Can Ice produce MeshFusion?

[AlanMc]

All,

With all the turmoil about Softimage EOL like everyone else I've been assessing my options. For now I've taken the Maya package - it was free, so why not.

Long term I'm looking at Modo as a possible purchase and this is when I started watching the MeshFusion movies. It looks really interesting but the more I watched, the more I thought - we should be able to do this in ice!

So far I have been successful at linking a small network of boolean operations together but I'm struggling on how to adjust the subdivisions of the various objects in the icetree. I can adjust them dynamically in object properties in the explorer, but I want to be able to adjust them through ice.

Could someone help me here? How do I expose, say, the u, v, and base geometry parameters of a cube in the icetree? I have to say, this is my first real go with ice and, well, its slow going just now. I tried the Get Data node but there doesn't appear to be any parameters in the pick list that are obviously these attributes. I have found a topology parameter and that brings these parameters into the icetree but for the life of me I can't work out how I expose them so I can control them with another node.

Any guidance would be great.

Many Thanks,

Alan

[luchifer]

thats amazing.. do you know if the resulting topology is clean?

[Bullit]

Did you checked here the posts about topology nodes. For example those from IamVFX. You do have a subdivide locally node. rray website also might show more compounds that were released all theses times.

[NNois]

Mesh fusion don't seem to be a simple boolean operator as he properly blend the sudbivision around the booleans region, producing clean results.

They're is no way in my opinion you can reproduce meshfusion with ICE, a simple bevel is already a migthmare to devellop so...

[FXDude]

thats amazing.. do you know if the resulting topology is clean?

The result is actually a pretty dense (yet very clean) mesh



Also.. a quick search lead me to Oleg Bliznuk's GigaBoolean compound


See at ~1:28..
Looks darn fast and darn clean! (compared to factory booleans)


He (originally) said he might release it, would be great if he did!

And I don't think it would be so much more of a stretch to bevel intersecting edges.

At least now we know great ICE (giga)booleans is at least indeed possible ;)

[Hirazi Blue]

He (originally) said he might release it, would be great if he did!

AFAIK it was released years ago (2011?), in the shape of a "IFX Gigaboolean" compound as part of the original (before it became a commercial package sold by Exocortex) Implosia FX addon (which can be found in our local backup (RMB to "save as")).

[FXDude]

He (originally) said he might release it, would be great if he did!

AFAIK it was released years ago (2011?), in the shape of a "IFX Gigaboolean" compound as part of the original (before it became a commercial package sold by Exocortex) Implosia FX addon (which can be found in our local backup (RMB to "save as")).

Wow cool that's great I missed that thanks! ;;) ( to Oleg too : )

[BenR]

I believe the Gigaboolean compound was the Carve CSG library wrapped in an ICE node.

[AlanMc]

I'm using the Gigaboolean node from Momentum 4 and the combinations of unions and subtractions work well. Even if you alter each object's mesh density after the boolean operations.

The node creates a good boolean but the biggest problem I'm trying to figure out is how MeshFusion ends up with such smooth filleted intersections. All I'm doing is combining a sphere with a rectangle and all the options I've tried so far doesn't produce a nice smooth fillet. I even created the same shape in MOI and imported it to see how a converted nurbs model would look. In this case, although the mesh is nice its still doesn't look as good the MeshFusion models.

Does anyone have a view on how MeshFusion is building the filleted edges? Or at least, is there a way of identifying the intersections and then rebuilding them?

Many Thanks,

Alan

[Mathaeus]

The node creates a good boolean but the biggest problem I'm trying to figure out is how MeshFusion ends up with such smooth filleted intersections. All I'm doing is combining a sphere with a rectangle and all the options I've tried so far doesn't produce a nice smooth fillet. I even created the same shape in MOI and imported it to see how a converted nurbs model would look. In this case, although the mesh is nice its still doesn't look as good the MeshFusion models.

Does anyone have a view on how MeshFusion is building the filleted edges? Or at least, is there a way of identifying the intersections and then rebuilding them?

Forget me if I'm answering to something you already know, but anyway.
Perhaps simplest way to re-create some sort of Nurbs fillet, could be:
1: get a curve form intersection of two meshes, before you did any Boolean operation ( don't know how to do that in ICE, but maybe there's ready to use solution).
2: extrude circle along that curve, to get a pipe
3: do Boolean between newly created pipe and both meshes
4: now, a sort of Nurbs blend - get a cross product of border edge and point normal, from both cuts. Draw a bunch of Bezier, 4 point curves (in MoI, this could be G1 blend). Two points aligned to mentioned cross product form one side, two point aligned to cross product from, another side. Where you'll be searching for starting point on cuts - this could be by cross sections of pipe.
5. create a loft, using these Bezier curves.

That's general - in reality, should be a lot of adjusting, like smoothing the intersection curve. matching the fillet to cuts. Mesh fusion seems to generate an additional extension, around filleted area, so perhaps you'll want to repeat the procedure to get these extensions. Finally, I'd be 101% sure that final result of Mesh fusion, has some sort of custom shading normal, to get seamless shading. So this part should be considered, too.

Long story short, a lot of boring work, trials an errors, for such thing, if you want to get it streamlined. And a lot more to get it usable for average user. Small advantage over usual NurBS procedure, is that in DCC app, you're not bounded by CAD rules of accuracy. Some dirty trick here and there, no problem.

[iamVFX]

thats amazing.. do you know if the resulting topology is clean?

The result is actually a pretty dense (yet very clean) mesh

Looks like a volume-generated mesh to me.

I believe the Gigaboolean compound was the Carve CSG library wrapped in an ICE node.

Less known fact: Blender uses this carve library since version 2.62...

I just leave it here: