BoolPro: A better mesh boolean

zoharl · 2013-08-24 09:09:50 UTC

Actually, it’s more of an unimplemented feature than a bug. That is, Carve lib supports it (boolean operation when one of the objects is fully contained within a face of another), but it’s not enabled in boolPro. Not sure when we will have time to address this.

MMighe · 2013-08-24 13:45:08 UTC

The upcoming Maya 2014 extension release does include the new booleans built with the Carve libraries.

zoharl · 2013-08-26 04:20:59 UTC

And I’ll finally be free…

tanglaoya · 2014-04-17 08:57:34 UTC

Dear Dr. Zohar,

Thank you very much for providing so powerful BoolPro. Currently I am trying to do boolean operations to multiple domains polyhedrons. Before this I always use CGAL. However, for this kind of multiple domains polyhedrons, the CGAL doesn’t work. I noticed that Carve could process this kind of problem and I also got to know that the powerful BoolPro provides convenient interface between maya and Carve. I downloaded the BoolPro code and studied very much from the code. Thanks.

Now I have a problem when using the Carve. For the poly1 and poly2 which are read from a1.off and a2.off, the following code crashed. Could you please take a look at it for me?

Thanks,
Tang Laoya

/// a1.off
OFF
18 24 0
1 -2 -2
1 0 -2
1 2 -2
-2 -2 -2
-2 0 -2
-2 2 -2
1 -2 0
1 0 0
1 2 0
-2 -2 0
-2 0 0
-2 2 0
1 -2 2
1 0 2
1 2 2
-2 -2 2
-2 0 2
-2 2 2
4 0 1 7 6
4 0 3 4 1
4 0 6 9 3
4 6 7 10 9
4 1 4 10 7
4 3 9 10 4
4 1 2 8 7
4 1 7 10 4
4 1 4 2 5
4 2 5 11 8
4 4 10 11 5
4 7 8 11 10
4 6 7 13 12
4 6 12 15 9
4 6 9 10 7
4 7 10 16 13
4 9 15 16 10
4 12 13 16 15
4 7 8 14 13
4 7 13 16 10
4 7 10 11 8
4 8 11 17 14
4 10 16 17 11
4 13 14 17 16

/// a2.off
OFF
8 6 0

2 1 -1
2 1 1
2 -1 1
2 -1 -1
-1 1 -1
-1 1 1
-1 -1 1
-1 -1 -1

zoharl:

This node version superseded the boolop command (obsolete):

                                                   [http://forums.cgsociety.org/showthread.php?f=89&t=1028025&highlight=boolop](http://forums.cgsociety.org/showthread.php?f=89&t=1028025&highlight=boolop)
                                                   
                                                   By Zohar and friends.
                  
                                                   [u]Usage:[/u]
                                                   
                                         1. Download the plugin and put it in your %MAYA_HOME%\bin\plug-ins
                    (e.g. c:\Program Files\Autodesk\Maya2013\bin\plug-ins\).
                    
                    [http://svn.code.sf.net/p/mymayaplugins/code-0/trunk/boolPro/](http://svn.code.sf.net/p/mymayaplugins/code-0/trunk/boolPro/)
                    
                    The link includes the source and binaries for Windows Maya 2010-2014.
       Thanks to @sit10, we now have binaries for Mac x64 2012-2013.
                    
                    2. Load the plugin inside maya: Window&gt; setttings/pref&gt; plugin manager
                    
                    If the plugin doesn't load on windows you are probably missing vcredist, so install the one for your platform:
                     
                     [http://www.microsoft.com/download/e...ls.aspx?id=8328](http://www.microsoft.com/download/en/details.aspx?id=8328)
                     [http://www.microsoft.com/download/e...s.aspx?id=13523](http://www.microsoft.com/download/en/details.aspx?id=13523)
                     
                 For more troubleshooting
                 [http://forums.cgsociety.org/showthread.php?p=7277884#post7277884](http://forums.cgsociety.org/showthread.php?p=7277884#post7277884)
                 
                    3. Select a few meshes.
                                         4. Run the python script 'connect_boolPro.py' (copy-paste to script editor) :
                                         [](http://%20https://sourceforge.net/p/mymayaplugins/code-0/8/tree/trunk/boolPro/)[http://svn.code.sf.net/p/mymayaplugins/code-0/trunk/boolPro/](http://svn.code.sf.net/p/mymayaplugins/code-0/trunk/boolPro/)
                      
                    5. Create a button shelf from the script.
                    
         
         Additional notes:
         
          - boolPro can accept more than two meshes, and it's preferable that way, since the inner data is kept as double precision, and thus doesn't suffer from the following limitation that can break a chain of booleans:
                                            
                                            [http://forums.cgsociety.org/showthread.php?f=89&t=1040477](http://forums.cgsociety.org/showthread.php?f=89&t=1040477)
                                                   
      To connect a new object to the node, first create a new item slot with the 'Add new item' button in the plugin attribute editor, then use the connection editor to connect the new object to the slot similar to the connections that are already there. See also the next note.
      
