Been playing with it a bit. It has issues here and there, but this looks like it's going to be absolutely killer for prototyping ideas and generating base meshes. Fast, smooth and works as advertised!
This might rain down hell on the weekly sub-d challenge thread. :P
This may convince me to drop 2 grand on Modo and the plugin...but I need to see these high poly models baked down to a normal map with no artifacts for me to be sold.
This may convince me to drop 2 grand on Modo and the plugin...but I need to see these high poly models baked down to a normal map with no artifacts for me to be sold.
Makes me wonder if this will work with Modo Steam Edition... Because that's only $149 for those who don't yet have Modo! I'm not sure if Steam Edition is a full version though :P
@Drew++, nope. Will only work with Modo 701 service pack 4 which was just relased today. And according to Brad, the modo co-founder, even if you buy full version of Modo 801 later on you'll still have to buy mesh fusion as a separate plug-in.
Quack! - They're just meshes in the end so they bake as well as any other geometry.
I figured as much, but I was looking at their wireframes in one of the videos and the topology at some connections was very funky. I wasn't sure of the accuracy of it all. It would just be nice to see a fully baked version of a relatively complex mesh.
That might sound a little off-topic but ... I would love to know how the 3D "sketch" of the red helmet (seen at the beginning of the second video) was made in the first place, as it really is the base of the design and seems to have been done in another environment allowing for some very good boolean operations too. Maybe Groboto ? Ore some powerful CAD program ?)
(Also I cannot help but feel a bit annoyed when someone refers to a fully rendered 3D image or a painfully airbrushed 2D painting and calls it a "sketch". I find it oddly condescending. Sorry for the off-topic mini-rant, just had to mention it !!)
I think I *somehow* understand where it is coming from now : probably the assumption that something that looks "cool" must have been "effortless" and therefore must have been done fast, like a "sketch". It's still very weird tho, and a bit similar to artists bragging about how fast they work without reference, or calling their own complex paintings "quick sketches". It's as if hard work was something to be ashamed of. Odd !
Anyways - sorry for the rant again !
I cannot wait to see more MeshFusion examples that do not look like child-like boolean mashups ; that is to say, more stuff like that helmet and less toy planes made from spheres
Can a Meshfusion object be easily edited after the fact, with things like FFDs or control cages ?
I think I *somehow* understand where it is coming from now : probably the assumption that something that looks "cool" must have been "effortless" and therefore must have been done fast, like a "sketch". It's still very weird tho, and a bit similar to artists bragging about how fast they work without reference, or calling their own complex paintings "quick sketches". It's as if hard work was something to be ashamed of. Odd !
Anyways - sorry for the rant again !
I cannot wait to see more MeshFusion examples that do not look like child-like boolean mashups ; that is to say, more stuff like that helmet and less toy planes made from spheres
Can a Meshfusion object be easily edited after the fact, with things like FFDs or control cages ?
Looks like you will be in complete control of the mesh both before and after mesh fusion. Once you convert it to a regular polygon object you can use anything you like to edit it (like ffds). But from the looks of the tools inside of modo you can ffd pieces it while it's being meshed together.
Also the density of the object is something you define by how dense your "cutter" meshes are. By increasing the density of your objects that cut into or add together you will increase the accuracy of the shape and get rid of any artifacts.
I played around with it a bit tonight, and it's really cool. There were some limitations I ran into that I would need some more time to figure out what was going on. You can see there are some minor holes in my meshes where I let the strips from different cutter/union meshes get too close. I tried to add another torus to the back circular element and it was freaking out on me. It could be that I need to change the way some of the operands (i think that;s the word) are ordered.
Yeah, you can use modo's falloffs to manipulate the cutters and you can extrude sections of the cutters or do any other modeling operation.
I've got to hit the hay, but if you all have any questions I can try and help answer them.
This plugin really looks sweet! I am not Modo user but I think I might become one very soon.
