I think edge/face weighting is where subd is heading ... Once everyone decides on a standard and we can pass weighted meshes back and forth between apps as easily as we can polygons, I think it will be the standerd way to go.
It's certainly what i do on home projects ... Once Mesh Fusion supports edge/face weights it's going to be a whole new world.
I've been working for about 3-4 years with a manual chamfer workflow and the last 2 years with opensubd, so here are my pros and cons:
opensubd (or similar):
pros:
- cleaner basemesh, much easier to make tweaks and changes (no redoing support loops)
- cleaner subdivided mesh, much better for sculpting since faces are mostly square and the mesh is very evenly subdivided
- you can UV unwrap the basemesh and thus texture the highpoly quite easily, allowing for a more flexible texturing workflow (i.e. baking to first or third person weapons with different polycounts and UV layouts)
cons:
- heavier subdivided mesh, you need about one subdivision more for the same surface quality, since with chamfering you automatically add more resolution where it's needed -> on edges and bevels
- less control over bevel width, since they always depend on the size of the adjacent faces. This means you still need a few control loops to compensate for. If you try it at first, everything looks too blobby and smooth, but with some experience you can get very similar quality to manual chamfer
manual chamfer:
pros:
- best control over bevel width and appearance
- lighter subdivided meshes (better for viewport performance and baking)
cons:
- managing control loops is time consuming and makes tweaks and changes take much longer.
- Very hard to unwrap and UV due to the quite heavy distortion, plus having to manage control loops in the UV. Opensubdiv might alleviate the distortion part.
- Resulting mesh is often not sculpting friendly (lots of long, thin quads instead of everything being uniformly tesselated and square)
If you want to try what opensubD is like, just use ye olde double turbosmooth workflow, it's the same thing. Well, minus the UV smoothing and crease control part. lower TS modifier with 2 iterations and seperate by smoothing groups on, upper TS modifier with 1 iteration and separate off is equivalent to opensubD with 3 iterations and a fixed edge crease of 2 (for edges inbetween different smoothing groups). 3 iterations lower and 1 iterations upper means 4 iteration with crease 3, and so on...
Overall it's not strictly better, I would say it's faster and gives you mode flexibility, depends on how much value you put on this.
manual chamfer has never been an option to me.
i've been using the doublesmooth with smoothing groups in max, wich lacks an equivalent in maya i gues.
its nondestructive, but you don't have as much controll over the bevel as with opensubdiv.
as far as i understand it you can transfer the edgeweight using fbx between applications that use opensubdiv.
haven't tried that yet though.
i think doing manual chamfers is not an option anymore unless there realy is no other way to achieve your shape nondestructively.
pros of opensubdiv:
-faster then turbosmooth
-can manually adjust bevel strenght per edge
-should be transferable between applications
pros of turbosmooth:
-actually none i gues
a feature that would realy hit it out of the park for me would be if you could adjust not only edgeweight, but also vertexweight.
kinda hard to illustrate what im talking about though, might have to take some screenshots.
also if anyone from autodesk or a capable scripter reads this:
it would be very awesome if you were able to select edges by the assigned crease value. when you want to tweak the creases on a model there is no way to just select the edges that have a creasevalue > 0
such a function would certainly be very usefull and timesaving.
Regarding automated smoothing: It works for TS pro too, it can set a fixed crease level for edges between smoothing groups, just like double TS does. There's no need to pick edges and assign crease values.
Regarding automated smoothing: It works for TS pro too, it can set a fixed crease level for edges between smoothing groups, just like double TS does. There's no need to pick edges and assign crease values.
uh nice that sounds usefull.
regarding the vertexweight, it should check the edges that are connected to the vertex for creasevalues and only use the vertexweight for those edges.
I guess you could convert the vertex selection to edges and then apply the creasevalue to these. Or make a script out of this.
also if anyone from autodesk or a capable scripter reads this:
it would be very awesome if you were able to select edges by the assigned crease value. when you want to tweak the creases on a model there is no way to just select the edges that have a creasevalue > 0
such a function would certainly be very usefull and timesaving.
Regarding this: I believe the new creasecontrol modifier in max 2015 allows this, watch some of the videos on the autodesk page.
Then again, the autodesk implementation doesn't seem to use smoothing groups for some odd reason, which means you must use edges for creases. Pretty cumbersome if you ask me.
