Cuber Guide

v2.15
 Introducton
Add Intersector Mesh
Isolate and Highlight
Remove As Intersector
Get Sharp
Auto Smooth
Mark Sharp and Clear Sharp
Assign New Material
Material Palete
Face Color To Vertex Color
Snapshots
Intersect Functons
Poly and Box Cuter/Slicer
Poly and Box Draw
Mirror
Quick Assign and Quick Select
Add Weighted Normals Copy
What is the Cuber add-on?

The Cuber add-on is a modeling support tool designed to enhance working with bevels and
boolean intersect tools. Its primary functon is to speed up edit mode modeling workfows for
hard surface models.

Figure 1

Once you install the add-on, you can fnd it in the T panel or in the 3d viewport using its pie menu
shown in Figure 1 with the hotkey Alt+X. You can change this hotkey in the user preferences of
the add-on.

All functons found in the T panel are in the pie menu as well so you can work without too much
UI.

You can purchase this in Gumroad.

Or in Blender Market if you like a percentage of the purchase amount to fund Blender
Development.

This is a lifetme purchase and all updates are free.

This guide is relevant only for the 2.79x version and will change once the port to the 2.8 version
of Blender is fnished.
Add Intersector Mesh

The Diference, Cut, Union and Intersect operaton revolves around the intersector faces which
are added to the mesh in edit mode using the Add Intersector Mesh command.

Figure 2

The intersector mesh comes in two shapes: Cube and Cylinder. Using the Add Intersector Mesh
command, you can positon them using the average locaton of selected elements (verts, edges,
and faces) like shown in Figure 2.

If no elements are selected, you can use the 3d cursor to positon this.
Upon using the Add Intersector Mesh command, a menu pops up showing the various setngs
you can use to shape the intersector faces.

Figure 3

Radius controls the overall size for the cube and cylinder. Segments is a separate setng you can
use for the cylinder and depending on the alignment you can use one of the scale axis to control
its thickness.

There are the Scale and Rotaton axis, use Ctrl or Ctrl+Shif while dragging the mouse to snap
these values into increments. If these setngs behave weird, apply the scale and rotaton of the
mesh using Ctrl+A in object mode.

The Alignment optons are used to orient the intersector mesh. Manual uses the Rotaton axis
setngs exclusively, View orients the intersector to face the viewport and Actve orients the
intersector based on the average normals of the selected elements.

The Initalize Scale and Rotaton On Reuse will reset the Scale and Rotaton axis to default value
every tme you use the Add Intersector Mesh, disabling this will let you use the previous values
used for the Scale and Rotaton axis when you use the Add Intersector Mesh command again.

Use Common Material makes the intersector mesh copy the materials used by the selected faces
or those linked to verts and edges to make the material assignment consistent. With the toggle
on, it will use the most common material used by those elements and with it of – it will use the
least common which is useful for face selecton. However, it won’t detect materials when using
the 3d cursor to positon the intersect mesh, with this method it will use the actve material in the
material stack so you can just select a face with a material to make it actve, deselect it, then use
the 3d cursor to positon the intersector mesh.
Isolate and Highlight

The Isolate and Highlight commands can be used to design the intersector mesh much easier and
also lets you see if there are any intersector faces present in the design mesh.

Highlight will select only the intersector faces from the entre mesh. This will let you easily move,
duplicate and if you want delete it.

The Isolate will hide the faces of the design mesh leaving only the faces of the intersector mesh
visible. This lets you easily design the intersector faces without any obstructon.

Figure 4

Even if the design mesh faces are hidden, the verts and edges can stll be selected.
Remove As Intersector

The Remove As Intersector command removes the selected intersector faces from the vertex
group: Cuber Group. This vertex group is used by the add-on to determine which faces are going
to be used for the intersect commands.

Figure 5

Every tme you add a cube or a cylinder using the Add Intersector Mesh command, they are
automatcally assigned to the vertex group.

