Softimage Boolean Functions

[azurecgi]

I've been using Softimage for a while now, but hadn't had to do any heavy Boolean functions until now, and although I heard that SI's tools weren't very good, I didn't expect complete failure!

All I'm trying to do is subtract a low poly cube from a high poly engine-block (imported CAD data), so I choose the engine block, I click on Boolean, and I then pick the cube... and then I wait... and I wait ... and I wait!

After 2.5 hours I figured it wasn't going to happen and had to close SI.

I then downloaded ImplosiaFX with it's "powerful boolean CSG tools", and had exactly the same result!

These tools really need looking at!

Pulled the same model into Lightwave and managed to bool a sphere out of it in about 10 seconds! It wasn't perfect, but it did the job!

[ActionArt]

Yes, they absolutely do need help. While we're waiting for that there are a few things you can do that may help. You may have already done this but here goes:

1) Freeze both objects.
2) Freeze all transforms on both objects.
3) If possible, separate the area you want to cut from the main object if it's a high poly object. You can re-attach later.
4) If possible, make sure it's a closed shape

This still may not work but that's the steps that make it work for me most of the time. Let's hope this gets fixed at some point...

[azurecgi]

Thanks for the reply, but I have tried all these things and they all failed!

Fingers crossed for SI 2013

[Chris_TC]

After all the bad things I had heard about booleans, I was mighty impressed by how flawlessly they seem to work. I've booleaned objects with 2 million triangles without issue in the past three weeks or so.

HOWEVER, your meshes should be clean. Exported CAD data tends to be a mess.

[azurecgi]

I know that's more than likely the problem, but sometimes you have to work with CAD data!

Lightwave doesn't make a perfect job of it, but it does get me 90% of the way there. Then the final 10% is tweaking it by hand at the poly/vertex/edge level.

The trouble with SI, is it want's to store everything in the stack. Sometimes you just want a quick and dirty tool that gets the job done regardless of the stack.

[ActionArt]

Have you tried it in immediate mode? Forgot to mention that. Seemed to make a difference for me once.

[azurecgi]

Yup!

I think I've tried just about everything possible within SI

[origin]

Immed mode is just autofreeze after each op.

[SreckoM]

I think for you would be best to switch to some NURBS modeler. Boolean are really tricky to work with in every polygon mesh modeler. I would not rely my everyday work on them.

[azurecgi]

You can't have tried Lightwave then!

I've been slicing and dicing CAD models with Boolean operations in LW for years. I thought moving my pipeline to Softimage was a good idea, and in general it is, apart from it's weak boolean implementation.

[SreckoM]

No, I did not. Well than what can I say, stick with Lightwave I do not think that Booleans will be improved soon, someone correct me if I am wrong, but I think they did enhance them not long ago.

[azurecgi]

Already there!

Little disappointed though as I really wanted to drop Lightwave completely, especially as I now have a good alternative to Mental Ray (V-ray)

[Maximus]

as someone suggested, the most overlooked thing when it comes to booleans is prepare the geometry. You need to clean it a bit, never had major problem after cleaning meshes just a bit for it to work. Of course it could be better.

[azurecgi]

Unfortunately imported CAD geometry with Vertex Normals means you can't go in and start welding up the mismatched points and holes as it completely screws the normals!

Besides that, the models I import are huge and it would take days to completely clean the meshes, and even then, there's no guarantee the Boolean function would work.

What's annoying is the 'slice' tool works almost in real-time, so a 'slice cube' function, even if it means filling in the sliced areas manually, would be perfect for my needs!

Any budding programmers out there want a challenge?

[TwinSnakes007]

MOI3D has the best CAD data mesh export I've seen [at its price point] - it spits out some air-tight, super clean meshes. I do all my hard surface stuff in Moi.

[BenR]

A while ago I wrapped the Carve CSG library in a custom ICE node. It wasn't too hard. It did seem to work better than the SI booleans (which kept giving me a "couldn't cope" error on the project I was doing). Maybe I should dig it out and update it to see if others find it useful. Also I just read that Carve is in the newest builds of Blender so it could be tried there.
Ben