[RELEASED] Mesh Tool - A Mesh Editor

[Nate]

Available on Unreal Marketplace and itch.io

Mesh Tool Youtube Playlist

Mesh Tool User Guide (WIP)

Mesh Tool Issue Tracker

Mesh Tool is a mesh editor for Unreal Engine. It allows you to edit mesh assets and prototype props and levels in Unreal Editor.






















Feature List

 

Spoiler

Select & Transform

• Vertex/Edge/Face/Quad/Object Mode
• Select/Translate/Rotate/Scale elements
• Vertex Snap
• Delta Transform
• Marquee Select (Add or Subtract Mode)
• Marquee Select Ignore Backfaces or Occluded Elements
• Select Coplanar Faces
• Select Connected Parallel Edges
• Select Linked Elements
• Select Border Edges
• Select By Mateiral/By Somoothing Group
• Convert Selection between Vertex/Edge/Face
• Show/Hide Transform Widget
• Customizable Transform Widget Pivot
• Focus on Selected Element or Editing Mesh
• Toggle Vertices/Edges/Backface Edges Display
• Hide Selection Display
• Customizable Vertex/Edge/Face Display Options

Vertex Op

• Create Face from Selected Vertices
• Delete (Orphan) Vertices
• Collapse/Weld Vertices
• Align Vertices
• Set as Ruler

Edge Op

• Split Edge
• Turn Edge
• Bridge Edges
• Extrude Edges
• Insert Edge Loop
• Delete Edge

Face Op

• Slab Transform Mode
• Draw Quad/Circle on Customizable Draw Plane
• Flip Faces Normal
• Extrude Face
• Inset Face
• Delete Face
• Delete Invalid Faces
• Duplictae Faces
• Sepparate Faces
• Assign Smoothing Groups
• Assign Material to Individual Faces
• Flatten Faces
• Plane Cut
• Mirror Faces

Texture Map (UV) Op

• Plannar(Wall/Floor)/Box/Fit Mapping
• Pan/Rotate/Scale/Flip UV
• Match UV
• Flow UV

Object Op

• Flip All Faces Normal
• Weld All Vertices
• Recompute Normal
• Insert Primitive
• Hide/Show Other Actors
• Auto UV
• Auto Smooth

Mesh Op

• Save/Duplicate/Browse to Current Editing Static Mesh

Change Log

 

Spoiler

1.0.7

• Add Slab Transform Mode for widget free level blocking
• Add Set Mesh Pivot to mesh center or current widget location
• Add Create Static Mesh from Scratch (Plane and Cube)
• Add Draw Box
• Add Material management options (Compact/Override/Revert)
• Add Marquee Select Strict Mode option, while off will allow select edge or faces by select only partial vertices.
• Build mesh silent mode works on 4.16 too (previously only works on 4.15)
• Now SkipGenerateDistanceFields option default is on
• Fix Plane Cut might cause editor crash when cut result face area is zero
• Fix Create Face from Vertices might cause editor crash when selected vertices count is less than 3
• Fix Marquee Select not works properly in Quad Mode
• Fix Marquee Select Edge not working when IgnoreBackfaces is on
• Fix Draw Plane Axis' default orientation

1.0.6.2

• Unreal Marketplace Release Version

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

1.0.5

• Add Mirror Faces
• Add Draw Circles divisions
• Add flattern selected faces command
• Add Insert Edge Loop Offset option
• Add Static Mesh dirty label and save mesh button
• Add option to delete left over vertices (orphan vertices) when deleting faces and edges
• Add option to enable switching mesh in elements mode
• Add option to display command notification
• Enable Pan/Rotate/Scale texture map in Edge Mode
• Rotate/Scale texture map now base on selection center instead of origin
• Fixed Insert Edge Loop should prefer coplannar faces route
• Fixed Pan/Rotate/Sclae Texture Map button not repsonsive
• Fixed Extrude Edge on 90 degree generate flipped faces

1.0.4

• Add Draw Circle
• Add Insert Edge loop
• Add Delete Vertices
• Add Delete Edges
• Add button to force rebuild mesh distance fields
• Add Normal as new Local Transform Coord option;
• Improve De-select Edge by Alt key, now can de-select shared edge from other side
• Fix Bug when LocalTransformCoord set to world, cached transform not been updated

1.0.3

• Add Auto UV Scope option, can now apply auto uv on modified/linked/all mesh elements
• Add Supress Distance Fileds Generation option
• Now Draw Quad plane display corrrectly in Ortho viewports
• Now Draw Quad will use Auto UV Scale Override when Auto UV option is on
• Ignore Backface Select and Ignore Occluded Select now works on edges/faces select too
• Vertex transform widget rotation align to face transform widget rotation when Orient Vertex LocalCoord To Edge option is off
• Fix bug Draw Quad not update correct mouse position for display
• Fix potential editor crash when changing viewport layout in Draw Quad mode
• Fix bug undo Extrude Faces and Bridge Edges did not update widget location
• Fix bug when undo Duplicate faces by Alt key no undo Auto UV correctly
• Start code refactoring for Blueprint based mesh editing api