Not really what I mean. I mean being able to create shapes with edge weighting to control their shapes and them mash them together with MeshFusion. At the moment, you have to use subd meshes.
It would be a lot faster to be able to just grab faces/edges, change weights, and tweak your boolean results that way.
Edge creases are not meant to replace bevels or chamfers. You Should be able to get bevels and chamfers with at least as much precision, but with less geometry in the base mesh using opensubdiv.
Replies
It's certainly what i do on home projects ... Once Mesh Fusion supports edge/face weights it's going to be a whole new world.
opensubd (or similar):
pros:
- cleaner basemesh, much easier to make tweaks and changes (no redoing support loops)
- cleaner subdivided mesh, much better for sculpting since faces are mostly square and the mesh is very evenly subdivided
- you can UV unwrap the basemesh and thus texture the highpoly quite easily, allowing for a more flexible texturing workflow (i.e. baking to first or third person weapons with different polycounts and UV layouts)
cons:
- heavier subdivided mesh, you need about one subdivision more for the same surface quality, since with chamfering you automatically add more resolution where it's needed -> on edges and bevels
- less control over bevel width, since they always depend on the size of the adjacent faces. This means you still need a few control loops to compensate for. If you try it at first, everything looks too blobby and smooth, but with some experience you can get very similar quality to manual chamfer
manual chamfer:
pros:
- best control over bevel width and appearance
- lighter subdivided meshes (better for viewport performance and baking)
cons:
- managing control loops is time consuming and makes tweaks and changes take much longer.
- Very hard to unwrap and UV due to the quite heavy distortion, plus having to manage control loops in the UV. Opensubdiv might alleviate the distortion part.
- Resulting mesh is often not sculpting friendly (lots of long, thin quads instead of everything being uniformly tesselated and square)
If you want to try what opensubD is like, just use ye olde double turbosmooth workflow, it's the same thing. Well, minus the UV smoothing and crease control part. lower TS modifier with 2 iterations and seperate by smoothing groups on, upper TS modifier with 1 iteration and separate off is equivalent to opensubD with 3 iterations and a fixed edge crease of 2 (for edges inbetween different smoothing groups). 3 iterations lower and 1 iterations upper means 4 iteration with crease 3, and so on...
Overall it's not strictly better, I would say it's faster and gives you mode flexibility, depends on how much value you put on this.
i've been using the doublesmooth with smoothing groups in max, wich lacks an equivalent in maya i gues.
its nondestructive, but you don't have as much controll over the bevel as with opensubdiv.
as far as i understand it you can transfer the edgeweight using fbx between applications that use opensubdiv.
haven't tried that yet though.
i think doing manual chamfers is not an option anymore unless there realy is no other way to achieve your shape nondestructively.
pros of opensubdiv:
-faster then turbosmooth
-can manually adjust bevel strenght per edge
-should be transferable between applications
pros of turbosmooth:
-actually none i gues
a feature that would realy hit it out of the park for me would be if you could adjust not only edgeweight, but also vertexweight.
kinda hard to illustrate what im talking about though, might have to take some screenshots.
also if anyone from autodesk or a capable scripter reads this:
it would be very awesome if you were able to select edges by the assigned crease value. when you want to tweak the creases on a model there is no way to just select the edges that have a creasevalue > 0
such a function would certainly be very usefull and timesaving.
I allows vertex weights, but I don't see a use for it. The vertex just becomes super pointy and it creates a spike when you move it away.
Regarding automated smoothing: It works for TS pro too, it can set a fixed crease level for edges between smoothing groups, just like double TS does. There's no need to pick edges and assign crease values.
uh nice that sounds usefull.
regarding the vertexweight, it should check the edges that are connected to the vertex for creasevalues and only use the vertexweight for those edges.
Regarding this: I believe the new creasecontrol modifier in max 2015 allows this, watch some of the videos on the autodesk page.
Then again, the autodesk implementation doesn't seem to use smoothing groups for some odd reason, which means you must use edges for creases. Pretty cumbersome if you ask me.
isn't it the same?
[ame="
Not really what I mean. I mean being able to create shapes with edge weighting to control their shapes and them mash them together with MeshFusion. At the moment, you have to use subd meshes.
It would be a lot faster to be able to just grab faces/edges, change weights, and tweak your boolean results that way.