I've got a very complicated mesh thats been generated by a tool called Structure Synth. The mesh has a large number of intersecting cubes that obviously need some work to tidy up Anyone know of an easy way generate a "skin" of the mesh?
Can't check the file atm, but options that spring to mind are : marching cubes algorithm (meshlab has a filter for this) or some sort of addtitive blob-mesh generator (no idea for tools, I do my own)
I don't know of an automatic way of doing this easily. In Blender you could use the 'Geom Tool' script to cut intersecting faces, but then you would have to delete the internal geometry yourself. If you select 'occlude background geometry' and select all of the vertices, by box selecting as you rotate around. You could then hide the external vertices and be left with just the internal ones, which you delete. Unhide the other vertices and you are left with the outer mesh. Not straight forward, but it could easily be done! You could also easily go wrong if you haven't selected all the external vertices before hiding them. Regards, Ian.
Thanks Ian! I'll give that a try later today, I didnt think there would be an automated way to do it I tried removing all edges in Meshlab then running one of the remeshing tools on the point-cloud, it didnt quite look how I wanted but I saved the mesh anyway as it looked quite cool
I forgot to mention .... The 'Geom Tool' script is not distributed along with Blender, it has to be installed. You can find info at :- http://www.blendernation.com/using-geom-tool/ Select all vertices and use the 'faces/faces cut'. It may take some time to complete. Regards, Ian.
well so far so good, i've separated out the geometry into chunks that should be easier to work with, the problem now is that the Union operation can only take 2 objects at once, even my ancient copy of 3DS from 8 years ago can handle more than 2 at a time.. tool change time i think cheers for all the help!