[W.I.P] Tweak improvements - Painting a soft selection

[micheus]

Hi guys

I really wanted to listen to a few users before go forward on this stuff...

I've felling like Tweak magnet was not cover some options we see in other 3D applications (usually called Soft Selection), so I decided to try include some extra options to it.

In this video I show some differences between the use of the current options and the ones available with paint mode:


The concept of the soft selection here is similar to the usual Tweak magnet command, after we paint the selection and apply one of the Tweak's commands the selection goes on. We can use Undo if necessary and the selection will be back.
The video doesn't show the 'Select from weight map' option, but you can use it by assigning a greyscale image to any portion of the mesh (UV mapping) and by selecting that area you just run the command.

It was added the follow options related to the soft selection painting tool:

• Paint: paints a soft selection using the magnet brush selected and the magnets route strategy;
  
• Paint from selection: paints a soft selection using as source any regular selection existent;
  
• Paint from weight map: paints a soft selection using as source a greyscale or a coloured weight map (red->blu) uvmapped to a selection;
  
• Erase: the paint mode is switched to erase and any soft selection will be erased using the magnet brush setting as it works for paint mode;
  
• Clear paint selection: clear any soft selection painted;
  
• Magnets->Route strategy:
  • Shortdist: the default Tweak's route mode and it must be the preferred one;
    
  • Surface: this option allow us to paint only one continuous surface when we have other surfaces of the same object close to that one and we don't want it to be painted. As it requires more complex validations it spends more time. So, it's not recommended we keep it the default option if we are working with a high resolution mesh.

The Paint option

• isn't available in Body selection mode;
  
• is disbled and any soft selection is cleaned if Magnet or Tweak is turned off;
  
• Paint and Erase command can be 'hotkeyed' as the other Normal, Scale, Slide... commands;
  
• takes in account any Magnet Lock we have set;

Know issue:
- For a unknow reason, in Vertex mode we cannot see the painted vertices (the selection can blink sometimes), but if we change to edge or face mode we can see them.

Here is the file for download: wings_tweak.beam for Wings3D 2.1.5
It should be found in a place like this: C:\Program Files\wings3d_2.1.5\lib\wings-2.1.5\ebin

* Don't forget to backup the original file before replace it (but, do not leave it under Wings3D directory)


Obs: After we ending the discussion about this feature it still will need to be approved by dgud.

[micheus]

Let me try to understand why I don't get any comments about this W.I.P. ...
- Is it something uninteresting or useless?
- The video without audio is a problem? Is it hard to understand how this feature should to work?

By don't getting any feedback about such implementation it discourages further implementations.

[oort]

Micheus,

Please do not get discouraged. I think it is a great addition. I am most interested in the normal map feature that you have added. I think everyone is just busy with other things and have not had time to try out the new features. I was hoping to have more time to play with it and give more feedback but have not...

It has been very quiet in the Wings3D forum lately...

Thanks,
oort

[Dimitri]

It is that Wings is almost abandoned that no one gives feedback Micheus. They do focus in learning the use of other software anymore. They do think that trying to learn more things about the app is in vain. This is the reason that no one answers. Your devotion is great no doubt but... it is not enough.

It is a pity, indeed, that this so great piece of modeling gem has been deserted but... what can be done? If the programming knowing ones have departed, its fate will be to be forgotten.

Think about it: it has not even a round beveling tool... something unthinkable for a modeling app of our times! In such a condition you can not persevere, even if you have all the intention to persevere.

I know those comments are a little bit bitter but... it is the truth, most unfortunately!

[micheus]

Hey oort, I already got you comments inbox and it's very appreciated.
That was a call for those who are regular user of Wings3d as well as regular reading of the forum.

I check the forum every single day to keep the spammersite away and I follow the user's activity. So, maybe you are right Dimitri. But, by following the user's activity I already know that eventually we have more than 14 registered users accessing the forum in the past 24h (http://www.wings3d.com/forum/online.php?action=today) and it has benn this way for long time.

I already try to figure out how to implement that bevel stuff, but I face difficulties to implement a logic that works in the "Wings3d's way". If that happens I need to move forward because I need to see results otherwise I get boring. It's frozen by now and I got back to rewrite my lost curves stuff - something I wanted to do but I didn't have time since Wings3d started to be rewritten.

[Asticles]

keep on micheus.

What's this about Wings rewritten?

[micheus]

Hi Asticles
I commented about that in this post: http://www.wings3d.com/forum/showthread....3#pid13223

[Asticles]

Thanks micheus, do you think the problem is because of erlang? Should wings be ported to any other major language?

[micheus]

The real subject is getting out of focus.

Thanks micheus, do you think the problem is because of erlang? Should wings be ported to any other major language?

Asticles, I don't think so.
There is a recent started implementation for Web: Wings3D web version (started three months ago)
There is another one in C++ that started as a clone of Wings3D, but it's taking another route: Feather 0.1 (started three years ago)
The probably will take long until be finished since they are basically a work of one man - that is the case of Wigns3D as dgud has already answered about this at the Resurrecting Wings... (that was a long discussion)

Ok long random rant..

Sigh, I hate this Erlang discussion, that pops up from time to time, if you worked on S-Geometry you know LISP and you know why functional languages is nice to program in.

Erlang is what makes Wings3D as stable as it have been, how many real crashes and bluescreens have you had in these years, and most of these crashes have been dependent on the OpenGL drivers anyway.

Now that I have started to rewrite the gui in wxWidgets (which is a C++) library, and I promise you we will get more random crashes, which will be really hard to debug. Which is really sad but we need to bump the looks from 1999 to 2010 :-)

We have started to require OpenGL 2.0 (which is really old now) to modernize and optimize that part of
the code and we get complaints that Wings-2.0.X does not work for some users.

Some more comments about performance, when Wings was designed in 1999, a model of 1500 faces was about the largest models made and not workable in wings. So Wings ground design was not made to handle 10000 faces or above, we cut corners to make it possible to develop as a one man made project,
which it still is more or less, i.e. performance have never been prioritized and until we have 10 developers that collaborate on a large re-write that will never happen.

Erlang is really good at using multi core systems, actually one of the best languages for doing that type of programming, though Wings was made before multi-core systems existed and need a lot of work to become partly concurrent. Google WhatsApp and Erlang for one example!

What Wings3D need is one (or two) young great developer with lots of time and energy not old dorks that needs to sleep at night. Programming takes time (at least for me), the last two months I have coded wings at least 30 hours per week, that is after my normal work hours, so you can guess what my wife thinks of me, I'll soon be kicked out the house. But for me right now coding wings is fun, next month I will be tired of wings and something else is fun and I will do that instead.

Remember this is a hobby for us.