Mesh Maker - The Modeling & Editing Collection

Yes, the asset store approved the Prefab Maker program, but didn't like the menu from Mesh Maker being on the main menu bar. It was approved in June being on the main menu, but I must have gotten a different reviewer. I've now moved it back to the Window menu and resubmitted it so hopefully they'll fast track it tomorrow.

This is just the first release (v0.9) so I'm all open to new ideas and suggestions. I'll make a note of your ideas and will try to incorporate them in the next update.

 

Sounds great...

 

Hi Alan,

Another quality addition to the pack. Just for clarification is prefabmaker similar to MeshBaker and SimpleLOD at it's core???

What I like as well is that you have stuck with your package and kept updating it. I have seen a few assets abandoned lately. Meshmaker deserves to do well.

 

Hey Doc,

It is probably closer to Mesh Baker than SimpleLOD as there is no triangle reduction. The main differences are that you have full control over the atlas import settings, it automatically creates atlases for the detail textures, you have full manual texture handling for the atlas and it has been designed to be very easy to use.

I'm glad you're enjoying the development of Mesh Maker as much as I am. The collection will continue to grow while upgrading all of the existing programs along the way. I have some big plans for the future, which are top secret of course but I want to address the more common feature requests before I knuckle down and get to work on the more revolutionary stuff.

Hopefully you'll see the full update come through today or tomorrow.

 

Hi Alan,

Yesterday I purchased Mesh Maker and I was ably to build the first textured object with Geom within minutes! I am really exited about the simple and straightforward approach and the diversity of the included tools!

However, I have tried to use Boolean Ops, but unfortunately without success: The whole Unity editor is closed every time without any error message (Unity 5.1.1f1). I repeated the operation with a simple cube and sphere and even with an old Unity version 4.2. The result is always the same - Unity is closed. The selected operation does not matter.

Do you have any idea what could cause this behaviour?

 

Hi TriState,

Thanks for your support and feedback. The Boolean Ops was a very early program and has always been the Achilles heal of the collection. The program seems to work best if the objects are located near the origin, at large distances from 0 the program gets more unstable. There will be a complete rewrite of the program using a different code base but it may be a couple of months away as I'm working a full rewrite of Mesh Painter to make it a full UV mapping/painting program before I can get back to working on this program.

 

That's really a fast anwer! I suceed in the mean time in an empty project (cube and sphere), but still have problems with a different mesh, even at 0. Maybe I have to wait for the update.
Thanks

 

Hi, MediaGiant.
I had buy the mesh maker, but I get this error below where down load it from Asset Store, could you help me?


This error occured when download 16 percent.
Could I send my Unity Order Number to you to get the package?

 

Yes you can send me the invoice number but I would strongly recommend contacting the Asset Store team at assetstore@unity3d.com to let them know about this problem. The reason for this is so that you get all future updates and it is able to be imported via the asset store.

Could you try restarting your browser, using a different browser or even rebooting the internet connection as this seems like it might be a temporary problem. I haven't had any other reports from customers about this so it would be worth trying a few different solutions first.

If the problem persists I will submit a bug report for you with your invoice number and hopefully the Unity team can look into this for you.

 

I don't usually get download errors (as above), but when I do it is just a hiccup in the internet that is the cause. Pressing the button again usually gets the error cleared right away, but sometimes I have to wait a while before it will work.

 

hi Alan! what a wonderful series of tools you have! i've been using the newest version, and i've made more progress with adjusting my meshes in one day then i have in days of wrestling with Blender. i had tried it out a year or more ago in Unity 4.x and it wasn't stable enough for me, but it seems this newest version is very usable in Unity 5.01 anyway.

couple of observations/questions:

1.)how do you subdivide triangles in the newest version? i tried the facet triangle button but it didn't do anything as far as i could tell. it would tell me it needed to create new vertices, but then nothing would happen. in earlier versions you had a dedicated Subdivide button, but that seems to be missing or more hidden in this version.

2.)the most important situation for me is that i will be selling and distributing this game as a lesson to game audio students in open source Unity project form. of course i don't want to distribute Mesh Maker along with this so i will be removing it. what i'd want to know is if i do this will i lose the edits and meshes i've already made? i know i can export them as separate objects if i want to, and i haven't tried your atlaser/prefab maker, but the meshes are all saved as .asset bundle files. can i remove the Mesh Maker code, delete the Library folder and distribute this successfully, or do the .asset files require MeshMaker to work properly?

