Remeshing in SketchUp (Tutorial)
By Anar on 17/10/2013, 16:28 - Tutorials - Permalink
Recently Gael uploaded the "Chest" parts for InMoov.
Among all the parts the plexus is made of two parts with the words "InM" and "oov" on them.
To create these parts he used a boolean operation in Blender.
But Blender didn't do a good job and the resulting parts were full of small artifacts and "spikes".
I then contacted Gael to ask him if he wanted me to try to do it better...
So I asked Gael if (hopefully) he still had the parts BEFORE the boolean operation.
But unfortunately he didn't...
It meant I had to clean up the mesh before to perform a new boolean.
So here is how I did it...
This tutorial assume that you have a minimum knowledge of the SketchUp tools.
Because it's mainly a "graphic tutorial" with a minimum of text.
At least you should now how to select things with a rectangle either going from right-to-left or left-to-right and by triple-click.This tutorial makes use of 2 plugins : STL import/export (by Jim Foltz) and Curviloft (by Fredo6)
First I import the STL in SU.
You will need Jim Foltz's STL importer to do that.
I prefer to work in meters with SketchUp because it has been designed to deal better with big scale meshes. It was initially intended for architecture modeling. So you might want to import the part in "meters" unit.
InMoov's part imported in SU
As you can see there's a lot of "spikes" that have been generated by the boolean operation in Blender.
So the idea is to completely reconstruct the top surface without the letters and to do a complete new boolean operation later.
1 - Select all, Make group
2 - Rotate 90°
3 - Smooth edges (20° - can you see all the artifacts left by Blender's boolean ?)
4 - Edit group, Select, Cut
5 - Close group, Paste in place
6 - Make group
7 - Hide
8 - Edit group, Select, Delete
9 - Select (spikes), Delete
10 - Select, Delete
You might want to perform an extra step not shown here before going further (scroll down to the end of the tutorial)
11 - Skin (plugin Curviloft)
12 - Select boundaries, Validate
13 - Close group, Unhide all
You might want to stop here if you don't want any text on your parts. Or you might also continue with your own text...
EDITED : TIG has finished a release 1.1 of the plugin I needed so it's now possible to apply it at this stage.
Thank's TIG !
14 - Create a coplanar square surface
15 - Select, Move
16 - Edit group, Select, Copy
17 - Close group, Paste in place
18 - Move (on surface)
19 - Arc tool (12 sides - recreate the round corners)
20 - Select, Delete
21 - Select, Cut
22 - Edit group, Paste in place
23 - Extrude
24 - Select, Intersect with selection
25 - Select, Delete
26 - Select, Hide
27 - Select, Delete
28 - Close group, Select, Explode
29 - Unhide all
30 - Close group, Select, Smooth edges
That's it !
The part is now clean and smooth.
The remeshed version of
- InMRightV1
- InMLeftV1
are available in my InMoov download section.
They are not exacly the same one as what can be obtained by following the tutorial because I have made them with a slightly different method.
Before step 11 I have divided all the boundary edges and made sure to have an equal number of segments (edges) on all sides. Then the triangulation made by Curviloft is even better !
So the parts available for download are better subdivided and have a better triangles distribution.
In a previous version of that tutorial I wanted to not use the plugin "Curviloft" to show you how to do step 11 by hand.
And then I wanted to subdivide the "hand-made" triangles. But none of the "Subdivide" plugins available could do what I was searching for...
So I had a discussion about that with Frenchy Pilou, and Pilou succeeded in convincing TIG to develop such a plugin.
The plugin TIG is working on is here.
I hope you liked that tutorial...