Hi Yenmonger,

> But the planar command can only do a single plane at a
> time - I need to do hundreds or thousands at a time.

You could try Rhino's MeshToNurb command, or Sycode's Mesh to solid converter:
http://www.sycode.com/products/mesh_to_solid/index.htm

These will convert every polygon face in the mesh into a trimmed NURBS plane - but be aware that if you have a mesh with a lot of little polygons in it where the mesh is trying to emulate a smooth surface, each little polygon will become one trimmed plane in the NURBS solid. That can end up making an extremely heavy and complex NURBS object made up of zillion little NURBS surfaces.

NURBS solids were not designed to have smooth surfaces emulated by a zillion little slivery pieces, NURBS are designed to have smooth surfaces as actual larger smooth spline surface patches.

So that kind of conversion is only very applicable to certain kinds of shapes, like meshes that are intended to be faceted objects such as blocky shapes and not meshes that are trying to be similar to a smooth surface with a lot of little polygons.

- Michael

The Rhino tool is limited to 20,000 faces also.

Hi Guys!

I'm new to your forum and have been invited by Frenchy Pilou to join your community ! Many thanks for welcoming me here!

My name is Hippolyte from PhotoSculpt, and I designed this new tool called PhotoSculpt Textures that you're just discussing here.

I hope you'll like it?

To your question about if photosculpt can help MOI users:

I was thinking about presenting your MOI art on a highly detailed wood 3d model, or stone, or something natural. In order to help break the CG look. This is just an quick and fast-to-do idea but that could be terrific, add (realistically) shallow depth of field and nice lighting and composition on top of that, what do you think? :-)

Please don't hesitate to drop me a line if you want to know more about PhotoSculpt.

Hi Hippolyte, welcome to the forum, Photosculpt looks really cool!

> I was thinking about presenting your MOI art on a highly
> detailed wood 3d model, or stone, or something natural.
> In order to help break the CG look.

That could be a good combination!

- Michael

Michael, couldn't you allow to import mesh objects for viewing only (with textures)?

@Hippolyte: I'm very curious for your Photosculpt release. The last years I dreamed from a way to get correct hight maps from real objects like the something simple like wrinkles on a bed sheet. Normal photography seems to be was the only way, but now your software could be a great tool for it. The maps from Crazybump are good, but not perfect - for example wrinkles can't be right catched in a map. I'm very curious how Photosculpt will do it. Do you know when approx. will be the demo available?

Please try to keep the price low, so that many, many people will buy and use it. Maybe you could follow the philosophy of the octane renderer ;) :

"If Octane Render is as great as it sounds, why is it so cheap?
Refractive Software could have charged much more for the performance of Octane Render and sold to fewer people, but in these hard economic times, that wouldn’t do much for helping out smaller studios and individuals from having access to this powerful software. By keeping the cost lower, more individuals will have access to this power and will be able to generate more economic growth than if only a few were able to afford Octane Render."

Hi Micha,

> Michael, couldn't you allow to import mesh objects for
> viewing only (with textures)?

Possibly in the future.

But making file importers and parsers tends to be a difficult area of work, it tends to take much, much more work to make an importer than it does an exporter.

It's hard to fit in areas of work that require a lot of development time into my schedule, usually if something takes a lot of work it means that I have to sacrifice some other feature in order to produce it.

What would you see as the benefit that you would gain by importing mesh objects for viewing only into MoI? Don't you already have other mesh-based programs available to you that can work as a viewer already?

- Michael

I see the advantage to show the MoI NURBS model together with mesh models, for example an exterior scene with low poly mesh trees, people and cars. Or a product design in a mesh environment created per photosculpt. The mesh import would allow to bring details and live to scenes. Designer and architects who use MoI only will like it. ;)

For example here a great resource of free mesh models:

http://archive3d.net

Hi Micha, currently MoI is not focused on producing things like renderings though, so the only thing you would be showing would be screenshots I guess?

> for example an exterior scene with low poly mesh trees, people and cars.

