New Tool Test "Draw Mesh"

I assume the red box of mask should cover the area where the intersecting lines are ?

It is to cover the "Apparent Intersection" (Apparent intersections are those that appear to be intersections from viewpoint, but are not actually intersections).
From your pic, I have marked the apparent intersection to show.

But as mentioned, for a patch with 4 control splines/lines, you should not need to mask out the apparent intersection. While creating the patch, once you have the number of cuts required, tap "Enter", it will produce patch based on splines rather than controlled via view direction.

Thanks Steve

I was actually putting the mask over the vertex in the bottom left corner, so I get it now, where the lines cross each other (or the apparent intersection)

With regard to patching it does not work for me on Sept 21 (if there is an apparent intersection) unless I apply the mask.

Thinking about this some more Istonia

Patching is very useful for retopo work where draw mesh is already working really well especially with the ability to import splines & refine them.

Because Nvil already has great spline tools which allow you to model & patch with precision, I don't know if there is really a need to use the patch function in Draw Mesh for non-retopo work so may not be worth doing a lot of work on it ?

Would others agree or disagree ?

Hi Kevin, I just want to see if the Draw Mesh tool can be used to speed up in some non-retopo modeling process. It doesn't have to be precision wise. For example if you have a background image, you can draw out some boundary lines then use these lines to generate meshes by using tools in Draw Mesh tool, patch is only one of them. Then you can tweak the mesh to its final shape. Just a thought. If you don't find it particularly useful in non-retopo mode, don't use it then.

I think I will use draw mesh a lot of non-retopo work. I believe it will speed up the modelling process of non retopo work. In fact I may find I end up using it for the majority of my normal modelling work.  Being able to patch in 2d is a real time saver too.

But draw mesh and 3d patching is problematical. Aside from the issue of having to create masks when you are drawing freehand curves that intersect other existing lines or curves, it loses its camera depth and ends up all over the place when you draw new curves that cross over existing lines or curves. Anyway I'll watch with interest if you are able to solve these issues. 

...when you are drawing freehand curves that intersect other existing lines or curves, it loses its camera depth and ends up all over the place when you draw new curves that cross over existing lines or curves...

There are 3 ways to tackle this.
1. When finishing line drawing, before you release mouse button, press down Alt key and the program will not check line crossing.
2. Put masks in where you don't want crossing to be checked before starting line drawing.
3. This method is not described in tooltips because I am not sure how it may work. It requires you the enable/disable snapping through hotkeys. During the drawing of the line, you need to enable Spline snapping at least once to tell the program that you are using this method. When you draw the line across other lines, you can enable or disable spline snapping to tell the program you want crossing to be checked or not.

Thanks for the tip, I didn't realise snapping was causing the problem when crossing over other lines.

I uploaded first batch of Draw Mesh videos.
http://samardac.com/nvil-forum//index.php/topic,4393.0.html

I uploaded first batch of Draw Mesh videos.
http://samardac.com/nvil-forum//index.php/topic,4393.0.html

Hi rubberDuck.

Thank you very much for sharing your efforts with this new tool (draw mesh).

I think that also could be very useful for the rest of us to see a basic tutorial on how to manage this very complex tool.

Thanks again.

Marco (mkmdm)

Yes, I can do that. But it may take a while.

Thanks RD for putting this together ! I've so far watched the first and third videos. 

It was inspiring to watch and fascinating to see how you used patching of the draw mesh tool to quickly retopologise the snails body and how quickly you were able to achieve such a great result. Istonia's efforts in creating a such a awesome tool has really paid off .

I also picked up a few tips
- How to retopo the tops of circular areas (like the head, rear end and bump on the body)
- How to use relax vertices (which is a tool in Nvil that I didn't know existed)
- Soft selection
- Your use of customised toolbars that kind of act like radial menus.

Did you use a tablet and pen to work with draw mesh for the retopo ?

Thanks RD for putting this together ! I've so far watched the first and third videos. 

It was inspiring to watch and fascinating to see how you used patching of the draw mesh tool to quickly retopologise the snails body and how quickly you were able to achieve such a great result. Istonia's efforts in creating a such a awesome tool has really paid off .

Thanks for the feedback.
Most definitely paid off, because the tool is fabulous.

- How to use relax vertices (which is a tool in Nvil that I didn't know existed)

Loop Tidy is also a very useful relaxing tool, if you haven't tried it.

Did you use a tablet and pen to work with draw mesh for the retopo ?

I tried, but I returned to mouse eventually. I'm so used to using mouse in NVil that it felt awkward to use a pen. I leave it for sculpting and painting.
Lines may be wonky sometimes when drawn with a mouse, but they are discretized later anyway (when polygons are generated out of them), so it's no big deal. Sometimes I take advantage of resume (CAPS+RMB), which allows for drawing a sequence of straight lines from an existing line.

...when you are drawing freehand curves that intersect other existing lines or curves, it loses its camera depth and ends up all over the place when you draw new curves that cross over existing lines or curves...

There are 3 ways to tackle this.
1. When finishing line drawing, before you release mouse button, press down Alt key and the program will not check line crossing.
2. Put masks in where you don't want crossing to be checked before starting line drawing.
3. This method is not described in tooltips because I am not sure how it may work. It requires you the enable/disable snapping through hotkeys. During the drawing of the line, you need to enable Spline snapping at least once to tell the program that you are using this method. When you draw the line across other lines, you can enable or disable spline snapping to tell the program you want crossing to be checked or not.

Try this
http://www.digitalfossils.com/Download/NVil-Sep-24-17.rar

Method 3 is removed.
Method 2 still stands.
Method 1 is improved. Whenever you want to avoid the crossing checking, press down alt key (or ctrl+alt if alt alone triggers the view naviation), when drawing that portion of line. The line color will change to indicate that.

Hi Istonia

Method 1 is still not working for me when snapping is left on. When using the Alt key I get the result in this image.




I'm finding it hard to draw a curve, hold the Alt key when crossing a line and enable temporary snapping all at the same time. But when I do that does work Ok.

From a user point of view it would be best to leave snapping on. When they press the Alt key it temporarily disables snapping when crossing another line.

I works fine on me. Have you assigned any snapping options to Alt key?