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Hard Mesh for Maya it`s OUT

interpolator
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LaurentiuN interpolator
ITS OUT lol, and i dont use maya :( please make it for max to :D

http://www.hard-mesh.com/

https://youtu.be/R0Ytc-TeOGM

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  • pmiller001
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    pmiller001 greentooth
    hooray!
    this is excellent news.
  • Bal
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    Bal polycounter lvl 17
    Looks pretty cool, $450 is a bit steep though.
    Gonna give it a try as soon as possible.
  • skyline5gtr
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    skyline5gtr polycounter lvl 9
    That is super expensive plus adding MAYA cost on top, MODO seems like a better option
  • LaurentiuN
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    LaurentiuN interpolator
    That is super expensive plus adding MAYA cost on top, MODO seems like a better option

    Yes, modo seems a better option in this case.
  • Add3r
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    Add3r polycounter lvl 11
    As awesome as the toolset is, and as excited as I was to see this finally go publicly accessible.... That price is just absurd for anything other than a large company. At that point, I think a lot of the professionals in the industry will not see the cost worth the learning curve and pain in the ass it would be to get corporate to get you a license in the first place.

    Make it accessible with a freelancer or cheaper, more non-corporate artist friendly, and I could see this getting 10x the sales. I am sure it was a lot of work to get the plugin ready for the public, but we as artists already have so many tools (free ones to boot) that we are comfortable with.
  • onionhead_o
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    onionhead_o polycounter lvl 16
    definitely too pricey
  • Jonas Ronnegard
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    Jonas Ronnegard polycount sponsor
    well I think it would be even harder to get your company to buy this, not sure how I would
    get them to buy a 400$ plugin.

    well hope they go back to the drawing board with their sales tactics
    because I'm pretty sure they would be bathing in money if it was around 100$
  • Brian "Panda" Choi
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    Brian "Panda" Choi high dynamic range
    Yeah, that price is too high for anything but studios.
  • throttlekitty
    well I think it would be even harder to get your company to buy this, not sure how I would
    get them to buy a 400$ plugin.

    well hope they go back to the drawing board with their sales tactics
    because I'm pretty sure they would be bathing in money if it was around 100$

    I agree.

    It looks really nice, but not at the price, and it looks like a lot of undo+test. Probably too heavy to keep in a history node that you can keep tweaking, unless there's a video that demonstrates this? It's hard to say since there's no single feature rundown video.

    It also looks like it really kills any idea of going back to make big changes on a complex model. Like changing the size of a cylinder cut-in that sits before and after other boolean edits* + possible post tweaks after you're mostly done and have a change request.

    *Unless you can actually do this, or at least reapply each using the same settings as they had before. Again, lack of good demonstration here.

    But it does go entirely in Maya, and looks cleaner than the Maya+ZBrush boolean/dynamesh workflow.
  • tsungyuw
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    tsungyuw polycounter lvl 8
    good for a quick concept art, still need lots work for production,
    topology needs a lots of clean up. if you want to animate later...:poly124:
  • LaurentiuN
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    LaurentiuN interpolator
    Seems like they updated to version 2, and the price list, 100 eur for basic license and 300 for full license and 30 days trial.
    Looks really nice. 

    I posted this idea on 3ds max forums, please vote it here -> https://forums.autodesk.com/t5/3ds-max-ideas/hard-mesh-for-3ds-max-real-time-boolean-operations-with-chamfers/idi-p/6914928


  • OccultMonk
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    OccultMonk interpolator
    Please mail them with a request to make this for 3ds max. If it works for Maya, it should not be impossible to transfer a part of the code.
    Or is there someone who could make something like this? 
  • low odor
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    low odor polycounter lvl 17
    Not as fancy...but this seems to be a free alternative

    https://www.artstation.com/artwork/laWOo
  • R3D
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    R3D interpolator
    Very cool, but yikes that price eh.
  • sacboi
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    sacboi high dynamic range

    Yeah echoing the general price point sentiment but considering ADSK's aggressive "Marketing" policy in terms of 'optimising' their product line profit margin of late, I mean quite honestly at the end of the day couldn't have come as any great surprise.

