Hi jpaluck,

it's another story but on top of all that, I'm a french speaking guy and though I'm not so bad in english it is still somewhat of a pain to write, it takes me forever.

Before I go on, I must thank you for the links and your thought on my dilema, these guys do amazing work. I just took a brief look and if ever I can do stuff the quality of the artline3d guy, god would I be happy.

I'm a 100% sure that using Moi for me is not an option any more, I'm stuck with it, I just love it. Believe it or not, I kind of feel not so bad with Scultris and possibly it would be similar with ZBrush (much more potential I believe). But Silo, even if I have no doubt it's a very good piece of software, it's like riding a bike backwards for me LOL, so even if it was free I don't think I will spent more time with the free trial. I can say basically the same for 3D-Coat they both feel very awkward to me. I must add that above all my other discrepancies, I'm a lefty, and a program like Silo, even if I can remap all the shortcuts, would still be a bit problematic.

Just a tought about Carvewright, I happen to see one in action and I was very disapointed with what I was looking at but I also happen to see a piece done on oak that was more than acceptable, so for quality I assume it depends on a few things. A minus I have is that it is to narrow and lastly but not the least, no 4th-axis possible. I've got very limited space in my shop and if I put in a CNC there, it must be able to do quite a lot because a few things of would have to get out to make room for it.

I admit I had my doubt about the displacement maps and what you wrote convinced me it would be a lost of time to go that route, so thanks a million for that. So I guess I'll have to rethink all this again.

Many thanks, lots of food for thoughts,
Felix

Hi Felix,

Wood crafting very often requires some kind of artistic touch, like sculpting, bas-relief, VCarving, inalay and micro detailed surfaces that are hard to produce with a NURBS based software, and requires an SDS approach. I can't imagine an oak or a grapefruit leaf modeled starting from curves, extrusions, sweeps and so on. On the contrary, also often in such artworks there are some components (rims, structures) that are best modeled using hard surfaces techniques (NURBS). To reach your target, especially if you later need to obtain a CNC toolpath, I recommend you to try Aspire, an artistic CAD/CAM package by Vectric. It has powerful vector based 2D to 3D tools, sculpting and bitmap to 3D support to obtain very complex bas relief, that you can easily integrate in your project. Aspire also includes a good CAM software and many postprocessors that cover almost any kind of CNC milling machines and routers.
You can also consider Luxology modo to add details to your works. It is more complex and expensive compared to Silo. But it has a great advantage on other SDS based modelers. You can model in a low subdivision degree and use many tools to deform your surfaces using textures and images (for example, with vector maps, normal maps and so on): the model is then represented with incredible high details, even if the real geometry remains very light. As soon as you are sastisfied with the results, you can "freeze" the geometry, and any effect you have applied is then transformed into a real geometry that you can mill with a CNC machine. As far as I know, this feature of modo is almost exclusive.
Another advantage is the presence of a good renderer, that you can use to present your projects before their actual phisical production.
Attached you will find an image of a rendering of a particular of a furniture, done with MoI, modo and Aspire.

Good luck

- Pietro

The king of modeling for this sort of thing is ZBrush ;)
All works is Zbrush for real stone carver results!
by Tomrobs


























They use also Moi ;)


for blend with Zbrush ;)


By Nicolas

Yeah, I've been dying to buy Z-brush.....

Cool... I tried Zbrush several times but I can't get used to it..

Peace,
Rich_Art. ;-)

< I tried Zbrush several times but I can't get used to it..
yes some try and learning curves are necessary
But now many videos are existing ;)
Like these ZClassroom about the last release ;)
http://www.zbrushcentral.com/showthread.php?161537-ZBrush-4R2-ZClassroom-Movies.-Update-3&p=895791&viewfull=1#post895791

I agree with you,Frenchy Pilou
I'm approaching to z-brush:i have bought Scott Spencer's book :Advanced digital sculpting(Italian title)
first i tried sculptris,i tried to do a simple carrot....disasters! (i'm nurbs addicted like MajikMike)
this is because sculptris don't offer so many tools like his big brother(z-spheres..masks..etc.)
i think that if you want to do human detailed models you have to be a real sculptor,or,at least, have something in you..a natural approach to real clay sculpture...
so i say to myself:Mauro you cannot do everythig you want...but i'm following z-brush,i plan to use it in the future

Hi Mauro,

> i think that if you want to do human detailed models
> you have to be a real sculptor,or,at least, have something
> in you..a natural approach to real clay sculpture...

Yes, that's something to keep in mind when you see some fantastic video of someone sculpting a magnificent figure - the main thing that actually makes that possible is the skill, experience and well practiced technique of the person doing the modeling, it's not like the software itself just magically makes that stuff happen.

It's a difficult skill set to achieve, so it's something that you should expect to invest quite a bit of time in to practice and refine your techniques.

But it is a great path to work on to get those kinds of sculpted detailed results.... Just be prepared for a high learning curve and a lot of time investment.

- Michael

Hi everyone,

I couldn't begin to thanks you enough for all the examples, suggestions and ideas posted here.

I believe at this point, that in someway the tools or software programs are irrelevant to a certain extent and it's the one in the driver seat that make all the difference. As it is, I realise I'm a newbie at all this 3D stuff and I pretty well know the route one as to take to become a better "driver", ie, lots and lots of studies and even more hard work to devellop the necessary skills. Thanks all for reminding this to me.

As I was looking for ways around these basic principles, I stumble across one of Blender 3D sculpt mode videos and in it there was this suggestion of trying to devellop your basic skill using blender (which as more sculp features then Scultris and much less then ZBrush) and from there when you get comfortable with the sculpting tools as well as learned some methods to use them skillfuly and then, if needed, you can migrate to a higher level, with ZBrush if I want to go sculpting or something else if I want to go SubD.

The only unfortunate conclusion I can make at this time, is that ounce I get out of Moi I can't come back with my sculpted objects to "glue" all this work together in Moi but maybe in another life...

Thanks you all again and my best regards,
Felix

Hi Felix,

> The only unfortunate conclusion I can make at this time, is
> that ounce I get out of Moi I can't come back with my sculpted
> objects to "glue" all this work together in Moi but maybe in
> another life...

Yup, that will probably be the case - basically those sculpting programs do not work with the same kind of object data that MoI uses itself which are called NURBS surfaces. Instead those sculpting programs work with polygon mesh data where objects are made up of a lot of little polygon facets.

You can export from MoI into a polygon mesh format, at which point MoI will dice up its NURBS surfaces into little facet pieces. But it's not easy to start with diced up little facets and go back to a larger NURBS surface except in special cases...

So yes once you have exported from MoI into a sculpting program your object will be made up of a different kind of data than MoI uses for modeling with and you'll need to be working with a polygon mesh program to deal with that data instead of MoI at that point.

There are actually a lot of various different ways that 3D objects can be structured - every 3D program is not necessarily based off of the same technology and that means that you can't necessarily transfer objects both directions between different programs using different techniques, some kinds of transfer are more one way.

- Michael