SculpTkt - a toolkit for sculptors

Yes, this would be an extremely useful tool. As for feature requests:

1 - a setting to affect ‘blobiness’. Like a sharp/round slider.

2 - the ability to use the drawing tool in subtractive mode(Alt modifier key) to 'trim/clip shapes.

3 - a flat shade/silhouette mode that would automatically apply a flat, black shader. Would be great for appraising silhouette.

^This^

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Wow, so many feature requests,
I can’t make all this in one week but I’ll try to release early versions so you guys can try out while I develop them.

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Great additional suggestions, @Musashidan. :+1:

Great! Looking forward to testing the add-on!

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Well…you asked… :laughing:

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Ok, just removed all the sktkt dependencies, now it’s a standalone add-on, If is looks a bit basic it’s because it is, at least right now but I’ll add more tools/features as time goes, lets see how far it gets.

I’m still unsure if I should create metabals or directly convert to mesh what do you think is better?

Looking forward for feedback/suggestions.
repo: https://github.com/jeacom25b/BaseTools

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Cool! Just out of curiosity: are you using a large metaball array to achieve the result? If so, that’s an interesting and creative solution.

I’m going to try it a.s.a.p… Unfortunately I’ll be in the stranglehold of a tight deadline until Wednesday, but maybe @Musashidan has some time left to give it a try?

I’ll be back as soon as I’ve tried it.

One bit of feedback after looking at the video: it would be very convenient if you could set the detail level / surface smoothness in the preferences. Otherwise you’ll be changing that with every new creation.

Thanks!

I just released this video like a day ago by now:

And @Metin_Seven refer me to this thread.
Now I am excited ! Thank you @Metin_Seven!
I hope if you look at my video you will understand this means a lot to me that this could be done in Blender, I only have two questions and I hope you may answer at your discretion.

1: Right after drawing the curve and BEFORE the actualization of the curve into mesh, is there a way to adjust the curve first like in the Program mentioned in my video so that the initial generated mesh is really well done ?
To break it down it would mean,
draw curve->adjust curve->actualize
as opposed to:
draw curve but too bad you can’t change it->generate mesh-> now it’s back to boring old sculpting.

2: The ALPHA and OMEGA of all questions…drum roll please…
Do you see the 2D Lattice System as a future possibility or it’s just too difficult to implement ?

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I already requested this. :slightly_smiling_face::+1:

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Nice :smiley: !
Hugs.

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Tried it! So, let put forth some observatisons:

a. It would be best not to mess at all with metaballs. Just drawing a shape and converting it in a simple mesh would be enough. Now the metaball shapes that appear after making the 3D shape are confusing to the sight (and annoying).

b. It is better the produced chunks be independent from each other. Such a think makes very easy to move them in whichever place the user wants. In fact with every sketch there should appear a totally independent mesh chunk. After producing all the chunks for the blocking of a mesh the user can unify them with the voxel remesher.

c. When sketching in orthographic profile views and clicking the ‘enter’ the sketches disappear. It must be a bug.

d. It would be better the sketching be with an open line and not with a closed one, because the closed line does not have the intuitivity of a pencil. When the user goes to close a shape can very easily mess the sketch. The best is to have an actual pencil like shape drawing way.

In fact the whole idea is to have a freely drawing way for producing 3D mesh chunks, in the most easy and intuitive manner. Giving to the user a 3D sketching ‘pen’ which works without disrupting the flow of inspiration. A ‘Zen’ painting brush way somehow, so to say.

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Yeah, I store an array of 2D circles and convert them to a bunch of 3D spheres (metaballs) the hard part was to calculate the position and radius of the spheres to approximate the shape, I ended up doing something similar to ray marching.

It’s doable, but I mean, I dont want to reinvent sculpting tools, since the grab brush can do basically the same. Tho I think tools to adjust the loop before converting it to a mesh would be useful.

yeah, I think you are right, so better have a resolution slider and convert it directly to a mesh after adjusting the loop

I thought It would be better to have the loop closed because it always get treated as a closed loop at the end for the algorithm to work, so open loop then! Although I think it will be less of an issue if we had a brush to edit the loop before committing it to a blob.

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Thank you for taking the time to answer my question.

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I agree with everything @Fatesailor wrote. Keeping it as a simple pencil sketching tool that auto-creates a mesh would be best.

I would also like to see an ‘eraser’ basic functionality. So it could work with the same pencil strokes with Alt held down and wherever the eraser(different coloured stroke) intersects 2 points of the sketch the internal drawn shape is booleaned.

I would always use this tool in ortho view and am getting the same behaviour mentioned above: upon pressing enter the sketch is infinitely small and placed at 0,0,0 world space.

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Hi @Jeacom,

I finally found the time to try Base Tools, but I can’t get it to work. :upside_down_face:

After installing the add-on and pressing the button in the Base Tools panel, I can sketch, and when I release the pen, I can see the array of circles, and I can see that they’re metaballs in the Outliner, but the circles don’t show as metaball meshes, and I can’t activate the metaball settings tab either, as if I’m stuck in creation mode.

I’ve tried pressing Enter, Spacebar and Escape, and tried pressing the Base Tools button for a second time, but nothing seems to finalize the sketch and convert it to metaballs / meshes.

I do need to add that I’m using the latest 2.9 alpha build of Blender.

thats strange, pressing enter should confirm the metabals, I’ll have a look into it once I get some free time.

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Thanks!

Maybe it’s the Wacom pen / tablet input issue again?

I finally got some time to fix the issues with the tool, I also added a few basic boolean operators, looking forward for feedback.

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Hi @Jeacom,

Thanks for the update.

I’ve just tried the new version in Blender 2.9 alpha (which is the same as 2.83 beta). It still behaves erratically. When I look at the info editor I see this warning about a hundred times:

Traceback (most recent call last):
  File "C:\Users\username\AppData\Roaming\Blender Foundation\Blender\2.90\scripts\addons\BaseTools-master\ui.py", line 33, in draw
    col.operator('base_tools.boolean', text='slice').operation = 'slice'
TypeError: bpy_struct: item.attr = val: enum "slice" not found in ('UNION', 'DIFFERENCE', 'INTERSECT', 'SLICE')

location: <unknown location>:-1


I fixed the warning, it was a typo sorry, but I coudn’t reproduce the erradicity you mention I tried both pen and mouse, how exactly you trigger it?

Thanks.

When I draw something there’s no connecting line between the start point and end point, so I tried double-LMB-click, Enter, Space and Escape key. Not knowing which of those actions worked, but a moment of calculation followed and the result looks like this, with loose metaballs at the start and end point:

Maybe I’m not using it correctly?