Mesh_preprocessor_in_blender_with_python

This project presents a mesh preprocessor tool which works with python and blender. It’s capable of processing mesh files in batch manner.

Introduction

The main reason to create such a mesh preprocessor is that preparing raw mesh files (especially .obj file format) for datasets usually is time-consuming, and it kind of needs tons of manual work. To free hands, a mesh processor tool is presented to do the dirty work for people.

Functions

A few functions are added in this tool, for example, subdivide mesh into (or closest to) desired vertex number, triangulate the mesh if needed, and extract vertex indices of arbitrary sub-surfaces from the mesh.

Time consumption

For a computer with i7-6700k cpu and 16GB memory, it will take about ~3 hours when processing over 100 meshes (low poly) plus subdivding them into 50K vertices plus extracting 1K sub-surfaces for each mesh. It will take about ~9 hours when processing over 100 meshes (low poly) plus subdivding them into 150K vertices plus extracting 1K sub-surfaces for each mesh. The time consumption varies on the cpu and memory.

Inputs and Outputs

1. inputs are mesh files ending with ‘.obj’, which are original mesh files you find or download online. In this repos, a folder named ‘data’ contains two examples.
2. outputs are mesh files ending with ‘_tri.obj’ which are subdivided and triangulated mesh files, and data files ending with ‘.npy’ under corresponding “vertex_indinces_of_arbitrary_surfaces” which contains a list of numpy arrays of vertex indinces of sub-surfaces from each mesh.

Code

You can find the code in here.

Usage

1. open blender software, if not installed, then download it from here. NO installation needed just unzip it.
2. clone or download the zip file of this repos (then unzip it).
3. click the “Scripting” tab on the above menu in blender, then click “Open” tab under “Scripting”, choose the work path to the mesh_preprocessor.py script in the unzipped repos.
4. change the variable named “work_path” in the mesh_preprocesser.py.
5. click the “Run Script” tab under “Scripting”, then you are ready to go. You can follow the steps to run script in blender as shown in the following image.