Convert Mesh Vertex to Entity
With the Convert Mesh Vertex to Entity addon, we can replace every vertex of a mesh with another object. This can be any object, like another mesh, a light, a camera, metaball, etc. In this article I show you a few tips using this addon.
How does Convert Mesh Vertext to Entity work?
Let’s start with an example.
- Create first a Circle Mesh (not a curve) and add another object for example a cube.
- Select the Circle and resize it a bit bigger. Maybe twice as big.
- To access the addon, open the N-panel and under the Edit Tab you find Convert Mesh Vertex to Entity.
- Now you see on every vertex his location a camera, but you also see a popup in the left bottom. Under Entity you select: Object. And under Name Entity Object, you fill in: Cube.
So in our case we fill in Cube and on each vertex’s location will appear a Cube. Since we don’t need the original cube and the Circle mesh we delete it. So this is the result:
Is that it?
Well, for me the fun starts here. To show how that looks like, here a few more steps:
- Select the dot (.) or full stop on your keyboard and select Individual Origins.
- Select the cubes and press S. And scale the cubes to your liking.
- Now, press S and then Z to scale the cubes on the global Z-axis. And we have now something like this:
Scale, Rotate and translate on local axis
- S, X, X to scale on Local X-axis.
- S, Y, Y the same but then on Local Y-axis.
- And S, Z, Z for scaling on the Local Z-Axis.
- Same with rotations: R,X,X and R,Y,Y and R,Z,Z.
With scaling, rotation and translation on Local Axis we still have a lot of control on each Cube.
Using Modifiers on all Entities
If you assign first one Modifier to one Cube (the active one), then you can copy that modifier to all selected Cubes with Ctrl+L. So I select all Cubes and be sure that one is active and the other ones selected. If you have it like in the previous screenshot, then press Shift and select a Cube. You will see then that the active Cube has a yellow outline and the others orange (selected).
Once that is done, we can add a modifier. Let’s choose for a Simple Deform Modifier on Z-Axis and on Taper. Now, press Ctrl+L and choose: Modifiers. As a result you see that all Cubes have now a Simple Deform Modifier with same settings assigned.
Next, go to the modifier and hold: Alt. While holding Alt, you adjust the Factor under Deform. This way you adjust for every Cube the Deform Factor of the Simple Modifier. The screenshot below shows the result so far.
This way, you can add as many modifiers as you want and adjust them for each cube. Next, I add a subsurf modifier and apply each modifier to every object. When we have the Cubes selected as shown in the screenshot above (one active and the other selected). Then I go to the modifier stack and apply the first modifier (simple deform in this case). You see a pop-up and choose to apply this kind of modifier on all the other objects as well. Same for the subsurf modifier. Last step is to press Ctrl+J to join all the objects to one mesh.
Remesh the object
We can now remesh the object, see: properties panel > Object Data > Remesh. Set the Voxel Size around 0.05m and press Voxel Remesh. We have now the object re-meshed. To finish it, right click and choose: shade smooth and use a smooth modifier to smooth the mesh a bit out. Set the factor on 1 and repeat somewhere between 3 till 30 times (depends).
You might want to remesh it with another remesher, because the mesh is quite high poly. So far, here is the result:
Where to download Convert Mesh Vertex to Entity?
If you want to support the development of the addon, best place is Blender Market. The addon is also available on Gumroad. And for more information, like updates check the thread on Blender artists.
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