 

Hi there metaphysician, yes the Mesh Editor was a big rewrite and I'm glad it is working well for you.

Subdividing triangles was the single feature that didn't carry over from the beta version, but... I have taken some time off from the current rewrite of Mesh Painter to get skinned mesh support working in Mesh Editor and Mesh Cutter (perhaps Prefab Maker too) so there will be an update in a week with the new versions and I will add subdivision back into Mesh Editor. It will be the same as in the beta version, splitting the selected triangles into three, but I have plans to add move advanced splitting in a future update.

Regarding your second question, as long as the mesh has been saved as an asset to your project folder with the .asset extension they are fine. If the mesh isn't saved as a file it exists as a temporary instance, so I recently changed Mesh Editor to always ask for a save location for the mesh to be edited and have now done the same with Mesh Cutter. You can safely delete the Mesh Maker folder and your new meshes will work fine even as part of a prefab.

Thanks again for your kind review and I'll try to get the new updates out within a week.

 

thanks! just nice to know i wasn't going crazy. good to have it back. actually by being able to delete triangles i solved the issue i had anyway. and being able to make the triangles two sided is really helpful and saves having to create an identical mesh oriented 180 degrees away when you talking about simple planes anyway.

excellent news about being able to keep things as they are and just have them work as is with MeshMaker needing to be present. that's definitely music to my ears for sure.

i'm quite excited by the upcoming UV features in the Painter app. UV-ing is the single most painful and time-consuming experience in the field of level design i have ever experienced. Blender sucks at it frankly.

i have no idea what you're planning on, but i would say a sore need for those of us wanting to stay in Unity full time, is a robust and full featured UV editing and texturing tool. as far as i know most UV tools on the Asset Store let you manipulate UV's on existing textures but don't seem to allow importing of new images to apply to existing UV maps, or ability to mark seams. i could be wrong though. haven't tried them.

heck while i'm wishing, intelligent unwrapping of UVs ala tools like Modo would be really helpful too. whatever you can offer will be most appreciated. oh and how about shape key or blend shape creation in Mesh Editor. with decent UVs and shape keys accessible in Unity i might not ever have to leave

anyway thanks again for such a great tool! looking forward to more developments...

scott

 

Thanks Scott, I really like your ideas for the UV mapping features. Changing textures for a selection is all about submeshes in Unity, and these functions are already a part of Mesh Editor and Mesh Cutter so that part shouldn't be a problem. My idea was to just unwrap the selected triangles rather than to unwrap the whole mesh, then you could move, rotate, scale and change the texture for only those triangles in a 2D window similar to the one in Prefab Maker. If you selected just a part of submesh or parts of multiple submeshes and want to change the texture then a new submesh would be created automatically for the new material/texture. Combine this with full 3D painting in the scene view and that's pretty much how I see Mesh Painter developing with the next update.

My wish list is pretty long too and one of the things I've been mulling over is different ways to do mesh morphing, so I see shape keys as a definite candidate. There's no shortage of good ideas for new projects, and hearing what people want certainly helps clarify what is needed so thanks again for your feedback.

 

The updates to Mesh Editor and Mesh Cutter to handle skinned meshes have now been accepted so please update these if you have them or the complete Mesh Maker bundle. The triangle subdivision is also back in Mesh Editor and it works nicely with skinned meshes as well. You will find the button for it in the Split Mesh foldout.

 

Hi Alan,

Really like the simplicity of prefabmaker.

Hitting problem though. I am using Cartoon farm and town by Manufactura K4 off the store.

I am combining about 70 objects and am not seeing any windows telling me there are more 64K verts or that the texture map exceeds 4096. I checked and both are within limits. But after combining the UV mapping seems to be messed up.
Have experimented by not touching the Atlas and just selecting the objects and hitting combine. Only thing can see is an error message in the editor saying - Material doesn't have a color property `_Color`

Any advice?

Thanks

 

Just tried again using Cobus's TAD sewer kit. Works great.

