So then “not real” blender users will be? Lets correct this, “a blender fanatic will never be impressed by anything non blender, but a cg artist who may or may not use blender will be impressed by whats been shown.” I’d argue the difference in mentality comes to down to being a fanatic with brand loyalty vs an artist who uses the tool but seems to appreciate the broader developements in the field itself.
Also regarding MF, you might not have used it right. While its true the viewport performance in general is poor, thats not really a fault of Mesh Fusion. If you knew exactly what it was doing, what its capable of and the sheer nature of the boolean opperations…its hard NOT to be impressed with it. As a Mesh Fusion owner, I find that…at least for my work, its use is limited with what I am doing… but I can also still appreciate and be impressed by its technical achievement…and it is a technical achievement (which is still in version 1 going on 2).
There are differences though, Mesh Fusion involves live booleans. Also, and this surprised me as well, but product design is the one area MF is getting the most use out of from Modo users…and it has a lot of Product Designers. In fact the Foundry got some slack for catering to them too much recently (with colorway and Modo).
Regarding MF, I was able to do this in literally a few minutes (and this isnt even a good example of what its capable for quick/difficult mesh work), so you can really get some good shapes out of it without much hassle, and its all happening live + non destructive unless you tell it to be.
For just basic low poly booleans and that same effect without adding extra geometry, Modo users (like game artist Tor Frick… some know him from the latest Wolfenstein game) will use the smooth edge shader found inside of the Material properties.
Such non-destructive boolean operations seem like a clear trend of future(@MF). As such it would be nice if Blender could have a relatively small update in that department (improving boolean modifier) which could include changes such as:
a) ability to include MANY objects in 1 single boolean modifier (Each with it’s specific boolean method). [SUB][SUP]Note: Would be nice to drag and drop objects from scene there or have a picker as manually specifying name right now is a pain with dense scenes.[/SUP][/SUB]
b) have bevel/chamfer like functionality upon operation or mark the edge weight that can then be used by Bevel modifier
c) some stability tuning so it would work in most cases
It might be nice indeed to be able to boolean groups of objects together that makes use of Blender’s group functionality, but when it comes to complex operations, it might become unwieldy until the modifier system moves from a stack-based system to a node-based one.
As I said while MF makes a terrible data for concept modeling this would be a tool I would personally love to have in Blender and work with.
However knowing that the MF data will be non usable in NURBS a current workflow of boolean operations without edge fillets is ok because I export the quad data into Fusion convert it to NURBS and then to much more accurate and controlled fillets there.
But still sub-d boolean including fillets is a dream for quick mock-ups and concept presentations.
I am actually not surprised that product designers use it the most. Just ask a normal CG student about booleans and even here people hate booleans
How do you see the future of BoolTool ( I think it is V0.2 now)?
I found it handy, but it could suffer from topo problems.
The solution could be some kind of up to date NURB addon; as an example Moi3D results are not bad after export.
I using tool for work, not fan or hater of this or this other tool (anyway you are free to think what you want about), if a tool worth the money for my job (and as I stressed every time, I evaluate a tool for what I need) I buying it as soon as possible.
For blender, you need simple to learn a bit about blender, probably you’ll stop trolling around… except mesh fusion (again, as I wrote) I don’t see nothing impressed me, like blender user, and I guess even Maya or 3dsm users are at the moment not so impressed ( and again for my needs, probably different by your needs, cannot stress more), and about mesh fusion, read what I wrote, if you cannot understood what I wrote, I’m really sorry, cannot rephrase better.
As I answered in other post, if this tools is good for your work and you think it worth 1400 $ this is good for you, buy it and be happy. For me, from what I see, no, it don’t worth 1400 $
Actually, this may be a good GSoC idea? The basics are already there, it’s mostly about wrangeling the UI and making optimisations on previous code, and would make many artists happy. You could sent a message to the BF contributor list if ‘polishing the boolean workflow’ is a good GSoC?
I don’t understand why people equate MeshFusion with basic booleans!? Does anyone get informed before commenting at all? The main thing is not boolean ops since every 3d package in existence already does that, its the surface topology reconstruction around the area of operation that keeps all quads if possible. No current boolean lib does that by default…and no Blender won’t do that with using only Carve…
I wasn’t talking about mesh fusion, I was talking about polishing boolean workflow, because people in the thread indicate that they would like seeing polished boolean workflow in blender, if not mesh fusion.
The question is not about “equating” but if we can draw inspiration/ideas from MF and find an optimal way to benefit Blender community rather than be emotional with subjective views.
The key is to ENHANCE what we already have (Boolean modifier) in most efficient/least time consuming way for benefit of everyone… rather than attempt to dilute development resources on incredibility time consuming feature that people will rarely use.
“…Boolean ops since every 3d package in existence”. You are mistaken. Most 3d applications collapse the history after boolean operations or only allow for minimalistic changes to base meshes/make it very hard to edit. This is not the case with Blender as the MODIFIER form allows for 100% non destructive workflow creating very sophisticated rapid results allowing for complete topology changes and utilizing modifiers on both base meshes as well as the sum boolean outcome. It is truly powerful workflow and is a lot like MF in that sense + has plenty of its own benefits.