Since the intersect functons will automatcally use the intersector faces assigned in the vertex
group whether they are selected or not, by removing them from the intersector vertex group, this
ensures that they can no longer be used for the intersect operatons.

This is useful for placing additonal design elements which do not necessarily need boolean
operatons.

Figure 5 shows the inner faces of the ring model selected and the Add Intersect Mesh command
is used to place a cylinder the average locaton of the selected elements. The Remove As
Intersector is then used to remove it from the Cuber Group vertex group so it won’t be
automatcally used by the intersect functons of the add-on.

If you accidentally assign faces to the Cuber Group, just use the Remove As Intersector to remove
them. You can use the Highlight command to see the intersector faces in the design mesh.
Figure 6

You can also use this to create auxiliary design elements using separate geometry.

In Figure 6, with the intersector faces selected, the Remove As Intersector command is used then
using its undo menu (F6), the Separate toggle was enabled to separate the intersector mesh as a
new object.

This new object inherits the property of the original design mesh and because the faces were
removed as an intersector, it can now be treated as another design mesh for the intersect
functon to work on.

The center of the design mesh is also copied over to the new object so the mirror functon will
behave correctly relatve to the source object or where the new object was separated.
Figure 7

To make the process of using the intersect functons (Diference, Union, Cut and Intersect), any
selected faces can also be used as for their operaton.

Figure 7 shows the design mesh or the cube faces duplicated then used for the Diference
boolean operaton.

If the design mesh has intersector faces present (assigned to the vertex group: Cuber Group), it
will use them and any selected set of faces for the intersect operatons.

Make sure that the highlighted or selected faces are another set of solid geometry or have no
holes in it to avoid problems when you use the intersect functons.
Get Sharp

This selects all the sharp angled edges in the design mesh based on an angle threshold. By default
this also marks the edges as sharp. You can use its undo menu to enable/disable the marking as
well as edit the degree angle threshold for capturing the sharp angled edges.

This captures the sharp edges from the selected elements (verts, edges, faces) and with nothing
selected will capture all the sharp edges in the design mesh.

Figure 8

The Get Sharp functon can be used to get rid of shading distortons using the bevel modifer by
marking the edges as sharp which allows you to use fewer segments with the default profle of
0.5. In order for this to work, you have to use the Auto Smooth functon on the mesh. Without
this method, getng rid of shading errors can be done by increasing the segments and profle but
these can afect viewport performance especially when resoluton begins to increase as you
model.
Figure 9

You can select all the sharp edges with nothing selected, this makes it easier to use because you
don’t have to highlight the entre mesh every tme unless you want to use the selecton method
to extract the sharp edges on an isolated part of the mesh. You can have all the elements
deselected or selected then use Get Sharp to Mark Sharp all the sharp angled edges.

Figure 10

This is also a great way of beveling the Cylinder intersector Mesh by using Get Sharp to capture
its sharp edges so you can bevel it without afectng the rest of the edges.

The Get Sharp functon marks as sharp the sharp angled edges based on a defned angle
threshold which means if the edge(s) doesn’t meet that then it will not be marked. You can mark
some edges manually using Blender’s edge menu (Ctrl+E) in the Edge Data sub-menu and click
Mark Sharp.
Figure 11

You can fnd Mark Sharp toggle in Get Sharp’s undo menu. You can disable this to select only the
sharp edges and not mark them.

This will get rid of most shading distortons but for some it will stll require some basic topology
work. The Mark Sharp functonality is also used by the intersect functons: Diference, Union and
Intersect, every tme they are used.

The Poly and Box Cuters does not automatcally Mark Sharp the edges so you have to go to edit
mode and use Get Sharp to manually mark the edges as sharp as well as any new geometries you
added using conventonal modeling tools like extrusion or inset.
Auto Smooth

The Auto Smooth functon smooth shades the design mesh keeping the edges sharp based on an
angle threshold (default is 30°). You can only use this command in edit mode.

Figure 12

Figure 10 shows the design mesh (lef) afer a Diference operaton and with the Auto Smooth
functon used to smooth shade the resultng faces from the boolean operaton (right).

