Hi evryone.

Often, when I create a mechanical model, I have found that I only need to give it a more natural look,
and the easiest way to do this is often to round all its too sharp and CG looking edges.

And to do this the first thing I try is to use the fillet command.
And in this way I often get the usual fillet issues of the current Moi's kernel.

BUT....I DON'T NEED A REAL FILLET, BUT ONLY TO ROUND GLOBALLY THE TOO SHARP EDGES...

So, if you only need to use your model for rendering purposes, I've found a very good and easy solution.

For this solution you must have 3D-Coat and use its "Voxel" mode.
I don't know how to use different Voxel software because I only have 3D-Coat ad I also don't know
if in 3D-Coat you can use even the "Surface" mode with the same good results of "Voxel" mode.
I find "Voxel" mode much more useful for this particular task.

Anyway....this is a short video tutorial on how to achieve the simple task of "get rid of fillets if you don't need REAL fillets" !

http://take.ms/p0Zec

It's a 121 MB video so you can download it if you have slow streaming.

Let me know.

Bye!

Marco (mkdm)

Original background a little disturbing! :)

Else mechanical model : maybe more marble model! :)

@You : "Else mechanical model : maybe more marble model!"

:)

I like marble skin!

Bye.

P.s. Just for a better explanation.

My method, or a similar one, is useful also because using it you can leave unaltered the topology of the original model,
without adding "fake" fillets only in order to make it more organic.

The model can remain the same and you can concentrate exclusively on its main look and aspect.

In this case and in all other similar cases, adding the fillets directly on the model is useless,
because they increase its complexity and modify its topology.

If all you need is FAKE filleting just for a much more natural look, the 3D-Coat method, or similar, I think is the way to go.

A simple quick and dirt rendering of a mechanical model with rust and "fake" fillets in 3D-Coat :

Hello,

Here's an alternative method I use often for that tasks, using Houdini.

Few benefits :

- Houdini will loop/voxelize every individual pieces of the geometry, so it works very well with models where all the details are done with MoI 'merge' booleans function.
- There is an adaptivity option that reduce polycount greatly without changing to much the overall surface quality. (but a second reduction pass might be needed)
- You can update the scene (reload the source geometry) with a single click
- You can run the process without a 3D viewport, and generate very insane models (no problem to push over 100M triangle polymesh)
- No need to heavily tesselate MoI mesh export, just use a low angle (triangles output) to get nice result.

It's still a memory intensive process, for average models 32Gb is a minimum.

Hi PaQ.

Thanks for sharing! It seems that we started an interesting topic :)

Yeah....Houdini it's really great!! Unfortunately I can't afford the purchase and I have spent a lot of time learning the basics of 3D-Coat...


Anyway...this is another quick example of what I wanted to say about "fake" using 3D-Coat instead of Moi...

This is a simple "non sense" model in Moi. Very, very difficult to fillet, maybe impossible...

The model : http://take.ms/OVObP



Using the 3D-Coat technique this is what I did :



Here's the pseudo turntable : http://take.ms/cI2Us

See you.

I think a rendering based solution for this would be ideal.

I do have a plugin that will add a small fillet/chamfer as a render effect in Carrara just to break the edge. I have found Simlab to be a quicker rendering solution for cad models. Unfortunately the developers are indicating they are not considering adding that ability.

I'm just starting to learn Blender, and have no looked yet to see if this is possible.

Hi chris,

long time i not used Blender and Cycles, but if i remember correctly there where or are scripts available to do that. Google for rounded edges shader etc.

Regards
Stefan

https://blenderartists.org/forum/showthread.php?329295-Bevel-shader

hi mkdm

Key Shot has that functionality in Scene Tab and it is Radius and Minimum Edge Angle that you can control.
If you have Key Shot you don't have that problem.

regards

Hi chrisd (CHRIS_DORDONI), STEFAN, PaQ and mariomarimba.

Thanks a lot for your very interesting suggestion.

Well...about "round edges" I have to say that, for what I have experienced so far (not too much to be honest),
the "post-process" or "render-time" solution often produce mixed results

I mean that often good results are too dependent on input geometry.
Not all input geometry gives good results.

Right now I prefer the trick of generating "real" round edges, using the 3D-Coat technique or a similar one.

It gives me much more control and the chance to do a fine retouch of the round edges, using sculpting brushes,
in order to increase the natural look of the model.

