an0malaus posted at 9:33PM Thu, 18 July 2019 - #4357298

Thanks for your reply in the absence of any other responses.

:)

Yes, I stared at your post and thought someone should try... ;)

Unless the constant (no falloff) morph tool is chosen and applied to the entire mesh, the deltas created while morphing will always tend to increase or decrease the distance between adjacent vertices in the mesh, thus distorting any details designed into the mesh.

This is a "Bloat" or "Inflate Geometry" sort of effect. IMO, it's a result of it including an object-center cardinal direction. AFAIK, even checking/uncecking normals will have the same effect. It's worth noting, however, that because the tool will differentiate the degree of inflation, it tends to put more weight on dense areas of vertices and less weight paid attention to for the object center because of that. It's still going to bloat the mesh - We don't have a manipulator to play with. Even the "based on screen" morphing doesn't pay attention to a camera position that deviates significantly in angle of a path drawn from the target location to the vertice being pushed. Somewhere in there, it still has to pay attention to the group's center (The morph tool is really wonderful, but one hits a hard-stop without a real manipulator, eventually. :( )

I have other script tools which, like some of PhilC's toolbox scripts, can perform boolean logic on one morph, based on which deltas of another morph are non-zero. I can also apply those algorithms to ensure that vertices defined as part of a specific group indicating a rigid decoration will all have the exact same delta applied. That's a meaningful thing to do for small rigid decorations like buttons, but is not appropriate for distributed, modelled mesh, soft decorations like stitching or lace/turned hems. If those areas need to be morphed in a piecemeal fashion, then delta smoothing seems the only applicable method of repairing distortions in their intended shape.

I don't see how that will do a lot to actually "preserve" details. Yes, you can selectively sub-d areas and the like, but a detail is a significant deviation from the surface of the mesh... basically. So, for instance, density doesn't mean detail. Small groups don't mean "detail." The easiest differentiation from the surrounding surface to yield a discovery of detail is like "relative angle from averaged normals" or some other acceptable deviation from a nearby planar average of one group of morph deltas. (And, it keeps you from having to have an original object, too.)

I hope you get it figured out! If so, be sure to update. Interesting stuffs is interesting. :)