Most non-subd hard surface models uses the 30° angle for Auto Smooth so it’s safe to stay at this
default value without ever changing it.

Avoid using diferent auto smooth angles for your models so you can avoid confusion specially if
you’re importng the 3d model to other 3d sofware packages.

To make the boolean scripts run faster in the add-on, this process is not automated on the
intersect tools, cuters and slicers so you have to auto smooth the design mesh from tme to tme.
Mark Sharp and Clear Sharp

You can use the Mark Sharp functon to manually mark selected edges as sharp.

Figure 13

This is helpful because Get Sharp only works for edges that fall within an angle threshold so for
some edges you need to manually mark them as sharp to get rid of shading distortons. In Figure
13, you can see the outer and inner rings of the circular detail marked as sharp to get rid of
shading distortons there.

The Clear Sharp functon will clear the marked sharp status of selected edges. This is used in
combinaton with the Get Sharp functon to clear away any marked sharp edges that doesn’t meet
the angle threshold used by Get Sharp.

You can afect the selected elements with Clear Sharp but with nothing selected it will clear all
marked sharp edges in the design mesh. You can use this behavior to quickly reset the marked
sharp edges using Clear Sharp then Get Sharp.
Assign New Material

The Assign New Material command assigns a new material to the selected faces. This is useful for
blocking out the basic colors early on and can be baked later as vertex color later on using the
Face Color As Vertex Color command in the add-on. The vertex color can then be used on a
procedural shader as a base difuse color.

Figure 14

When you’ve used the Assign New Material command to the selected faces, two color bars will
appear above the buton for both the T panel and the Pie Menu.

These are the viewport Difuse and Specular colors for the material. The default color assigned
for the new material assigned is white but you can change this using the two color bars.

The newly added material does not have any node setup and is purely for viewport purposes only.
Figure 15

You can select any face or set of faces in the design mesh and if any material is assigned to those
faces then the two color bars should appear above the Assign New Material buton.

You can use the Select Similar-Material (Shif+G) functon if you wish to select all the faces which
shares the same material.

Remember that you have to disable matcaps to view the viewport color of the material assigned.
Material Palette

This creates a list of saved materials that you can organize and use to assign on any face or set of
faces.

Figure 16

You can think of this as a color palete but we’re using basic materials to assign color to the
design mesh. Figure 15 shows the cylinder model using the Material Palete colors.

This lets you assign presets of colors quickly by selectng a face or set of faces and clicking the
material name in the list.

You can use the Assign New Material functon to create a new material then save it to the
Material Palete.

The list can organize and change the color of the viewport difuse and specular but it does not
enable you to rename the materials in the list, you have to use Blender’s own material list for this
in the Propertes Panel.

If you happen to change the name of the material in the propertes panel then the link to the list
will be broken and it will show you an error icon next to the material name in the palete list. You
have to remove this using the (X) icon and re-save the renamed material.
Face Color To Vertex Color

This functon shows up when you enter vertex mode right next to where the Assign New Material
would be. It lets you bake the viewport difuse color of the materials assigned to the faces as
vertex color.

Figure 17

With the viewport difuse colors baked as the vertex color, we can now get rid of the multple
materials assigned to the mesh and use just one shader with the vertex color as the difuse for
the Principled BSDF, for example.

With the Assign New Material, Material Palete and Face Color To Vertex Color functon,
conceptualizing hard surface design is faster since you can use any procedural shader using the
vertex color as a base difuse immediately afer modeling.
Snapshots

The snapshot functon is a way of saving backup copies of the design mesh. This is useful if you
want to experiment on a design idea but stll have the ability to get back on a previous copy of the
mesh.

Figure 18

Use the Take Snapshots functon to save a copy of the design mesh and save it to the snapshots
list. Figure 17 shows the default cube with its snapshot taken before the side edges are beveled.

You can switch between the snapshots in object or edit mode.