All depends what will Autodesk bring on the table this year in 2015 releases.
With founding modeling team in Maya last year that followed with modeling toolkit and announcing openSubdivs (which, in my opinion, might bring new array of modeling tools), AD bought themselves another year.
Another quick test to see how feeding meshes to ZRemesher/DecimationMaster works out. Pretty well, it turns out! And this is all button clicking with default options ... no guides or sliders necessary.
I've got to ask, what's the topology look like at intersections? How do the fillets behave in terms of polygon flow? Is there any chance that using a bit of clever setup and ingenuity you could get a perfectly quad-ed mesh out of mesh fusion? From a few of the videos I saw it looks like you'll need to retopologize after freezing the mesh.
I also have a question - I know there's a whole thread dedicated to Modo, but wondered how the modeling is compared to Max? I've been using Maya for years but mainly do modeling/texturing and hardly do any rigging or animation, so would prefer something more modeling focused.
The meshes generally look great for baking. You won't want to use them as game geometry but the smoothing is set up perfectly and the edges are great most of the time.
The strips that form the connections between meshes are often NOT perfectly stitched to the geo around them which means once you freeze the mesh you probably don't want to futz with it too much or you'll break your smoothing and/or introduce little cracks and seams.
Basically, it creates great geo for baking from ... not geo that you'd want to actually work with afterwards. It gets cleaner if you use ZBrush to ZRemesher it up but still ... you need to think of the output from MeshFusion as baking fodder.
IMO anyway. And that's not a problem, that's what I intend to use it for...
Modeling in Modo as compared to Max goes something like:
- no FFDs
- no splines
- no modifier stack
However, Modo works better in a lot of ways and the app has advantages like being easily customizable (hot keys, forms, pie menus, macros, scripts, etc) and not looking like an application developed 15 years ago. :P
I have been interested in trying Modo for awhile, and this plugin does many things that I've been wishing for the past couple of years. It's too bad modo doesn't have a low cost non-commercial license available.
I do wonder with the advancements in auto-topo if we won't see "nicer" topology in the future for this plugin. Would probably take a ton of processing power, but perhaps it could create curves on the fly from intersections and use those to route topology similar to zremesher or 3d coat.
@Torch, you can render curves into polys and there are also a tube tool and an editable spline tool (bezier, linear, pen) that can do those tubular connections in your posts video.
Major difference with Max is it's not live and editable after "dropping" the tool or switching to another tool. In Max you can fatten or poly reduce a spline tube anytime unless you flatten your stack.
In modo, it'll be a pain tweaking your hoses or cables. You'd probably just let zbrush do your tubes if you have zbrush and modo.
Not my wires, but a quick shot of someone elses. A sphere subtracted from a cylinder. You can see the edge strips it lays in pretty clearly. Those strips are also changeable at any time so you can tweak the size, the tightness, and other things.
WarrenM I totally agree but i am currently just testing out Modo at work to see if it is something I would switch to. Was hoping to try the plug in to see if I will use it over other things. I am sure I would but 300 is a bit steep for guess work.
@Jesse Moody, i got pretty much comfortable with Modo after less than 5 days in it, looks like i will be only using it for modeling from now on. The only drawback is that Modo will be sluggish and slow with some meshes.
The days of spontaneous hard surface doodles are upon us.
I'm glad I learned Modo last year, being a Max/Maya user it did take a while to get used to Modo's conventions, and I hated most of the default settings.
That being said, if you take your time and customize it(and install a few scripts), it become one beast of a modelling package. Will try that plugin soon and hope that comes natively in 801(and hope the price doesnt skyrocket).
The days of spontaneous hard surface doodles are upon us.
I'm glad I learned Modo last year, being a Max/Maya user it did take a while to get used to Modo's conventions, and I hated most of the default settings.
That being said, if you take your time and customize it(and install a few scripts), it become one beast of a modelling package. Will try that plugin soon and hope that comes natively in 801(and hope the price doesnt skyrocket).
