Hey guys,

I'm trying to cut through polygons / edges the same way it' d be doable with the “Cut” tool in 3ds max. Or even better by being able to simply draw a curve onto the surface of a geometry (in my case a head / face) and cut a cookie / inprint on there with that curve / spline drawn on the surface.

Any tips on the best way to go at it please? I've looked at the Knife tool, which is more of a “slice” tool if you compare it to 3ds max. And i've tried the Polysplit which is very promising, but found the workflow of adjusting that spline onto the surface very difficult. hard to connect / close that curve procedural (connecting first and last point on curve), but mostly just rearranging point onto the surface. So far the perfect curve / spline needs to be done in 1 first go, otherwise i'm in for a never ending loop of manual tweaks point by point.

hence why i have a preference for a good old click by click cut tool to progressively cut the perfect inprint without creating gazillion points. Def my favorite way to do it.

Any help / advise /link to tuts more than welcome. Thanks in advance.

A.

PS: For those who do know the cut tool of 3ds max, here is a link that shows what it does. Very straight forward.(i am not the author of the video by the way).

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uZWPfbQCCa0 [youtube.com]

Also, while i'm at it, When using polysplit, it creates a group “splitpathgroup” (in red in my image) that contains what the name says it does. Any easy way to create two groups from that, one for the polygons inside of the “splitpathgroup” and one for the polygons around that “splitpathgroup”? I'm obviously trying to keep it procedural here to send out the inside polygons to a RBD fracture sim, while keeping those around as collision object.

Cheers,

A.

use TopoBuild with your geo as template geometry
- then just create polygon with 4 click in Build mode
- within TopoBuild it's easy to add/delete/move/smear/relax points on the template geometry as you line
- adding points to a poly is a bit hacky, in Split mode doubleclick on edge
- then you can just enter Brush mode and move them around easily
- or in Build mode one by one
- if you want smooth result treat them as if they were CVs of the curve and you can append convert SOP to convert to NURBS curve, which you can visualize as you are editing them
- then resample afterwards and use in polysplit

Thanks Tomas, I'll give it a try. Appreciated.

Any idea how to automatically split inside/outside groups after the Polysplit node? There's gotta be a way to extend the edge/poly selections procedurally on either side of the edge split, no?

Cheers,

A.

actually thinking about it, just Curve SOP with viewport primitive snapping and geo geometry templated may work for you quite well

tamte
actually thinking about it, just Curve SOP with viewport primitive snapping and geo geometry templated may work for you quite well

It does, but i still can't figure out how to have automatic groups once cutting the polys, like in this example, pretty much what i'm trying to do.

https://vimeo.com/39223895 [vimeo.com]

Cheers,

A.

you can either do Edge Cusp SOP and use splitPathGroup as Group
that will disconnect the geo on split, then use Assemble SOP to get your groups or just use Connectivity SOP to get class attrib which you can use to directly to refer to individual regions

or you can do it without splitting, by directly use Connectivity SOP in Prim mode and specify splitPathGroup in Seam Group

Thank you, Tomas. Forgot to subscribe to my own post, so didn't get notified.

Cheers,

A.