In the snapshots menu, you can use the (+) icon to take a snapshot or the (X) icon to delete it. The
(+) icon shows the snapshot of the design mesh you are currently working on.

This operates on a basic parentng and hide system to create the snapshots, which means that
once you take a snapshot, it duplicates the design mesh, uses that copy as the new object for you
to work on and parents the previous copy to the duplicate so you can move it around and the
snapshots will move along with it.

Selectng a snapshot from the list will re-parent the rest of the snapshots to the actve one and
hide them.

If you manage to reveal all snapshots using the Reveal All functon in Blender, just select any copy
and use the Hide Snapshots functon to hide all the snapshots except the actve one.

Using the Clear Snapshots will delete all the snapshots except the actve one.

Do not use this to any object that are already parented to avoid problems with the parentng
system of the Snapshots functon.
Intersect Functions

The intersect functons cut, draw, add and subtract the design mesh based on its overlap between
the intersector faces and are part the Intersect (Boolean) and Intersect (Knife) functon in
Blender.

Figure 19

Figure 18 shows the Diference, Union, Cut and Intersect functons efect respectvely on the
design mesh based on the overlap shape of the intersector faces.
Using the add-on makes it faster to work with the intersect functons since you don’t have to
Select Link the intersector faces all the tme.

The intersector faces needs to be a solid set of faces that have no opening to avoid problems
mostly for the Intersect (Boolean) functons like the Diference, Union and Intersect.

Figure 20

The Diference operaton subtracts from the design mesh based on the overlap of the intersector
faces.

Figure 21

The Union operaton adds the intersector faces to the design mesh and basically gets rid of the
overlapping geometry inside the design mesh.
Figure 22

The Cut operaton cuts lines or edges on the design mesh faces based on the overlap shape of the
intersector faces.

You can Bevel the cut then use Inset to make them visible. Or select the cut then use Select Inner
Region and Inset to push or pull the detail in the design mesh.

Figure 23

The Intersect operaton creates new object based on the overlapping shape between the design
mesh and the intersector faces. The small twist compared to the default intersect operaton is
that both resultng shape from the overlap are maintained.

The result may not be immediately visible if the design mesh is not using the Bevel Modifer since
the cut would be “paper thin”. Having Outline Selected enabled also helps view the resultng
operaton if you’re want to be light at the start and delay using the Bevel Modifer.

You can also assign a new material to the new object to beter distnguish it.
Figure 24

The Auto Sharp toggle is also added which selects all the sharp angle edges in the design mesh
and marks them as sharp as seen in Figure 26. This is used every tme you use the Diference,
Union and Intersect functons. With new geometry you extruded using Cut, you have to use Get
Sharp to manually mark them.

The Auto Sharp and Sharpness setngs is exposed only in the T panel below the intersect
operators. This feature is enabled by default and allows you to get rid of most shading distortons
when working with ngon faces and the bevel modifer. This means that you can work with fewer
segments and use the default bevel profle of 0.5 without worrying about shading distortons
every tme you boolean the design mesh.

See the Get Sharp functon for further informaton about Mark Sharp functonality.
Poly and Box Cutter/Slicer

This is a convenient way of cutng and slicing the design mesh in object mode by drawing
polygonal and box shapes in the viewport.

Figure 25

Upon using the poly or box cuter/slicer to the selected object, it will enter modal mode where
you have to draw the corresponding shape to cut or slice the design mesh.

Use LMB to draw the points, RMB to remove a point or cancel when there are no more points,
Spacebar or Enter to execute and Escape to immediately cancel the operaton.

In the lower lef corner of the 3d viewport, you will see interactve setngs to control the corner
bevel and cut depth of the cuter/slicer object. They can also be found in the T panel and Pie
menu where you can manually input new values.

Use Alt+Mouse Drag from the center of the cuter/slicer object to increase the Width, this is the
corner bevel width used to round sharp corners. Drag away to increase and drag towards to
decrease the value. You can use Alt+Shif+Mouse Drag or press Shif while using Alt+Mouse Drag
to slow the increments.

