Messages

1

Gallery / Re: Wake up and shoot the coffee

« on: April 26, 2013, 10:43:26 AM »

Thanks for your comment and your hard work.

About sculptris, the alpha6 is the last version so far and at this point nobody's expecting any update in the near future.
The quad remesh shown 3 years ago never saw the light of day (unless it have been implemented in zbrush in some way, but I'm not a zbrush user yet so I can't say for certain).

2

Wish List / Re: Set Tool Parameters Before

« on: April 22, 2013, 08:58:20 PM »

Maybe a preview checkbox could be more useful to be able to decide how to proceed depending the situation.
Personally a lot of times the on-the-fly preview helped me avoid to guess what is the best setting for a model. If it wouldn't have been there I would've been forced to go back and forth using accept/undo in a trial and error workflow, that wouldn't have been very practical. If possible I wouldn't want to lose it.

3

Gallery / Wake up and shoot the coffee

« on: April 22, 2013, 08:43:32 PM »

I made this sculpture to try the latest build of MM, using as an inspiration the cover of "Wake up and shoot the coffee" a parody comic starring the Pulverizer against Wulvoream.

The characters models have been sculpted mainly with sculptris but all the props (weapons, shells, claws, bags, mask, boots, slices and booleans) have been done in MM.

This version seem to be quite stable, the program didn't crashed not even once.
The difference booleans left every time some holes on sharp corners but the inspector had no problem in fixing those (unfortunately smoothing those areas in the process).

The slice works very good, but on complex models apparently the undo don't work as expected.
The cut plane appears but the model isn't affected anymore. On simpler forms it seems to work though.

Eventually I'll make some other test and post the images to show what I'm referring to and how to do it, and while I'm at it I'll try some of the other new functions I didn't need for this sculpture.

Nice work as usual RMS.

4

Announcements / Re: meshmixer08 update 2

« on: April 13, 2013, 04:28:18 PM »

I've tried a couple of new functions and the build seems stable so far, but when I use the slice it seems that the two objects aren't separated as it happens in the preview video.

As shown there, I use the plane cut, 'slice' instead of 'cut' and accept. Is there something I missed?

5

Announcements / Re: meshmixer08 update 2

« on: January 26, 2013, 11:11:26 AM »

Brilliant as usual. I just downloaded the update, I'll try it as soon as I can as well.

6

Gallery / Re: Desert Eagle

« on: November 06, 2012, 06:08:18 AM »

Thanks MagWeb.
You got it right, and you're right.
In case you have to delete multiple elements (like I did with the primitives I used for the boolean operations) you just have to combine all the elements you want to delete with another one beforehand and then you select/delete them; that's neat, man.
Anyway that's one more passage that could be avoided so I thought it was worth mentioning.

Thanks RMS.
Well, MagWeb already did the terminator head and a lot of other really impressive models, but I have to say that I've been surprised myself when I realized it's now possible to model mechanical elements with ease (relatively speaking) using booleans with the last improvements you did (faster and more reliable).
Now I just have to complete the scene with the two guns...

Very cool stuff, keep up the good work. 

7

Gallery / Desert Eagle

« on: November 05, 2012, 09:03:54 PM »

I completed the Desert Eagle model; it took more time than it was worth and I simplified some elements, but it's done entirely in MeshMixer with individual pieces like the Peace Maker revolver I did last time.
Some things I noticed doing it:

I was right, smooth boundaries pin handles can't move anymore after any of them is cancelled (double click on existing pin handles);

booleans tend to ruin edges when there isn't enough detail, and don't work well with small elements leaving, more often than not, open areas that can be closed only with the stamp tool;

to clear the outline list from already deleted elements it's currently necessary to restart the application;

It could be nice to have a wider palette for the face group colors.

I'm sure there was something else, but I'm too tired now and I don't remember what that was.
I'll post it here should that come to mind.

8

Wish List / Re: Retopology Tools

« on: November 05, 2012, 07:16:30 AM »

He prefers Sculptris for fast doodling and so do I.
Sculptris is good, I did all my sculptures with it (with a consistent aid from MeshMixer from a certain point on) and I think that I even overdid with details on some models, but the point is that if you're good with Zbrush and you know how to use dynamesh (that is a relatively new tool but already widely used by artists like Ryan Kingslien), you can do some crazy things in less time with the benefit of better tools and brushes.

About retopology tools, of course it's up to RMS to decide, but instead of an automatic solution I'd rather prefer a more user friendly manual one (but in both cases the end result should be using quads and not only tris).
Of all the softwares I've tried, the best so far have been 3dCoat with its point to point tool (I find it more comfortable).
I've seen videos of the new curve tool added in the latest version of ZBrush and it seems quite interesting as well.

9

Wish List / Re: Retopology Tools

« on: November 04, 2012, 08:01:34 AM »

Sculptris isn't considered a helper by those who use Zbrush, especially after the introduction of the dynamesh tool; on the other hand, it's true there's a big difference between MeshMixer and Mudbox tools.

