select you select any (face/vert/edge) that touches the selection box? As it works currently it’s only stuff that fits inside the entire bounding box.

That’s a nice feature to have (I once added similar feature in Instance Tool to select touching instances, but it seems no many people aware of that feature). I will try add that in 1.0.7.

[Wolfen]

Can I purchase this some other way aside from Marketplace since it seems to not be there yet?

[Wolfen]

Nevermind, found the itch.io one. =D

[Nate]

Hi Wolfen, you found it while I’m typing reply (And uploading 1.0.6 build)

[Nate]

Mesh Tool 1.0.6 now live on itchi.io

1.0.6 Change Log:

1.0.6.1

• Enable Quad Toolbar icon

1.0.6

• Add experimental Quad support
• Add Match Face Texture Map
• Add Match Quad Texture Map
• Add Flow Texture Map
• Add Plane Cut
• Add Auto Smooth
• Organize UI in groups
• Now can use rotation widget to rotate Draw Plane

[Wolfen]

@;737726

Mesh Tool 1.0.6 now live on itchi.io

1.0.6 Change Log:

I put this version in my projects engine/plugins folder and recieve an UE4Editor-MeshTool.dll wrong version error asking if I want to rebuild. How can I reoslve this? Using 4.16.2-893055

[Nate]

@Wolfen, have you downloaded “MeshTool_1.0.6_for_4.16.2.zip”?
The zip files you downloaded should contain prebuilt binaries for launcher version (4.14.3, 4.15.3, 4.16.2), if you are using you own source build engine, then the plugin have to be rebuilt with your engine or project.
The 4.16.2 launcher version number should be “4.16.2-3514769”

The easiest way to use Mesh Tool in you own source build engine is to extract the zip to the engine source’s plugin folder (e.g. E:\unreal\416x\Engine\Plugins"), and rebuild the engine to make it available to all projects using the source build engine.

[Wolfen]

Ahh. That’s probably the problem. Will need to rebuild with our own source. Will let programmer know and give it a try.

Thanks. Will report back when I hear results.
=)

[Nate]

@Wolfen;737754

Ahh. That’s probably the problem. Will need to rebuild with our own source. Will let programmer know and give it a try.

Thanks. Will report back when I hear results.
=)

Cool! Let me know if you or your programmer might run into any issue building with your source engine version.

And I just found out that I forgot to enable Quad icon in 1.0.6 build, so you might want to download 1.0.6.1 version I just uploaded.

[Wolfen]

@;737766

Cool! Let me know if you or your programmer might run into any issue building with your source engine version.

And I just found out that I forgot to enable Quad icon in 1.0.6 build, so you might want to download 1.0.6.1 version I just uploaded.

Yup. I will do that tomorrow. I am in China myself, so the day has been done for work for a couple hours now hehe.

[Wolfen]

,

So I got it working fine in a normal project. Seems great. I have one question. So far the rest is great and I will likely come back with more feedback in the future. Check out ProBuilder for Unity. They have a lot of pretty awesome features too.

A couple requests, questions.
~Will you add a feature (or did I not find it?) that will let you set the pivot point permanently?
~Also, how about a custom UV mapping window?
~Rather than using a premade mesh, is it possible to create a feature to make some basic shapes and save that object as a mesh? So I could click “Box” and it makes one, then I edit from there how I want. A plane, sphere, ico, etc?

Great work though so far. Totally worth the asking price (a steal if you ask me. PB charges I think close to 100 bucks for something very similar for Unity, though it’s a bit more advanced and clean looking).

[OptimisticMonkey]

@Wolfen;738078

~Will you add a feature (or did I not find it?) that will let you set the pivot point permanently?
~Also, how about a custom UV mapping window?
~Rather than using a premade mesh, is it possible to create a feature to make some basic shapes and save that object as a mesh? So I could click “Box” and it makes one, then I edit from there how I want. A plane, sphere, ico, etc?

has a really useful Pivot Tool on Marketplace that does this Pivot Tool in Code Plugins - UE Marketplace
UV Mapping Window is question - I am always using the auto UV.
Use Insert Mesh to replace the current mesh with a cube,cylinder, sphere,etc…