Currently the way to make something like that is to export your MoI model into a rendering program, and then also import those low poly mesh trees, people, and cars also into the rendering program, and then produce rendered images there.


In the future I do want to make it possible to do some basic renderings in MoI too though, so in the future at some point a mesh import would probably become more valuable than now.

But still for a while yet the focus for MoI will be more on NURBS objects for model time, and only on exporting mesh data and not on loading or manipulating polygon mesh data.

You already have a lot of various programs that you can use for loading and working with mesh data, so that's why it was not a priority for MoI to be focused on that at least for a while.

- Michael

For me the wish isn't important, you are right, I have enough tools to show 3d models. I thought on users who use MoI3D only and work with screenshots. Right, if it needs to much development time, than better you implement other features. ;)

Hi Michael,

- wrinkles on a bed sheet:
It works very well with photosculpt.
I'll make more models of that.

- Price is on study right now: It's quite difficult for me as I'm lacking solid comparison reference.

- Octane Render : I need to study that. They have low price and outperform the competition is this right?

- When : as soon as possible, after all testing is performed, hopefully before summer.

I've just released a new video showing the interface, see it for yourself here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nN_r77gOEY0

Hippolyte from www.PhotoSculpt.net

"- Price is on study right now: It's quite difficult for me as I'm lacking solid comparison reference."

I understand. I think many user could use it a few days per year only for some tricky textures and other (game development) could use it daily. For example crazybump is something that will be used more often, because it based on simple textures from all resources. Photosculpt needs a good real world source.
The biggest benefit by photosculpt could find user who create texture and sell texture collections. Maybe you add a license type for this kind of users (Arroway.de could be one) for selling textures created by photosculpt.

"- Octane Render : I need to study that. They have low price and outperform the competition is this right?"

Yes, rendering per graphic card seems to be the future. Many graphic cards could plug in one computer and the power could be very impressiv.

"- When : as soon as possible, after all testing is performed, hopefully before summer."

It could be good if you note it at your web page. I assumed "soon" means days or some weeks only. ;)

"- Price is on study right now: It's quite difficult for me as I'm lacking solid comparison reference."

... also I like the idea behind the MoI3D pricing - each new version will cost more than the version before, the update price is the difference

I'm not sure it will be possible with Photosculpt too, since future versions will be get an enhanced core too. General I think, a first Version is not so matured and have a lot unknown limits, so a low price for a v1 is a good deal for developer and user most. ;)

"The biggest benefit by photosculpt could find user who create texture and sell texture collections."

That's true!
And also many sculptor either real sculptors (wood, metal, stone using a CNC machines) or zbrush/3d coat/mudbox users are interested. :-)

PhotoSculpt is different than other texture softwares.
Because the models or textures are analysed from actual 3D data. Not 2D data. That makes all the difference for the user.

It's robust 3d recognition algorithm is entirely new, and it's the core of PhotoSculpt.

All model you create with PhotoSculpt are so detailed that you can fly between crevices, like a bee, and get real close if you want.
Of course it's always really fun to do but more than that, it shows the ultra high resolution of the software.
I think it's never seen before in this industry. :-)

Example:
Making fly-through are fun to create, I should do more. See : http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WaEP2RwDxVc

"each new version will cost more than the version before, the update price is the difference"

Really? Cool idea!

Quick info:

Demo of PhotoSculpt now available for Download !

see www.photosculpt.net for more!

PhotoSculpt is realised! ;)
http://www.photosculpt.net/

PhotoSculpt v1.0 now available for purchase !!

Price for the individual license is EUR 99.00

see www.photosculpt.net for more info!

Little test with Chaoscope http://www.chaoscope.org/
A crazzy prog who has not 3D file export only 2D images but can rotate in "3D view" the current view of parameters :)
So you can make 2 images with any rotations like a camera ;)
Then use Photosculpt 8-)

Pilou, you are an infinite source of links to interesting software :-D

You should put it all together on one page, like a blog or something.

take a look here : something like 48 pages all is free! (something like 30 or more are mine ;)
http://www.zbrushcentral.com/showthread.php?t=19484&page=1