You can change the Profle by rolling Ctrl+MMB up and down, up to increase and down to
decrease. Press Ctrl+Shif+MMB or press Shif while Ctrl+MMB to slow the increments.
Roll MMB up and down to change the Segments, up to increase and down to decrease.
The Depth determines the length of the cuter/slicer object. This is used to cut the design mesh
through and through, if the selected object is too big the default 2.0 value of the cut depth may
not be enough so you can increase this using Ctrl+Mouse Drag to change this. Drag away from the
center of the cuter/slicer object to increase or towards to decrease. Use Ctrl+Shif+Mouse Drag
or press Shif while using Alt+Mouse Drag to slow the increments.

This operaton is view dependent and switches to orthographic view to make the cuts straight
front to back of the design mesh. The view switches back to previous setngs once the cut or slice
is done.

While using MMB to rotate the view, you can press Alt to snap it to profle views like the sides,
front and back, top and botom. This will help you align the cut beter when cutng/slicing
angular objects.

Figure 26

This is essentally a lasso tool where the parts of the design mesh inside the poly or box shape
gets cut or sliced.

When using the Poly Cut or Slice, you can press Shif while drawing points with the LMB to snap
the lines to a 45° angle.
Figure 27

The cuters and slicers are not limited to a single object and can cut multple selectons as well.

Figure 28

Figure 26 shows the resultng cut operaton mirrored to the other side using the add-on’s
symmetry operators. This lets you manage the cut or slice shape on just one side then just mirror
the geometry aferwards for perfect symmetry.
Figure 29

The cuters subtract the lasso shape (lef image in Figure 27) from the design mesh and the slicers
creates a new shape (right image in Figure 27) based on the overlap of the lasso shape and the
design mesh.

Figure 30

Figure 28 shows a quick asset sketch using the Poly and Box Cuter/Slicer.
Poly and Box Draw

This operates like the slicers and cuters except it does so in edit mode and the overlap between
the lasso shape and the design mesh results in a cut line.

Figure 31

The controls are the same but the Depth is replaced with the Cut Through opton. This enables
you to make the cut penetrate the whole design mesh.

Figure 32

In Figure 30, the outline of the lasso shape becomes the cut line in the design mesh.
Figure 33

Figure 31 shows the Cut Through disabled and enabled using the Box Draw functon. The lasso
shape essentally cuts the entre design mesh front to back.

Figure 34

Afer the cut, you can Bevel (Ctrl+B) the cut then Inset (I) to push the resultng faces up or down
to make the cut into an obvious detail. You could also select the entre edge loop of the cut then
use Select Inner Region and Inset (I) to push the faces up or down.
Figure 35

Figure 33 shows a sci-f panel modeled using mostly the Poly and Box Draw functons. The cut
lines have been inset as demonstrated in Figure 32.

Figure 36

With the interior faces of the cut lines selected and once you enter Inset mode, press Ctrl to push
the faces up or down.
Mirror

This operates like the Symmetrize functon in Blender but mirrors only either the intersector faces
in the Cuber Group or the entre mesh.

You can fnd it below the Add Intersector Mesh buton in the T panel and in the lower secton of
the pie menu.

This is essentally a single functon but you can fnd it segmented into six butons (+X, -X, +Y, -Y, +Z,
-Z), each having their own axis or directon to work on.

The Invert icon which is disabled by default means that it will only symmetrize the intersector
faces and if enabled will symmetrize the entre mesh including the intersector faces. You can fnd
it in the pie menu as the Mirror Entre Mesh toggle.

Figure 37

This is useful specially when using the cuters/slicers and draw functons because unlike the
intersector faces created by the Add Intersector Mesh command it cannot anchor to any central
positon.

If the design mesh is asymmetric, you disable the Mirror Entre Mesh toggle or the Invert Icon to
mirror only the intersector faces.
Figure 38

You can use either the 3d Manipulator or the Mini Axis found in the lower lef porton of the 3d
viewport as a reference on how this works.

