Sculpt Tools

(Piotr Adamowicz) #1

Edit: :skull_and_crossbones:This add-on is dead and there are no plans to resurrect it. There’s half a dozen other add-ons that do a way better job. :skull_and_crossbones:

I think I never actually made a topic for Sculpt Tools here despite having written it a year ago. So I’m making one now since I just updated it with some new goodies.

So what is it?
It’s a little bunch of operators that make some boolean and modifier-based actions easier and faster to work with.

So what’s new?
Cutting meshes with Grease Pencil thanks to Iceking
Mesh extraction
Updated and de-crufted for 2.69

Where can I get it?
Here: https://github.com/MadMinstrel/blender-sculpt-tools
Or here’s a direct link to the zip.

What does it look like now?
http://i.imgur.com/tCS7kkh.png

Where can I find it?
In the toolbar.
Also, there’s a handy Ctrl-Shift-B (B for Booleans) context menu.

Enjoy.

Feedback naturally welcome.

Mask Tools
List of addons that work with 2.8
(Piotr Adamowicz) #2

Small update: there are now offsets and three extraction styles to choose from.

(LuisEDB) #3

Thanks for sharing.

(Piotr Adamowicz) #4

Yes, I guess I should make some. Just no time for it at the moment. The tools are pretty simple, so I was naive enough to think the tooltips would be enough.

I changed my nick :slight_smile:

(Piotr Adamowicz) #5

Multires support added for mask extraction. It uses the multires ‘preview’ resolution as the reference mesh.

(Sanctuary) #6

Some nice tools there, the quick remesh despite the mess the blender remesh code does is still interesting when using dyntopo, the boolean are nice too with dyntopo, but i’m not sure the grease cut is actually working as intended .
It seems it does not work in sculpt mode, only in object mode, and if i do it in object mode half of the time it does not actually cut but create something odd :

  • i had the cube, i used the grease cut on it, it worked, then i moved one of the 2 piece of the cube, used the sculpt ui boolean union then the remesh and gave a stroke of grease pencil :
    http://i.imgur.com/1JFaSZ2.jpg

  • i click on the grease cut button , for some reason it put me to perspective mode automatically despite i was in ortho view :
    http://i.imgur.com/oKzYk6Y.jpg

  • but worse, it didn’t actually cut as before , as if i move the object i see it is still complete but the grease cut generated this odd thing :
    http://i.imgur.com/hncuhvS.jpg

I attached the blend of this bug shown in screenshot to this post.
Load the blend with “Load UI” enabled to have the grease pencil stroke displayed exactly as in the screenshot, and click on the Grease Cut button, it will lead into the bug displayed.

Attachments

greasecutbug.blend (120 KB)

(Piotr Adamowicz) #7

Yep. Grease cut is written by Iceking and is rather fiddly at the moment. I’m hoping he’ll fix it himself, but if he doesn’t I’ll have to take a good hard look at the code and do something about it. Just don’t have the time at the moment.

Hey Iceking! Get to work! :wink:

(estuardorosales) #8

hey thank you so much for this, It really gives some of the best feautres from Zbrush

prev.png960×540 92.6 KB

again, thank you so much for sharing. this should be added in the official release.

(kakachiex2) #9

wow i love this tool thanks

(1D_Inc) #10

Updated my post: added video

(kakachiex2) #11

I found a way to make the border smooth and clean for hard surface

  • first design the shape you want with the mask tool
    1- extract the mesh with the flat option for better result
    2- select the extracted mesh and enter edit mode
    3- in face mode select all the face and add an inset operation like in the image #3
    4- select all face and add an smooth operation 5 interaction image#5
    6- with the mesh still selected add a LapRelax addons from paleajed apply various time after you are satisfying with the result this addons relax and distribute the geometry and keep the volume and border intact…
    7- with the mesh still select add a solidify operation as you like image #8
    8- in face mode select all face loop border and add a new material image#9
    10- select by material all border this will act like polygroups in zbrush
    11- add an inset operation to the selected border like image #11 [ optional ]
    12- another inset [ optional ]
    13- final result
    /uploads/default/original/3X/3/5/35661d7d2ecacc4e9430f994536a14943b73f1ad.jpgd=1384064598&thumb=1
(hype) #12

These tools are great! I’m having that weirdness with the grease pencil as well, and it messes up union booleans a little bit, too, but generally, pretty awesome.

(iceking) #13

hello guys, weirdness with grease cutter huh? hehehe, yeah, it does that sometimes, anyways, i wanted it to be simple as it can be without too much buttons, primarily designed to speed things for self.

anyways, i’m currently topping out on my sculpting skills and continuing my studies on this department. if i get some time maybe i’ll code.

glad to see some of you guys are actually understanding some of the concepts of these tools.

(iceking) #14

soldier_gcutter_demo.blend.jpg1366×706 228 KB

just in case you guys get confused on what i love most, sculpting or coding?

take a look at this wip, just testing out the new sculpt tools on some apparels for my warrior dude here.

(Piotr Adamowicz) #15

Iceking fixed the grease cut! Hurrah! Many thanks, good sir.

Fix committed to github, get it from the usual place. :slight_smile:

(Sanctuary) #16

I just tried it, and it’s not fixed for me, same bug as the one i reported on the blend i attached previously.
Using stable 2.69 of course

edit : tried on the same blend with a current unstable build and exact same problem.

(iceking) #17

bcrunch_alienbust.blend.jpg1366×706 143 KB

hard surface dyntopo fun using grease pencil and retopo support addon.

@sanctuary

dude, i get the same issue here, the code for the preparation for boolean cutting is good, its just that the voodoo lies in boolean itself,

here are some instances where a bug may occur

  1. holes in the mesh
  2. messed up normals
  3. since the cut plane is a plane, sometimes lack of geometry in the area of the object being cut can also result in a bug

since i’m not a major coder, just learned enough so i can get to game dev in the future, cant really fix the bool code. :frowning:

but anyways, just know it’s limitations and try to have fun with it, i did just try to create that cos i got tired of manually making planes to cut the mesh in a dynamic manner and eventually shared it.

(Sanctuary) #18

Oh i can understand how hard this could be to fix (especially as the model has no hole, has no normal inverted and even if you subdivide it more than it is already it will still exhibit the problem), all that python scripting thing is beyond me to start with anyways.

Maybe you could ask for support about your code on the Python support board, maybe there’s someone that is experienced with the booleans hiding in there that could have the answer :
http://blenderartists.org/forum/forumdisplay.php?11-Python-Support

(iceking) #19

the booleans is hard coded into blender, that i think is dev stuff, and these guys are already up to their neck with scheduled tasks. all we could do is wait, they’ll eventually dive into boolean, i mean the sculpt lasso mask was rather unexpected.

(Piotr Adamowicz) #20

Yep, the Grease cut was still unstable after iceking’s patch. So I’ve rewritten it and simplified it. It should work better now. Please report any problems.