    I also remember reading the initial beta testing results blogged by the dev (...independent I think?!) from memory around the 4th quarter 2014 or there a bout's. In my opinion looked fairly fleshed out even then! so I guess ADSK waited until most of the primary stability issues were ironed out before "hopefully?" purchasing the software accordingly at an commensurate sum. On the outside (non-Autodesk user) a nice addition too your toolbox however again carries a sting in it's tail that'll typically be felt by the indie/hobbyist crowd :(         

  • beefaroni
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    beefaroni sublime tool
    low odor said:
    Not as fancy...but this seems to be a free alternative

    https://www.artstation.com/artwork/laWOo
    These are nothing alike

  • OccultMonk
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    OccultMonk interpolator

    It should be possible to implement this in 3ds max (using a lot of the already existing features). The code should:

    1.            Use the Existing Booleans features of 3dsmax (for example the new Bool 3)

    2.            Cut a strip where the meshes intersect of a variable width in both meshes.

    3.            Create a 'chamfer' strip between the parts of the geometry

                    (this strip should have an adjustable 'loop count/tension/chamfer hardness. (And average of topology of both sides)

    4.            Connect the gaps on both sides of the new strip topology with topology that connects the meshes with the strip.

     

     https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCysh63BciDmy2vc3rA0EXsQ/videos

    (They basically explain how it works in the videos)

    http://www.hard-mesh.com/http://www.hard-mesh.com/



  • OccultMonk
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    OccultMonk interpolator
    Please vote for implementation of soft blending between booleans on the 3dsmax ideas forum.
    Every major package is getting this functionality: Maya (HardMesh), Modo (Meshfusion), Lightwave

    VOTE HERE PLEASE - 3ds Max Ideas Forum:
    Soft blending between boolean meshes like Modo Meshfusion


  • OccultMonk
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    OccultMonk interpolator
    I emailed the creators of Hardmesh about a 3ds max version of plugin. They say their code is portable and they consider 3ds max the first candidate. Please mail them with some encouragement ;-)

    "Thank you so much for the interest in Hard Mesh! You are not the first one that wants a 3d max version, along with other softwares.  At the moment we have our core that is cross platform, and software indipendent so we could really make a version for 3d max. Even if everythig is made to be portable the effort for creating a version for another software is not so little, so it will take some time. After the release of the mac and linux versions we will look more seriously in the porting to 3d max that it will be for sure the first software to look at for a porting."

  • LaurentiuN
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    LaurentiuN interpolator
    I already e-mailed them when it was in beta like 5 years ago :))
  • throttlekitty

    It should be possible to implement this in 3ds max (using a lot of the already existing features). The code should:

    1.            Use the Existing Booleans features of 3dsmax (for example the new Bool 3)

    2.            Cut a strip where the meshes intersect of a variable width in both meshes.

    3.            Create a 'chamfer' strip between the parts of the geometry

                    (this strip should have an adjustable 'loop count/tension/chamfer hardness. (And average of topology of both sides)

    4.            Connect the gaps on both sides of the new strip topology with topology that connects the meshes with the strip.

     

     https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCysh63BciDmy2vc3rA0EXsQ/videos

    (They basically explain how it works in the videos)

    http://www.hard-mesh.com/http://www.hard-mesh.com/



    I toyed with the demo for Hard Mesh for a while, it's quite nice and intuitive- it's basically an extension to the boolean workflow with some smart code. One feature I liked was that you set the output sub-d levels per-operation in something like a layer stack. So you start with a relatively low base mesh and cut some cuboids from that, then step it up a level or two to get some bonus edges for adding cylinders or whatever. The method definitely favors very high poly models in the end, and it seemed set up to be able to pull something resembling your base mesh + boolean inputs but I couldn't get that to work.

    Anyway, the part I wanted to mention is that as it is now, the chamfer strip doesn't care too much about your topology.I really ought to have taken pictures, my demo time is up. It has some adjustment sliders, but I found the geo rarely lined up, it's more like it's creating points along a curve on either side of the strip. Corners in particular got butchered. This is where going high poly basically saves it by simply having more geo to cover the oddities it makes. I found that it started lagging too much to work comfortably with a high mesh with many live booleans going, maybe if I had spent more time I could have worked it smarter- hard to say. Now that I think back on it, I think it cleans stray edges automagically, I don't remember having to scout for issues while I bashed things around (it just works??).

