Three.js - Create new mesh from certain faces/vertices of another mesh - three.js

Question

I´ve been several days struggling with a particular Three.js issue, and I cannot find any way to do it. This is my case:
1) I have a floating mesh, formed by several triangled faces. This mesh is created from the geometry returned by a loader, after obtaining its vertices and faces using getAttribute('position'): How to smooth mesh triangles in STL loaded BufferGeometry
2) What I want to do now is to "project" the bottom face agains the floor.
3) Later, with this new face added, create the resulting mesh of filling the space between the 3 vertices of both faces.
I already have troubles in step 2... To create a new face I´m supossed to have its 3 vertices already added to geometry.vertices. I did it, cloning the original face vertices. I use geometry.vertices.push() results to know their new indexes, and later I use that indexes (-1) to finally create the new face. But its shape is weird, also the positions and the size. I think I´m not getting the world/scene/vector position equivalence theory right :P
I tried applying this, with no luck:
How to get the absolute position of a vertex in three.js?
Converting World coordinates to Screen coordinates in Three.js using Projection
http://barkofthebyte.azurewebsites.net/post/2014/05/05/three-js-projecting-mouse-clicks-to-a-3d-scene-how-to-do-it-and-how-it-works
I discovered that if I directly clone the full original face and simply add it to the mesh, the face is added but in the same position, so I cannot then change its vertices to place it on the floor (or at least without modifying the original face vertices!). I mean, I can change their x, y, z properties, but they are in a very small measure that doesn´t match the original mesh dimensions.
Could someone help me get this concept right?
EDIT: source code
// Create geometry
var geo = new THREE.Geometry();
var geofaces = [];
var geovertices = [];
original_geometry.updateMatrixWorld();
for(var index in original_geometry.faces){
// Get original face vertexNormals to know its 3 vertices
var face = original_geometry[index];
var vertexNormals = face.vertexNormals;
// Create 3 new vertices, add it to the array and then create a new face using the vertices indexes
var vertexIndexes = [null, null, null];
for (var i = 0, l = vertexNormals.length; i < l; i++) {
var vectorClone = vertexNormals[i].clone();
vectorClone.applyMatrix4( original_geometry.matrixWorld );
//vectorClone.unproject(camera); // JUST TESTING
//vectorClone.normalize(); // JUST TESTING
var vector = new THREE.Vector3(vectorClone.x, vectorClone.z, vectorClone.y)
//vector.normalize(); // JUST TESTING
//vector.project(camera); // JUST TESTING
//vector.unproject(camera); // JUST TESTING
vertexIndexes[i] = geovertices.push( vector ) - 1;
}
var newFace = new THREE.Face3( vertexIndexes[0], vertexIndexes[1], vertexIndexes[2] );
geofaces.push(newFace);
}
// Assign filled arrays to the geometry
geo.faces = geofaces;
geo.vertices = geovertices;
geo.mergeVertices();
geo.computeVertexNormals();
geo.computeFaceNormals();
// Create a new mesh with resulting geometry and add it to scene (in this case, to the original mesh to keep the positions)
new_mesh = new THREE.Mesh( geo, new THREE.MeshFaceMaterial(material) ); // material is defined elsewhere
new_mesh.position.set(0, -100, 0);
original_mesh.add( new_mesh );

