Is there the idea to introduce an edit poly modifier like in 3DS Max? It coul be very powerful for modeling.
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The edit poly modifier is edit mode…
Uhm, it is not exactly the same thing! The edit poly modifier allows you to edit, for example, evry vertex generated by the subsurf, without aplly it. It’s very important!
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No offense here, but, why turning blender into max? Edit poly modifier is such a clunky concept. I hated it whenever I had to edit anything (and that is before knowing that Blender exists). Leave Max be itself and Blender be Blender.
Many of the new features of blender 2.5 are features that alredy exist in other programs. This is the evolution of a software, not the deniel of itself. If you don’t understand the power of such a modifier, it means that you never used it properly.
(sorry for bad english)
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So basically multires without the sculpting?
LOL, I don’t think there will be many coders willing to bite the bullet and code this modifier. Modeling in Max takes different approach and philosophy compared to Blender. So far, I have been able to do the same things in Blender as I was in Max, only faster by a factor three.
You are right, I might not be aware of hidden power of edit poly modifier. Then again, there always is Max out there and that program has it properly implemented.
Sorry about the rant, i just can’t stand 3DS Max (personal reasons)
for the love of god please, no!!!
well I’ve been using max as an export tool for the UDK and I have to say the edit modifier is the silliest thing ever. blender has edit mode, mutires and subsurf that’s all you need imo max just complicates things but making edit mode a modifier to me max is a half decent export tool and that’s all I’ll ever use it for.
And when 2.6 is out and people start writing import/export scripts again I will leave max in my programs folder to collect dust haha!:rolleyes:
I agree about the silly way the editing is implemented in max. Blender is a breeze. But there could be use of a similar modefier. A kind of “apply mesh” modefier. It would help sometimes when you want for ex. a solidify modefier after some of the other modefiers. But the edit part of the edit oily thing in max is annoying.
When it will be functional; Derived Mesh nodes of phonybone’s branch should answer your request and keep a clean modifier stack.
http://phonybone.planetblender.org/2011/01/09/happy-new-year/
…Gh!.. I’ll first have to learn how to use nodes. Once this integrated… it’ll be a joy to make “groups” of them all around! 
I do not really like the 3DS stack system. It would fit the Blender philosophy . Because the edit poly is really powerful. I was thinking something like this: when you go into edit mode and press Tab, and then ctrl-1, go to edit the mesh at the basic level, before any other modifiers. If, however, hit ctrl-2, go to edit the mesh at the first edit poly modifier that you put, if you press ctrl-3 go to the second and so on. Maybe putting a limit of 10 to edit poly that can be put (which is more than enough). This allows you to change the result mesh without apply the modifiers.
Only thing the edit poly modifier ever did for me in max was crash… 
might’ve been an “isolated case” on my machine only though…
Nope, the only reason to use it in the first place is in complex situations, and this many times(less than 50% though) ends up crashing…the modifier stack throws too many curve balls at is and it EFFs things up fairly easily, but jumping around in the stack will often do that anyway…I stopped using max with 2009 ver. I’m 100% Blended, shaken, but not stirred.
It sounds like a good idea on paper, but in the end it can have the same problem as the unlimited history stack implementation that’s also in Max.
You have a few modifiers and you decide to add an edit poly modifier, sounds good right, you can edit the modified mesh directly without applying any modifiers. Then you decide to add more modifiers, still good, the changes they make are applied to what you changed and added through the edit poly modifier, the topology has changed a bit and you added quite a bit to the mesh, but everything looks good, so what is the problem?
Now try moving the edit poly modifier up and down the stack, because you used that modifier to make extensive changes to the mesh, the modifier code would be unable to reliably predict how to re-propagate the changes that you added through your modifier throughout the stack, how can it re-arrange and re-position the geometry so the resulting changes is what you expected to occur, how would you know that the mesh will be changed in a way that won’t end up crashing Blender from too much RAM use or CPU overhead and be changed in a way that gives you the result you were expecting?
You could make it so that all the changes made with that modifier will be lost, but then you lose much of the power that modifier would supposedly give you, last month I gave my input on having limited history stack functionality in Blender so it won’t allow you to change things in ways that give unpredictable results (like Max allows you to do) and thus possibly cause crashes, but I don’t think even that can be done with something like an edit poly modifier.
Granted, Blender is already able to roughly predict how to propagate displacements when editing and adding geometry to a multires mesh, but that scenario is simpler as the sculpted details do not change topology, each multires level at its simplest definition, divides each generated face into fours (the base faces if the level is one) and moves the verticies according to the commonly used catmull-clark algorithm, and thus you can then imagine the mesh being de-subdivided after sculpting and finding that while the verticies changed position, all the original faces are still there. When you add new faces to the bottom level, you can picture a displacement map being created from where the generated verticies are in relation to the face so it’s like stretching a row of pixels on an edge, copying the whole map, or smoothing it to a higher (or lower) resolution.
So I will have to say no on this, there’s not really any way to make this work so things can be predictable.
It could prevent you from making changes to the mesh topology if there is a edit poly, or prevent changes to the part of the topology affected by the edit poly. I think we don’t have to refuse an idea totally, but try to find a solution to use its good parts.
Well… manual shape edit modifier (cannot edit topology) sounds good to me…
Lell - if you are afraid to make edits to geometry, save often under different (sequential) file names. and don’t hit ‘apply’ until you are happy with a mesh. At the moment it seems that you are experiencing a problem with workflow, not functionality.