blender-mat-addon

(Import-Only for now). Pls refer to link for detailed generation process.

And this post for the strategy of detecting degenerated slab.

This addon will generate medial meshes & interpolated MATs from MA files in blender

MA file(Different from mayAscii) stores the the information of medial mesh. It can be generated using Q-MAT, MATFP or MATTopo.

---

If blender-mat-addon contributes to an academic publication, please cite it as:

@misc{blender-mat-addon,
  title = {blender-mat-addon},
  author = {Song, Shibo and Wang, Ningna},
  howpublished = "\url{https://github.com/songshibo/blender-mat-addon}",
  year = {2023}
}

Usage

• Blender version >= 3.0
• Clone the repo
• Compress the folder mat_import into mat_import.zip
• Open blender.
• Edit > Preferences > Addons.
• Click Install button.
• Select mat_import.zip.
• Check the checkbox of the MAT add-on to enable it.

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• Import parameters:

  
  • Subdivision of Ico Sphere: Resolution of medial sphere. The higher the smoother (3 should be enough, 4 may slow down the generation when there are a large number of spheres).
  • initial diameter: default radius of sphere (useless after the generation is optimized, will be removed)
  • resolution of medial cone: 32 should be smooth enough.
  • MAT type:
    • Standard MAT: no extra features for v/e/f in .ma file
    • MAT with features: Inside Features are marked as Sharp Edge, Outside Features are marked as Seam Edge. (Select one edge in edge select mode, then use Select-Select Similar-Sharpness/Seam to select one type of features).
  • Import Type:
    • Only Medial Mesh: only import medial mesh
    • Sphere-Cone-Slab: generate Sphere Cone Slab separately. (Faster than individual primitive)
    • Individual Primtive: generate each Cone and Slab as an independent object. (Very Slow, but for debugging)

Updates

• Improve the performance of importing high-resolution medial mesh
• Use icosphere instead of UV sphere
• Add subdivision of icosphere/ initial radius of medial sphere
• Using blender-vscode plugin for development.

Update(2021-10-09)

• Add a new generation mode: each medial primitive will be generated as a single object and named by its index.

In primitive generation mode, each medial primitive will be created as a individual object containing medial sphere/conical surface of medial cone/slab.

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Update(2021-12-16)

• Rewrite File View UI
• Greatly improve the speed of medial sphere generation (744 sphere/subdivision 2: 17.07s -> 0.15s)
• Support Medial Features
• Add Only Medial Mesh import type
• Add Medial Cone Resolution

Results

this addon will import medial axis transform as several objects:

• Medial mesh: named as ${filename}.
• Medial sphere: named as its vertex number. eg v1. Its global position and scale are the center & radius of the sphere respectively. All spheres are packed into a group named ${filename}.SphereGroup.
• Medial cone: single mesh object named ${filename}.ConeGroup.
• Medial slab: single mesh object named ${filename}.SlabGroup.

medial mesh	medial spheres	medial cones	medial slabs	combined

Requirements

• Blender 2.80.0 or older

MA file structure

/# number of vertex(medial sphere)/edge(medial cone)/face(medial slab)

vertices edges faces

# v/e/f indicates the type represented by current line

/# (x,y,z): center of the medial sphere; r: radius

v x y z r

/# two end vertices of the edge

e v1 v2

/# three vertices of a triangle face

f v3 v4 v5

# comment lines in MA file should start with #