If topology is issue, which it is not for Quick prototyping or last step detailing (e.g hard surface modeling): a) use nurbs b) retopologize manually c) houdini remesh/voxelize or zbrush zremesher. Would be great of course to have some sort of “retopo” modifier but there are good ways to work around it. Also as i understand MF outcome is very dense/hardly editable after so it’s all relative/
You might be quite right here, but there are papers out that do sub-d modeling with trimming - it would be amazing if this could over time be included into Blender if people like.
I see one main problem with Blender and carve library and that is speed. You can bring Blender to a crawl with a simple design. There MeshFusion just runs incredibly fast. Here is a screenshot and you cannot drag the tube anymore smoothly. End game.
The main reason besides price why I never settled for Modo is that Blender uses modifiers which is closer to feature design in a solid modeler. If they could add a better speed for boolean operations in Blender it would be amazing. So for my in my workflow Blender actually is better than Modo. I would also have to buy the other 600$ add ons to do sub-d to nurbs and CAD imports and for that I use Fusion which is free and a true solid modeler.
Also regarding topology I checked some images online (no 901 trial there yet) and it seems that MF does what I read some time ago it trims the sub-d tessellates everything and blends. If one is concerned about topology I am not sure if MF is the right tool then - I hardly see quads with MF.
Before switshing to blender, i’v tried numerous trial versions of 3D soft, and the one i liked by far is modo, almost same features as blender, rendering is very easy, there is also it’s connection with other foundry soft that’s makes it very attractive.
if i had a choice between 3dsmax, maya and modo, i will definitly choose modo.
Low poly modeling with limited sub-D levels (speeds things up)
Modifier tree for interactive sculpting
Transfer raw OBJ Data to Fusion
Convert OBJ to TS and auto generate NURBS
Use solid modeling to finish the design
Adjusting TS model (like sub-d model) will update NURBS design tree.
When working in MF with live booleans, it display everything like that. Once you are happy with what you made you can convert it over to a mesh item, this will keep as many quads as possible. You also have control over the settings in how the intersections will be displayed, their size, width, smoothness…ect
So what you see now is just how its rendered in the fusion view, but if you choose to create a separate combined mesh item out of it (applying the fusion) those tris go away for the most part.
Note this is still on the old version of Mesh Fusion, we do not know whats been improved and changed for version 2.0 which will be in 901.
Another note: The developer has been testing out the workflow between MF and ZBrush, so at this point you can export the MF mesh into ZBrush and get polygroups based on the separate meshes used to create it, plus the borders inbetween. This means you can generate curves based on those polygroups and use Zbrushes autoretopology to generate an even cleaner quad based mesh from it.
Here’s the MIC similar to 901 video. I struggled with rounded edges but otherwise it is just as “LIVE” as MF and everything else in modifier based workflow:
Please also note the MINIMALISTIC GEOMETRIC information that is enough to describe to Blender what to do with modifiers for high resolution result. This is why Blenders modifiers are so incredibly powerful way of working and why i believe that ironing out some small perks with boolean +bevel modifier could yield very fast workflows with high quality results.
I reiterate request:
a) boolean modifier supporting many objects each with own boolean operator and perhaps edge weight
b) Better beveling of results (no spikes)
c) more stable behavior (though it’s very good already)
I’m left to wonder, with the boolean tree being in an illustrated form on the left of the screen rather than in its own window, how would Modo handle the tree drawing once you get into complex kitbashing setups and how would the user be able to work with it without getting lost?
I imagine that there must be some sort of functionality that helps with that, but the UI videos that I’ve seen when MF first came out seem to be more suitable to a simpler set of operations.
Simple, there are two ways to fusion. One is with a floating (movable) tree in 3d space, the second is a node based panel similar to Blender’s node window.
I would be interested in trying this out, but can’t find anything out about a free version for designers under a certain income level. You are talking about Fusion 360 from Autodesk right? Currently I am using the free DesignSpark Mechanical (based on SpacClaim) for my CAD needs but would be very interested in Fusion 360 if there really is a free version. I can only find a 30 day trial and student versions.
You are welcome. I think the problem with Blender here is that the bevel tool will work on the mesh the boolean modifier created.
MF here uses a different approach it rather calculates correct trimming so it can fit in good bevels.
So as long as blender cannot do that with the boolean operation the bevel modifier will always have bad results.
Jamez, you can DL the trial and then request a one year start-up license. The agreement is that you cannot use this for commercial work with a year income of above 100k. If you are a commercial designer with an income below that, a student, or even a hobby user you are fine to use it for free and renew the license each year.
I think you can however only have access to the basic version of Fusion and not Fusion Ultimate - but thats ok Ultimate is different only in areas of better 2D drawing tools and better CNC machining. That really matters more only to tech shops.
