is this amazing project just abandoned ?
oh… 8(
so sad…
At the risk of been flamed, you seriously couldn’t see this coming. Said something to the same effect when this first started got burnt. track record, history…Now let me duck out like a chicken.
It’s waiting for bmesh, as I understood.
only part true freemind…
there was a patch from Raul against an old version of blender that was pretty difficult to apply…
i only know of one build and that was pretty un-usable… whether that was an error in the build (as a result of the patch being so hard to apply) or an error in the base code is difficult to tell…
it’s more gated on building a dynamic pbvh as the model changes… which is only partly linked to bmesh…
Raul requested help a few times on the dev mailing list, but I guess this is pretty advanced stuff and that those that could help him with that find it difficult to find the time and/or collabprate with someone with such limited internet access that getting the latest source is a problem…
Developing major features or software in general is really not a walk in the park. You guys need to learn that early in life. So when someone introduces one you better count years and maybe decades. In other words, don’t get your hopes up too high. Reminds me of a recent example. Newtek’s so-called Core. It was introduced as the next big thing since sliced bread in a red capet fashion. They even made it seem like it will be ready in a few months and persuaded users to pay for it’s development in exchange for having the privilege to try its builds and request features. Long story short and two years later nothing has come up and latest news say it was eventually dropped. I knew it from the start that it is really not that easy.
105% support to your words.
As soon as I read that the developer was consulting for 3DCoat guys, I knew that UC was dead, full stop (would you allow a collaborator of yours to spend time developing a competing product? obviously not, if you are in the I-want-to-pay-the-bills business).
Let’s be honest: for lots of developers, open source is a great way to get known and show their skills; as soon as somebody notices, they (understandably, unless your parents are the one paying for the food you eat) switch to commercial development and their open source stuff is abandoned, pardon, owned by the community :evilgrin:.
At the time that’s not why I said that, I said it because I think he suffers from the same afflication Leonardo Da Vinci must have suffered from. He pursues things with great vigour until his curiosity in the matter passes and something else catches his eyes. I think he must be an extremely clever person who probably has a frightening quick learning curve. So he must do most of these things out of academic curiosity. A lot of his stuff is of a highly experimental and in a wide variety of fields.
IIRC he has experimented with voxels, volumetrics, sph, photon mapping, some planet texturing thingy of the sort etc and on it goes
Well, although it´s sad Blender lacks good sculpting, one can just buy 3DCoat. It´s a great tool and the edu version is dirtcheap. And if you need to work commercially I am sure one can afford the full version, saying it’s too expensive is pure greed.
Or, use sculptris, but then you´re bound to windows.
It´s not as if there are no alternatives and you got to life without sculpting tools.
Ack, can’t resist…
I quite like blender’s sculpting I certainly wouldn’t call it bad… no layer system mind but very workable none teh less… I also find sculptris fine for that block out phase… together they’re a powerful combo…
Irrationally it does feel like sculptris died somehow when bought by pixologic… probably because of teh death of dr petter’s forum and the transfer to pixologic killing the vibrant community vibe…
I’d love to see Raul’s work done though, just because it’ll give us a libre alternative…
3d coat is something I always feel I should like more, but there’s something about it that makes it feel like a toy somehow… zbrush would be my commercial choice or even mudbox if it wasn’t so crashy… I don’t know why I can’t get into 3d coat…
ps I use sculptris under wine without issue… no key shortcuts but you can’t have everything!
Please see his new blog post… Why is Unlimited Clay on hold… http://farsthary.wordpress.com/2011/07/16/why-is-unlimitedclay-on-hold/
One wonders how many people go through life postponing things that can actually be done now. All because this one is free or open source. I mean when is the waiting going to end? People, for example, are raving about Cycles. When are users actually going to have a working version of it for professional use? After a year or two? Look at Yafaray also. It’s been in development for years now. What does it take to make people stop asking for more?
bmesh NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO
Well, although it´s sad Blender lacks good sculpting, one can just buy 3DCoat.
What exactly don’t you like about sculpting in Blender?
Contact the GSOC guy that works on sculpting this year.
Basically, all I’m missing is:
Unlimited clay and performance speed and sculpting layers… that’s it…
That is what I did not only for the sculpting but also for the autoretopo that really rocks. When Blender get these things I will switch, but for now here it is still a sculptris/3d-coat/blender combo ^^
I’m not holding back because of something is closed source (but it must be affordable) or not. I prefer OSS but in the end for me it is all about what is usable at that time.
I take it that you don’t read the other posts in this thread even if they are on the same page as your post.
Quite easy, give Blender sculpting tools like in Sculptris, which are to sculpting, what MyPaint is to artistic Painting, give it OpenCL voxels to crank up the performance like 3DCoat has with CUDA and give it Retopo tools like 3d coat has. Give it layers and microvoxels. Also detailbased autosubdivision and meshrelaxation. And finally overhaul Blenders viewport so it doesn´t slideshow where Scultpris or 3DCoat doesn´t even get short breath…
I think Blender´s sculpting is a long way to be close to 3DCoat or Sculptris, which is sad, because as far as I know Sculptris was initially meant for Blender, but there was some argument about the way of implementing it whatever and so he took off and made his own tool. I am not sure though if it is true.
So for now, I just ignore Blenders sculpting to some point and use 3DCoat/Sculptris in combination with Blender.
The thought that Blender could replace all other tools in a production line is utopian, yet some people seem to persue or hold on to that thought… let´s wait, I am sure Blender can do it tomorrow.
Take Unlimited Clay. Raul has done a lot in terms of researching and developing for Blender. Now he got a job hacking for 3DCoat.
Many Opensource developers start out in a project and get hired by a company lateron. The give for free due to their belief and to build experience and reputation. All the community can do is donate, after all, R&D needs money.
If I buy 3DCoat, I support him indirectly. That´s fine for me. I got good sculpting, he´s paid back what he did for Blender.
And to be completely honest, if Cycles would have stayed a 3rd party renderer (as of now it seems it will replace BI) and Brecht would have sold it for a decent price, I would have bought it.
Brecht has done more than enough for Blender already.
And face it the most common things Blender dev´s get is ingratitude why a feature is missing or why something is not working.
Although I don´t completely agree with the development of Blender, I am grateful for what we got with it, and where it doesn´t meet my requirements I can always detour to another tool - it´s not that they are not there, it´s just that not all of them are free…
That said, Blenders scultping works, just not for me. If it´s enough for you, be happy. If not, there are alternatives, but I´ll not stop sculpting waiting for Blender to meet my requirements.
What arexma said.
It seems like there are significant differences in how various people define “sculpting”. To me, Blender’s sculpting just doesn’t feel like sculpting, but more like a different way to push vertices around. Sculptris, on the other hand, is as close to actual sculpting as anything I’ve seen. Even though it has annoying problems on Linux, I still find it to be far superior to Blender sculpt, and will continue using it. Hopefully unlimited clay will eventually be implemented into Blender, but for now I have to agree that sculpting in Blender is just not terribly impressive.
It does feel that way… Although, in fairness, Dr. Petter had already said that he was doing no more work on Sculptris, so that may have happened anyway. A pity. It’s a great little app…
I completely agree. 3DC has always felt amateurish to me.