How can I hide soap skin mesh lines?

SketchUp Pro
1

I created a mesh with soap skin from a non-planar closed set of 4 lines. How can I hide the mesh lines? Here is the construct.

Screenshot 2024-06-25 at 3.56.01 PM
Screenshot 2024-06-25 at 3.56.01 PM1486Ă—620 11.7 KB

The edges are fine. The mesh is (or is part of) a group.

Thanks

2

With Select, Triple click on the soap skin group to open it for editing and select the geometry. Right click on it and choose Soften/Smooth Edges. You may need to tick the box for Soften Coplanar, too.

What version of SketchUp are you using? Please update your forum profile.

1 Like
3

Thanks. I had to unblock “smooth normals”.

sketchup pro desktop 24.0.554.

4

That’s odd. Shouldn’t need to do that.

Please correct your forum profile with that information.

5

It works a little weirdly. Takes some fiddling. The smoothing doesn’t happen until I deselect the group. Also, I had to click/unclick the boxes.

6

Not the same here. I wonder what’s different in your setup.

ssb

7

Can we call this a teaching moment for rookies like me and define “soap skin” and mention what “mesh lines” like these do/are and where they come from? Or point me to a tutorial if that’s easier.

Thanks.

8

Soap Skin and Bubble is an extension that creates a surface from a loop of edges, typically non-planar edges.

The mesh lines are edges between faces on the surface. Since SketchUp is a face modeler, every face must be bounded by at least three coplanar edges. In order to create a non-flat surface, it must be subdivided into smaller faces. The mesh is the result of that.

The surface I created in my gif is subdivided like this.

Screenshot - 6_25_2024 , 3_56_58 PM
Screenshot - 6_25_2024 , 3_56_58 PM625Ă—698 23.6 KB

9

Actually SketchUp only has faces and edges. Soap skin is a concept coined by an extension developer to describe the function of his/her extension that takes a face, subdivides it to smaller parts and “inflates” it to approximate a “bubble” surface.

10

Nice. Probably the clicking sequence. I’ll try what you did.

11

Maybe.

Please update your forum profile.

12

Thank you @Anssi , that makes perfect sense to me.

13

and also some videos in the YouTube sidebar.

You can make a surface delineated by 3 or more lines making a closed “loop”. The lines do not have to be coplanar, which is the whole point. Also see curviloft and vertex tools.

14

I did update it

15

Evidently you didn’t save the changes after updating.
Screenshot - 6_25_2024 , 4_24_35 PM

16

bummer

17

she be done now!

2 Likes
18

should

19

Thanks @sabrawer