Answer 1

I created a fully operational JSFiddle with the case to try things and see the problem more clear. With this STL (smaller than my local example) I cannot even see the badly cloned faces added to the scene.. Maybe they are too small or out of focus.
Take a look to the calculateProjectedMesh() function, here is where I tried to clone and place the bottom faces (already detected because they have a different materialIndex):
JSFiddle: https://jsfiddle.net/tc39sgo1/
var container;
var stlPath = 'https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/s/p1xp4lhy4wxmf19/Handle_Tab_floating.STL';
var camera, controls, scene, renderer, model;
var mouseX = 0,
mouseY = 0;
var test = true;
var meshPlane = null, meshStl = null, meshCube = null, meshHang = null;
var windowHalfX = window.innerWidth / 2;
var windowHalfY = window.innerHeight / 2;
/*THREE.FrontSide = 0;
THREE.BackSide = 1;
THREE.DoubleSide = 2;*/
var materials = [];
materials.push( new THREE.MeshPhongMaterial({color : 0x00FF00, side:0, shading: THREE.FlatShading, transparent: true, opacity: 0.9, overdraw : true, wireframe: false}) );
materials.push( new THREE.MeshPhongMaterial({color : 0xFF0000, transparent: true, opacity: 0.8, side:0, shading: THREE.FlatShading, overdraw : true, metal: false, wireframe: false}) );
materials.push( new THREE.MeshPhongMaterial({color : 0x0000FF, side:2, shading: THREE.FlatShading, overdraw : true, metal: false, wireframe: false}) );
var lineMaterial = new THREE.LineBasicMaterial({ color: 0x0000ff, transparent: true, opacity: 0.05 });
init();
animate();
function webglAvailable() {
try {
var canvas = document.createElement('canvas');
return !!(window.WebGLRenderingContext && (
canvas.getContext('webgl') || canvas.getContext('experimental-webgl')));
} catch (e) {
return false;
}
}
function init() {
container = document.createElement('div');
document.body.appendChild(container);
camera = new THREE.PerspectiveCamera(25, window.innerWidth / window.innerHeight, 0.1, 100000000);
camera.position.x = 1500;
camera.position.z = -2000;
camera.position.y = 1000;
controls = new THREE.OrbitControls(camera);
// scene
scene = new THREE.Scene();
var ambient = new THREE.AmbientLight(0x101030); //0x101030
scene.add(ambient);
var directionalLight = new THREE.DirectionalLight(0xffffff, 2);
directionalLight.position.set(0, 3, 0).normalize();
scene.add(directionalLight);
var directionalLight = new THREE.DirectionalLight(0xffffff, 2);
directionalLight.position.set(0, 1, -2).normalize();
scene.add(directionalLight);
if (webglAvailable()) {
renderer = new THREE.WebGLRenderer();
} else {
renderer = new THREE.CanvasRenderer();
}
renderer.setClearColor( 0xCDCDCD, 1 );
// renderer = new THREE.WebGLRenderer();
renderer.setPixelRatio(window.devicePixelRatio);
renderer.setSize(window.innerWidth, window.innerHeight);
container.appendChild(renderer.domElement);
document.addEventListener('mousemove', onDocumentMouseMove, false);
window.addEventListener('resize', onWindowResize, false);
createPlane(500, 500);
createCube(500);
loadStl();
}
function onWindowResize() {
camera.aspect = window.innerWidth / window.innerHeight;
camera.updateProjectionMatrix();
renderer.setSize(window.innerWidth, window.innerHeight);
}
function onDocumentMouseMove(event) {
mouseX = (event.clientX - windowHalfX) / 2;
mouseY = (event.clientY - windowHalfY) / 2;
}
function animate() {
requestAnimationFrame(animate);
render();
}
function render() {
renderer.render(scene, camera);
}
function createPlane(width, height) {
var planegeometry = new THREE.PlaneBufferGeometry(width, height, 0, 0);
var material = new THREE.MeshLambertMaterial({
color: 0xFFFFFF,
side: THREE.DoubleSide
});
planegeometry.computeBoundingBox();
planegeometry.center();
meshPlane = new THREE.Mesh(planegeometry, material);
meshPlane.rotation.x = 90 * (Math.PI/180);
//meshPlane.position.y = -height/2;
scene.add(meshPlane);
}
function createCube(size) {
var geometry = new THREE.BoxGeometry( size, size, size );
geometry.computeFaceNormals();
geometry.mergeVertices();
