PicoCADToolKit

This is Jordan's PicoCAD Toolkit! It's python code that will look at and edit the save file for a PicoCAD project! What is picoCAD? it's a little CAD/3D modeling tool availible here https://johanpeitz.itch.io/picocad. It's made in pico8 which adds a lot of really useful artistic limitations. Sometimes we want to go a little bit further! This toolkit adds some helpful functionality that either wouldn't fit in the pico8 cartridge size or doesn't fit the purpose of picoCAD.

Installation:

To download a pre-built version of the toolkit go to https://github.com/jordanfb/PicoCADToolKit/releases and download the latest version for your operating system.

To run this from the code clone the repo, make sure you have python 3.X installed, make sure you have the "pillow" library installed using pip3, and run toolkitUI.py to launch the user interface.

Usage:

Check out the README_FOR_PICOTOOLKIT.md that should be included with your build download or read it here on the repo page. If you have questions message in the #custom-tools channel in the picoCAD discord server.

At its core you create a base model in picoCAD, then save it and can open it in this toolkit to help mirror things, copy things, rotate things, unwrap things, and much more!

Please make many backups! There's even a button in the toolkit that will do that for you! Some of the operations in the toolkit can mess up your file and most are irreversable.

TODO:

Here are some items that we're interested in adding to the toolkit! If you have more ideas or want to contribute message @quickpocket#2838 on the picoCAD discord server (The Megadome)!

- Tool for merging/unmerging the uvs of a mirrored face?
- Tool for unwrapping neighboring faces using the same basis if the normals are similar
  - Plus then connect them by linking the UVs!
- Rotate face normals (physically, not by swapping the vertices)
  - needs face selection though... hmmmm.
- Consider changing around the output_save_text function of a picoSave to use the parsed header functions not the original text
- Round to Nearest N button to let people round their vertices to the nearest value of their choice.
- Round to N decimal places as well would work better for rotated objects and still reduce file size
- Delete unused UV coordinates (i.e. if the face has no-texture enabled) to save space!

Changelogs:

v0.2: The Mesh Update

Implemented exporting alpha map for use with 3rd party programs
Improved mesh selection method from entering a string to a dropdown menu.
- like improved it a lot it's so much better now
Merge vertices based distance and (optionally) remove the faces that become hidden
Added a confirmation dialogue for the close window button if your save data isn't saved
Scale meshes by x, y, and z independently!
- This is currently relative to the origin of the object, not the midpoint! keep that in mind!
- You can move the origin to the midpoint (or anywhere else!) and then scale it how you want it to by adjusting the origin!
Scale mesh positions by x, y, and z independently!
- Same deal, this is relative to the world origin!
Invert normals on a mesh (you'll need to do this if you scale a mesh by -1 on a dimension!)
Button to remove invalid faces with 2 or fewer unique vertices!
Round vertices to nearest .25 (i.e. the snapping grid in picoCAD)
Copy an object's vertices and faces into another object!
- it won't delete the original, but if you want to you can do that manually in picoCAD!
- I reccomend merging meshes and then removing duplicate vertices to clean it up!
Save a copy of the open data to a backup file
- Save what is currently opened (not what is currently saved!) to a new file. Keep editing the original.
Changed the backup button so that when the backups are opened in picoCAD they will save to their backup filepaths, not to the original file
- This is helpful because of the next feature I added:
Merge a save file into your current project!
- One issue I was having with my large projects was accessing models behind other models! This feature means that you can save a copy of the project you're working on, delete everything except what you want to hide in the original, go back to the original and delete what you want to hide, work on whatever you want, then merge the hidden objects back into your main project! It's a little finnicky but it also helps with performance while you're editing other objects!
- PLEASE MAKE A BACKUP IF YOU'RE GOING TO DELETE THINGS OR MERGE FILES. IF YOU MERGE TOO MANY OBJECTS BACK INTO A PROJECT IT CAN PREVENT PICOCAD FROM OPENING THE FILE IF THE FILE BECOMES TOO LARGE. PLEASE TAKE CAUTION.
Object Origin Adjustment!
- If an object isn't rotating the way you want it to, (or if you want to scale a shape differently!) you can adjust the object origin!
- This will keep all the vertices in place and just move the origin (the red dot in picoCAD)
- There are options to:
  - Adjust it manually
  - Adjust it to the world origin <0,0,0>
  - Adjust it to the average position of the vertices in the object
  - Adjust it to any one of 27 points on the world aligned bounding box of your mesh
  - And round it to the nearest .25 unit if you so desire so it snaps nicely in the grid

