Tutorial for Mesh Edit v0.3

1. Using the menu, click "GameObject>MeshEdit>Create Custom Mesh"
   OR
   Using the heirarchy, right click to bring up the drop down menu and click "Mesh Edit>Create Custom Mesh"
2. The new mesh will now be sitting in the middle of the scene view.

A new mesh in the scene view

• The Default mode
is active whenever the GameObject is selected. While in the default mode, everything will behave like it usually does for a Unity GameObject.
• The Mesh Edit mode
is the mode which lets you change the geometry of your mesh. In this mode the appearance of your mesh will change to reveal the selectable vertices and faces. In this mode a variety of shortcuts will become available to modify your mesh.
• The Tile Edit mode
gives you the ability to texture your model using a Tileset.
• The Vertex Colour mode
lets you modify the vertex-colour property of the vertices and faces on your model.

Before you start

The tileset folder, place all the textures and animations for your tileset here

The "Tilesets" window

The "Tilesets" window

1. Open the window by clicking on "Windows>Tilesets" in the menu
2. To create a new tileset, hit the "+ New Tileset" button
3. Fill in all the boxes to define your tileset:
   • File Name is the name of the tileset, make sure it's unique to the other tilesets before you apply any changes!
   • Tile Width and Tile Height refer to the size of each tile. This should be the size of the tiles in the textures and the same size as each frame of the animations that you're giving to the tileset.
   • Tile Spacing defines the amount of outline you want to add to each tile in the tileset, this helps get rid of visual issues on the textured Mesh.
   • Textures is the list of 2D textures used to make the tileset.
   • Animations is the list of spritesheets that are used to create specific, animated tiles in your tileset.
   • Page Size (the little label at the bottom of the window) shows the final size of your tileset. This is also the size of the final, compiled texture that your model will use. This value cannot be changed without adding/removing textures or animations from your tileset.
4. Apply changes. No changes are saved until you hit this button! This will save your new tileset and make it available to use in the "Tile Edit" mode of the MeshEdit interface. If you ever edit a texture that's used by your tileset, just hit "Re-Apply" changes to update the tileset, otherwise your changes won't show up.

The Default edit mode

• Re-Center Pivot centers the pivot point of the GameObject
• Export to .obj opens a saving interface that lets you export the selected MeshEdit object as an .obj file. If Copy textures on export is checked, this will also save a copy of the tileset and a .mtl file alongside the .obj file
• Import .obj opens a loading interface that lets you bring an .obj file into the MeshEdit object. This will also try to import any textures linked to the object, but more complicated materials may be simplified in the process.
• Show shortcuts affects all edit modes. When checked, each edit mode interface will also display a list of available shortcuts. You can find the full list of MeshEdit's shortcuts here.

The Mesh Edit mode

• Select determines the selection mode you use. "Faces" will let you select only the faces on your mesh and "Vertices" will let you select only the vertices. You can switch between the two quickly by pressing CTRL/CMD+Tab
• Normals lets you see the direction of the vert, triangle or face normals on the mesh. Setting the field to "None" will hide the normals entirely.
• Normal Length determines how long each normal drawn on the screen should be. This setting does not affect the mesh data.
• Add Primitive lets you add a new mesh to your object. Planes and Cubes are added as-is, but the small drop-down next to the "Circle" button defines the number of sides that a Circle or Cylinder will have when added to the mesh.
• Cut deletes all selected faces and adds them to the clipboard.
• Copy adds the data from all selected faces to the clipboard.
• Paste adds faces to the mesh from the clipboard and selects them. Faces will always be pasted in the same position they were copied from.

Selecting parts of the mesh

Selecting verts/faces with the Right Mouse Button

• Use the Right Mouse Button (RMB) to select a vert/face on your mesh. Holding Shift while selecting will add the vert/face to your selection.

• Select All by hitting A in either mode, hitting the key again will deselect everything.
• Loop Select with Alt+RMB in either vert or face-select mode to select a specific loop around the mesh. Hold Shift to add the loop to the selection.
• Activate Circle-Select mode with C and select large groups of verts or faces with LMB. While in circle-selection mode you can change the size of the selection area by scrolling. To exit circle-selection mode, hit RMB.
• Toggle mesh Transparency with Z. While the mesh is transparent you'll be able to select verts and faces on the back side that would usually be covered by an opaque model.

Modifying the mesh

Selecting a face, moving it, scaling it, rotating it and extruding it

While you have any verts/faces selected, you can modify them using shortcuts on you keyboard. MeshEdit works mostly through the keyboard and has no buttons on the interface to replace these functions.

First, select a group of vertices, then hit any of the following keys on your keyboard:

• Hit G to move the selected vertices and faces with the mouse.
• Hit R to rotate the selected verts/faces.
• Hit S to scale the selected verts/faces.
• Hit E to extrude the selected verts/faces.

While you're in the middle of a transformation you can use the following keys to make your changes more precise:

• X, Y or Z to constrain your transformation to a single axis
• Shift+X, Y or Z constrains your transformation to only the other two axes
• Holding CTRL/CMD will snap your changes to the nearest unit
• Holding Shift+CTRL/CMD will snap your changes to a finer degree

Applying a loop-cut to a mesh that's been made transparent with Z

Now that you know the basics you can start to edit your mesh a bit more:

• Loop Cuts can be made by pressing Shift+R and moving your mouse around the mesh to find the right spot to cut. While finding where to cut the mesh you can use the scroll wheel to increase/decrease the number of cuts you want to make. Once you've found the right spot click with LMB to make the cut. To exit loop-cut mode without making any cuts, click RMB.
• Delete selected faces by hitting Del in face-select mode.
• Dissolve the selected vertices by hitting Del in vert-select mode. This will attempt to dissolve the selected verts into the mesh, any verts that cannot be dissolved will be deleted.
• Flip Faces by hitting F in face-select mode. This will change the direction of the face normal.
• Create Faces by hitting F in vert-select mode. Since you can only create quads with MeshEdit, exactly four vertices must be selected first but you can also create a face when only two or three verts are selected if there is a free space for a face to be added.
• Resaddle all selected faces by pressing D. This will rearrange the triangles in a face so that they fold in the opposite direction. This is useful for making fine edits to a mesh and for making sure textures and vertex colours display correctly on a certain face.

For the full list of ways to edit a mesh, see the Shortcuts section at the end of this tutorial.