Maya 2017 U3 Quad Draw issue

[Anonymous]

Picking vertices that are submerged under the live surface doesn't work even with camera based selection off, culling off and so on. This is an issue I don't recall having in 2016. It seems like Quad Draw it's functioning with backface cull on all the time, although there is no such option turned on whatsoever . Tried the Snap to Backfaces on in the tool's options and still not working. The tolerance for Quad draw to pick and move and snap submerged vertices under the live surface, should be an option with a slider This is a workflow blocking bug. Please fix this asap. Thanks.

[brentmc]

Do you have a scene file you could post that shows the issue?

Thanks.

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Brent

[Anonymous]

Hi,

  Unfortunately the scene i have contains confidential data so i can only send it to Support or some Autodesk stuff, I can not post it here.

If you can give me an email I can add it to, that would be great. Thanks.

[brentmc]

You can send it to me at brent.mcpherson@autodesk.com. If the problem can be reproduced with just a part of the mesh that would be enough to investigate.

Thanks.

[Anonymous]

  Hi, me again with the same problem. What is happening is that every time i want to retopo on a mesh that has thickness quad draw snaps the verteces to the faces behind instead of keeping them on the faces facing the camera. When I use edge extend for instance, the vertices do not always snap interactively on the faces facing the camera, but they end up submerged or snapping to the faces on the other side of the thickness . I have " Snap to backfaces turned off" but that has nothing to do with the issue as the vertices snap to the faces that have the right normals but they should be occluded by the camera. Quad draw needs to be able to take in account the camera occluson and not only the object normals.

      Also i believe the Extend faces and Draw quad strips they shouldn't be on the same shortcut as many times the tool gets confused and it doesn't know if you want to select the edge and extend or just draw quads.

    Do not forget we are using this tool for retopo-ing meshes for games which have to be low poly counts so the quad edges end up submerged in the high poly many times and selecting them it's a pain.

 I added 2 videos and a file to illustrate that.

Thanks!

[brentmc]

Hi,

When using extend points are translated based on your current view and then re-projected back onto the live surface. In this scenario the points end up on the inner surface because it is closer. (and then the points become unselectable since they are inside the surface)

The best solution for now would be to create a new reference mesh with the inner surface removed for use with QuadDraw.

I've opened a new issue internally to track this:

MAYA-84803 - QuadDraw projects to wrong surface when working on a reference mesh with thickness

Thanks.

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Brent

[Anonymous]

Thank you!

[Anonymous]

Just working again with Quad draw, trying to retopo a coat i simulated in Marvelous Designer and exported it with thickness. Quad draw extend edges feature is useless as long as is incapable of auto-snapping the verteces on the surface facing the camera, while dragging the edges. Nowadays everybody uses Marvelous Designer and most people export meshes with thickness straight from Marvelous. Quad Draw needs to be up to the standards and be able to retopo  clothing exported with thickness. I can not delete the thickness every time because Quad draw has a handicap. Please prioritize this and fix it in Maya 2018.

   In production we need reliable fast tools not problematic ones. I see myself forced to go back to Topogun in order to move faster now.

Here's the video showing what i mean one more time.

[brentmc]

The closest thing to QuadDraw extend in TopoGun seems to be extrude.

In Topogun do you find yourself using extrude a lot on double-sided meshes? If so do you have to enable crawl (instead of project-back) to get good results?

The issues with QuadDraw extend and double sides surfaces are two-fold.

First, extend is using the equivalent of Topogun's project-back setting which means the points are projected back on the mesh after applying the entire translation. (from mouse down)

Second, extend is translating in the camera plane so the loop may actually be moving diagonally as shown in this animation where the live surface is disabled:

I don't expect these issues to be addressed in the short term so you would need to extract the outer surface of the reference mesh for retopo or avoid using extend.

Sorry.

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Brent

[mspeer]

Hi!

This is not as easy as you might think.

In your case Quad Draw should snap to some faces with normals facing to the camera and at the same time to other faces facing away from the camera

and these faces can be nearer or more far away then other faces with the requested normal direction, based on how far you move the edges.

Also, there are cases where the other normal direction has to be used or it will lead to a wrong result (for example when you have bumps on your surface).

Workaround:

1. Use a high value for Surface Offset when using Quad Draw.

2. Use Shrink Wrap

Worked pretty good with your test-scene.

[rodolforubens]

Yep, I'm having the same issue, after you extend a borde it snaps to the mesh surface behind and you can't move the vertices, the cursor won't highlight them, it's unusable.

[Anonymous]

having exactly the same issue using 2018.4.  What this issue ever addressed?

[brentmc]

No it has not been addressed yet.

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Brent