Hello, 1st question:
is it possible to get an outline from one or more objects?
To make it more clear, I have a cube and a sphere. They are placed with different Z-Value (see A1.jpg), so not at same height.
What I want now is to get a polyline or bezier curve that is the outline of both objects in top view. (see red marked line in A2.jpg)
The resulting polyline / bezier curve should have vertices at same Z-axis.
Is this possible?
2nd question:
If I have a polyline / mesh etc., is it possible to make all vertices appear on same level? e.g. Z-Axis.
So I want to make a flat object (only 2D) of an 3D object, someting like a projection of a 3D object onto a wall.
Is this possible?
In your top view, insert a Bezier or Nurbs curve, extruding and inserting points to create the red outline. Press C to make it Closed when you are done. You should need about 6 points to define the curve you have in red. For the corners of the cube, make your bezier handles really small to get a sharp edge.
Your top view is already orthographic, so you can place your bezier at any Z you want.
I believe that all closed bezier curves can only be in two dimensions, So to answer your question, just create the bezier circle in the orientation you want. If you accidentally rotate it, use the traNsform key to clear the rotation. The surface can be rotated, so that an elipse shape can be projected and viewed to be a circle based on the angle.
Hello,
1st thanks for reply, but the example I have shown in my previous post was just a simple one, and your way to do it manually will work her.
But I want to have a way for lets say hundred of objects.
So I want to select hundreds of objetcs and get the outline of it. If there are hundreds of objects it will be very tedious to draw the lines manually using the polyline tool.
yea I got a way you can do it. attached is an outline I did in probably 2 minutes using this method.
1.) Go to top view (or whichever view you want the outline of)
2.) Select any object to start with go to edit view and look at edges (Ctrl+Tab)
3.) Select the perimeter edges and duplicate (Shift D), then seperate those duplicated edges §. To make things easier to work with I went back into object view and moved the seperated object to layer 2.
4.) Repeat 3 for all objects
5.) make all the perimeters seperated in step 3 into one mesh (Ctrl_J)
6.) connect the endpoints.
And to fill it all you have to do is Shift-F then Shift-J and you should be set, quick and easy way to do it. Hope this helps
I remember a script that Cambo wrote a long time ago that does that in 3D . It creates a new mesh that wraps things like what you get when you cover food with a plastic wrap.
Can’t seem to find Cambo’s site, though. So I did some searching and it seems that the code is here: Convex Hull script: http://blenderartists.org/forum/showthread.php?p=610630
Select your meshes then Ctrl J to join them into a single mesh. Run the script. Set the transform orientation to View the Skey, zz (press zkey twice), 0 (zero), enter… to flatten the resulting mesh in the Z axis of your monitor view. Select the outermost edges then Pkey to separate it.
Hello Peasly,
thanks for reply, but this is just another manual way. It is very tedious to get an outline of hundreds or thousand objects with many edges.
What I need is an AUTOMATIC way, any further ideas?
Hello grafix,
thanks for reply, it seems to be the correct solution, I got now the outer hull of the object by joining the meshes and start the script.
But than I cannot anymore follow with what you said:
‘Set the transform orientation to View the Skey’ - What does it mean?
…zz (press zkey twice), 0 (zero), enter… to flatten the resulting mesh in the Z axis of your monitor view. Select the outermost edges then Pkey to separate it.
Can you advise me?
Thanks for further help!
Hello grafix,
I finally got what you wrote, thanks!
But I just used the ‘Edge select’ mode, selected all outer edges and used SHIFTD to copy them. Now I have what I wanted,
Sorry, I seem to have omitted “press” before Skey. Glad you had it sorted out.
After selecting the outermost edges, pressing the P key should separate them into a new mesh. No need to shift D it because your flattened hull is going to be deleted anyway.
Just a thought… How about running the convex hull script again on the flattened convex hull? Would that give you the same result? You might have to select all vertices and Wkey/Remove doubles to get rid of the overlapping verts.
