Distort/Edit via Custom Control Polygon?

Hey guys, badly need an idea how to solve this. Is there an option or workaround to get this managed to have better control over the geometry when distorting my texture mesh into those outlines? Thanks for any hint! H
PS: there are several meshes and the outlines slightly differ.

Are you using CageEdit with a custom cage? Iā€™d try this with the middle control object youā€™ve shown (which is probably a surface) directly over the mesh. Then use Osnaps to deform it into the lower outline. Post the file if you need more help please.

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@BrianJ where is the option for a custom cage?! Need this canā€™t find it though.

At that point in the command just select the object that you want to be the control. Make sure itā€™s exactly lined up with what you want to deform to make the whole process intuitive.

@BrianJ you made my day!!! one question, to generate a control polygon incl those isocurves I can only take a single element (line, polyline) for generating a cage but no group, right?
So now I was coming up with a polyline describing the same points as this. Or is there a way to generate a cage from a group of curves as well?? Thanks for your thoughts! H (maybe McNeel should consider to add an option ā€˜use custom cageā€™ to make this option more obvious)

Not a group but you can Split and Join overlapping curves into one curve or polyline and use that. In your case, Iā€™d split the border curve with the central line and then Join them all into one polyline.

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Oh I see! Thanks a lot @BrianJ this is something I would use quite often now!!!

Got some issues with the polys. do you know how to prevent the cage creating those distortions? Thanks for your help

My guess is that the cage is not a polyline or that the cage control points are not coincident with the verts of the mesh itā€™s deforming. You may need to make a custom polyline cage placing a control point at each vert along the borderā€¦ not really sure though without seeing the file.

Ah ok, itā€™s just faster for me, will fix it later in Photoshop. Thought this would be driven be the ā€˜accurateā€™-option. So this is my workflow now (concerning the polyline)

Iā€™m not sure which objects are the controls in that screenshot but I definitely wouldnā€™t use the ā€œ2ā€ shaped one. Iā€™d use Vertex Osnaps and trace the border with a polyline for the control object.

http://recordit.co/aBSsb9BHHm

Here you see the process, background is that the original cut patterns of the sail are slightly different from the flattened ones done by ExactFlat plugin (even itā€™s really precise) and when I was aligning and distorting them in Photoshop as you might know the Transform tool would distort even in perspective and hence would fuck up the pieces not matching the artwork at the seams.

This way I came up with splitting both generated outlines (flattened pattern and original DXFs) into 4 lines and divided them by 4 segments to generate the grid. so thatā€™s why Iā€™m snapping to the intersections and endpoints of the grid to construct the cage polyline. As you see in the video with the cage Iā€™m matching the ExactFlat pieces this way with the original cutting pieces.