geometry.computeVertexNormals();
geometry.center();
var material = new THREE.MeshPhongMaterial({
color: 0xFF0000,
opacity: 0.04,
transparent: true,
wireframe: true,
side: THREE.DoubleSide
});
meshCube = new THREE.Mesh(geometry, material);
meshCube.position.y = size/2;
scene.add(meshCube);
}
function loadStl() {
var loader = new THREE.STLLoader();
loader.load( stlPath, function ( geometry ) {
// Convert BufferGeometry to Geometry
var geometry = new THREE.Geometry().fromBufferGeometry( geometry );
geometry.computeBoundingBox();
geometry.computeVertexNormals();
geometry.center();
var faces = geometry.faces;
for(var index in faces){
var face = faces[index];
var faceNormal = face.normal;
var axis = new THREE.Vector3(0,-1,0);
var angle = Math.acos(axis.dot(faceNormal));
var angleReal = (angle / (Math.PI/180));
if(angleReal <= 70){
face.materialIndex = 1;
}
else{
face.materialIndex = 0;
}
}
geometry.computeFaceNormals();
geometry.computeVertexNormals();
meshStl = new THREE.Mesh(geometry, new THREE.MeshFaceMaterial(materials));
meshStl.position.x = 0;
meshStl.position.y = 400;
scene.add( meshStl );
// Once loaded, calculate projections mesh
calculateProjectedMesh();
});
}
function calculateProjectedMesh(){
var geometry = meshStl.geometry;
var faces = geometry.faces;
var vertices = geometry.vertices;
var geometry_projected = new THREE.Geometry();
var faces_projected = [];
var vertices_projected = [];
meshStl.updateMatrixWorld();
for(var index in faces){
var face = faces[index];
// This are the faces
if(face.materialIndex == 1){
var vertexIndexes = [face.a, face.b, face.c];
for (var i = 0, l = vertexIndexes.length; i < l; i++) {
var relatedVertice = vertices[ vertexIndexes[i] ];
var vectorClone = relatedVertice.clone();
console.warn(vectorClone);
vectorClone.applyMatrix4( meshStl.matrixWorld );
////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////
// TEST: draw line
var geometry = new THREE.Geometry();
geometry.vertices.push(new THREE.Vector3(vectorClone.x, vectorClone.y, vectorClone.z));
//geometry.vertices.push(new THREE.Vector3(vectorClone.x, vectorClone.y, vectorClone.z));
geometry.vertices.push(new THREE.Vector3(vectorClone.x, meshPlane.position.y, vectorClone.z));
var line = new THREE.Line(geometry, lineMaterial);
scene.add(line);
console.log("line added");
////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////
vectorClone.y = 0;
var vector = new THREE.Vector3(vectorClone.x, vectorClone.y, vectorClone.z);
vertexIndexes[i] = vertices_projected.push( vector ) - 1;
}
var newFace = new THREE.Face3( vertexIndexes[0], vertexIndexes[1], vertexIndexes[2] );
newFace.materialIndex = 2;
faces_projected.push(newFace);
}
}
geometry_projected.faces = faces_projected;
geometry_projected.vertices = vertices_projected;
geometry_projected.mergeVertices();
console.info(geometry_projected);
meshHang = new THREE.Mesh(geometry_projected, new THREE.MeshFaceMaterial(materials));
var newY = -(2 * meshStl.position.y) + 0;
var newY = -meshStl.position.y;
meshHang.position.set(0, newY, 0);
meshStl.add( meshHang );
}
EDIT: Finally!! I got it! To clone the original faces I must access their 3 original vertices using "a", "b" and "c" properties, which are indexes referencing Vector3 instances in the "vertices" array of the original geometry.
I cloned the 3 vertices flatting the Z position to zero, use their new indexes to create the new face and add it to the projection mesh (in blue).
I´m also adding lines as a visual union between both faces. Now I´m ready for step 3, but I think this is complex enough to close this question.
Thanks for the updateMatrixWorld clue! It was vital to achieve my goal ;)

Answer 2

try this
original_geometry.updateMatrixWorld();
var vertexIndexes = [null, null, null];
for (var i = 0, l = vertexNormals.length; i < l; i++) {
var position = original_geometry.geometry.vertices[i].clone();
position.applyMatrix4( original_geometry.matrixWorld );
var vector = new THREE.Vector3(position.x, position.y, position.z)
vertexIndexes[i] = geovertices.push( vector ) - 1;
}