this thread is amazing! I'm going to be spending alot of time with pro booleans today I think. I'll try to post results later!
edit: Oh man this thread plus this thread = a fun afternoon
For most professions, especially a cushy office-job where you get to be create, perform no hard labor, and receive a decent pay, you'll need years in uni to qualify for a job. You need to study a great deal.
A great many 3D artists think they'r exempt from this. They are lazy, unprofessional bums who think being in this industry is not a "real job". Most of these people either hang on to an existing job by the fingertips, or they daydream that they'll one day get a job. They will have a hard time, won't make decent money, and will have to fall back on other skills, and if they don't have any then tough luck.
If you can't be bothered to learn sub-d modeling, what are you even doing in this industry? Could you possibly be any lazier, any less ambitious? When are you going to grow up and take some responsibility? Your job is going to be taken by a young talented and hard-working artist, or it will be outsourced to India/China.
When you enter a profession, you need to take the necessary time to master the tools of the trade. But you're sat there playing computer games and making aggressive posts on youtube instead. In some years you will enter deep depression.
I want to quote this section specifically and say if you do not understand, go watch Feng Zhu Design Cinema. It's about concept art but every video has useful information for CG artists of all disciplines. And teaching a discipline is what all his videos, and his school, is about. To paraphrase some point he makes time and time again, If you work for an hour, and there is a guy practising his craft 8 hours a day, in a year he will have 7 years more experience than you and he will get the job. He will pick and choose his freelance work in a few years. He will have the money and the experience to take his career where he wants.
Computron, awesome!
Yes, try to do as Internet Friend says, use "reference" copies of the original mesh with an additional push modifier on top.
I didn't do that for my version of the mesh, it was all manual work with standard 3ds tools (to make it relevant for a tutorial) and took 90 minutes (that includes everything that happens after collapsing the boolean mod) for a pretty much perfect result. 90 mins for such complex intersections in the course of a working day - it's not a lot. Also is quite fun so time seems to pass quickly.
I made a bunch of small simple cases to more clearly show the different techniques though.
Love this workflow, you still going to publish the tutorial?
So this Perna tutorial already somewhere else in forum or just didn't make it out public?.. I was reading all 3 pages with a thing in mind, that next page there'd be a tutorial but seem it's not the case (beside the finished wireframe mesh image by Computron)? Pro-boolean in action sounds really useful tho.
Hey Perna have you ever used the "No Edge Removal" in the Advanced Options section in the Boolean modifier? I just found out about it while messing around and I find it pretty amazing.
Yeah thanks. The more you discover and use the actual tools like bend, twist, etc in Max the more things start to get easier doing Sub D's. I didn't realize Booleans was this powerful until I ran up on your threads and started messing with stuff.
lord perna, I'm joining the chorus of people wondering whether you ever ended up publishing your comprehensive primitive/boolean workflow tutorial. I'm slowly cobbling together bits and pieces of that workflow from posts you've made here and in the "dem shapes" thread, but I'm definitely missing a lot of info. It feels like I have random pieces of an old treasure map. I try to figure things out for myself, but I'm still very much a noob at subD.
I'm also curious whether the workflow has evolved in any major ways over the years since you first started talking about it.
We're all grateful for all the help you've provided either way, but I was just curious.
We're just curious. The bool-primitive thing is helpful. Do you not use it anymore? Are you into MeshFusion instead? I thought I saw you and Computron making fun of it in another thread.
I was trying to work out an efficient way to do it in Max. I start with a set of primitives, add XForm mods to them, instance the objects, and create a ProBool out of them. From then on, I perform transforms only on the primitives' XForm gizmo, not the original object, which ensures the transforms carry over to the ProBool object. To add operands to this ProBool after the fact, I animate its position: at one keyframe it overlaps the original set of primitives, so it's easy to add stuff, and at another it's offset.
I saw you mention in another thread that the most important component of this was making it easy to make a low-poly after the fact. I think? I was also wondering if there was anything you did to make the hi-poly cleanup easier.
When I saw many of the hard surface stuff done in Zbrush I thought I am retarded, because I don't see any upside to it. I am glad to know, that Sub-D is better and more accepted than Hard Surface scultpting. :thumbup:
its just much more flexible to use basemeshes, applying changes inside zbrush is horrible you basically need to start over at a certain point, while usually with classical modelling its just pulling some verts
With ZB, you can very quickly block in and experiment with shapes, however once you polish that, doing something as trivial as making a bevel wider or thinner can be a serious amount of work.
Traditional sub-d modeling on the other hand generally requires a lot of work to set up the mesh correctly, and it can be hard to make big sweeping changes after its setup without reworking your geometry, but sliding around edges and tweaking things can be done a lot faster.
Replies
edit: Oh man this thread plus this thread = a fun afternoon
I want to quote this section specifically and say if you do not understand, go watch Feng Zhu Design Cinema. It's about concept art but every video has useful information for CG artists of all disciplines. And teaching a discipline is what all his videos, and his school, is about. To paraphrase some point he makes time and time again, If you work for an hour, and there is a guy practising his craft 8 hours a day, in a year he will have 7 years more experience than you and he will get the job. He will pick and choose his freelance work in a few years. He will have the money and the experience to take his career where he wants.
Love this workflow, you still going to publish the tutorial?
Thanks
https://www.dropbox.com/s/71lbno5hbyeutdt/CylSide.png
https://www.dropbox.com/s/xw19gj7nnfklk3e/CylSide2.png
I'm also curious whether the workflow has evolved in any major ways over the years since you first started talking about it.
We're all grateful for all the help you've provided either way, but I was just curious.
MeshFusion
YOLO
Not sure if serious. I don't have enough experience to tell if that was tongue in cheek. :poly124:
Thanks for this info, gold! Going to play with this tonight.
Did you ever post that tut??
I was trying to work out an efficient way to do it in Max. I start with a set of primitives, add XForm mods to them, instance the objects, and create a ProBool out of them. From then on, I perform transforms only on the primitives' XForm gizmo, not the original object, which ensures the transforms carry over to the ProBool object. To add operands to this ProBool after the fact, I animate its position: at one keyframe it overlaps the original set of primitives, so it's easy to add stuff, and at another it's offset.
I saw you mention in another thread that the most important component of this was making it easy to make a low-poly after the fact. I think? I was also wondering if there was anything you did to make the hi-poly cleanup easier.
Again, just curious.
edit: oops, XForm, not XRef
When I saw many of the hard surface stuff done in Zbrush I thought I am retarded, because I don't see any upside to it. I am glad to know, that Sub-D is better and more accepted than Hard Surface scultpting. :thumbup:
With ZB, you can very quickly block in and experiment with shapes, however once you polish that, doing something as trivial as making a bevel wider or thinner can be a serious amount of work.
Traditional sub-d modeling on the other hand generally requires a lot of work to set up the mesh correctly, and it can be hard to make big sweeping changes after its setup without reworking your geometry, but sliding around edges and tweaking things can be done a lot faster.
I mean honsetly if you're doing this for us, this is at least what i can do for you!
http://polycount.com/discussion/168610/proboolean-dynamesh-hardsurface-workflow-tutorial