Surface Fillet
It would be very useful to have a surface fillet function in Blender. How it should work? We select two different objects (or even two segments of the same object), choose the Surface fillet, and Blender creates a new object, that nice, and smooth connects the selected objects. Then we can change size of that object, number of segments etc. It could be very useful, and versatile function. Can be used everywhere. Fe. to create smooth connection between wing and body of airplane, between two pipes, and in many, many other situations. I know, that it is very hard, to explain, what I mean, so there is little, short tutorial, of how it works in Maya:
8 Comments
This feature should be super useful but proposal omits technical details how it should work in blender.
This feature needs two intersecting objects. We search for intersections between meshes, then expands them towards surfaces of both meshes to produce curves (thats hard part). User can define in redo panel distance of this spread. New, separate mesh is created based on those curves. We need to smooth surface. I see two ways we can do that: A: Easy way. Iteratively smoothing mesh with influence weights set to edgeloops. Ends have weight equal 0, red intersection loop weight equals 1. After couple of smooth iterrations surface is smooth. Thats the way I made my mockup. B. Proper, hard way- Surface calculations similar to bevel operator/modifier.
Last edgeloops always should be snapped to surface of objects to ensure good shading.
I thing this feature should be available only in Object mode as it create new mesh, not modify existing ones. It will be easier to select objects to do operation, we can then join them after operation.
This is not particularly easy to implement, but does have some similarity with bevel, inset, and knife project, all of which I've had some hand in developing. I will put this interesting idea on my todo list (which, unfortunately, is kind of long right now).
Thank You Monio. You explained it much better, than me :) Unfortunatelly, I can speak english, but not so good to explain it better.
This sounds like the Bridge Edge Loops function that is already in Blender. Search for it in the Blender online docs.
Not at all. Those are 2 entirely different tools. Bridge works on selected edges, create faces witch curvature based on mesh normals. Surface fillet create new separate mesh based on two objects intersections and curvature detection. You cannot achieve same results with Bridge.
I think it quite simple. It could be even two different tools. One in edit mesh mode. U select two parts of an object, then press a shortcut, or select menu option, and Blender creates a new part, that makes smooth transition between selected parts. And then You can in numeric pannel change the size of created part, and number of subdivisions. Similar to the Bridge tool. The second tool could works as new object creator. You select two different objects, then select Add object->Surface fillet. And Blender creates quite new fillet object. Then You can specify number of subdivisions, and size in numeric panel.
To that end, I might recommend that you include this (perhaps with mock-up images) in your original proposal. And since the behavior is different for the object tool variation of this idea, it might be a good idea to split that into its own proposal.
The video you include is pretty helpful in explaining the feature, but for this to be a really actionable proposal, it would be most helpful if you describe how you'd expect such a tool to work within Blender's interface and interaction model.