      - To setup the plugin manually (without the python script), see post #33 on:
      
      [http://forums.cgsociety.org/showthread.php?p=7568531#post7568531](http://forums.cgsociety.org/showthread.php?p=7568531#post7568531)
      
      It can be used, for example, to set the boolean operation before connecting complex objects to work on.
      
          - boolPro tries to preserve the original input meshes topology. Thus the meshes are not triangulated before the boolean op. In can of problems the first thing to do is to triangulate the input meshes.
                                                   
        - If the operation fails, first check the validity of the input meshes. Each input mesh should pass the Mesh&gt; Cleanup with all the parameters on. If the problem persists please post here a link to your two meshes (.obj or .fbx).
        
- Boolean operations are defined for solids. Thus, any input object should be watertight and with planar faces (preferably triangles). Whatever booPro does with other objects is magic, which might fail.

                                     [u]Limitations and future work:[/u]
                                                   
                            - Please send me compiled versions for your platform, and I'll add them.
              - Add CGAL boolean operations as an alternative to carve lib. CGAL uses exact computation, which makes is slower, but robust to the more trickier meshes.
            - boolPro preserves normals, and preservation of UV coordinates and vertex color should be added.
            - BUG: In a boolean operation (e.g. union) between two objects A and B, if A  is fully contained inside a face in B, then the face would disappear.  Temporary solution: refine the face (Mesh&gt; smooth). See post #79 on this thread.

              [u]Changes[/u]
              
          28-Mar-2012: Added normal preservation
              27-Mar-2012: Added preservation of the original topology as much as possible (doesn't triangulate the meshes before the boolean op).

zoharl · 2014-04-18 08:17:10 UTC

Did you make fun of my avatar?

Your first object isn’t a manifold, and I can’t help you further. Please contact carve lib author.

tanglaoya · 2014-04-18 16:01:17 UTC

No. You did help me great in studying the Carve lib. At least now I have successfully read/write the OFF file by my own manners, that means I can use this lib latter.

BTW: I provided an unclosed polyhedron before and you can get the result by A_MINUS_B operation, I also tested but found that the 1.4 version works but latest version still crash, so there are still some bug in coping with these kind of unclosed polyhedrons.

Now the problems focus on me is that my other projects are compiled by VS2012 but the Carve 1.4 can’t be compiled by VS2012, so that I have to use the latest version to work. I have also contacted with the author of Carve, he replied that he is on holiday:(

Thanks,
Tang Laoya

DeadlyNightshade · 2016-01-13 00:54:39 UTC

Bumping this thread.
Is the plugin obsolete or no longer in development? If it’s available then is there an install for Maya 2016 available?

zoharl · 2016-01-13 01:09:41 UTC

I can build a version for Windows x64, maya 2016 if you want. But isn’t the new Maya (I think since 2015) finally using the same machinery, and thus would perform comparably?

curtis10945 · 2016-01-13 05:55:34 UTC

So we should try it in 2016?

zoharl · 2016-01-13 12:07:25 UTC

I didn’t need to use booleans for a couple of years; but rumors say that the new Maya booleans should work the same as my boolPro plugin. So maybe you should give maya internal booleans a try. In any case, I uploaded a new boolPro_2016_x64.mll.

Note:
I moved to VS2013, and initially I had problems with the plugin crashing. I did the following, and I’m not sure what helped:

I moved the internal classes Hook and Hooks outside of the CSG class (but still in the namespace).
I added the projects from carvelib (carvelib, fileformats, glew, gloop) to boolPro solution instead of linking against the lib.
In release mode I changed the code optimization from max speed (/O2) to min size (/O1). This might affect performance.

Instead of the above, the plugin should probably be built with vs2010, instead of messing with carveLib.

sciLoop · 2016-01-15 06:45:22 UTC

Zohar,

this cannot be a general problem as I had no problems compiling boolPro (vs2013/vs2016)
with the ‘original’ file structuring.

zoharl · 2016-01-15 10:20:58 UTC

Hi Burkhard,

Good to know. So maybe something is messed up on my system; I didn’t have time to look into this properly.
Feel free to send me a link to your binary (e.g. dropbox), and I’ll upload it instead of mine.

curtis10945 · 2016-01-15 11:00:39 UTC

I guess the new boolean in Maya are pretty good.I was trying them and no crashing like days of old.

sciLoop · 2016-01-16 05:23:48 UTC

My version is different from the ‘official’ boolPro…hope I will some day have time to incorporate uv support and then release it. As I have said in another thread, the default Maya-carve-booleans crash more often then the boolPro version…of course I have no idea how that is possible. :surprised

oglu · 2016-01-16 05:44:30 UTC

no crashes here in maya 2016 ext1… i hope you send your crashes to autodesk…