Hi PaQ, well most of the time has been involved with researching N-sided hole filling and experimenting with different approaches.

Check out here for some fairly spectacular failures:
http://moi3d.com/forum/index.php?webtag=MOI&msg=5673.7

But I'm getting pretty close now to what seems like a pretty workable method I think, it should be useful for filling in holes and putting rounded caps on things in situations where it would have previously been pretty difficult. Here are a few recent examples:









There are still a few things left that I'm experimenting with but I think I'm on a good track now.


- Michael

Here's a kind of torture test with more hole than object, this probably isn't going to really be the best kind of thing to do but at least the method does not just fail:







Each surface wedge in all of these right now is a 20x20 control point surface:



- Michael

it's useful !!
...also choose number of control point surface,like last -network tool- options..i'm asking too much?

Hi Mauro, yes I think that there will be an option for the number of points to use, for a lot of cases it seems like 10 points can work but much less than that and the slices don't stay smooth to one another.

So it will be a little different than network, here if you use a really low number of points you'll start to see creases form between the slices. In network if you use a low number of points you still get a smooth surface it just does not stick very closely to the curves.

You probably aren't going to really be able to control point edit these kinds of patch surfaces anyway though, if you move any points nearby the boundary where 2 slices connect it will get a sharp edge between them.

- Michael

Appetizing!

PaQ is a a very impatient guy! :D

That looks like it's coming along nicely Michael......very nicely, I'm assuming auto tangency as per Blend?

-

Hi Danny, yup automatic tangency for where it connects to the edges to be filled. I think there will probably be some kind of bulge factor type slider like Blend as well, although I still need to work out what adjustment parameters will be available. I also want to do a bit of experimenting with maybe having a "crown point" that you could move up or down but I'm not sure if that will work out yet or not.

- Michael

Hi Michael,

You mentioning a bulge factor type slider reminded me of this thread http://moi3d.com/forum/index.php?webtag=MOI&msg=2915.4 maybe difficult for the n-sided patch however any chance seeing it with Blend?

-

Brilliant results, absolutely brilliant - have you thought about doing this sort of stuff as a job Michael?



Martin (2)

What is the name of the command ? This is great!

Kaël

Amazing work, this will be quite useful!

Marc

BLESS YOU MICHAEL!!!!

=-D

May you be further inspired.
(can't wait)

Looks magic !
Thanks a lot for showing us the progress !

I guess Michael has already come across the problem where the surfaces adjoining the hole do not have continuity. I've run in to this problem a lot in Solidworks, which forces G0 continuity in a lot of cases.

Hi Danny,

> You mentioning a bulge factor type slider reminded me of this thread http://moi3d.com/forum/index.php?webtag=MOI&msg=2915.4
> maybe difficult for the n-sided patch however any chance seeing it with Blend?

Yeah I am planning on overhauling Blend soon too, probably not for this very next beta but the one after. I want to do various tune-ups and one thing I want to try is being able to have separate bulge factors for each side rather than just one combined one.

- Michael

Hi Kaël,

> What is the name of the command ? This is great!

I think it will probably be called NSided.

- Michael

Hi Steve,

> I guess Michael has already come across the problem where the surfaces adjoining the
> hole do not have continuity. I've run in to this problem a lot in Solidworks, which forces
> G0 continuity in a lot of cases.

Right now I do still have a general continuity problem that I'm still working on - there is a small area right in the corners of the wedges where they are often G0 instead of G1 but I still have some things to try to hopefully eliminate or at least reduce that.

But also if the surfaces around the hole are themselves not G1 to each other (like for example if you have a simple box with one face missing and then try to fill that in), then I don't expect the blend will be G1 in that corner area either. Is that the kind of thing that you're talking about here? I'm not sure that it's actually possible to have a G1 blend in the corner in cases like that, you're basically trying to make a surface that has 2 different surface normals at one single spot. It could be possible to try to make the blend be G1 itself with using an averaged normal maybe but then the blend will be smooth itself but instead not be G1 to the neighboring surface.

- Michael

Hi Steve, one thing that I've experimented a little bit for the sharply meeting surfaces case is to put in little corner blends like this with poles at the corner spots:



Then that leaves the rest of the area with only G1 meeting surfaces to be patched:




If you want a smooth blend surface fitting into a sharp corner, probably it's going to need that kind of surface with a pole in it (like the tip of a cone) to get that.

But this has some problems - in general the more little surfaces that are used will tend to leave evidence of their construction in the final shape.

There may be some possibilities with an automated blend using that method though, but I'm not sure if I will be getting to that level yet with this current pass.

- Michael

nice stuff Michael.

for now, I move over too viacad to use the tangent cover function to fill holes :)
, tick that off my wish list :)

I wonder if some sort of inflate surface function would help with a lot of the organic type modeling?

Hi Steve,

> I wonder if some sort of inflate surface function would help with a lot of the
> organic type modeling?

Could you describe a bit about what inflate surface would do?

- Michael