Hi all,
I have just released ‘Pop Mesh’ for Blender.
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‘Pop Mesh’ is a free mesh generator addon, based on a custom implementation of the age-old technique known as ‘path extrusion’, ‘sweep mesh’, ‘sweep surface’, and so on…
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The idea is that we generate a 3D mesh by sweeping a 2D path (a shape on a plane) along another path in 3D space such that the normal vector of the 2D path corresponds to the tangent vector at each point of the 3D path.
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Hence the acronym ‘pop’, short for path-on-path. To avoid confusion, in ‘Pop Mesh’ we use the name ‘profile’ to refer to the 2D path.
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Now, by changing the original ‘profile’ shape and by blending two or more profiles along a path the addon can generate a large number of variations in the resulting mesh.
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A few preset paths/profiles are provided and the addon allows you to select your own custom path/profile data. The requirement here is that your profile should be a 2D (flat) path on the XY plane.
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In addition, you can generate animated transitions between different states of the mesh when you enter ‘animation mode’. The animations are stored in NLA tracks.
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Finally, you can save/load settings to/from .json file.
Where to download:
You can find the addon at the following github page:
I have tested the addon with Blender 2.97 up to 3.3.7 versions.
Please feel free to post any questions or feedback regarding ‘Pop Mesh’.
PS: The ‘pop’ idea was further explored and two more addons ‘Pop Curve’ and ‘Pop Array’ are currently in the final stages of development.