LocalBevel

LocalBevel allows the Face Extrusion / Bevel at Polygon Level.
It respects Edge Visibility and extrudes each Polygon separately.

Version 0.3 BETA (2/23/2000)

Use the [>Pick Object To Extrude/Bevel] button to select the Mesh to Extrude. The Object must be of Geometry class and should have a valid Face Selection. (This will NOT be checked in this version).

The utility will remember the NAME of the object to use. If you delete the object and create a new one with the same name, it will be used instead. If you rename the object, you should pick it again. If there is a problem with the picked object, a general error message will be issued, but the script will NOT crash.

The utility will repsect edge visibility. If two adjacent faces have a common invisible edge, they will be extruded as a single polygon. If the edge is visible, each face will be extruded separately. If you select only a single face with an invisible edge, only the face will be extruded unless you select its neighbour.

The default extrusion mode is Constant. This means that all faces will be extruded with the same amount. The utility uses the procedural Face Extrude modifier. In case both Extrude and Bevel modes are set to Constant, a single instanced modifier will be applied. If the [Collapse Resulting Stack] option is unchecked, changing any of the FaceExtrude modifiers will affect ALL extrusions so you will be able to tweak/animate (!) all extrusions at once.

The Extrusion value can range from -1000 to 1000. The default of 0 means no extrusion, but new vertices/faces will be created.

The Random Extrude option lets you specify two limit values for the extrusion. For each group of faces (polygon), a new random extrusion will be generated.

The Increment option lets you specify a starting value and an increment value. After each extrusion, the value will be increased with the Increment value.

Random Bevel and Incremental Bevel work the same way with the Scale value of the Face Extrusion. NOTE that Bevel is expressed in Percents, so 100 means NO BEVEL.

NEW In version 0.21: the original selection will be always assigned to the resulting mesh. This will let you keep on extruding in multiple passes. When the stack is not collapsed, the selection will be stored in a MeshSelect modifier on top of the stack.

In addition, 0.21 fixes a problem with a MAXScript bug in MAX 3.0 which prevented the script from assigning a bitarray selection to the MeshSelect modifier. If MAX 3.0 is detected, a patch will be applied by converting the bitarray to a regular array. MAX 3.1 should work as usual.

New in 0.21: By default, screen redraws will be disabled, but you can change this by depressing the "Disable Viewport Redraws" checkbutton. This will let you watch the single bevels pop up from the surface as the script goes on...

New in 0.3: When the "Collapse To EditableMesh" checkbutton is active, no Modifiers will be used. Instead, the object will be collapsed to EMesh first, then it will be extruded at face level using the faceExtrude method. This method is many times faster than the modifier way used so far. If you decide to use modifiers, depress the checkbutton. This will take LONG time with many polygons. For comparisson: Using EMesh, a Sphere with 32 segments (960 faces) extruded all polygons in 121 seconds. Same Sphere with Modifiers took 7.9 HOURS!

NEW in 0.2 - Local History List! Before and after each extrusion, a copy of the object will be saved to the \Autobak directory. Using a drop-down list, the user can revisit any state of the current object.

The History List is saved per object. If you restart MAX and select the same object (or an object with the same name), its history list will be reloaded.

The history list can be reset - all files containing the current object's name will be deleted from \Autobak


	Constant Extrude 20.0, Constant Bevel 50%
	First pass: Constant Extrude 20.0, Constant Bevel 50% Second pass: Constant Extrude 20.0, Constant Bevel 150%
	Random Extrude 20.0 - 50.0, Constant Bevel 50%
	Constant Extrude 20.0, Random Bevel 50%-0%
	Incremental Extrude From 20.0 with 2.0, Constant Bevel 50%
	Constant Extrude 20.0, Incremental Bevel From 100% with -1%
	Random Extrude Random Bevel in 3 Passes.
	Constant Extrude, Constant Bevel in 3 Passes
	Same as above with NURMS
	Random Extrude, Random Bevel in 3 Passes with NURMS.
	Constant Extrude, Constant Bevel, Side Faces only.
	Incremental Extrude, Constant Bevel, Side Faces only.
	Constant Extrude 20.0, Constant Bevel 50%.
	Constant Extrude -20.0, Constant Bevel 50%.
	Random Extrude, Constant Bevel, 3 Passes
	Same as above with NURMS.