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Author Topic: Roof (Surface overlapping geometry)  (Read 2796 times)

Michael Betke

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Roof (Surface overlapping geometry)
« on: January 13, 2016, 10:40:15 AM »
I have prolems with my simple roof again. :-/
I use a surface and my shingles distort at the end of the surface. I use a exclusion spline ot cut the shingles. The extend surface option doenst help too.
The roof has a lot of surfaces and I have no idea how to solve it without using a lot Railclone objects for each surface plane or manually modify (enlarge) the surface plane which helps sometimes.   
It also would be nice to have an end-cap shingle which has another piece of geometry.
Last but not least it seems the shingle get cuts off at the top side of the roof. I would like it to be cut at the bottom.

Paul Roberts

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Re: Roof (Surface overlapping geometry)
« Reply #1 on: January 13, 2016, 04:50:29 PM »
Hi Michael,

Thanks for contacting us and the file. In this case the distortion is caused because the surface and the clipping spline are close to one another. As you've mentioned the only way to solve this is to enlarge the surface so that it extends beyond the clipping spline. I've amended your sample scene to show how this could be done.



The surfaces being used by RC are hidden, but can be found in the Surfaces layer. I created them by splitting the edges for each face of the roof and using Racoon Artworks Extend Borders script..

To add end caps you should be able to add additional geometry to the Left and Right inputs of the Generator. Also changing the generator's Default mode to Adaptive will prevent sliced edges unless the roof is cut at an angle. To slice from the top instead of the bottom you can rotate the array by 180 degrees using the generators Properties > Clipping Area > Z Rotation value, just remember to adjust the padding and rotation for the tiles too.

At this moment the best way to solve roofs - unless they're very simple - is with one RC object per side. I appreciate that this can be complicated but we do have plans to introduce new tools to simplify this process. In the meantime you may find the script attached to this post useful. It allows you to select a RailClone object and apply it automatically to selected polygons. Here's a quick demo:



The script works by automatically extracting a closed spline from each polygon. It then duplicates the selected RC object, orientates it so that it is aligned with the polygon's surface normal and finally assigns the spline to the RailClone object's Clipping path. In most cases you should find this means you don't need a surface if the spline is flat, if not as in some of the sides of the roof in your example, you may still need to add a surface to get the correct shape.

To use it:

  • The surface must be an Editable Poly object with no modifiers applied.
  • The RailClone objects should have a clipping spline applied with the Generator set to Get X/Y Size from Area. The Clipping spline needs to be the first entry in the Base Objects rollout. If necessary you can use the arrows change the order.

  • Run the Script and use the Pick Rc Object button to select the RailClone object you'd like to clone.
  • Select the polygons on the surface and click apply RC to Faces. The script will create a new clipping spline and RailClone object for each polygon
  • Alternatively hold shift and click RC to Faces and the script creates a single spline and RC object that combines the selected faces. This is most useful when all the faces selected are planar.


I hope that helps, please let me know if you have any further questions.

Many thanks!

Paul
« Last Edit: January 13, 2016, 05:38:46 PM by Paul Roberts »
Paul Roberts
iToo Software

Michael Betke

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Re: Roof (Surface overlapping geometry)
« Reply #2 on: January 14, 2016, 08:25:46 AM »
Really great. Thanks a lot for your time Paul. :)
Seems so easy if you do it. :D 

Paul Roberts

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Re: Roof (Surface overlapping geometry)
« Reply #3 on: January 14, 2016, 01:24:34 PM »
Hi Michael,

Glad I could help out - let me know if you have any other questions.

Thanks!

Paul
Paul Roberts
iToo Software