cool unique everyday polymodeling tools in all packages

[wesserbro]

As i'm bumping this thread anyway, want to mention a great feature of blender: the ability to work with raw edges. It really freaks me out when in almost all other packages you're forced to deal with polygons only.

Moving in that direction, while working with edges would be really great to have some features from spline patch modeling paradigm from Animation:Master where region enclosed by four splines (raw edge loops, if we translate it to polymodeling) automatically is filled with a patch (polygon). And in general, it has a simple, but somehow sophisticated workflow: you click in an empty space - you add point and edges(splines) there, you click on existing geometry - you add points and edges to existing geo. And it is all one tool - really cool

I only recently found out about such a decent implementation of spline-patch modeling (in comparison 3dsmax's one is a complete disaster), but tangent-only continuity is no go for smooth surfaces, and that's why s-patches is almost dead now.
But I remember a paper where was introduced ideally smooth surface which goes through control points (unlike sds), dealing with 4 and 3-side areas and that looked great! but i forgot the name (( so, although i'm pretty sufficient with SDS and sculpting, my childish dream of more advanced modeling paradigm is still alive ))

[Mathaeus]

For Subdivs in Maya (Catmull or OpenSD), you really need to use the Crease Edge tool and Crease Sets. When Open SubDivs was added, a new Crease Set editor was also added because the 2 went hand in hand.

With all due respect to You....
come on, what, crease editor crease sets , crease TOOL perhaps some appropriate jumble of nodes, and additional plugin to manage all that ;;), everything just to deal with plain hard edge.....
All I need is a total hard edge on insets, because it is easier to model two joined edges. Otherwise I do not use hard or crease edges, anytime, simply because I don't know how it will (not) work in another 3d software, so before exporting I'd just disconnect them. Already have a script sequence which automatically sets selected edge to max hardness, convert to Maya Catmull Clark and propagate edge hardness (which "edge hardness'' I do not see under OpenSubdiv controls, btw).
Anyway, nice example, how some software became idiotic, by blindly following the facility (some puppet factory) who have a ZERO experience with anything realistic, they NEVER made realistic car, character, anything....

[wesserbro]

Anyway, nice example, how some software became idiotic, by blindly following the facility (some puppet factory) who have a ZERO experience with anything realistic, they NEVER made realistic car, character, anything....

they've made realistic tree! )

and overall environment rendering was very plausible in Good Dinosaur.
But yes, that has nothing to do with hard-edge related stuff.

[Mathaeus]

As i'm bumping this thread anyway, want to mention a great feature of blender: the ability to work with raw edges. It really freaks me out when in almost all other packages you're forced to deal with polygons only.

If you mean ability to have an 'empty wireframe' without polygons, that's definitively cool, while I don't know for some practical advantage. Last time I've tried, if I'm correct it was possible to extract curve from mesh, only from that empty thing, which is a small minus,
On great positive side, it is a modifier stack in Blender. While it has limitations, edit mode doesn't cooperate nicely with modifiers, system is robust and simple to maintain, for example I saw several rigs, having a multiple Armature (envelope / skin) modifiers, one on top of another, which is just cool. Blender seems to be only 3d app, able to add usable modifier stack in middle of development (long time ago it has no any).

[Bullit]

As strange as it is InstantMeshes which is a retopo only app has a tool that all other modeling applications should have , you draw a curve in the screen and the mesh behind gets edged.

Seems the new C4D has that ;)
And nice how you can tweak the cut.

https://www.maxon.net/en/products/new-i ... /modeling/

Not the same thing, but due to not so clear word i employed you could not know. By edged i meant hard edged. I did not saw anything comparable in C4D video you linked to.

Check from 5min to around 8min

[tarkovsky]

Not the same thing, but due to not so clear word i employed you could not know. By edged i meant hard edged. I did not saw anything comparable in C4D video you linked to.

Check from 5min to around 8min

Ah - I see. Pretty cool. Actually something I have been searching for! Gotta check out.
Been wanting to try Geomagic for something like this as well.

[wesserbro]

Been wanting to try Geomagic.

im just watching the videos right now, and seems like its the software i thought about long ago but never met one: combination of sculpting and nurbs. Just wow! (but need more investigation, brilliant ideas could have ugly implementations)

[Bellsey]

For Subdivs in Maya (Catmull or OpenSD), you really need to use the Crease Edge tool and Crease Sets. When Open SubDivs was added, a new Crease Set editor was also added because the 2 went hand in hand.

With all due respect to You....
come on, what, crease editor crease sets , crease TOOL perhaps some appropriate jumble of nodes, and additional plugin to manage all that ;;), everything just to deal with plain hard edge.....
All I need is a total hard edge on insets, because it is easier to model two joined edges. Otherwise I do not use hard or crease edges, anytime, simply because I don't know how it will (not) work in another 3d software, so before exporting I'd just disconnect them. Already have a script sequence which automatically sets selected edge to max hardness, convert to Maya Catmull Clark and propagate edge hardness (which "edge hardness'' I do not see under OpenSubdiv controls, btw).
Anyway, nice example, how some software became idiotic, by blindly following the facility (some puppet factory) who have a ZERO experience with anything realistic, they NEVER made realistic car, character, anything....

