The big SDF thread

Alien worm science fiction character design.

Modeled and rendered in MagicaCSG, with a little post-processing (slight texture).

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A loving tribute to my all-time favorite game series: Ghosts ‘n’ Goblins and Ghouls ‘n’ Ghosts.

Modeled and rendered using MagicaCSG, post-processed in Affinity Photo and Photoscape X.

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:green_heart: :green_heart: :green_heart: :green_heart: Some of the best games ever.
Great tribute. That first tombstone jump was a nightmare! :sweat_smile:

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It’s nice knowing I’m not the only one in the world who appreciates Ghouls 'n Ghosts.

I bought Resurrection here the other day. It’s been a kick in the pants.

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What is that? My gaming days are long behind me. :smile:

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It’s a sequel/reboot of Ghosts 'n Goblins and Ghouls 'n Ghosts. A trailer will probably explain it better than I could, so…

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:+1::+1: Damn hard, but addictive as well.

Back in 1989, a friend of mine arranged an early Sega Megadrive for me, straight from Japan. The near arcade-perfect Ghouls ‘n’ Ghosts conversion was among my first games. So with lots of blood, sweat and tears I completed the game, and was a bit disappointed by the Japanese text that followed, instead of a rewarding end sequence. So I quit the game.

Not long after that I read in some games magazine that you need to complete the entire game twice to get to the ultimate devil end boss who kidnapped your princess, which was clarified in the Japanese text I couldn’t read. :confounded::confounded::confounded: There was no internet yet to look things up.

So I started the game from scratch again, and completed it twice with even more blood, sweat and tears. As you will know here were no game saves back then. We early gamers were persistent tough guys compared to today’s gamers. :wink:

Thanks mate! :blush::+1:

I had to get used to the weird puppet-style 2D-animated approach, but it grew on me, as the original knight sprite also moved in a whimsical, puppet-like manner.

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A few work-in-progress stages of the G ‘n’ G tribute.

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Updated the initial post with a MagicaCSG to Houdini to Substance 3D Painter workflow video by Mikko Sinisalo.

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:sweat_smile: :sweat_smile:

I first played Ghosts and Goblins one Christmas with my cousins. It was on a ZX Spectrum and a tiny 7" black and white with constant thick vertical bands of noise moving up the screen. :rofl: I later got it on C64 and was addicted for a long time.

I always wonder why modern games don’t just call the hardest setting on the game ‘1980s mode’. :smile: It made us the men we are today. lol.

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And you know what’s even worse? The actual ending isn’t any more spectacular. You just get another wall of text congratulating you for a job well done.

But, you know, you don’t play the GnG games for the ending. You play them because you like the abuse.

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You guys are at it again with another trip down memory lane?
Fine, I am in…
All I am saying is this: you don’t know the true meaning of abuse and masochism unless you have started you gaming career on a PC with a Hercules graphics monitor, the black and orange one to be more specific.
It could display almost twice as much pixels as a CGA monitor, but only one color.
Playing Prince of Persia on it while being unable to visually recognize any traps or details in general was almost fun.
I brute forced my way trough the whole game by nothing but (muscle) memory until I could play the game blind. I hated it by that point, but I made a point out of defeating the end boss repeatedly purely to demonstrate my superiority ( I became untouchable) and seeing him falling to death and getting impaled on spikes again and again.
I can still hear the crunchy and squelching sound it made like it was yesterday. :boom:

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The Online SDF Modeler Womp 3D, has now a Text Tool,
is the first SDF Modeler, i know, which have something like this.
It’s still in alpha, but works so far.

As far as I know, there are only a few Fonts available in the free version.
Where the Pro version allows you to upload your own Font.

Btw. i’m a MagicaCSG Patreon and asked Epthracy once if a
Text Tool was possible in MagicaCSG. But he unfortunately
said no. Because it would be too computationally intensive.
Maybe there is a possibility after all :slight_smile:

Here a Video about the Text Tool in Womp 3D.

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Bad-ass! :muscle::sunglasses::facepunch:

:+1:

I hope so too!

Ephtracy just added a feature request of mine to MagicaCSG, which will make adding ridges, panels etcetera a breeze: a profiled bevel along object intersections…

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Demo of MagicaCSG’s upcoming Groove Blend:

I am new to this Signed Distance Field modelling topic, I find this workflow alluring after having looked at Plasticity and Nurbs modelling in general (and still found them lacking in regards to my personal desire/demands).

I have some questions:
What is the current status quo?
Is there a program that is close to being production ready/stable or significantly advanced compared to the competition?
I see that there are tools running on CPU and some even have GPU support.
I’ve read in the Clavicula 3D editor thread that the faster GPU performance is coming with the price of a hefty load even on an 3080, not to mention the fact that it is a standalone program with a “peculiar UI”.

But all footage I have seen about SDF modelling is accelerated not realtime, so how much faster are the GPU versions really?
I don’t necessarily want to be participating in another hype and disappointment loop of being an early adopter.

I found this free SDF toolset for Houdini and played around with it for an hour or so.

It runs on the standard Houdini Voxel tech, which is CPU based but still pretty solid in terms of performance, but unfortunately still not fast enough for comfortable modelling of slightly bigger pieces.
My conclusion so far is that this tech is only really valid for modelling smaller or lower res pieces or using it at the end of the modelling phase as a form of SDF boolean toolset to get these nice transitions between objects.
If I don’t see the necessary details and are forced by the lacking performance to work on proxy geometry and switching to high res takes seconds to a minute, the whole thing defeats the purpose.
It’s definitely useful, but still appears gimmicky to me.

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That would be Substance Modeler. It’s hybrid VR/desktop, but I personally only use the VR side of it. It’s in a legue of its own for SDF, imo.

Sub Modeler uses both for different operations, but GPU/VRAM is the primary important resource.
It has crazy performance though, even in VR. In a stress test I did I pushed it to 316,000 voxel layers with 42 billion triangles.

Also something to be aware of is the 2 different types of SDF. It basically boils down to the live-blended layers pure boolean approach(like MCSG) Vs the warp and smooth/sculpting tools approach with destructive layer blending(like sub modeler)

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This is the most recent voxel project I did. All modeled in SDF in VR. Final raw voxel model was 500 million triangles.

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Ok, sold. The end result speaks for itself.

I guess I am official hyped now. :heart_eyes:
Thanks. :handshake:

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