Furthermore, in 3D-Coat for example, at the end of the process I can always "decimate" the model to get rid of million polygons
and get a lighter model but with almost the same render quality.

Anyway, thanks again for suggestion!

I already know the Bevel-shader for Blender but I will take a deeper look and maybe with a newer version or
with some similar plugin I hope to get good results.

@mariomarimba, thanks for the tip but I don't have a license of KeyShot.

Any further advice is welcome!

Bye.

Well for stills, rounded edges at render time works very well.

As for the polycount using voxel conversion, it's really an issue.
Maybe manageable on simple project, but if you try to apply the same process on a more complex model, you need to crank up the voxel density to a point
3Dcoat or Zbrush will hardly handle the data. This is especially true if you are picky with surface quality and you want to capture every detail from the input CAD geometry.

I have mostly tried every software around for that process, but Houdini is really the only one that can deal with this process quite smoothly.
It's possible to transfer MoI styles data during the conversion, pretty cool.

Hi PaQ.

@You : "...As for the polycount using voxel conversion, it's really an issue.
Maybe manageable on simple project, but if you try to apply the same process on a more complex model, you need to crank up the voxel density to a point
3Dcoat or Zbrush will hardly handle the data..."


Yes PaQ, you're totally right!

In fact usually I play with pretty "light" models, not so detailed, not so much to put 3D-Coat under extreme stress.

But no doubt the solution achievable with Houdini is excellent!!

Who knows, maybe one day I'll get a license of that product, but right now it's totally out of budget for me.

In next days I will try to get a closer look to some technique or plugin to use in Blender to achieve the same task.

Thanks a lot for sharing and have a nice day.

Marco (mkdm)

Hi Marco,

why not try Houdini Apprentice?

https://www.sidefx.com/products/houdini-apprentice/

Regards
Stefan

Hi Stefan.

First of all, thanks a lot for the suggestion.

@You : "why not try Houdini Apprentice?"

Well...simply because of its limitations, as shown in their website :

"Use of Houdini Apprentice is limited to following:
Non-commercial projects
Houdini Apprentice cannot be used in the same pipeline as commercial versions of Houdini
Houdini Digital Assets created in Apprentice can not be used with Houdini Engine or Houdini Engine Indie
Houdini Apprentice uses its own file format for saving scenes and assets
It is restricted to 1280x720 when rendering
Rendering to file formats other than .picnc are wordmarked
Houdini Apprentice does not work with third party renderers."

Usually I really don't like to use these two kinds of software : 1) Software with time-limited subscription licensing (like Adobe) 2) Restricted versions with limited features.

Simply, if I know that I can't afford the purchase of a standard commercial license of a software I don't waste time to learn any of its limited versions.

If one day my budget will be enough then I will consider to buy a license of Houdini.

Thanks again and have a nice day.

Understood,

however i use the Apprentice version for years now and always can export the .obj's
for rendering in my Render Engines. A lot of people bought also Houdini Indy, to
get a version not limited like Apprentice.

Regards
Stefan

Thanks Stefan but unfortunately Houdini Indie says "It is restricted to 1920x1080 when rendering out animations"
and...it has annual subscription of 199$.

Anyway...you said "i use the Apprentice version for years now and always can export the .obj's for rendering in my Render Engines"

My question is : the obj exported from Apprentice version, include all the modification made within Houdini ?
For example, if I export an Obj from MOI to Houdini just in order to round all the sharp edges of the model just to increase its natural look,
then when I export the obj, that obj will include ALL the transformations I did inside Houdini ?
or the OBJ export will suffer some sort of limitation ?

Thanks and have a nice day.

Bye.

Hi Marco,

when i did in the past modifications on an .obj file in Houdini i was
always able to export the new modified mesh.

However i have not tried PaQ's technique yet, because i don't know
how he did it, nor do i have so much RAM.

So maybe he can explain to you on how to accomplish this.

Regards
Stefan

Hi Marco,

The only question is : do you have the time and the will to discover and learn Houdini ?
Because it's a very complex software, and you need to invest time (lots of time) in it to be rewarded.

It's not like you just buy a license, read the documentation and start produce amazing 'stuffs'.

In this learning journey, the apprentice edition is the way to go (and yes you can export .obj without any restriction as far as I know).
It's the most addictive software I ever used (it's more like a game than anything else for me :))

Beside, I hate subscription model, but 200$/year for the Indie version is an amazing deal ...