1.0.2

• Customizable hotkeys
• Add Auto UV Texture Map Scale Override
• Add Orient Vertex Local Coord to Edge option
• Now can use Alt + Middle mouse to move custom transform pivot
• Add MeshTool settings page in editor preference; Move proxy mesh support to experiemental category
• Fix StaticMesh been built twice

1.0.1

• Add Draw Quad as Tile
• Add Draw Plane manipulation
• Add Custom Transforming Pivot indicator
• Faster mesh build time

1.0.0

• Marketplace build

0.9.9

• Select Connected Parallel Edges
• Set 2 vertices as Ruler
• Pan/Rotate/Scale UV
• Flip U/V
• Delta Transform

0.9.8

• Draw Quad on Customizable Draw Plane
• Hide/Show Other Actors

0.9.7

• Close Beta

[ULLS]

Looks promising

[EntrpriseCustomr]

Reminds me of Lumberyard Level-Editing.
This could be a very popular Tool in UE4....

[CoquiGames]

Hi [MENTION=702]Nate[/MENTION],

Looks really cool. If you are planning to sell this at the same price as your Instance Tool count me in as a day 1 buyer . I also saw your pivot tool and like the idea. I would suggest combining both tools into one package. This new "Mesh Edit Mode" could really speed up level prototyping.

One suggested feature: Add the ability to subdivide a face or entire mesh. You can do something similar to Blender -> Select a face and then press a button to just double the number of faces. This would add huge versatility IMO.

I can image the workflow being -> Use BSP to create basic shapes or start with a basic cube and then subdivide faces and extrude.

Just some suggestions

Keep up the good work!

[Nate]

Updated DevLog of Week2. And thanks folks, for all the kind words.

[MENTION=49600]CoquiGames[/MENTION], I haven't figured out how to proper subdivide a triangle face without dramatically increase the poly count, but your suggestion motivated me to add the Split Edge command. And the Poor Man's Extrude.

[motorsep]

Good Lord, finally someone is working on this!!!

Do you plan on having clipping tool (like Knife tool in Blender) and functionality to remove selected triangles ? (I'd like to chop off parts of the mesh that protrude into terrain and cut out holes in my mesh terrain)

[CoquiGames]

Very nice [MENTION=702]Nate[/MENTION]!!

This is already looking like a huge timer saver for simple mesh adjustments! I can see myself importing a mesh from Blender and then making simple adjustments with this tool to change scale, etc.

One thing to consider (and this may be hard) - what about UV mapping? If you start with a simple cube and subdivide / extrude several faces, how will the UVs be created?

Keep up the good work!

[Shirk]

This is great, I do really hope you expand on this quite a bit (it has massive potential in engines like this). UV map generation, lightmap generation, extruding, beveling, etc will really make this an ultimate level designer tool for layouts.

[apoisonedgift]

Yeah stuff like this is sorely missing from the UE4 editor. Nice work!

[Nate]

Do you plan on having clipping tool (like Knife tool in Blender) and functionality to remove selected triangles ? (I'd like to chop off parts of the mesh that protrude into terrain and cut out holes in my mesh terrain)

I'll definitely add "Remove faces" functionality (I think it'll be useful to delete useless faces after actor merge). Not sure about Knife tool, I understand tools like that could be useful but I have to be very careful to not make a full feature modeler to compete with blender . (Probally a bad idea considering that's my first ever mesh editor) But I do like to explore the idea to add basic mesh boolean operation.

Very nice [MENTION=702]Nate[/MENTION]what about UV mapping? If you start with a simple cube and subdivide / extrude several faces, how will the UVs be created?

Good question! That's something keep me thinking these couple days, from my little "google research", there're basically 2 ways: 1) Auto UV projection whenever mesh being edited (e.g. extrude), could be simple Box Mapping or could be complex as LSCM or As-Rigid-As-Possible). 2) Do it via shader voodoo, like World Space UV Mapping or Object Space Triplanar Mapping. Haven't decided which way to go.

This is great, I do really hope you expand on this quite a bit (it has massive potential in engines like this). UV map generation, lightmap generation, extruding, beveling, etc will really make this an ultimate level designer tool for layouts.

To be honest, I haven't quite made up my mind the scope of Mesh Tool. But I like to keep playing around see how far it'll go

[Nate]

Week3 - Auto UV Correction

Adding a simple method to auto correct uv while editing static mesh inside editor.

[motorsep]

I'll definitely add "Remove faces" functionality (I think it'll be useful to delete useless faces after actor merge).

Absolutely ! (with preservation of UV maps, vertex normals and vertex colors)

[Nate]

Week3 - Delete hidden faces after merge actors inside UE4 editor

[MENTION=1680]motorsep[/MENTION], I hope that will put some smiles on your face

[Nate]

Week3 - Assign Smoothing Group and Recompute Normals

Re-assign smoothing group and re-compute normals to achive hard edge looking.

[motorsep]

Week3 - Delete hidden faces after merge actors inside UE4 editor

[MENTION=1680]motorsep[/MENTION], I hope that will put some smiles on your face

Haha, it did Do you have "L" hotkey to select linked tris ? (like in Blender)

Does it already preserve UV maps and other stuff?

How would it work with static mesh actors that have LODs ?

Btw, awesome job you are doing there, sir!