NVil Forum
General Category => Community Help => Topic started by: Monkeybrother on April 16, 2013, 09:02:24 am
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Hello. I'm a modo user and just discovered NVil. So far I'm absolutely loving it, and that's not something I say very often. I have a couple of questions.
Is it possible to cycle through the selection modes with one button? In modo I press space to switch between vertex/poly/edge mode.
Is it possible to change the way the perspective viewport rotates? I want the "trackball rotation" that is in modo, it feels a lot more intuitive.
Thanks!
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There is no selection mode cycling tool yet, but it should be quite easy to make.
I am not so sure what 'trackball rotation' is. Can you explain?
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I really don't know how to explain trackball rotation, but you can try it out in blender. kun, blender has both turntable rotation which is what Nvil uses and track ball.
kinda like what you got with no locked axis I guess but you should try it out.
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The ability to cycle selection modes would be very nice.
About rotation: What Passerby said. Basically completely free rotation.
Another question: If I activate a tool from a button, I don't have to hold down a key, but if I activate the same tool with a shortcut, I have to hold the key down. Is there a way to just activate a tool with a single keypress and keep it active?
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And can I set the options for shortcut activated tools anywhere? I want the extrude tool to always use "cursor control" for example.
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You can do that by using the streamline tool. For example, in the default setting, in polygon mode, A+MMB is polygon extrude with cursor control option.
If you are not sure what streamline tools are and how to set them up. see Help > Contents > Tutorials > Modeling Samples > Set Up A StreamLine Tool.
You can activate a streamline tool without hotkey from 'Tool Search' window, radial menu, a button in user tool window( a user customizable tool window).
If you want to tap a hotkey to activate a streamline tool without the need to keep pressing the hotkey, there is a streamline tool option 'Allow tap to live' for each streamline tool.
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Thanks. I'll check it out.
And about my previous question? ("Another question: If I activate a tool from a button, I don't have to hold down a key, but if I activate the same tool with a shortcut, I have to hold the key down. Is there a way to just activate a tool with a single keypress and keep it active?")
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See my edited previous post.
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Perfect, thanks.
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The selection mode cycling tool is added. You can bind it to a key, radial menu, user button or a streamline tool's WMB Up/Down events. Please let me know if it works to your expectation.
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That was fast. Thanks a lot, I'll check it out.
Next question: is there a way to make NVil portable? Can I have the settings on a USB key instead of in my windows/user catalog?
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Nevermind about the portable question, found it...
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If you want to go the DropBox way, you can check this thread at post #63
http://www.polycount.com/forum/showthread.php?t=116573&page=3
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I actually wanted to run it from my dropbox and it seems to work.
Also, the cycle selection mode works perfectly.
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I'm figuring things out and I really like that I can customize just about everything.
Another question though I can't figure out how to turn off the transform manipulator that pops up when I've selected something. Can it be turned off and not be shown until I activate a transform tool?
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I think that's the selection mode tool. I GUI it is an arrow button next to the manipulator buttons. In default settings, it is assigned to the 'Selection Tools' streamline tool with hotkey Q. So you can just tap Q key to toggle it on/off.
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But then every time I drop a tool with ESC, I drop selection mode as well?
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Do you think it's better that ESC command should not drop selection mode?
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Track ball style navigation is added. Escape won't turn off selection mode any more.
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Wow, that's great. Thanks! I just bought a license.
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Two more questions: Is there a command to join two or more adjoining polygons into an NGon? I guess I could select the edges and just delete them, but it would be a lot faster to just select polygons and join them.
And another noob question. I have some trouble using the bridge tool, or maybe I'm using the wrong tool. I have two separate meshes in the same object and I want to bridge edges across the meshes, but it's not working. I can only bridge edges on the same mesh.
Also, do the polygons I'm bridging have to have the same amount of vertices? That's a pretty big limitation.
Third: is there a way to edit how many segments the bridge tool creates across the bridge?
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A simpler way to put the question about bridging:
I want to select two sets of one or more polygons, press a button and have a bridge (no matter how many polygons in each set). Can this be done? And same thing about edges.
