Wings 3D Development Forum

Plugin Candidate : Surface-Evolver (.fe) export from Wings

I'm looking at this already. So calling it a candidate is probably a bit silly.

Why do I "pre-announce" these ? Answer is simple ... sometimes I would get some help along the way. Believe it or not ... it is sometimes easier to develop when just-in-time power users or testers get involved.

I have a reference exporter that goes from .obj to .fe to fall back on. But I think the .fe format seems simple enough that I'll just read the format and write it with a plugin.

Surface Evolver is extremely cool. BTW.

Anyone want to get in early ?

First release out in new ManifoldLab bundle.

Won't work well with multi-object scenes, I don't think.

Not much testing yet.

But is out there.

This does all manner of transformations to morph your shapes according to physical / physics sort of rules. I added ability to export FIXED vertices yesterday.

After a time I hope to get it seamlessly integrated as a stand-alone plugin.

Mark put an explanatory video, whenever you find the time, please... seeing is the best way for understanding the working of such things...

Thanks...

The documentation on the Surface Evolver website should suffice.

I would think. I doubt I will be able to produce better docs.

But once the seamless integration is done ... I will probably make a video anyway.

http://www.susqu.edu/brakke/evolver/exam...amples.htm

Been a long time since I worked in a DOS command prompt screen. I have not got a clue how to run
Surface Evolver. With no disrespect to Professor Brakke, but does he not have any time to create a proper
windows program, I'm sure he could get help from his students

I'm looking forward to an explanatory video!

DOS Prompt, linux prompt ... all the same to me. LOL.

The idea is similar to how ManifoldLab "WRAPS" and "SHELLS OUT" to CarveCSG. And similar to how it shells out to qhull and qvoronoi and tet gen. It design exactly so that you don't need to use the DOS command line if you use my plugins.

But ... you might want to at least know enough about surface evolver to decide why you want in.

I actually emailed the professor a few years ago I ask him how he would go about shelling one of his surfaces, His reply was since each surface is different it would take more math input, more then I possess, to create the formula to do the task in Evolver. I had included a pic of a shelled schwartz, He asked me how I had shelled the schwatz. I told him I used K3Dsurf and by simply adding a cube formula to the schwartz formula, generated the shelled schwatz.