man you have no idea. Alias, costing as much as a used BMW, is definitely not for independant designers.
Blender being free is definitely a huge plus.
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Thanks for this info. I’ll definitely add it to the list.
It’s interesting the amount and differences in tools to pick from. Being someone who works on like 5 different CAD programs every week, it does get dizzying remember all those shortcuts, workflows, menus, tools. Sometimes Im jumping between 5 programs in one day! It’s insane. And Im only adding more to the mental library.
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You know, Rhino keeps coming up too much for me to ignore anymore. Not that I dont take it seriously, just that like i mentioned in a previous post, I have so many CAD programs I use at one time, I have to make time to fit more into my work flow. This finally convinced me to take Rhino more seriously.
Huge thanks. Great to get positive feedback. Sometimes it’s hard to gauge and Im glad I’m hitting a note with the most critical of artistic tastes. I’m always trying to push this into world class and the feedback helps. Thank you!
You confuse Alias Speedform which was based on T-Splines with what Alias settled for.
Inventor and Fusion360 continue using T-Splines. For various reason the Alias team decided to go a different route namely using the Pixar Sub-D.
I am a former Rhino user and I would never use that app again. Yes it is cheaper and that is also what you get for it. It is not even at the same league like Alias or NX which is even more expensive.
Instead of Rhino I rather would go then with Inspire from Altair as it offers nurbs and sub-d in one workflow with a design history that is object based like Alias.
The thing is Rhino besides having tons of tools like 10 ways to draw a line (face palm) just lacks design history and the same class-A modeling tools you really need that Alias offers.
Obviously if money is tight and you don’t need parametric / design history then Rhino will serve you well.
As a designer I just want to be able to adjust my design and explore design variations faster.
In Rhino it is more make a copy undo / untrim restart = lot of labor work
I fully agree on the Alias price but this is made for the car industry ! they work on a different budget.
I hear you. I teach industrial and interior design.
One class out of fun I filled the white board with software I use or used to show the students that when you complain learning SketchUp is hard that you might want to reconsider your career plan lol…
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I’m curious about the analysis side of things … typically CFD and FEA software need to do their own meshing from a nurbs model.
Oh man sketchup. I forgot about that.
On my heaviest day, I remember going from Solidworks, to Blender, to Sketchup, to Microstation, to AutoCAD, finishing something off in Keyshot, importing a model from Solidworks into Inventor because that’s what the client wanted and then finishing the day rendering out a scene in Lumion 8 at the time. Then doing a crash refresher course in Revit because the usual revit guy for this firm was out sick for the week and they were curious if I could do that too to avoid delays. Just survival.
Not to mention touching up photos in Lightroom and Photoshop before sending to the client for approval. And then you could go weeks without using most of it. So it’s constant learning, forgetting and relearning until it’s instinct.
Everyone’s got their limits. It’s a weird industry like that. If 3D is your job, it’s your JOB.
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So we’re at the stage now creating what we call a “car buck” or a buck model. It’s a sectional cut of the model that will be printed out to form the skin on top of. We’re using Slicer for Fusion 360 which imports STL models, analyzes it, lets you customize the cuts you want to make, and automatically calculates the instructions and layouts you need from the print job to assemble the model in real life.
The original plan was to 3D print a foam plug (just a cnc styrofoam cut version of the car to build the skin off of), but at 15 thousand dollars, we are deciding it’s cheaper to create a digitally precise computer generated buck. This will reduce the cost significantly. With a skilled bodywork specialist, we can still get good surfacing on the final build. That’s all the skill of the master bodywork specialist.
The complex surfacing of this car makes it difficult to create a solid piece, so I might go back and create a solidbody version of the car to become more “slicer friendly”. The body can still be shaped without it, but just something to help the team.
Pretty cool little software. These are some progress shots and an example shot. We havent decided on what material to use just yet. We can literally have these sections cut from whatever flat material we want. Cardboard, wood, plastic, combinations, etc.
This software is so savage, it even automatically creates an animation of assembly steps and prints plans for you. Infinitely faster than if you try to slice up the model in Blender.
On and it’s free
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Created an alternate 360 interactive video for the presentation https://mail.google.com/mail/u/0/#inbox/QgrcJHsNjBzZhFqSsMgVhCxDxXxCWmxLKqV
Looks beautiful. I can’t help but imagine how painful it would be to try and go over a speedbump in it though.
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Me either. I was just told last night that there’s really only going to be about 3 inches of suspension travel on this. So that’s 1.5 inches either up or down. Tops. Super rigid.
the design reminds me of Batmobile in Arkham knight. But smoothed.
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interesting. Haven’t heard that one before
thanks brother!
I saw two Audi R8’s on the roads in the last days and I was instantly reminded of this. It looks amazing.
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Thanks man. Great to be compared to something that
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Today we where published on Blender Nation with some more backstory as to how this project began.
Published. Today marks the first official behind the scenes international article on the half million dollar Tauro 2030. Blender Nation asked me to talk about what we have building behind the scenes with the Tauro 2030 prototype and how this all began.
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Awesome post!
Thank you)
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Amazing work
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