roberlarues/roofeus

Blender plugin to generate tiled geometry along a surface based on a template

Roofeus

Blender plugin to generate tiled geometry based on a template along a surface .

Purpose

If you want to apply displacement maps in a plane in blender, you'll need more vertices inside the plane. You can create them automatically with subdivisions: The more subdivisions you make, the better results you'll have, but it will be more heavy and more complex to render. And there are lots of useless geometry.

You can create them manually, but in extensive surfaces with lots of details could be a pain...

Roofeus offers another possibility for repetitive patterns:

1. Define a template over the texture (composed by vertices and faces)
2. Apply it in a blender face, adapting it to the face UVs

This solution allows to create subdivisions with the exact precision you will define in the template and very fast. On the left, plane subdivided by blender using Multiresolution tool and 7 simple subdivisions (>16k vertices). On the right, roofeus result (1318 vertices).

How to install

To install roofeus add-on, compress the "roofeus" folder in a zip file and install it from the blender add-ons menu. You can find more information about install blender add-ons in https://docs.blender.org/manual/en/latest/editors/preferences/addons.html

To run template_editor.py and main.py you will need python3 and the dependencies in requirements.txt

How to use

Roofeus is intended to use in 2 steps: create the template and using it in blender.

Create a template

To create and edit templates you can run the template_editor.py script to open the visual editor. It will allow you to:

• Open a texture to draw vertices over it
• Open an existing template
• Save the template (txt extension, for the moment)
• Create and edit vertices
• Create and edit faces

In the "Face creation" tab, the texture and template is displayed in a 2x2 grid. That is because, when you apply it as a repetitive pattern in blender, you'll want to have the vertices of your template linked to the next 'projected' template. So, you can create faces between them.

Use a template

Select a face in the edit mode and open the "Roofeus" vertical tab. A panel with some options will be displayed:

• Template: The created template to apply
• Fill uncompleted space: Options to fill the space between the vertices that were linked to other vertices in the template that doesn't fit in the target face. Available options are:
  • Fill to vertices: faces will be created until the target vertices.
  • Fill to border: faces will be created as if they were cut by the target edge. This is the most accurate option, but it creates more additional vertices along the edges.
  • No fill: no faces will be created.
• Roofeus: begin process.