Hello!
I have mostly theoretical question about poly structure.
When I working on models I always have a problem with edit poly after complete setup model for rigging. Weighs, vertex color, selection sets and etc depend on vertexes/edges/faces numbers so if I change significantly topology I loosing my setup.
I don’t like redo work which already done well, so only solution use some of tools which save/load setup data by vertexes position (Skin modifier can do it). Some of tools for save/load I write by myself.
I see one solution which can be more suitable than save/load data by vertex position. What if vertex/edge/face would have unique ID? Then would any data (weighs, colors) can be stored in “container” with this unique ID.
I understand that can be slow down poly workflow, so my question is – why such feature not implemented?
I want to hear technical and artistically argument after or against such feature what would a better understanding of the problem.
storing skin data by vertex ID is an option of one of my skin tools. this is not a vertex index, its a number associated with a vertex stored in vertex or map channel.
this concept doesn’t slow anything. the only question is what to do when topology changes.
if a vert was deleted it’s OK. but what if a vert was added? new vert ID depends on the way which the vert was added. in general there is no way to guess what weight this new vert has to get.
i use this: if a vert not in my list i search for its neighbors and put an average weight.
kdtree is great for fast vertex position based lookup but building the tree is prohibitively slow in mxs so really only an sdk option. Adding it to mesh and mnmesh and then exposing it to mxs would be a nice addition.
It seems such feature doesn’t have serious obstacles to be realized. It’s really sad
Thank you for the answer.
When I implemented a kdtree for an custom version of the wsm conform (used to speed up the ray casting into the target mesh) i was so surprised by the simplicity of it’s implementation it was very disappointing that it’s never been implemented for core meshes by autodesk.