You can see the arrows having the colors: Red, Blue and Green. This is very simple, all you have to
remember is that XYZ is RGB – Red is X axis, Green is Y axis and Blue is Z axis.

Where the arrows are pointng at are the positve axis and opposite that is the negatve axis.
Figure 39

In Figure 37, in order to mirror the triangle detail on the X axis, let’s use the 3d Manipulator or
the Mini Axis as a guide. With the center of the object in mind, we see that the triangle detail is
on the positve side of the X axis. So to mirror it on the other side use the +X buton.

Figure 40

In Figure 38, the triangle detail is on the negatve side of the Y axis (relatve to the center of the
object), so to mirror this on the other side we use the -Y buton.

It’s simple, use the axis where the detail is located relatve to the center of the object to mirror or
symmetrize it on the other side.
Quick Assign and Quick Select

The Quick Assign is an interactve way of adding bevel efect to the design mesh. This operates in
object or edit mode letng you see the bevel changes in real tme as you modify the Angle,
Width, Segments and Profle slider values.

Figure 41

The Quick Select boxes lists the unique bevel weights assigned to a partcular edge or edges of
the design mesh if you’re using the Weight Limit Method which is a parameter of the Bevel
Modifer which determines what edges are going to be beveled. You can then select from this
bevel weight list to change them using the Bevel Weight slider if you have the Use Angle Limit
Method disabled in the Quick Assign Setngs.

By default, the add-on uses the Angle Limit Method set at 30°. This will bevel the sharp edges
which meets the 30° angle threshold. Using this method is faster but not as versatle as the
Weight Limit Method since the Bevel Width is the same for all the edges.

This adds the Bevel Modifer to the selected or actve object when you change the Angle, Width,
Segments and Profle slider values or by using the Refresh icon which will use the current values
in the Quick Assign sliders.

With the Bevel Modifer (Cuber Bevel) added to the design mesh, you will see the Apply and
Remove buton appear which of course will enable you to apply or remove the bevel modifer.
Two new icons (Viewport and Edit Mode Visibility) will also appear on the top right part of the
Quick Select boxes, they let you toggle the visibility of the Bevel Modifer efect in object or edit
mode. This lets you work faster in edit mode for example where having the bevel efect on in a
complicated or higher resoluton mesh will slow down some viewport processes like moving
vertces around.

The Lock icon will lock or immunize the “locked” object to the efects of the Quick Assign sliders.
This lets you avoid changing a fnalized bevel setng on a partcular object. The add-on will list
the “locked” objects and you will see the lock icon change from locked to unlocked depending on
whether the object selected is locked or not. You clear the “locked” object list using the Purge
Locked Object List command found only in the T panel or by toggling the Lock icon on a “locked”
object.

Figure 42

The Quick Assign Setngs will let you modify setngs inherent to the Bevel Modifer like the
Clamp Overlap, Loop Side and the Use Angle Limit Method which when disabled will let you
assign bevel weights to the selected edges of the design mesh in edit mode replacing the Angle
slider with the Bevel Weight slider.

The Clamp Overlap, Loop Slide and Use Angle Limit Method toggle efects are instant but the
Push Bevel Modifer To Top and Remove Other Bevel Modifer will only execute once you use
some of the real tme sliders or by using the Refresh icon.

With the Push Bevel Modifer To Top enabled, this will always push or put the Bevel Modifer on
top of the modifer stack ensuring that its efect will not be overridden by other modifers. The
Remove Other Bevel Modifer will remove every other bevel modifer in the modifer stack except
the one used by the add-on (Cuber Bevel) to ensure that their efects will not overlap.
Figure 43

Figure 41 shows the basic diference between the Angle Limit Method (lef) and the Weight Limit
Method (right).

With the Weight Limit Method, edges can have their own unique bevel weight assignment which
creates variety on the bevel efect. The Angle Limit Method, on the other hand, is faster since
you don’t have to select edges and assign bevel weights to them but the bevel width is uniform
for all edges that meet the angle threshold.

