Using tools only available out of the box, sounds like you should select fewer edge loops, extract linear curves from the selected edges, then use the Curve fitting/clean/resample tools to make smooth curves which can be lofted into your desired tube. But that's assuming you want to recreate the tube you're extracting from.
If your tube is truly a tube (ie: symmetrical along it's length or width), you could just extract a single cross section and two rails in the perpendicular direction and do a birail extrusion (extrusion - 2 profiles). Without seeing a picture, it sounds like you're doing more work than necessary to get the result. To eliminate the middle man: A simple implementation via script would be to select all the vertices of one curve/ring as an edge loop. Your code would start at a selected vertex in the loop and check the neighbor vertices to see which one isn't selected, then walk along the mesh along the unselected edge recording visited vertex IDs and positions until the end is found (end of mesh, or revisit a previously visited vertex). At that point, draw your curve using Model.AddNURBSCurveList(). Rinse, repeat for each vertex in the edge loop. Matt From: [email protected] [mailto:[email protected]] On Behalf Of Kris Rivel Sent: Friday, October 12, 2012 9:09 PM To: [email protected] Subject: Re: select edges on mesh in one direction Sorry for the confusion. I have very dense mesh...kind of like a long twisty tube. I want to select just the edges traveling either along its vertical axis, or just the ones perpendicular to that...the rings making up the tube. I was manually selecting edge loops, pulling a big curve from that, using an addon to pull the subcurves, then a script to put a new thin tube along each curve...but now I'm tripling the amount of original curves and wondering if there's a better way to generate this kind of wire mesh. Kris On Fri, Oct 12, 2012 at 10:00 PM, Matt Lind <[email protected]<mailto:[email protected]>> wrote: If the goal is to simply select a line of edges, then the range selection tool can do that. You pick an edge, press ALT, then pick another edge and Softimage selects the shortest path between the two edges. If the edges are on the same line, then it's a clean result, otherwise a lot of zig-zags will result, which is what I think Kris wants to avoid. To answer Kris's other question, yes a curve can be extracted from a mesh via Model > [Create] Curve > Extract from Edges. From ICE or script you'll have to code it yourself by traversing the edge and collecting the vertex IDs and positions in the order you want the curve drawn. Matt From: [email protected]<mailto:[email protected]> [mailto:[email protected]<mailto:[email protected]>] On Behalf Of Andreas Bystrom Sent: Friday, October 12, 2012 6:53 PM To: [email protected]<mailto:[email protected]> Subject: Re: select edges on mesh in one direction depends how the mesh is constructed, but sometimes you can simply first do a "select edgering" and with that result selected do a "select edgeloop" command. On Sat, Oct 13, 2012 at 2:47 PM, Matt Lind <[email protected]<mailto:[email protected]>> wrote: Define one direction. As in, what is your point of reference for defining the direction? Matt From: [email protected]<mailto:[email protected]> [mailto:[email protected]<mailto:[email protected]>] On Behalf Of Kris Rivel Sent: Friday, October 12, 2012 6:45 PM To: Softimage List Subject: select edges on mesh in one direction Is it possible to select edges along a mesh traveling in direction only? I'm trying to extract hundreds of edges along a mesh but only want the ones running across the surface in one direction. Any scripts or tools that do this? Possible to generate curves or strands in direction on a mesh via ICE or something? Kris -- Andreas Byström Lighting TD - Weta Digital
