Automatic edge splitting

[gap]

Another feature of other 3D editors that I miss in Wings3d is the automatic splitting of contiguous faces, either if the edge connecting them is marked as hard, or if the angle between them exceeds an user-configurable figure.

This is useful especially in video-gaming, because the 3D format used by some games doesn't support hard edges / smoothing groups.

[micheus]

Shouldn't this looks like if all object's face were extracted and combined to rebuild it?

[gap]

Yes, more or less, but if you extract a triangle three new vertices, three edges and two faces pointing in opposite directions are generated; that means that all the newly generated edges will become hard, whereas we might need only one or two of them to be hard.

The way I see this feature (which is the way it is implemented in Blender btw), edges are considered rather than faces: if an edge is marked as hard, or if it connects two faces whose normals describe an angle wider than a threshold previously set by the user, then in its place two edges are generated (one for each face); if not, the old edge is retained.

I hope I made myself clearer this time

[micheus]

Besides the hard edge command you can use the auto-smooth with an angle tolerance to set some hard edges as you said.
But, I don't think we can have the edge splitting that way since Wings3d works with manfold meshes only. So, have two edges sharing the same vertex is like to have a hidden hole or a zero area face between them. Any mesh cleanup should to remove that.

Maybe it should be something to be added to the exporter as we already have the smooth group option. I hope in the next year dgud can say something here.

[gap]

Besides the hard edge command you can use the auto-smooth with an angle tolerance to set some hard edges as you said.

I often use that feature, very handy for a quick object smoothing, though some manual adjustments are required at times

But, I don't think we can have the edge splitting that way since Wings3d works with manfold meshes only. So, have two edges sharing the same vertex is like to have a hidden hole or a zero area face between them. Any mesh cleanup should to remove that.

I understand that; what about duplicating the vertices together with the edges? Would that make things easier?

Maybe it should be something to be added to the exporter as we already have the smooth group option. I hope in the next year dgud can say something here.

My fingers are crossed!

On an unrelated note: let me wish you merry Christmas and happy holidays