Figure 44

Figure 42 shows the unique bevel weights assigned to the edges of the jar model in Figure 41. You
can pick any value from this list and it will be copied to the Bevel Weight parameter of the Quick
Assign sliders. This also selects the edges with that bevel weight assigned so you can quickly
change the bevel weight assignment using the Bevel Weight slider. This works in object or edit
mode.

You can also use pick a bevel weight from the list and select another edge or set of edges then
use the Refresh icon to assign the bevel weight.
The Update List For Actve Object refreshes the Quick Select boxes to list the unique bevel
weights of a newly selected object if it is using the Weight Limit Method.

You can remove any bevel weight from the list by reducing it to 0 or all of them using the Remove
command’s undo menu by enabling the Remove Bevel Weights toggle.

Figure 45

To make it easier to select the edges and assign bevel weights to them specially on complicated
areas of the design mesh, you can use the Get Sharp functon of the add-on.

Figure 46

Since the Quick Assign sliders’ efects are real tme, to avoid accidentally using the current values
to a newly selected object with a completely diferent set of bevel setngs – the Synchronize
Setngs functon will appear. Use this to copy the objects bevel setngs to the Quick Assign
sliders.

Without using the Get Sharp method:If you have any problems with shading errors or distortons
specially on long ngon faces just increase the Profle to something like 0.7 or 0.8 then increase the
segments. Other distortons are geometry based caused by close proximity edges where the bevel
overlaps, when this happens you can use Edge Slide to set them apart.

Remember that the Get Sharp method along with the bevel modifer will get rid of most shading
distortons but for some situaton you will have to edit the topology to get rid of these.
Add Weighted Normals Copy

This creates a copy of any object or objects with an existng Bevel Modifer with the modifers
applied, the bevel segments can be set lower in the resultng copy but will keep the rounded look
of the beveled edges in the original.

Figure 47

Figure 45 shows the cube with a bevel modifer set to 12 segments (lef), the resultng copy using
the Add Weighted Normals Copy command (right) shows the Bevel Modifer applied with only 1
segment. The roundness of the edges is kept by baking the face normal data of the original to the
resultng copy.

Figure 48

Shown in Figure 46 is what the cube would look like with the Bevel Modifer applied with 12
segments (lef) and the weighted normals copy (lef) with only 1 segment.

Enable the Nearest Normal toggle when the object have edges marked as sharp to bake the
normals of the faces correctly or if you’re using the Get Sharp method to get rid of shading
distortons.
Figure 49

Make sure you preview the lower bevel segment you’re planning to use for the Make Weighted
Normals Copy command using the Quick Assign sliders. Figure 47 shows the beveled edges using
12 segments (lef), when reduced to a much lower segment (right) the bevel can sometmes
overlap in some areas of close proximity edges so make sure to adjust the lower bevel segment
value you’re planning to use frst before making it higher and using the Make Weighted Normals
Copy command.

Figure 50

It’s possible to export the face normal data using .obj or .fx enabling you save these light-res
assets for use in the future or for importng in other 3d packages.
The Auto Smooth functon should be used before using the Add Weighted Normals Copy
command on the actve object. A Bevel Modifer must also be present on the selected object as
the whole premise of the functon depends on baking the rounded edges face data to the
resultng copy with fewer bevel segments.

Figure 51

This makes it possible to quickly render multple hard surface assets in one scene without the
added render stress of having the Bevel Modifer on or applied with higher segments.

Figure 52

The Add Weighted Normals Copy functon will remove the original copy so make sure to
duplicate the source object before using the command if you don’t intend to lose it. It works on
selected multple objects (make sure you have an actve one) provided they have a bevel modifer
and is a mesh type object.
Subscribe to my Youtube channel for future video demos of the add-on.

Email me at blendergpuppy@hotmail.com for questons, bug reports and suggestons.

Take a peek at the shops as well: Gumroad , Blender Market

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