As for the retopo, unfortunately 90% isn't good enough if you see it from a production standpoint (where you need to have an even topological flow with a controlled polycount).
You got to have a retopoed model based on you project needs if you're doing it for animation, and it really takes less time to do it from scratch (if you're good at it) than trying to fix an automated version, just like RMS have been told in the past.

Static models that must only be rendered are another matter altogether, but in that case I think that blender's remesh modifier should already be good enough.

10

Announcements / Re: meshmixer08 beta 1

« on: October 28, 2012, 06:44:30 PM »

Maybe you could add a note on the help menu like: 'press esc to exit'.
I use it on a regular basis to get out of any command and it's the fastest solution that I'm aware of.

EDIT: shaping the silhouette of the Desert Eagle, I've been able to replicate the problem with the smooth pin handles I talked about in an earlier post. You can add/delete the handles, but apparently after deleting it's not possible to move them anymore. At that point you can only press esc and start from scratch once again (I think that the best option for now is to make a group out of the selection beforehand, so that you can re-select it with just a double tap in case anything should go wrong).

11

Announcements / Re: meshmixer08 beta 1

« on: October 26, 2012, 08:03:28 PM »

I couldn't play with the new builds in the past days, that's a bummer really; maybe this weekend I will model a desert eagle just to complete a character I sculpted a while ago, so I should be able to test the latest MM build a little more.

The pin movement works great, I have experienced some strange behaviour though:
a) moving the pin outside of the model (like you would do with the warp tool) ends up with the pin actually jumping inside of the model itself;
b) At one point the pin handle wasn't moving anymore; maybe the operation became too heavy (I suspect that was the reason because cancelling it and doing it again worked), but I'm not sure if that was the actual reason. Should l be able to replicate it I'll make you know.

Another odd thing is that after you set a target there's no object selected and the import menu appears once again. I'm not complaining, just wondering if that's intentional, considering that I tried to import/replace all the primitive objects (bunny/sphere/plane) and I got appended instances instead.

Talking about warp, an old feature that I probably didn't addressed in the past is the fact that the transform operation on selected faces actually ends up in an extrude action (sort of actually, but the end result is very similar). Warp, on the other hand, gives you a pinch handle that moves faces with a falloff inside of a selection.
What if, after you use a transform operator on a face selection, the near faces of the selection are influenced with a smooth falloff outside of the selection, basically a warp where the selected faces are the equivalent of the pin handler?

Anyway, from what I tested until now you did a terrific work as usual. Nice job RMS.

@MagWeb: man, that dummy workflow is neat. In a way it reminds me of Zbrush mannequins.
I didn't have the time to try it, and I would probably prefer to use a base skinned model to pose and import for sculpting, but the idea is very clever. 

12

Announcements / Re: meshmixer08 beta 1

« on: October 14, 2012, 05:35:38 PM »

I just tried that as well and it didn't work either. Apparently the healing stamp is the only working solution at the moment.
I'm sending you the model so that you can take a look at it yourself. In case I'm able to recreate this kind of error again I'll send you the project with the elements before the boolean operation.

Thanks for the tip about the angle snap using shift, I missed that.

13

Announcements / Re: meshmixer08 beta 1

« on: October 14, 2012, 01:44:09 PM »

Man, I love this beta. Great job as usual. 

To try some of the new functions (especially the corner pin  ) I did a model of a gun using a pdf tutorial for 3dcoat as reference. This peacemaker have been done entirely in meshmixer, wow. 

Just a couple of notes:

while using the plane cut it would be good to have an angle snap, right now you can use a lazo selection (sort of) but because you don't have an ortographic view you can't be certain you're cutting the plane properly. More often than not I had to create an extra box and use a boolean subtraction to have a perfectly aligned plane cut;

one time I experienced the old graphic glitch that shows the inside of the model;

I haven't been able to repair the majority of the boolean errors using the inspector, those areas are the blue marks you can see in the images. I also tried the zip brush and the fill tool, unsuccesfully;

it would be great to have coordinates for the transformation tool so that you could be more precise using numeric values. Also it would be better if the red handles for the corner pin and the warp had a smaller fixed size no matter the distance, more than once I had a hard time creating two corner pins that were too close;

sometimes size don't work for smooth brush, sometimes it stops at a fixed value (like 54/68). As a workaround you can change the size with the select brush and then switch back to the smooth brush;

I didn't have tried all the new functions yet, but until now the program have proved to be quite stable; it just crashed a couple of times because of boolean operations and using the add detail brush on ruined areas. The corner pin is great, it just needs a slider to control the sharpness of the corner, and if it would be possible to move the handles to control the form of the selection curves it would be perfect. The boolean operations works usually flawlessly with multiple objects, the only problem are those opened areas that are created from time to time. Good stuff nonetheless.

14

Gallery / Re: Sketched Based modeling in MeshMixer..

« on: September 14, 2012, 07:52:00 AM »

Cool, I used this method in the past to create some armor plates and various props (that's why I'm still hoping to see sharp corners with smooth boundaries in a future release ), but I didn't thought to use it to create actual parts of the body. Very clever.

15

Questions & Troubleshooting / Re: download starting models?

« on: August 16, 2012, 05:02:03 AM »

Sorry, I didn't knew that it was possible to download those sample files. My bad.