Too bad Tsplines won't see wide adoption as a Subd-NURBS bridge until the patent expires in 17 years. Otherwise, expensive software is the only option...

Hi Danny. What i said was "if you are hoping to make something which handles organic modeling better than subd, i don't think you will achieve it just by using patches". My point isn't that it's not possible, but that there are better and faster ways to get it done. It is impressive that he used Nurbs, but did it result in a "better" model because he spent the extra labor to do it that way? And now with T-Splines it really becomes irrelevant because you can convert the subd model to Nurbs patches... And better solutions will just keep on comng in the future...

jonah

Hi Danny,

> I realised this when I surfed around on this subject, plus I
> think if it was easy you need to have that artistic flair like
> a sculptor with clay.

Yeah, I think that there is a need for a lot of the same kind of sense of proportion that a good sculptor would have.

But in addition to that, it is kind of its own medium which although similar in some ways is not exactly the same as working in clay. I mean after all you normally work on the computer with a mouse and you don't normally work on clay with a mouse.... :)

So you have to spend a lot of time becoming familiar with the medium itself and learning how it behaves in response to your actions, stuff like that.

On top of that kind of many many hours of experience in the medium, it helps if you study different modeling strategies. There are different ways to manage the organic construction process and since you are dealing with a kind of big sea of points, it becomes pretty important to have a pretty detailed management process that helps keep things organized.

That's a lot of skills that need to be developed that are equally important (well, probably much more important) as the tools.


There is a new type of organic modeling based on brush-stroke type painting which now seems like it may be coming more to the forefront, stuff like ZBrush, Mudbox, and 3D Coat are focused on this different style. It seems like this area has some promise to be an easier to use medium so that it might not require quite as high of a specialized skill training and experience level as subd point manipulation does...

- Michael

Hi Michael,

>>it is kind of its own medium which although similar in some ways is not exactly the same as working in clay. I mean after all you normally work on the computer with a mouse and you don't normally work on clay with a mouse.... :)

I disagree, the mouse and the application (MoI) are your tools, of course clay you can use your hands to feel,
but you also have your sculpting tools, in painting you have your brushes (the mouse) and your palette of paint( the software toolset) I think these are very alike it's just that computer art is frowned upon by purist.
I'm sure back in what ever BC (now BCE) someone used a medium for their art piece for the first time and everyone in the art world would of said , WHAT THE ! and down the track is accepted as art.

just my point of view.

mmm.....what shall I sculpt next with MoI ;)

Cheers
Danny

Hi jonah,

>>And better solutions will just keep on comng in the future............No doubt.

Just asked the question because I'm no expert on organic modeling, the only organic modeling tools I've delt with is what's available from the high end engineering apps and they are highly accurate NURBS surfaces that are produce in microns and no way I could use these apps to produce a sculptured head without some stupid criptic error message popping up.

Cheers
Danny

Hi Danny, well there are more subtle differences as well - for example in SubD modeling you don't push or pull directly on a surface like you would do with clay, you control a point cage and the surface created from that point cage is kind of shrunken and smoothed down from it.

It is a particular mechanism which works somewhat differently from clay.

Let me put it this way - an expert clay sculptor is not going to be able to sit down with a subd modeler and right away produce models with it the same as their clay sculptures. There will be a bunch of their skills on proportion and form that will certainly come over, but the medium and details of how you interact with it follows different rules in the specifics.

The subd artist needs to worry about topology, edge loops, arrangement and spacing of individual points in 3D space, these are a lot of things that don't really have a similarity in clay sculpting.

I mean don't get me wrong, I am not in any way meaning to say that the results of subd modeling are not art, just that it takes time and experience with them to really become productive and able to produce very refined and detailed shapes with them.

- Michael

Hi Michael, I agree with the differences but you are comparing two different mediums, like sculpting compared to painting, both are art but different mediums.

Thanks anyway, I've learnt alot from this thread and know what direction I want to go with my hobby.

Cheers
Danny

Ok, this is my hour attempt.
I thought I'd start with a 10cmX10cm surface produced by freeform curve using control points at 1cm increments.


Then created a network surface using these curves.
I have a question about this surface, when I produced it I could see little white flicks through it, is this normal, is it the graphics or is this surface not a good surface, I have no analysis tools at the moment to check it.
on the other hand it did trim and join ok.


Then all I did was push 'n' pull the control points to produce this nose, it was quite entertaining and educational. added some nostrils and you have a basic shnoz.



I think with a little more refinement of the mesh and finer control points you could probably get more detail, but as you said Michael it is hard work.

Cheers
Danny

The grid with control points reminds me of those Pin Pression toys - "Press the Pin Pression to any object to instantly create that image in 3-D"



Ed

Hi Danny,

> Hi Michael, I agree with the differences but you are comparing
> two different mediums, like sculpting compared to painting,
> both are art but different mediums.