I'm still learning NVil and maybe I'm just missing something, but so far this is the only modo modeling tool I'm missing. Here's an example:
http://www.luxology.com/training/video.aspx?id=36
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It's not a one click solution, but for joining faces, you can select them, and then there's a command "Polygon Shortcut Tools -> Edges Inside Polygon Selection". After executing that you can delete the edges. I've got those things in radial menus, so it's just 2 gestures I need to make.
For me it makes sense, that I can't bridge faces between 2 seperated meshes, because the defining characteristic of the mesh subobject is that they are seperated from one another. The solution might be that bridge and other commands that join stuff would auto-combine the meshes to one new mesh.
As far as I know Nvil is indeed limited to matching numbers of vertices for the bridge command.
There are 2 ways of editing the number of segments. Either you use the visual tool 'bridge holes' in edge mode, where you can set the number of segments. Or you can use the streamline tool Bridge/BridgeHoles/CapHole, which works on edges. You select the first edge, then hover over the second edge and press one of the number keys.
For polygons, bridging is just a command (no interaction like with the edge bridge), so I don't see a way for editing the number of segments that way.
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For joining/merging of faces, I set up a streamline tool(Hot-key) for that.
Polygon tool=
On Activated:- Edges Inside Polygon Selection
On Delayed:- Delete
For the bridging of separate mesh within an object. Normally I do merge them first, but I have just checked, and no problem.
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I want to select two sets of one or more polygons, press a button and have a bridge (no matter how many polygons in each set). Can this be done? And same thing about edges.
It is possible to improve the edge 'Bridge Hole' tool to bridge between hole with different number of edges. My question is how do you expect the edge flow result. For example, there are 8 possible ways for a bridge between a 3 sided hole and a 4 sided hole. If the result is out of your expectation, will you have a hard time to fix it.
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Sure, in some cases you would probably need to do some cleanup, but having an almost good bridge is better than not having any. What I love about NVil is that it's very fast and can be tailored to work basically how you want it to, but the lack of 'limitless' bridge tool kinda breaks that and makes the workflow screech to a halt every time I come to a situation where I need to bridge stuff. It works most of the time in modo, but when it doesn't there's a "twist" setting that you can adjust to try different "solutions".
I mean this as constructive critisism, not just critisism. NVil is on it's way to become the best modeler out there, in my opinion.
It is possible to improve the edge 'Bridge Hole' tool to bridge between hole with different number of edges. My question is how do you expect the edge flow result. For example, there are 8 possible ways for a bridge between a 3 sided hole and a 4 sided hole. If the result is out of your expectation, will you have a hard time to fix it.
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And thanks steve and Vaquero. I'll try out your suggestions.
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I need some inspirations. Can you provide some screen shots of a bridge built from a 3 sided end and a 6 sided end. One shot for one segment, the second shot for 2 segments and the third shot for 3 segments. I want to see the wire frame. I would be better if you can provide the pure wire frame screen shots as well.
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And thanks steve and Vaquero. I'll try out your suggestions.
No need to use the work-around for merging of polygons. IStonia added a tool, he called it "Make NGon"
http://voidworld.cmcproductions.co.uk/index.php/topic,1207.0.html
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Sure, here are some examples:
https://www.dropbox.com/sh/lb72yynjti3btv5/p51_hDM9M-#/
Dropbox might not show them at full resolution, so you might have to download them. Let me know if you need better views.
I need some inspirations. Can you provide some screen shots of a bridge built from a 3 sided end and a 6 sided end. One shot for one segment, the second shot for 2 segments and the third shot for 3 segments. I want to see the wire frame. I would be better if you can provide the pure wire frame screen shots as well.
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Nice.
No need to use the work-around for merging of polygons. IStonia added a tool, he called it "Make NGon"
http://voidworld.cmcproductions.co.uk/index.php/topic,1207.0.html
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I could imagine it to work similar to the "Make Quad Topology" tool, where the movement of the mouse cycles through different solutions, and the mouse wheel sets the number of segments. Ideally, there would be different streamline tools, one that builds a straight bridge, and one that creates a curvature between the ends, based on selection normals.
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I agree, that would be very handy.
I could imagine it to work similar to the "Make Quad Topology" tool, where the movement of the mouse cycles through different solutions, and the mouse wheel sets the number of segments. Ideally, there would be different streamline tools, one that builds a straight bridge, and one that creates a curvature between the ends, based on selection normals.