Hey,
I have googled for an answer to this question a lot already, but found nothing helpful. Probably I am just using the wrong keywords. Anyway, my question is the following:
Is there a way to kind of highlight all faces which’s vertices are not actually on one plane? As you know, when you span a face between vertices hat are not on one plane you will get those bad faces with edges where there actually are no edges. But sometimes you don’t notice you just produced a bad face like that. So is there a way to globally check for the existence of such?
I also have a follow up question:
Is there a way to automatically correct such bad faces for the a whole mesh? So to align vertices on a plane which span a face but are not on the same plane? I know of the the method pressing S + (X,Y,Z) + 0, that’s not what I am talking about, in case you thought that was what I wanted
Thanks a lot! So, I take it it’s a normal step in modelling a more complex object to auto triangulate the whole thing in the end, as the problem of making all the non-planar faces planar is a problem of such a high complexity (both computationally as well as manually)?
They’re not that big of a problem. All faces get triangulated when they’re drawn on the screen and in rendering but you wouldn’t normally triangulate when modeling. Game models get triangulated if you have to squeeze polygon count down, bake textures, or in export but it’s not common to use triangles otherwise.
It probably isin’t that difficult for an experienced programmer to make a function that averages faces so that they’re planar within given tolerances but I don’t think making one is high up on the priority list.
While experimenting with the Mesh Analysis for distorted faces I came across something I didn’t understand. Blender has marked faces as distorted which’s vertices are definitely all on the same plane. I have checked that manually. Is there another factor that determines if a face is marked as distorted?
The Looptools addon includes a “flatten” function that will make the selected geometry co-planar. You can choose the plane too. View plane, normal average, or “best fit”. (note sure what “best fit” does, maybe shortest average distance a vert needs to be moved?)
Hm, that’s pretty cool, but it seems to not pay attention to surrounding faces. It makes one face planar but distorts another
Because the imperfection bugs me quite a bit I have started flattening the bad faces manually. This works fine for the ones that are parallel to one of the standard planes (XY-plane, ZY-plane etc.) but not at all for the ones that aren’t. Therefore I wanted to just align the whole mesh with the face I am working on to one of those standard planes… but I couldn’t figure out how to do that for the life of me. Might you tell me how to do that?
Is it not possible? I only find very crude explanation which I fail to replicate on how to do this. Is there really no way to just make an object parallel with one of its faces to one of the standard-planes?
the normal work is by following the global axis for the widget
but you can change it by selection and edge or face and use transform
then the widget will follow the new set up!
but not certain how this would work with an Ngon face
have to test that !
So I make me a custom orientation by getting the widget to align with the normal vector of a plane between 3 of the 4 vertices of the face I want to make planar.
this was already mentioned before
if you do that it may correct that face
but at same time you will change the other faces which will become non co planar
so sorry but not possible !
always been like that !
and when you select face it will pick all verts and not only 3
so the widget will follow sort of the average of all verts in face
you can flatten a face with the loop tool script
but if you do it may still change other faces around !
Well, if I go through the entire mesh from one side to the other I can get rid of the distorted faces without creating new ones.
Are you saying it is not possible to get the coordinated of a vertex relative to the custom widget orientation? Or that it’s not possible to straighten the faces without distorting other ones?
no if you have non co planar faces I dont’ think there is a simple way to correct all faces
only way I see would be to redo your model following the main global axis
each time you correct one face other faces will become non co planar!
sorry don’t know simple way to get the coordinates of a vertex relative with normal tools
there was some script that could find that for one face
but not very usefull if it changes other faces in mesh!
mesh’s faces topo have to be done coplanar when created !
and easy to do if you follow global axis