One thing I can see is that if I open the 3Dforge textures in windows paint or gimp I see the full texture map. When I do that with the ManufacturaK4 textures the texture is incomplete??? It seems that when prefabmaker reads the texture in it is seeing this corrupted map. If I select a standard object in the scene the texture map is fine.

I am wondering if this is some kind of copy/edit protection the author has somehow implemented. I know nothing about UV mapping so I might be a million miles off.

 

Sorry Alan,

Even more confused now. I open the demo scene Thiefs Guild from TAD Sewer kit. Without touching anything and just running the scene I see stats of - 1693 batches, tris 725.4 K verts 1.3M, setpass calls 767, shadow casters 1423.

After combing as many objects as can and deleting old unused objects stats change to - 1178 batches, tris 7.1M(??) verts 11.2M(??), setpass calls 476, shadow casters 1308.

No idea why the massive increase in verts and tris.

Sorry again Alan

 

I'll have a look for any reference to the _Color property and make sure that there are more checks in there. It is possible, and sounds likely from what you are seeing in Gimp, that the textures are encrypted. I know that TexturePacker has this feature and may have been used to make the Manufactura K4 assets.

I'm using the standard Unity CombineMeshes calls to do the mesh combine and normally only see an extra dozen or so tris and verts after the combine process so that one is a big mystery to me. Even if the meshes were highly compressed and shared most of the verts between triangles I wouldn't expect such a difference, you'd expect to see a 2x or 3x increase at most.

This is the first draft of the program and it hasn't been stress tested in the real world so I thank you for your findings. You can send me some screenshots of the stats to support@meshmaker.com and I'll do my best to improve the program for such cases. Have you found it works with general models and textures as expected?

 

Hi Alan, I just updated Mesh Maker from Asset Store, what's the change log?

 

Hi Teo, the changes were to add skinned mesh support and subdivision for the selected triangles. You will find the details in the readme.txt file.

 

Oh! Thanks, didn't notice that file

 

No worries. It sounds like a small update, but a lot of changes were made to both of the programs.

 

Thanks Alan.

Not tested with general models and textures other than 3dForges and MAnufacturasK4 but Cobus (3dforge) seems to keeps things well optimised and accessible for users to play with so I wouldn't expect too much difference. In the scene they had already been grouped by object just not combined. I just combined by object i.e pillars, walls etc.

Just had a thought though. As far as I am aware I only combined standard meshes but if there were other effects attached to those meshes would they be taken in as well?

I didn't know textures could be encrypted but that does look like what ManufacturaK4 is doing.

Just thought based on your accent from the instructional videos it's late there now. Don't worry about me just get some shut eye as we say over here. It can wait.

 

Thanks Doc, meshes aren't so much the problem as they have fixed properties. Basically they have vertices, triangles, uv, normals, uv1, uv2, tangents, colors, colors32. All of these properties, excluding those for skinned meshes, are preserved during the combine process. I'm still wondering whether anyone would have a use for combining skinned meshes unless it was to turn them into static meshes but I'd like to hear more on this.

The textures are more of a problem due to tiling, odd sizes, complex formats, compression and matching detail textures. They are certainly the toughest part to get right.

Thanks for your kind sentiment, I tend to be a night owl anyway and I also like to catch the Alex Jones radio show live which happens to be from 2am to 5am here so it works well with my programming habits

 

Hi

First, I need to say that I'm very satisfied with MeshMaker. It's a great product and I've been using it more and more day by day.

Now, I have sonething to report that screwed up my whole project. Well maybe it was working as intended and documented or explained somewhere and maybe it's my fault but, anyway, you just can't allow the asset to have so destructive behaviour by any means.

I hadn't used PrefabMaker till now. So I've gave it a try. I've selected a bunch of objects from my scene and clicked 'Combine'. So far so good.

PM asks for a directory to save the combined stuff. I've chosen my working directory, were I keep everything I'm working on...

PM deletes everything inside that directory!! If I'd chose Assets root folder, I'm quite sure the whole project would be wippped out...

That was so bad to be true that I've tested again on a empty new project and boom. PM just deletes everything inside the save directory. Why?! WTH!!

