A Visual Guide to Hard Mesh 2.1

The creator of Hard Mesh, a modeling plugin for hard surface non-destructive modeling in Maya, shared the visual guide to the update of the tool. A set of GIFs illustrates some functionalities that will be updated on the next upcoming free upgrade.

Here is the visual overview from the developer:

Turning on and off the operators open up a layer style workflow.

Turning on and the visibility of the Hard Mesh elements.

The effect of the resolution change. Notice that instead of applying the smooth after like in a regular workflow, we apply it before the end result.

Creating chains of operations.

Select the operation that best serve your needs.

Starting a new Hard Mesh operation

The Geo Bias. Notice how the vertex near the cut are moved when increasing the parameter.

The Offset changing on each side.

Changing the offset value.

Changing the Chord Dist between 1 and 0.001.

Deleting an operator that we don’t like is an easy. 1 Isolating the current elements is a great way for focusing just on the relevant inputs.

Display All the input versus Current inputs.

A simple example of operation reorder, notice how much can affect the final result

Notice how the blending assume a sharp profile when the interpolation is not computed.

Moving from the bottom to the top of visibility give an idea of all te steps used in the modeling of the object.

Turning on and off the computations

Activating one of the ramp preset to perturbate the blending strip.

Changing the Split Refine. Swapping the resolution between 0, the original poly count, to 2 a smoothed level.

Section Spans change.

The Weight parameters let you change the profile of the blending based on tangency.

You can get the 30-day trial on the official website. The version that you see in the images is not yet available, but it’s a matter of days.