Update o5.june.2oo7
gsculpt has now duplicate/fill face, object grouping, proportional editing with relax (like the smooth brush in sculpt mode), vrml export, subdivide face, smoothening and sharpening tools for edge creasing (like smoothing and hardening edges in blender) which is visible during live subdivision as well (aka subsurf in blender).
grab it here: http://gsculpt.sourceforge.net/
…
gsculpt surprises me recently, geoffrey french, the dev. of this program works on this all the time and the tools he implements into this open source modeller are useful and awesome!
i wish he could do programing stuff for blender
//maybe i will nag him when the time has come for blender soc projects this year :D//
this video is made during the blender conference, since this the prog matured a lot:
for example you can edit your own shortcuts now, he finished the surface tweak tool, added a new modelling procedure–>the draw face and draw quad options…which are almost the same like retopo in blender, only better! http://video.google.co.uk/videoplay?docid=6835962488244721592&q=gspot
gsculpts website also contains 4 video tutorial, check them out as well. i enjoyed the last one about the draw quads tool especialy…whoooaa. http://gsculpt.sourceforge.net/video_tutorials.html
sooo…the big question…what do you think? if the guy continues like this, will he be able to
make a better free modeller than the currently available wings 3d?
i dont think that blender is a good modeller, but it will grow into that direction.
opinions welcome.
Looks impressive. Then again I don’t know much about 3D softwares. I kinda stopped working with Blender only after 3-4 (very intensive) weeks because I was getting very frustrated. Not because of blender, but because I’m impatient and find it too hard to draw what’s in my head, always ending up with bad topo and messed up meshes. I also never done any 3D work before. The way you can cut anywhere you want without creating new loops all the time (I guess that’s what they call N-gons?) and add details without messing up the topology of the whole thing sure looks like to would make my life easier when fixing things. I might try it out. I suppose you can export objects to a format that blender can open.
The downside to gsculpt is that it is written in python. Python is a great scripting language, but not ideal to base an entire program of this nature on. I think you will find that Wings has a more responsive interface.
yeah, gsculpts gui is the only thing i have to get used to…and python
i have started 3d with maya 5 ple, and was natural for me to think that 3d softwares
they contain this awesome cut tool, where you can cut edges wherever you want, or cut
so many edges inside faces howmany you want, and then i switched to blender…oh, boy…
“what the hell?”…
i mean, this was 2 years ago, and still…cut operation inside blender is a nightmare if i wanna obey my artistic needs (loopcut is not a help if you dont wanna use it, but you have only that option).
gsculpt can export in wavefront .obj format, blender can open it without any problems.
gsculpt is missing some features compared to wings, like uv editor, or a rendering option. anyway, i added it into my workflow
I tried just a bit gSculpt and it seems to me a very powerful software, with really smart tools.
I don’t like the GUI, because it takes too much space compare to the 3d viewports; an icons system or shorter buttons might help.
Another point is that every time you choose a tool the button panel switches to a new one with description, options and confirmation… I don’t know if it’s the best solution, because its should be faster having these in a tool bar at the bottom/top of the screen (like in Photoshop, for example) and keep the tools always visible, so you can switch from one tool to another without confirmation.
Ok, It was just a try so I can’t say more… anyway the impression was really good and I’ll look to it more often!
(sorry for my bad english…)
I’ve looked at it before, fastly as it has popped in several forums…I think it has too much interface, and in my experience, to much going towards buttons is slower and distracting for a fast modelling person… Anyway, I think it can have a bright future.
"will he be able to
make a better free modeller than the currently available wings 3d? "
rarely i’ll see coming a Wings3d killer. I tried deeply Silo demo, and wasnt convinced compared to Wings… (of course, Silo is great, imo not as great as Wings… )
I have been years with Wings too, it uses Mirai’s aproach to modelling. Is simply…fast.
Anyway, gonna give it a try, as I tend to use more than one tool, indeed, a lot, there are things better done in one than in the other allways.
btw: the vids would earn a lot being not so slow in explaining…modelers tend to be fast understanding This would allow also way smaller in MB files, as most ppl dont download big videos… There are many pauses nto really needed also. But anyway, it’s free, I only say in case you want to cut it there.
The draw tool is similar to Silo’s topo brush, and if am not wrong the retopo however is called new tool in blender…first time I saw it was in silo, for redrawing ordered and low pol wires over a zbrushed million polies head…Anyway, I even model wrinkles and crazy detail with Wings, directly, but in a subdiv modelling way.
I’ll see all the videos, am curiouse. To much buttons and interface for a fast workflow imo for what I have seen, but anyway, a very nice tool. Virtual mirror is present in Wings, and like all, with customizable -on the fly over the menu with ins key- keys to access its functions. The retopo no, but “connect” tool (the one at top menu) allows drawing polygons in that way.