 

Hi TRoNDaNeflin,

My sincere apologies for the work and time that you lost. Yes PM does assume that the new save folder will be empty and is just there for the new prefab.

Because I knew that PM makes 3 new folders, 1 or more new materials and textures in the folder that you select that they should be kept in a folder by themselves. Of course in hindsight nobody else would know this without first running the program or being told about it.

The problem I faced was I didn't know exactly how many files were created the last time a prefab was made or how many other files were created or even what they were named. So a standard file search and delete was not possible and the only way to be sure the program didn't run into an error when creating the new assets was to start with an empty folder.

I will add a notice about this on the website and update the program to provide a clear dialog warning about this when saving to an existing folder but I will have to look into a better alternative for how to clear the existing assets when overwriting them.

I hope the project wasn't too badly damaged and that you had a backup of some or all of the files that were lost. I will get this fixed ASAP.

 

About the work I've lost, no problem. I've just lost time because I had to do it again. It' a project were I prepare models before I send them to production.

About the problem, why don't you create an empty folder inside the folder the user have chosen? It looks like the the proper way. It's almost standard across everything related to tech and software stuff.

And yes, better put some noticeable-red-letters-flashing-loud and bright-warning before commit the Combine or you will certainly have more complains and probabily some very very angry guys spamming bad news.

 

hi MediaGiant,

I tend to update unity with Patch releases all the time, im interested in this product but would like to know if it works in latest Patch release prior to purchase.

thanks and good work

 

I'll certainly do that. I've just got to come up with a name that isn't likely to conflict with an existing folder. The code has been changed to put up a warning if the chosen folder contains an existing folder or files and I'll try to get it out soon.

Hi MagicZelda, thanks for your interest. The programs have now been tested with version 5.1.3 of Unity and I'll do my best to test them with each new release. The releases are coming out faster now so I might not be as quick as others but I'll certainly fix any problems that are found within a few days.

 

It's working well, only tried 2 things though.

I made some notes on the planter thing and colliders in unity here:

https://sites.google.com/site/terrymorgan1213/tutorials/meshmaker

A little difficult to pick the edge I want.

Is there any plan to make a complete UV editor?

Can't register on your forum, doesn't think it's 2015

 

How would I go about bridging this doorway, in blender I'd 'subdivide edge' and extrude, subdividing
the quad here doesn't help.

 

Hi hike1,

Thanks heaps for the work you have put into the tutorial.

It can be difficult to select edges but sometimes if the object is small then scaling the object up can help. You can then scale it back down to the original size when you have finished editing.

I am part way through a rewrite of the Mesh Painter program to make it a full UV editor and painter. The work is slow as UV unwrapping is not an easy process.

I have changed the answer on the forum as it was still set to 2014. You can now register by answering:

Mesh Maker
2015

Mesh Editor can subdivide triangles which helps when reshaping meshes but there is no subdivide edges yet. A full set of subdivide options will be added to the program in the next major update.

 

Hello,

Really liking mesh maker so far. The only issue I have is the constant blinking when the main menu is toggling it's states. How can I disable this?

 

Thanks summerian, I will add a settings dialog for the main menu which will allow you to disable the highlight, change the color or change the number of blinks. This is all planned for the roll out of Mesh Maker 2.0 which will have splash screens, help & forum links and perhaps a link to a mirc or other chat channel.

I added the blinking because it can be hard to see when you first begin using Mesh Maker. You can also exit the main menu and use the standard menu links from Window/Mesh Maker/...

 

Those sound handy. Do you have a timeline for this update?

 

There will be a small update in a week or two to tidy up some things but the new subdivide features may be a month or two away. This is because I am halfway through writing a new app for the collection that I'm sure will be appreciated just as much

 

Is there any chance that Boolean Ops will support runtime opperation? Thanks!

 

Hi fermas,

There is an example of using Boolean Ops at runtime here at http://forum.meshmaker.com/index.php?topic=67.0
I have started a complete rewrite of the program using new code and the tests have been positive, so a new version with tailored support for a runtime API is not too far away.

 

Hi, love this asset! Is there any plan to include triangle reduction in the future for easy low-poly conversion? Thx...

