Blender Q - Measuring parts for LOD_0 build

[Bitsy Buccaneer]

Below is a picture of an oil lamp Im working on, along with a very early start at a lowest LoD build (currently 28 tris, LI on its own is slightly over 1). The lamp has a fatter central section with a handle and spout attached, so it's important to carry over the proportions of each section into the lowest LoD.

My question is this: Is there a way in Blender to accurately measure parts of a semi-complex build?

TIA.



[MIstahMoose]

As far as LOD is concerned using duplicating the model then using a decimation modifier or manually deleting edgeloops and merging vertices (My preference) will create LODs that keep the overall shape.

Measuring tools though, are Under scene, Metric is what you'll want to use to keep it similar to SL's metric system. I forget specifics It may be 1:1 or 1.5:1 or something.

 

[Drongle McMahon]

First, you need to be aware that the lower LOD (and physics) models will be stretched and/or squeezed so that their xyz axis bounding boxes fit the bounding box of the highest LOD grid exactly. So if you need to make them fit the whole of that box if you want to avoid distortion. Knowing that, if you make the LOD models separately, the easiest way to align their parts is to align them exactly with the high LOD model along each axis and adjust them. If you align all three axes at once, so that the models are superimposed, then that's easy, but you can't always see well enough. Then you can place one behind the other in each axis, aligning the other two. Provided you use orthographic projection, you can then align parts along those two axes. Wireframe view can be useful there. If all that isn't enough, then you can get exact measurements by checking the Edge Info: Length checkbox in the Mesh Display section of the properties panel on the right of the 3D view. Once again using orthographic projection along the major axes, you can temporarily add rectangles, stretch them to the bounds of the part you wish to measure, and read the lengths of the selected edges. As MistaMoose says though, you can avoid all these complications by actually making the low LOD models from the high LOD (or vice-versa).

[arton Rotaru]

I use snap to vertex for that usually.

https://www.blender.org/manual/editors/3dview/transform/transform_control/snap.html

[Bitsy Buccaneer]

Sighs. I had a bit too much real life so I switched projects to one where I thought the mesh was done and it was just texturing left, and scripting which a friend will help me with this weekend,... only to find that a choice I made in the very early stages was a compromise too far and the oh so carefully mapped UV needed to be redone. And of course it is much harder to redo the UV at this point. And I'm just moaning here cause I know most of you will have done something like that too and I need to clear my head before I dive back in.