v0.3: The Graphics Update

Added displays for each of the orthogonal picoCAD Orientations to see which object(s) you are editing
Added a display for the UV map so that you don't have to keep clicking "Show UVs"
Added controls for those as well (arrow keys, wasd, +-, scroll wheel, and on screen buttons)
Added border and padding fields for customizing how spaced out the automatically packed UVs are!
Removed the ugly image of the coordinate system and replaced it with text that appears on the render views when you hover over them

v0.3.1: The Mac Update

Implemented a tool to convert faces from non-textured faces to textured faces by setting the UVs to the first pixel of the correct color found
Implemented a tool to add any missing colors used by non-textured faces to the end of your image for the above conversion
Implemented buttons to set or clear each face property on every face of a mesh
Implemented a "change background color" button that will change the background color of the render views between white and all 16 pico8 colors
Added a Mac build!

v0.4: The Image Palette Converter Update

Added a tool to convert any image to the picoCAD/pico8 palette
- includes ability to weight each color from the palette to make it more likely or entirely remove it
Fixed a bug with removing all the faces from an object messing up the save file (but it still won't load in picoCAD!)
Fixed a bug where merging vertices wouldn't make the render views update
Renamed "Delete Hidden Faces" checkbox for merging vertices to "Delete Contained Faces" to try to emphasize how it's not perfect
Added a tool to rotate a mesh around its origin by a certain number of degrees
Cleaned up some UI
Added copy/delete mesh buttons
Added a difference between "Merge Mesh Into" and "Copy Mesh Into". The first one will delete the original mesh, the second one won't.
Changed the instructions to the Markdown format and cleaned up the readme!

v0.4.1: The Vertex Merging Hotfix

Turns out the implementation of merging vertices forgot to actually delete the now unused vertices
This version fixed that, and added a button to manually delete unused vertices in case you wanted to clean up files that were previously merged and never got their vertices deleted

v0.5: The Subdivision Update

Added a stats page that shows estimated file size, estimated percentage full, and number of objects/vertices/faces
Added a triangulation/subdivision page that lets you subdivide objects while maintaining uv coordinates!

v0.5.1: The Filename Update

Cleaned up the buttons that reload/save/save a copy of the file
Added the file currently being edited to the titlebar of the window

v0.5.2: The Vertex Rounding Hotfix

It was rounding the vertex positions and then throwing away that data! Now it correctly rounds vertex positions to the nearest .25

v0.6: The Hole Filling Update

Added hole filling! It's far from perfect but can fix some accidental deletions and maybe create some cool shapes.
- Currently it's still experimental, so as always make a backup!
- When a hole is filled it's replaced with a double sided face in the least used color that has the no-texture flag set to help you find it.
Added UV clamping to get offscreen UV vertices back into an editable location.

v0.7 Disjoint Mesh Separation

Added a button to separate disjoint meshes into separate objects (basically the opposite of merging two objects together)
Added a button to rename objects

v0.8 Cleanup and Compatibility

Slightly improved hidden face removal
Implemented rounding to any value (hopefully correctly trimming the significant figures as well)
Updated the version of tkinter to support python 3.11 for improved compatibility

v0.8.1 Color Palette Conversion Hotfix

Fixed color palette conversion color weights
Add support for loading pngs that aren't using the standard RGB format (for instance indexed).

Thanks:

Thanks so much to Johan Peitz Twitter: @johanpeitz for making picoCAD and inspiring this project!

Thanks so much to everyone who has made this project possible!

Here they are listed in order that they contributed to the project:

Jordan Faas-Bush Twitter: @quickpocket

VinnyFettuccine

Gokhan Solak Twitter: @artsolak, Github: gokhansolak