 

Hi Christougher, glad you are enjoying the asset. Yes, there will be some triangle reduction tools added to the collection, possibly in the new year. I actually wrote a tool for this six months ago, but it wasn't up to scratch as it removed the fins of sharks, etc. I've been researching new ways to do this better since and will decide on the best approach before I write a new version.

 

Hi all, the latest update has now been submitted for review, which should be available for download in a day or two.

Many of the changes requested during the sale have been addressed and some new features added. The main difference is the addition of a splash screen with quick links to the websites, forums and tutorials (now in PDF format instead of Word.)



You will also find some settings for changing the behavior of the main menu, like changing the color of the flashing or disabling it.

The news is displayed from the website at MeshMaker.com. So if there is some news or important information about a program that wasn't covered at the time of release I can now update you in real time.

The programs have been released for versions 4.6.2, 5.0 and 5.2.1 of Unity.

Unity is no longer supporting inline shader code, which resulted in pink lines in the latest versions, so all of the programs have been updated to use a separate shader.

The following is a list of most of the changes that come with the update.

Mesh Maker:
New splash screen
Real time news updates
Resources folder renamed to Files
New settings for Main Menu
Fixed namespace clashes
Main folder is now moveable within the project folder

Mesh Editor:
New option to show normals
New option to recalculate normals
New option to recalculate tangents
Update UVs now works with normal editing
Locked object stays locked after delete, etc
Fix to Snap To Grid
Fix to shader warning
Fix to handle position after extrude
Fix to double sided normals
Added tool to generate secondary UV set
Added tool to recalculate normals

3D Brush:
Added option to generate random names

Prefab Maker:
Added clear warning if selected folder is not empty
Suppressed log warnings if materials and submeshes don't match

I will continue to add the new features for Mesh Editor, such as edge splitting and filling holes, but I wanted to get this update out asap.

 

Hi
We are using Mesh Maker in our project, and for other needs we have purchased DOTween Pro.
As you know there is a conflict:

http://dotween.demigiant.com/support.php
"DOTween Pro > Ease.INTERNAL_Custom doesn't exists error"

Do you have a plan to fix it ? May be it's already fixed and you have a patch ?
Well, as always we need this asap... We can't kill any of this plugin since they improve our performance alot

Thank you in advance.

Regards,
Vyacheslav

 

Hi Vyacheslav,

Yes, it should be available any day now. We are just waiting for the asset store to review the update as it has the fix for the namespace clashes between Mesh Maker and DOTween. We certainly want to see you using both of these programs together and thank you for your kind comments and feedback.

 

Thank you !

 

Looks useful so far. Just purchased it and getting started.

I'm trying to combine meshes and materials. Created an empty project for testing with a quad and a cube, ran PM, edited/resized (also tried not editing) the atlas. Pressed combine button. I get one material on the combined mesh. The Console has an error "Couldn't find Asset at Assets/Combined Mesh/Textures/Combined Mesh_Prefab_Maker_Atlas.png".


^^^ This is what it looks like before combine. (The error message on the bottom is from the previous try.)
The .png file is nowhere to be found.
Windows 10. Unity 5.2.2.p1

Any ideas?

 

Yes, one point that didn't find its way into the tutorial is that at least one textured object must be included in the group. This came about as swatches were a late development, but this will be addressed in the next update.

Thank you for your support and I hope you enjoy the tools.

 

Thank you for the quick reply.

It worked when I used a standard "white" material, with texture map/maps (could be any common material color I suppose). Colored materials with different colors had their colors "change" when combined...which makes sense I guess since MM is making a single material out of it (not creating a multi-material prefab). So as long as the material color is common across objects it looks 'normal'; it makes the texture atlas file and shares that one material, remapping the UV's to the atlas. Maybe there's more to learn (I'm new! ) As long as I know that I can plan for it. Working well now.

Thanks again for the fast response. That's great support.

P.S.
Nice goggles.

 

You're very welcome. I'm glad it is working for you. Another tool that I will add in the new year will be a vertex painting program which will be ideal for such cases.

 

Hello, I've purchase the mesh maker and want to cut a FBX imported skin mesh to separate parts. The problem is after cutting the original skin mesh with the mesh cutter. All the original blend shapes are lost. Is there any way to retain the original blend shapes after cutting mesh ?