Please excuse my ignorance. I’m really more of a hobbyist 3D artist still. I saw this featured in a Blender Market email and while it looks really cool, isn’t the same basic geometry possible to create through a subdiv mod and adding extra edge loops etc? What kinds of problems or issues should I expect this to solve for me if I use it? I admire the work, I’m just curious because I’m not quite sure I see what it does that subdiv doesn’t?
Definitely not, the ability to bevel / unbewvel / chamfer interactively and flip between them is way above the loop tool actions. as is the “Unf*ck”, that little gem alone saves a lot of time. The demo videos may not look like anything constructive, but if you start applying the addon to real-world modelling, you’ll quickly realise the potential and time saving. I dropped the money on this with some reservations, I am so glad I did now as it’s already saved me in a couple of situations where I had to tweak things. Instead of rebuilding the gemoetry, I just hit a few keystrokes and boom, job done.
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Any kind of geometry can be created in different ways. Most approaches have upsides and downsides. The downsides of subd’s are strict topology requirements and usually the mesh density increase all over the model. A bevel based approach allows for more focuses mesh density, where it is required.
This is perhaps a more personal thing, but I think subd hard surface models always have rubbery look to them, whereas a bevel based workflow creates visuals much more like solid/cad based modelers do. Very hard looking surfaces.
Anyway, I talk about about why MESHmachine was created and what it aims to solve on the introduction of the docs, which you may want to check: https://machin3.io/MESHmachine/docs/
In the end it’s all about flexibility and giving you options. As colkai said (thanks btw!) MESHmachine is a lot about going back and forth between bevels of different resolution, even undoing them completely if needed. These are things traditionally very hard or impossible.
For me these are important factors when experimenting with and exploring form.
If you are very much focused on subd modelling, MESHmachine is probably less useful.
But there are some gems, that are extremly versatile in a number of scenarios like the Un*fuck tool, or the Flatten tool.
I’ll get a video out ASAP, that documents the tools in detail in a real life scenario, thanks for the comment/question!
I’ve added the preview release 0.5.10 to gumroad and blender market.
- fix HUD offsets, Tape offsets and mousewrap issues with some layouts
- add Tape stroke undo/redo (ctrl + z/ctrl + shift + z, F1/F2)
- add flatten face/vert mode to subtitle in HUD
- QuadCorner slipped through the cracks:
- add mouse wrap
- add pen tablet support
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~30 minutes in real time, uncut.
Note how, a lot of the time, I’m actually fixing misbehavior of Blenders bevel/chamfer tool . I’ll attempt to create a better one in a while.
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Really nice video.
I have a small question: At 11:19, how are you merging the two overlapping faces cleanly after flattening them?
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I’m running my clean up script.
I’ve just checked and it’s the first 3 checkboxes(together) that manage to remove these edges. The script is part of MACHIN3tools.
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Thanks man, really useful script
thanks for the video 
and man … that second track by q function … awesome 
Hitting SPACE is a quick way to apply/ get out of the modal. Just want to leave this here for people.
LMB and SPACE applies, RMB and ESC cancels. This is common practice for all modals in Blender. For the Tape tool LMB places a point, similar to Blenders Grease Pencil and Knife tools.
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I should have tried it earlier. Wouldn’t have to trouble you with modal options otherwise.
Well, I did not follow standard practice and mention this in that bar at the bottom, so I’m gonna take the blame
I’m finding that the unf*ck modals wrapping is very unreliable at the top of the screen. It works fine if I move the cursor very slowly, but moving at a decent speed causes it to fail to wrap. Interestingly I don’t seem to have the same issue at the bottom of the screen… no idea what could be causing this.
Using the 0.5.10 preview on 2.79b 64bit under Windows 10
All tools use the same wrapping function, so if its an issue in one tool, it should be an issue in all of them. Please confirm.
Please post a screenshot of your complete layout, your screen resolution and dpi.
I can’t reproduce this at all.
As a side node, based on my exprience you rarely wan’t to change this to anything other than 0.55, 0.7 or 1.0, which you can do with the presets. I’s 0.7 95% of the time for me. Also, keep in mind that you can use the Redo Last panel to change the tension or any other value, after you’ve finished the modal.
Sorry yes, I have this problem in all modals. It also affects horizontal dragging if I close the T panel on the left side (may be a dual monitor issue). Additionally, vertical wrapping virtually doesn’t work at all with the viewport maximized (Alt+F10), very rarely I can get it to wrap at the bottom but never at the top.
I am using dual monitors, primary display (which I run blender in) is 1920x1080 with my secondary screen being 1920x1200. UI Scale is set to 100%, not sure where to locate the DPI. Full screenshot here: https://imgur.com/t1PzKfw
I feel I should also mention that HardOps and Pie Menu Editor modals wrap perfectly no matter how fast or far I drag, which leads me to suspect this is specific to meshmachine.
Edit: Also thank you for the tips, I’ve been using the redo last panel instead of the modal but I suppose I really should be using the presets
Does turning on region overlap in the system tab fix your issues?
Nope, it doesn’t
Normal Flatten: to take care of those pesky smoothing issues on faces that should appear flat.
Normal Straighten: applied to straight sections of Fuse/Bevel/Bridge surfaces. The model is the one from the 30 minutes demo posted above. You’ll notice at the end, when rendering, for most materials the normal fixes are hardly visible. But if you are working with highly reflective materials, it’s something you may want to do in the pursuit of normal perfection.
I’ll try to release 0.5.11 later today.
The cool thing about these tools is, you don’t need extra geometry to try to fight the normal issues. You may have noticed me doing some insets towards the end of the 30min demo. That’s what I was trying to do there, but it was only partly successful, and actually adjusting the normals is a much better strategy.
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