3d Mesh generated from functions using blender.

[CoolHardMaths]

Hello, My name is Rick and I've beenplaying KSP for a while now. The game is so greatly improved with theuse of mods such as B9 that I felt the need to contribute. So I'madapting an idea I had (originally for designing ship hulls) to makea blender extension for designing KSP parts. The plugin will allowyou to auto generate a mesh from a 3 variable function and create acollision mesh.

This is my plan for development.

First release

• 
  
• develop algorithm to generate simple mesh object
  
• add material to the mesh
  
• auto generate collision mesh
  
• create GUI
  

Second release

• 
  
• add peicewise functionality(use different functions for x > or < whatever)
  

Third release

• 
  
• improve vertex spacing to reduce polygon count to smallest possible number
  

So before I start, while learning touse unity/blender, I have a few questions from the modding community.

Any words of wisdom?

Has anybody tried this?

What features would you like to seefrom this?

What else can be automated in blender?

Would you make use of this plugin?

Where can I find good python in blendertutorials?

Has this given you any ideas? Pleaseshare below.

Thank you.

[Randazzo]

Sincerely not intending to rain on your parade, but Unity provides this function in about three clicks (two if the mesh is already selected) for simple meshes like hulls. Something that could generate convex colliders for complex objects would be awesome, however.

Edit: Or I've completely misunderstood and you're talking about the actual model mesh being generated. That too, would be great.

Edited June 5, 2015 by Randazzo

[CoolHardMaths]

Sincerely not intending to rain on your parade, but Unity provides this function in about three clicks (two if the mesh is already selected) for simple meshes like hulls. Something that could generate convex colliders for complex objects would be awesome, however.

Edit: Or I've completely misunderstood and you're talking about the actual model mesh being generated. That too, would be great.

Don't be sorry for parade raining, That's why I added that Q&A at the end so people could let me know if I'm wasting time. That being said yes I am talking about generating the actual model.

[CoolHardMaths]

Alright, progress. I have programmed a dirty python class (in IDLE not blender) which takes a function with parameters z,x and returns y. It then adds each new vertex to a list. Currently its just a jumbled list of vertices in the order they where generated.

The blender API looks simple enough so as soon as I find away to assign vertex tuples to faces I should have a working prototype. The function for generating vertices has to be hard coded unfortunately and I'm currently testing with a simple hemisphere.

I'm also starting to think it might be much cleaner to generate meshes radially rather than up from a grid.

Your thoughts would be appreciated.

import math

class f3dmesh:

#class 3d mesh is an object which handles a mesh based on the output of a 3 var function

vertices = []

edges = []

faces = []

def __init__(self):

self.data = []

def make_vector(self,x,y,z):

#return a list object in x,y,z format

vec = (x,y,z)

return vec

def obj_func(self,x,z):

#this function defines the geometric function of the vectors

#will return string "none" if encountering a domain error

try:

#FUNCTION GOES HERE

y = math.sqrt(pow(5, 2) - pow(x, 2) -pow(z, 2))

return y

except:

return "none"

def build_mesh(self ,Xrange, Zrange):

#scan through Z for each val X

for indexX in Xrange:

for indexZ in Zrange:

#get val of Y from obj_func(x,z)

Y = self.obj_func(indexX, indexZ)

if Y != 'none':

#add to vertices if Y is defined at x,z

self.vertices.append(self.make_vector(indexX, Y,indexZ))

def get_verticies():

return vertices

def get_edges():

return edges

def get_faces():

return faces