Quote - I think smoothing is a good idea, but what you really want is not volume preservation, but coverage preservation. By that I mean the only important bit is not to create any new pokethroughs when smoothing. So one possible idea would be to check after each smoothing step whether any vertex has wandered inside the original convex hull for its ring, and if so, push it out again, probably along its normal or something.

That said, if you only need a small number of smoothing steps, volume preservation might come close enough, and is certainly easier to implement.

Just some unorganized thoughts of mine. Don't put too much weight on them.

Well, er.    When I say "volume preservation", I mean the "cheapie volume preservation" which I've applied in some of my earlier scripts.  Which actually comes closer to what you describe than actual, factual volume preservation, as I understand the idea.  :blushing:

Actually, if I restrict the smoothing process to sliding the vertices along the edges of the ring, the effort should hopefully help align the columns more effectively while preventing shrinkage.

Good input!  :thumbupboth:  Thanks, odf!

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Cage can be an opinionated jerk who posts without thinking.  He apologizes for this.  He's honestly not trying to be a turkeyhead.

Cage had some freebies, compatible with Poser 11 and below.  His Python scripts were saved at archive.org, along with the rest of the Morphography site, where they were hosted.