Personally, I don't see how you can use Subdivs in Maya without using the Creasing and the editor. And if anything the new tools since OpenSubdiv have just made things alot easier now, actually usable again in some aspects. Certainly was the feedback at the time from various big users, even now I use them all the time.

But yeah right of course, what the hell do Pixar know anyway.

[Mathaeus]

But yeah right of course, what the hell do Pixar know anyway.

Since let's say Blizzard movies ten years ago, they (pixar) simply do not showing a comparable level of complexity and realism like mentioned Blizzard and many others, today. Their renderer and variances of that renderer, were rejected from Max's market in early 2000s - while most popular renderer created in Max environment became widely accepted in Maya community. Current variance of Renderman for 500$ or something, most likely is commercial disaster.
Of course a good bit of that belongs to their artistic style, but, once someone wants anything out of that style, they do not showing any usable reference, that's it. Blizzard and many others do.
What they know or not, imho this is irrelevant.

Back to topic, one always cool in Softimage is, Mark Hard Edge which sets two things in same time, maximum crease and it splits normals.

[Bellsey]

But yeah right of course, what the hell do Pixar know anyway.

Since let's say Blizzard movies ten years ago, they (pixar) simply do not showing a comparable level of complexity and realism like mentioned Blizzard and many others, today. Their renderer and variances of that renderer, were rejected from Max's market in early 2000s - while most popular renderer created in Max environment became widely accepted in Maya community. Current variance of Renderman for 500$ or something, most likely is commercial disaster.
Of course a good bit of that belongs to their artistic style, but, once someone wants anything out of that style, they do not showing any usable reference, that's it. Blizzard and many others do.
What they know or not, imho this is irrelevant.

Hardly a fair comparison. Blizzard do some very good work, but then so to many other studios. You can't really compare two very different styles, as they both have their own requirements and complexities. It like comparing the two Disney jungle books.
Also, Renderman isn't just about Pixar movies, because for years its been a standard for movie visual effects. Of course more renderers have entered the market, but Renderman is still being used and more than holds its own.

[wesserbro]

If you mean ability to have an 'empty wireframe' without polygons, that's definitively cool, while I don't know for some practical advantage.

Well, for me its not for some special purpose, but just regular modeling or retopology. Sometimes i extrude edges (to from a face), sometimes extrude vertices (to form an edge strip). I think its depend on a way you visualize part of surface: if you see an evident edge , why to not model some parts by edge strips You can convert curves to edges, grease pencil to edges, and it all incorporates with regular polymodeling process, which i think is great.

[Mathaeus]

If you mean ability to have an 'empty wireframe' without polygons, that's definitively cool, while I don't know for some practical advantage.

Well, for me its not for some special purpose, but just regular modeling or retopology. Sometimes i extrude edges (to from a face), sometimes extrude vertices (to form an edge strip). I think its depend on a way you visualize part of surface: if you see an evident edge , why to not model some parts by edge strips You can convert curves to edges, grease pencil to edges, and it all incorporates with regular polymodeling process, which i think is great.

There's small drawback, it seems to be really easy to create wrongly connected polygons in Bl, manifold thing and all that. While Bl has a nice set of tools to fix this, comparable to Max.
If there is only just a bit nicer display of polys in Bl, instead that ugly old Maya style with dot in middle. Btw is there a way to do not display the dot thing over polygons? How about display modes in object mode in newest Blenders, any way to see (full) wireframe over shaded or flat shaded object. If I remember correctly, there were more display modes in times of Bl 2.5 and before.

[wesserbro]

most of the time just 'remove doubles' is enough for me. Yes, there is nice tool to work with non-manifold geo, but the last time i used it was for cleaning up remeshed scan data, not my own models.

You can set the center dot to 1 pixel size, it will be barely visible. And yes, you can set to display wire while in object mode. But if by full wire you mean to see it through the shaded object (like xray in SI with screen option), that can only be done in edit mode, but since its only useful for selecting hidden vertices, you dont need it outside edit mode, and its great to have it only on the object you currently work with.

[Mathaeus]

most of the time just 'remove doubles' is enough for me. Yes, there is nice tool to work with non-manifold geo, but the last time i used it was for cleaning up remeshed scan data, not my own models.

You can set the center dot to 1 pixel size, it will be barely visible. And yes, you can set to display wire while in object mode. But if by full wire you mean to see it through the shaded object (like xray in SI with screen option), that can only be done in edit mode, but since its only useful for selecting hidden vertices, you dont need it outside edit mode, and its great to have it only on the object you currently work with.

Exactly I meant something like Softimage's "Hidden Line Removal" or Maya's "wireframe on shaded" + "use flat lighting'' (Maya always seems to want a two or three actions to describe just one thing in SI, but that's another story), able to work with any mesh resolution. If I recall correctly, something like this existed in older Bl versions, but didn't worked on huge scenes, it was actually a limited count of edges possible to display - so that was a reason for Blender style of ''partial'' edge displaying, some were visible, some not.