Yup, no disagreement here.

I guess the problem that I am trying to emphasize is that some mediums are more temperamental and just difficult to work with than others. That does not mean it is not a good medium, but it does mean that a fair amount of time is required to become accustomed and skilled at working in it.

I've noticed a general trend over the past several years that the ease of use of subd as a medium has become quite exaggerated. People who have spent a lot of time getting accustomed to it can make it look easy, but you're not seeing all the hours and hours (and years and years) they have spent building up their skills.

Similarly you can use NURBS modeling for doing faces like the Jinwoo Lee stuff you linked to and were asking about. However, that's an even more temperamental medium for doing that kind of work than subd is, so it takes an even greater amount of time to become fluent and productive at doing that. That's why it is not commonly done these days, not because it is not possible but because it is a more time consuming road to take.

- Michael

Hi Michael,

And just to confuse things even that bit more, you've got SensAble's FreeForm & ClayTools.
http://www.sensable.com/products-freeform-systems.htm

One of the Members on 3dcadjewelry Forum has FreeForm & a couple of others have ClayTools & they've done some really great work with it .
Here's one site with some examples.
http://www.harryhamilldesigns.com/Portrait.html

It really seems like the answer for those wanting something like a NURBS type "Organic Sculpturing".
But from what I understand, unfortunately it's very expensive & the system requirements are very specific.

regards Colin

Well if not NURBS patches, how about some FiberMesh methodologies added to MOI?

http://www.cg.cs.tu-berlin.de/papers/fibermesh.pdf


Since drawing curves within MOI is such a snap, having surfaces and volumes shaped by curves seems like it would be an awesome toolset to have. ;-)

I like how the curves always stay on top of the surfaces and also how features are defined by simply adding points to the control curves and then shaping them! B-)


-Will

Hi Will,

> Well if not NURBS patches, how about some FiberMesh
> methodologies added to MOI?

That's definitely a cool system, but it looks like the final output object is a big bunch of triangles.

That makes it a really difficult fit with MoI because a big bunch of triangles would not be able to interact with MoI's existing tools which all work on NURBS objects instead of faceted objects.

MoI has a big focus on accurate type modeling, and that system is very interesting but for a very completely different style of non-accurate cartoon like modeling... It would be pretty difficult to try and fit both those worlds together in some kind of seamless way.

- Michael

Hi Colin, yup definitely that SensAble system is an interesting system providing a different style (and oriented towards easier to use) organic / detailed modeling medium through the use of specialized hardware.

But yes, very expensive...


It seems to me that brush-based software-only methods like ZBrush/Mudbox/3D coat are the ones mostly on the biggest surge right now though.

- Michael

>That's definitely a cool system, but it looks like the final output object is a big bunch of triangles.

Hi Michael, yes I saw that the resultant meshes were hella ugly but the concept of using curves to generate shapes and contours like that I felt would be something wonderful to have for a NURBS modeler.

I'm certainly not a math wizz so I don't know if the algorithms could be reworked to work with NURBS surfaces or not - it "appears" like it would be compatible since it's curves that are used as input to the system, similar to NURBS...

-Will

Hi Will,

> I'm certainly not a math wizz so I don't know if the algorithms
> could be reworked to work with NURBS surfaces or not -

As far as I can tell it is definitely on the "not" side, I'm afraid to say.

Maybe with additional research in the future they will be able to make it more adaptable in that direction.

Possibly someone with a whole bunch of specialized reverse-engineering type of NURBS experience might be able to generate NURBS output from that, but it would be a very difficult task.

To turn something naturally into NURBS it needs to have a very regular quad-like layout to it, NURBS surfaces are a rectangular net of control points. If you see something that is a whole mess of points connected in no particular apparent order, that then is not something that has a very natural automatic conversion to NURBS.


> it "appears" like it would be compatible since it's curves that are
> used as input to the system, similar to NURBS...

Yeah, but the curves get diced up (intersected with a triangle grid) at one point.

Just because something initially starts out as curves doesn't really mean that it produces similar structured objects out the other end...

- Michael

Would anyone with Carrara6Pro care to fiddle with this using the Displacement Brush in the Vertex Room?
Love to see what people come up with.
Brian

THIS IS A FAULTY FILE_____DO NOT TRY TO USE PLEASE__SORRY
BRIAN

@PAQ
yes Top Mod is a crazy prog for make easily curious forms impossible to make easily with other progs :)
http://www.topmod3d.org/

Where is the T-Spline converter?

Here some funny things TopMod---Zbrush :)

Hi Pilou,

> Where is the T-Spline converter?

It's at http://www.tsplines.com/ - it's a plugin for either Rhino or Maya.

- Michael

Ok I see :)
Is this sort of tools who is use in Rhino (as hidden tool) for the bender or deformations functions?