Mesh Capture Plugin

How about a plugin to capture a dynamic mesh and allow saving as a file, or multiple rendering of the same dynamically-generated mesh by more than one Mesh Renderer patches?

I understand there is an OpenGL extension called TransformFeedback that might allow this.

a|x

usefuldesign.au's picture
Re: Mesh Capture Plugin

Not to threadjack — recently I posted a request for an Output-to-PDF plugin to save output as vector art instead of the usual bitmap possibilities that QC and Quartz Crystal offer. Obviously this could only output vector/primitive sources like GL Lines, Points, Quad Structures etc.

After getting no traction with that I thought maybe an output to a 3D file-format which could then be opened and printed to PDF as vector art in a 3D app completing the vector-only round trip into Illustrator...

Not sure if this is the kind of thing you are talking about or you mean only for meshes in a SL/QC 4 context (I'm still on 10.5 so no mesh for me).

Still some sort of output as vector from QC would be handy at times because it's such a great content creation tool… From imagination to prototype in an hour or so you can have proof of concept. Cleaning up in AI would be handy sometimes for me.

toneburst's picture
Re: Mesh Capture Plugin

I think we're talking about very different things though:

I'm talking about capturing 3D mesh data (vertices, normals, colors, texture coordinates, indices) into a mesh array or .dae (or other format) file.

What you're talking about is abstracting 3D point data to a completely 2D format. What you're after (if you really only want points and straight lines) might be achievable, but it's quite a different proposition to my request, and I imagine it would be quite difficult to extract the data you want from the data I want :)

Your vector output module would form a useful part of a suite of vector tools for QC, but that's another thread (and one that's already been started, I suspect).

a|x

usefuldesign.au's picture
Re: Mesh Capture Plugin

Yeah sorry for confusion toneburst, what I was getting at is that because that 3D->2D abstraction is quite complex and there's a good chance it can't be pulled of the GPU when it works it out for screen rendering purposes, to just publish the 3D data as 3D data in a 3D app native format.

ie. 3D points become Spheres with diameter ≃ GL Point size 3D GL Lines become 3D lines with (x,y,z) co-ords Quad Structures become 3D Faces colour values passed etc all wrapped up in a 3D file eg. .3dm, .obj .dxf or whatever

Then let a 3D app do the complex 3D -> 2D abstraction eg. In Rhino print screen to PDF file and everything flattens into a perspective view made up of PS artwork. Spheres become elipses, lines stay lines.

I guess in relation to this thread, I'm hoping that some GLTools ready structures of geometry could be outputted to a 3D file in addition to mesh contents. Just take the structures feeding GL Point Structure *et al *and plug them into the Renderer-to-3D-File patch.

So where you are talking export mesh to 3D file, I'm saying could GLTools type stuff go with it, please. [because I use them almost exclusively ;) ]

Having said that, maybe when I get to QC4 I can use meshes instead of GLTools for hi-volume ball-stick type stuff. I'm wondering if meshes are as fast to draw and easy to make largish sets of with a simple JS patch?? New GLTools Structure Transform patch could help out there it looks pretty powerful. Replicate in Space was always to limiting for my liking