I’ve modelled this kind of toothpaste piping. Trying out beziers etc.
Now I’d like to make it look as if the matter is being squished a bit, like paste would do, it would kind of melt or bleed into the other surface and the part resting on the horizontal surface would squish slightly as the object spreads or sags.
The look I’m after is where two surfaces kind of melt together, or in this case where the bottom would sit
Flat on the ground surface
Bulge slightly outwards
Edges would kinda bleed into one another, almost like what you get with remesh
I’ve been thinking I could use lattice, or boolean cut the bottom and re-create the surfaces… or maybe go into sculpt mode and try something there like flatten the bottom then buldge the sides or perhaps the only option is to retopo it
I feel that I do not want to model it by hand, simply because the vertices of the bezier mesh do not align, so much tweaking will be needed.
Perhaps I could have lofted shapes together instead. But toothpaste takes many forms, bezier mesh seems simple.
1-Use sculpt mode. You may have to apply the subdivision so you have enough vertices to work with. This is a manual technique, but will give you the most control.
2-Duplicate the object, squash the copy and position it so it forms the bulge. Then, use voxel remeshing to fuse the 2 objects together. You can then remesh the object if you like.
3-Select the edge loops close to the ground and use proportional editing to move them in the shape you need.
4-The advanced way: use a cloth simulation. Create a vertex group that contains everything except the parts that will squish on the ground. Then, create a cloth simulation and use the vertex group as a pin group. Give the simulation some pressure and animate the object moving towards the ground. The bottom of the object will be simulated and squish towards the ground, but the pinned parts will remain untouched. You may have to apply the subdivision before so you have enough vertices to work with.
exemple file: cloth_squish.blend (2.1 MB)
rethinking it, perhaps sculpt then retopo will do it. Very manual but steady and controllable.
Two main things are that the volume would sit on a surface, this would indicate it’s force down and it would give way or bulged, second is that the volume would kinda melt into itself.
I have been looking at voxel remeshing via nodes (is that what you mean?) and also at the remesh modifier, which solves point 2, but it’s not smooth at all. I found sculpt smooths it, but is work.
That led me to think perhaps retopology would be the only way to gain as much control as needed. Compared to retopology or quadmesh workflow which id like to try as well.
Perhaps cloth sim to cover point 2, then voxels and sculpt for step 1…
Going to try voxel, sculpt then
A) some add-on which cleans up the mess better, maybe instant meshes or speedretopo. Then bisect the bottoms and scale them outwards for the saggy bottom 1)
or
B) a Retopology add-on, or custom modifier method
Cloth sims don’t work very well for self intersection, so I think remeshing would be the better choice here.
Here is how I would do it:
1-Model the bulges manually by adding new objects. Maybe curves or metaballs could be good candidates to get this job done.
2-Combine the objects and fuse them together with voxel remesh. Don’t hesitate to go fine enough to capture all the details, we are going to reduce the polygon count later anyway (2 or 3 million triangles is reasonable at this step).
3-Use the smooth modifier to soften the transitions. If you need more smoothing, increase the “repeat” setting, but leave the “factor” at default. Don’t hesitate to use a large number for the repeat if needed. When you have something good enough, apply the smooth modifier.
4-Give the object a decimate modifier to reduce the object to a manageable polygon count. Set the ratio to 0.5 and apply the modifier. If you need more decimation, repeat. I decimate heavy models in multiple steps like this for stability reasons and so I can take a look at the polygon density before reducing more.
5-Decimate the model until you reach the point where any more reduction would start to noticeably degrade the look of the object. There might be some slight shading glitches here and there which you can fix by moving some vertices a bit in edit mode. If you don’t care about the topology of the object, it might already be useable at that point, especially if it’s going to have a patchy texture or subsurface scattering.
6-If the topology is important or the object is meant to look perfectly smooth and shiny, then it will need retopology. Unless you have access to external tools, the most reliable way to do it in Blender is manually with the shrinkwrap modifier and snapping.
