Smooth Sharp
Last updated
Last updated
This operator smooths vertices that doesn't meet the Sharpness angle threshold. The script basically gets the vertices from sharp edges and reverses this list to instead smooth the other vertices from the selection.
The name should be Smooth Sharp Inverse but it's too long and I want it to be in the same word length as the Crease Sharp operator.
When activated, the operator will trigger immediately and to change its result you have to use the F9
hotkey to show the redo panel.
This operator like Crease Sharp is also designed to work with random results that uses the subdivision modifier or if the Copy All Modifiers toggle is turned in the add-on Settings with the randomized meshes inheriting the subdivision modifier from the source mesh.
It is designed to get rid of subdvision banding when it comes to organic models when using the random operators like Random Panels to generate armor details for character models for example.
In Figure 2, by increasing the subdivision of the source mesh using the Random Loop Extrude operator, we give its randomization algorithm more faces to work with, hence more detail.
This increase in resolution though has its setbacks and that is the banding or lines on the surface of organic meshes that becomes more obvious as you increase the subdivision level.
This is native behavior of the subdivision algorithm that Blender uses in edit mode and is the one that is exposed in the script to be used by developers.
Using the Smooth Sharp operator can work for most situations when getting rid of these bandings.
Here are the operator properties and what they do:
The Sharpness property will filter the sharp angled edges from the entire mesh or face selection and will smooth the other vertices instead. Doing this will keep most of the structure of the random meshes.
The Smooth property is the amount of smoothing for the affected vertices. Be careful of higher values as this can have an adverse effect and spike the vertices instead.
The Repeat property is the number of times you want the smoothing to be repeated. This is the property you will modify more often after deciding on a proper smoothing strength.
The Offset property will let you offset or inflate the smoothed vertices. Smoothing the vertices will often displace their position by "deflating" the surface so you can use this property to counter this.
The Smooth Boundary toggle will let you smooth the boundary or nonmanifold edges as well.
The Selected Only toggle will let you smooth selected vertices only and not the entire mesh.
The Invert toggle will show up after enabling the Selected Only toggle and will smooth the inverse selection instead.
This operator is best used in combination with the Crease Sharp operator.
After smoothing, you can crease the sharp edges on the random meshes to make these areas less softer from the effects of subdivision.
These operators are designed only for fully organic meshes and not hard surface models with curved surfaces.