Frequently Asked Questions
If you have a question that is not answered here, please don't hesitate to ask. Either post it in the forum or e-mail meshmixer@gmail.com.
Licensing / Operating Systems
| Is meshmixer Available for OS X/Linux? |
No. Soon, though. |
| Is meshmixer Open Source? |
No. meshmixer is a research project. I will eventually release some source code for components of meshmixer. But meshmixer is not open source - it simply free. |
Mesh Stuff
| What mesh formats does meshmixer support? |
meshmixer02 supports import/export of arbitrary OBJ polymeshes, with per-vertex normals and arbitrary UVs. OBJ is a relatively ubiquitious interchange format for meshes, and should be used if possible. Meshmixer can also import OFF triangle meshes, and export STL and COLLADA/DAE triangle meshes (these are mainly useful for 3D printing - why not give Shapeways a try?) |
| Will meshmixer lose my UVs? |
Meshmixer will try preserve your UVs as much as possible. The image below shows how it works when I drag-and-drop part of a mesh with UVs (click to enlarge). The UVs on the interior of a part will be completely preserved, as will the UVs in unmodified regions of the surface. Within "fill" regions, where there was no original surface, there will obviously be no UVs. Your UVs will also be lost within the small transition region between the base surface and the dropped part, which meshmixer converts to triangles (Future versions of meshmixer will do better here). The UVs on dragged-and-dropped parts are completely unmodified (click on the image below to see the UV spaces). If you are combining parts from different models, this will probably result in overlapping regions in UV-space, which you will have to clean up using other software. Also meshmixer does not handle any actual texture or material assignment - the output OBJ mesh is a single mesh with a single UV map. So you may need to break up the result into multiple maps, and re-assign materials, etc, in your modeling/rendering package.
[NOTE] this UV handling is highly untested, particularly on the more complex UV-sets common in "real" textured models. If you find problems in UV handling, please contact me. |
| Does meshmixer Support Quad/Poly Meshes? |
Yes, up to a point. meshmixer will do its best to preserve your existing topology. The cut operation fills with triangles, and when you drop a part, there is a boundary region, colored green below, that gets remeshed with triangles. But the part interior is not remeshed. (click to enlarge).
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Part Library
| Where is the part library scroll bar? |
There isn't one yet. But you can still scroll. Just drag with the right mouse button anywhere on the part list. |
| How do I remove/delete/discard parts? |
Drag them to the left, out of the window ("toss them out of the program"). There is a brief demo in Tutorial Video #1. You can also manually delete files from the Be careful! If you toss the parts out to the left, the part files are deleted, and they do not go to the Recycle Bin (yet). |
| OK, so how do I save parts for later?? |
Copy the files from the C:\Program Files\meshmixer02\parts_default\ folder to somewhere else. The filename format is "###_mesh.obj", where ### is a code representing the creation time. So sorting the folder by name gives the same result as sorting by date. There may also be an associated file called "###_mesh.obj.prt", which you should also save. (sorry, I will come up with something better for this) |