The skin modifier work is done, at least for now. I’ve completed my own code review, now the patch is uploaded for and awaiting review from another Blender developer. I’ll bring this up at the Sunday meeting tomorrow to confirm this as a 2.64 target.
A couple quick notes about the final version:
- I’ve noted some people are not happy with node scaling switched from S to CTRL+A, but for now I think it’s the right decision. It’s still up for discussion though, and it’s certainly possible that the code reviewer will have an alternate suggestion.
- The patch does not include wireframe overlay in editmode (although I have already uploaded that patch separately, it has not been reviewed yet.)
- Armature generation now makes nicer bone/vgroup names (e.g. Bone.001 rather than bone fe42bc95)
- The skin modifier now does a remove doubles operation at the end. It has a very small distance threshold, so this only affects some degenerate cases that created very tiny faces.
- The shading combobox has become a checkbox to match the remesh and screw modifiers.
- There’s now an operator to squarify skin vertices (averages the X and Y scales.)
- The documentation has received a few updates.
- I do not intend to add any new features to the skin modifier until 2.64 is released (at earliest.)
The past few days have had quite a flurry of testing and bug reports, thanks to everyone for that :) Also, apologies if I missed any comments, between replies here, emails, G+, and the BA thread it’s possible some notes slipped by me.
Looking forward to the addition to trunk. This and the remesh modifier in trunk is something I’ve been looking forward to since they first came to my attention. (as are most of your projects Mr. Bishop) These utilities with the hopefully soon release of unlimited clay should turn Blender into a nice 3d doodling pad on top of it’s already amazing capabilities.
Thanks for all your hard work, it is much appreciated.
I still think that kakachiex2′s idea of having normal vertex/node scaling remain S (as it was in the previous releases) and scaling for multiple vertices/nodes individual origins be ctrl + A would be a much better idea.
But I still would like to thank you very much for your hard effort and putting up with my nagging XP, but can you blame me? i’ve been looking forward to seeing the Skin mod being updated and improved since the 2.56 release, i’ve been using it regularly even in the old build and find it to be a great tool, armature generation, non square shapes just served to make it even better, so thankyou very much.
PS You forgot to include how holes/dents etc are formed in the documentation :)
Awesome work! Thank you! Can’t wait to play with it when it’s in trunk. :-)
But there is always the question when I see your skills at work: What is the next goal on your list? :X
Would there be any benefit to color coding the vertices that are marked as loose? I’m just thinking for noobs like me it would be easier to keep track of what’s what when tweaking a design.
I would much rather see tlirotaus on arrays where you are applying arrays to instanced proxies. Using arrays like this ramps your RAM usage way up and is not optimal. It is simply a bad workflow to teach. For example, take an object and create an array of it 1000 times (Note the RAM usage going way up in blenders header bar). In another scene, create the same object and make it a group. Take that group and link it to another scene or .blend. Create an instance of it in your new scene of .blend by shift + A add group (if your new object is green, then you have not created an instance of the original object. The instanced object should be orange with an empty). This creates an instance and will take advantage of blender’s memory instancing. Now make it into a proxy and duplicate it 1000 times.See the difference in RAM usage? Arrays are not optimal in blender.Using arrays, blender will quickly grind to a halt when a scene goes upward of a million polys or so; depending on the machine obviously. If you take advantage on blender’s memory instancing, which arrays do not, you could have a real-time scene in the hundreds of millions.
Whatever key is used for node scaling it really neads a menu entry (or better still) an on screen prompt (like the knife tool has)…
I’ve spent hours trawling around because I knew the key had changed from S but didn’t know what it had changed too!
http://wiki.blender.org/index.php/Dev:Ref/Release_Notes/2.64/Skin_Modifier#Skin_Radius