I’ll see all videos when I have a moment, tho. I think it can be useful tool.
People are mentioning that the UI is a bit cumbersome. I’d agree with that. Way too many buttons, but surely that doesn’t matter because each button has its own shortcut key.
I was also wondering if the program is slowed down because some (not all) of it was programmed with python, how hard would it have been to write the whole lot in c++?
previous versions where created in c++ entirely as far as i know, but then he discovered python…for coding guys python is like for 3d modellers wings or maya after 3ds max…BIG relief, or something like that…(believe me, i have naged him a lot because of the gui, or this whole gtk look). so, anyway, he likes to make his creative process easy with python, and i hope that after a while when a LOT of people would suggest to make it again entirely in c++, or better, to integrate everything into blender he would consider this wish seriously
so, being open source is a big advantage. there are many talented coders within the blender community and i hope the 2 project eventualy gona meet one day. like with the case of sharpconstruct…whoa, that would be a dream…
so, this weekend he released a new version again. he made the option fill available within gsculpt, so if you have a hole now, you can fill it, just like in blender. so you can use box modeling with gsculpt, and edge editing, or almost vertex pushing how others would say…
wings does not makes you that kind of modeling easy
Looking at the feature list for gSculpt, it seems to encompass most of the feature set for Wings3D. Actually, considering that both gSculpt and Wings3D import/export .obj formatted files, using both together could be complimentary.
This feature looks useful:
“Its procedural modeling system makes it an excellent choice for making modeling tutorials, as the steps required to build the model from the beginning are displayed to the user in a list.”
i have created for myself a wings-blender mixture of shortcuts, with those ones the gui is realy responsible. if you guys dont mind, i share:
undo—ctrl z
redo—ctrl y
move–g
rotate—r
scale----s
flip—ctrl n (this is for flipping the normals, currently inside or outside, you can not flip separated faces, all faces gets flipped)
knife–k (this is for body selection mode, where you can draw one line across the mesh, and cut the whole model)
mirror—ctrl m
subdivide—ctrl s
bandsaw—ctrl e (like loopcut in blender)
n bandsaw—alt e (same as above, except for mousewheel scrolling more cuts are added, 2,3,4…etc…)
bevel—b (like in wings, you can bevel everything .sweet…)
bridge, tunnel—alt b
connect—ctrl c
n connect—alt c (connects selected edges)
cut—c
n cut—shift c (cuts from edges to edges, or from edges to vertices…more cuts with wheelmouse)
extrude—e (just like in blender)
grow selection—up
shrink selection—down
move normal—shift g
pick edgeloop—L (just like in wings)
pick edgerings—shift L
spin—u
tweak—t (this is some pretty awesome feat.)
surface tweak—shift t (twice as cool then the previous one if you are finetuning a human head for example, it preserves the overall shape of the model)
weld—w (merges vertices into eachother, cumbersome to use)
target weld–shift w (this is what you need if you want to merge vertices into eachother)
fill—f (just like in blender for creating faces…currently im using only with two edges selected. its only available in edge edit mode)
body tools–shift b
face tools—shift f
edge tools—shift e
vertex tools—shift v
delete----backspace
also to mention, gsculpt has live subdivision feature just like blender (blender calls it subsurf) with optimal draw…this is cool for organic modeling.
oh, one thing to remember on windows machines:
you have to download the
Microsoft Visual C++
redistributable: MSVC 2005 redist
under the gsculpt download as well for you to be able to save your shortcuts. if you edit your shortcuts, you can use them right away, but as soon as you close the program, they gone. this thing saves your shortcut config into your C:/Documents and Settings/yourname/.gsculpt/gsculptshortcuts.confxml file, where you can use them if you delete and install a new version too. after finishing editing it, worth to save it out somewhere else as well to keep it safe
I’ve never tried GSculpt before, but I have (briefly) used Wings3d. I highly recommend it. I probably wouldn’t use Wings if it wasn’t for the nice N-Gon feature that Blender doesn’t have…
C:\Documents and Settings<USERNAME>.gsculpt\gsculptshortcuts.confxml
On Win32,
And:
$HOME/.gsculpt/gsculptshortcuts.confxml
On Linux.
About the C++ / Python thing, there is no chance of going back to all C++. Sorry.
Python allows orders of magnitude more productivity, and allows a much more flexible system. Its just a much better language for this kind of stuff.
The code that really requires the speed (i.e. the actual operations) will remain in C++, unless a better alternative (with equivalent speed) is found. Can’t see that happening soon though.
Anyway, I think it can have a bright future.