    Cool plugin and workflow and a bit unstable, but I think I'd still rather go a CAD route for any super serious omg such detail sort of hard surface work.
  • OccultMonk
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    OccultMonk interpolator
    Cool plugin and workflow and a bit unstable, but I think I'd still rather go a CAD route for any super serious omg such detail sort of hard surface work.
    What CAD Program would you advise? I have used Autodesk Fusion 360 before. MoI3D? / Rhino / Sketchup...

    So Hardmesh performs worse than Modo Meshfusion since it does quite a nice job of connecting the geometry. 
  • Aabel
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    Aabel polycounter lvl 6
    Fusion, done in Houdini Engine, this tool works in Maya:
  • rayle1112
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    rayle1112 polycounter lvl 6
    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-tC5YpTCpBE 
    If you just need boolean, Crease+ is a good alternative.  It's only $8.
  • LaurentiuN
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    LaurentiuN interpolator
    @rayle1112 that`s not the same, try on complex surface like in hardmesh plugin.
  • OccultMonk
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    OccultMonk interpolator
    Aabel said:
    Fusion, done in Houdini Engine, this tool works in Maya

     I thought 3dsmax also supported the Houdini engine. Can't that be used in 3ds max as well?
  • cptSwing
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    cptSwing polycounter lvl 11
    ^ Several of us have not gotten Houdini-in-Max to work, if I remember correctly.
  • kos88
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    kos88 polycounter lvl 7
    Hello guys,

    for those that are interested here is a quick preview of the upcoming free upgrade:

    ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

    Core:

    - Some stability fixes. A lot more coming soon!!

    Workflow:

    The workflow remains the same, but is more powerful.

    - Maya 2017 dockable window
    - New operators Stack, now displayed as a list with icons.
    - Delete any operator in the chain. Feel free to experiment even more without worrying if you want to delete something in between!
    - Bypass function: turn on and off the operations to try variant on your model. It's like having layers.
    - Automatic computation of visible elements: when you change the visibility of the operators, all the non relevant nodes are turned off, giving you faster iterations also on very long chains!
    - Smarter color highlighting: when selecting an operator from the stack, the involved elements are highlighted.
    - Global compute, but per network: if you turn off the computations, they are off only on the current network of objects.
    - Shader Selection: choose between hard mesh default shader or select your own for the resulting meshes.
    - Isolate Elements: isolate the Hard Mesh elements when working on them
    - Maya Layers no longer used. Internal layers on every connected object.
    - Activate UI from curve. Now by selecting a curve the UI is activated.
    - More coming soon!

    ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

    We are also almost ready to start the beta for Mac and Linux, if you are interested please contact me: costantino.fracas@pux-3d.com

    If you have doubts or questions about Hard Mesh I will be happy to answer!


    Cheers,
    Costantino
  • kos88
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    kos88 polycounter lvl 7
    sorry, double post :D
  • OccultMonk
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    OccultMonk interpolator
    @kos88 Please hurry with the 3ds max release :)  It's our only hope on integrated soft blended booleans! There is also no chance of a Houdini engine release in the foreseeable future for 3ds max. I emailed the developer. So Flux HDA will not work as opposed to Maya. Though support of FLUX HDA has been pulled temporarily due to performance problems inside Maya through Houdini Plugin. 
  • LaurentiuN
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    LaurentiuN interpolator
    @koss88 like @OccultMonk saied, we really need this for 3ds max, insta buy for me and many other when this gets into max.

  • onionhead_o
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    onionhead_o polycounter lvl 16
    seems like the main site is down, was gona check out the 2.2 version
  • Br0ken
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    Br0ken polycounter lvl 3
    By the way, they wrote in email that 3ds Max development is frozen for now.  :/
  • pOgOstyle
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    pOgOstyle polycounter lvl 8
    Well, 2.2 looks very promising on the Vimeochannel.
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