There was a build with the skin modifier released quite a while back, and as a quick base-mesh creation tool it quickly became one of my favourite tools for making 3d concept designs and even helped me make some quick models (I used it to quickly make low poly models for my game Otherworld, they don’t look too good, but what can I say, I was rushed and bspheres are meant for bases, not final models:) ). I even used it to create the base meshes of much better looking models (which I won’t show just yet as i’m not finished with them yet it was a little buggy and would sometimes generate way to many vertices, but those were small problems were easily fixed.
Is the tool still being worked on? The mac build is no longer public (fortunately I kept it and uploaded it to mediafire) and the rest are old builds (2.56 I think it was), I hope we could still have this in 2.6 as it is an awesome tool.
If you wanna try it out you can find the old builds here.
Here is the link for the mac build for the skin modifier:
Here is the link for the linux build for the skin modifier:
Here is the link for the windows build for the skin modifier:
Edit: This thread clearly is no longer about the original topic, hence the pre-fix, unfortunately you won’t find any news or even discussion about the skin modifier beyond the 1st page with the exception of single posts sandwiched between the rest of the posts unrelated to the topic. Sorry.
Let’s not forget Nicholas’s adaptive subdivision sculpting thing as well…
This dude us awesome, but I think he should finish one project before going to the other…
I don’t know if these features are still worked on, but I really wish that’s true.
We can only hope that those will be completed one day with some bug fixing too (hopefull once the Bmesh edit mode new code is there, it will help) because they were very usefull :
-the Skin modifier was brillant for quick model “sketching” before moving on to sculpt (though it will get hopefully some refining, as when displaying the spheres themselves performance was really very bad).
-the Remesh modifier, despite its shortcomings was the only remesh method that made it really in Blender.
I can’t say for the dynamic topology, as i never tried it, but with the end of UC it could be a possible alternative to get this kind of sculpting method in Blender.
Past couple months I’ve been entirely focused on the adaptive sculpt. It’s trickier to get working than I’d at first hoped
If I get adaptive sculpt working, then remesh modifier may become less important, at least for sculpting (which seems like primary usage.) My plan is to spend a bit more time on adaptive sculpt – if it looks like it’ll be a long time 'til it’s ready, I’ll look into getting remesh modifier into trunk
Skin modifier certainly has limitations in its current state; if it were crash-free but still limited to its current feature set, would y’all consider it a useful addition to trunk? If so, pictures and videos of it in action are best way to answer these questions, becomes simple to get released if users provide evidence of it in your workflow.
RickyBlender - the intent of both UC and adaptive sculpt is the same, but the algorithm and underlying implementation are quite different. I’m not sure if Farsthary is still doing anything with UC in Blender or not.
tyrant monkey - Unfortunately I haven’t touched that code in a while. There may be further news on that soon, though.
Carrozza - Have you found the remesh modifier helpful for boolean modeling? If so, example images/vids are the best recommendation for getting it in trunk
michalis - Yep, adaptive sculpt is all triangles. It does not produce good topology in the sense of good edgeflow for animation – you’d need to retopologize it for that. However, it does produce good topology in terms of a good sculpting mesh – no long stretched triangles or things like that.
michalis - Yep, adaptive sculpt is all triangles. It does not produce good topology in the sense of good edgeflow for animation – you’d need to retopologize it for that. However, it does produce good topology in terms of a good sculpting mesh – no long stretched triangles or things like that.
It seems that the remesh modifier produces quads mostly.
I didn’t ask for edge loops. Animation means a specific topology.
Sculpting needs another, friendlier for strokes. Then retopo for animation and baking.
Why everytime I mention retopology, this misunderstanding? It became predictable and funny a bit.
Retopology means remeshing, any kind, projections, subdivisions. Any dynamic tessellation method is a topological method anyway.
kakachiex2 - No need to link to other surface algorithms; I’m well aware of the many options out there. I certainly don’t have the time or interest to work on all of them
FreeMind - Nope, nothing Bmesh-related here. Adaptive sculpt is all triangles, so no benefit from ngons here. Internally, the mesh is being converted to a linked-list format (similar to EditMesh, but with different adjacency data) and then sliced up by the PBVH (the acceleration structure already used for mesh and multires sculpting.)
michalis - Yep, I don’t think we are disagreeing on anything here I meant only to clarify that adaptive sculpt uses all triangles.
@ nicholasbishop
I didn’t find any build to test it under OSX. But, these are quads mostly and looks similar to the new Zb DynaMesh. I’m confused now.
BTW, one that is killing me, LOL, when blender subdivides a tri mesh, a triangle anyway, it produces three triangles. It could create three quads instead. This is a PITA for me when I retopo fast. A very low poly mesh with some tris works fine after first subdivision in zbrush for instance as it’s all quads. Indeed, an extruded area could geometrically expressed as a subdivided triangle to three quads.
FreeMind - Nope, nothing Bmesh-related here. Adaptive sculpt is all triangles, so no benefit from ngons here. Internally, the mesh is being converted to a linked-list format (similar to EditMesh, but with different adjacency data) and then sliced up by the PBVH (the acceleration structure already used for mesh and multires sculpting.)
The reason I asked is that Bmesh is the reason why UC is on hold.
Bmesh has the ability to find neighbor vertexes quickly, while Edit mesh has to search through the whole mesh (Or something like this), so that makes UC very very slow, which is why Farsthary is waiting for bmesh… Well actually, he said he might port his work right to bmesh and continue from there…
I thought not using bmesh is the cause for it being difficult for you.