Pfff. The better fix damn axis conversion for FBX export ;/
Sorry for rant, but because of that small issue I just can't force my self to learn modo properly ;/.
Other than that, plugin is mind boggling. It will definitely make modelling in mode even better than before.
Pfff. The better fix damn axis conversion for FBX export ;/
Sorry for rant, but because of that small issue I just can't force my self to learn modo properly ;/.
Other than that, plugin is mind boggling. It will definitely make modelling in mode even better than before.
Yeah, Modo still has some cringeworthy shortcomings, but it is getting better, hopefully.
Replies
[vv]85143355[/vv]
[vv]85143356[/vv]
Pixo gives Zremesher in return for Modo's quick posing tools which is much quicker and intuitive than it's IK-less TransposeMaster.
This might rain down hell on the weekly sub-d challenge thread. :P
And that's all fully adjustable, editable (down to the face/edge/vert level), real time. I'm blown away.
Plus, you can tweak the chamfers at the connection points in real time, whenever you like.
Makes me wonder if this will work with Modo Steam Edition... Because that's only $149 for those who don't yet have Modo! I'm not sure if Steam Edition is a full version though :P
I figured as much, but I was looking at their wireframes in one of the videos and the topology at some connections was very funky. I wasn't sure of the accuracy of it all. It would just be nice to see a fully baked version of a relatively complex mesh.
oh snap
(Also I cannot help but feel a bit annoyed when someone refers to a fully rendered 3D image or a painfully airbrushed 2D painting and calls it a "sketch". I find it oddly condescending. Sorry for the off-topic mini-rant, just had to mention it !!)
And yeah, Pior, I understand what you mean. It is a bit condescending calling that a sketch when it looks like a full blown illustration on its own.
Anyways - sorry for the rant again !
I cannot wait to see more MeshFusion examples that do not look like child-like boolean mashups ; that is to say, more stuff like that helmet and less toy planes made from spheres
Can a Meshfusion object be easily edited after the fact, with things like FFDs or control cages ?
Looks like you will be in complete control of the mesh both before and after mesh fusion. Once you convert it to a regular polygon object you can use anything you like to edit it (like ffds). But from the looks of the tools inside of modo you can ffd pieces it while it's being meshed together.
Also the density of the object is something you define by how dense your "cutter" meshes are. By increasing the density of your objects that cut into or add together you will increase the accuracy of the shape and get rid of any artifacts.
Yeah, you can use modo's falloffs to manipulate the cutters and you can extrude sections of the cutters or do any other modeling operation.
I've got to hit the hay, but if you all have any questions I can try and help answer them.
All depends what will Autodesk bring on the table this year in 2015 releases.
With founding modeling team in Maya last year that followed with modeling toolkit and announcing openSubdivs (which, in my opinion, might bring new array of modeling tools), AD bought themselves another year.
I know people praise Modo for its modeling tools but after seeing stuff in Max like renderable curve or plugins like this: [ame="
The strips that form the connections between meshes are often NOT perfectly stitched to the geo around them which means once you freeze the mesh you probably don't want to futz with it too much or you'll break your smoothing and/or introduce little cracks and seams.
Basically, it creates great geo for baking from ... not geo that you'd want to actually work with afterwards. It gets cleaner if you use ZBrush to ZRemesher it up but still ... you need to think of the output from MeshFusion as baking fodder.
IMO anyway. And that's not a problem, that's what I intend to use it for...
- no FFDs
- no splines
- no modifier stack
However, Modo works better in a lot of ways and the app has advantages like being easily customizable (hot keys, forms, pie menus, macros, scripts, etc) and not looking like an application developed 15 years ago. :P
I do wonder with the advancements in auto-topo if we won't see "nicer" topology in the future for this plugin. Would probably take a ton of processing power, but perhaps it could create curves on the fly from intersections and use those to route topology similar to zremesher or 3d coat.
http://community.thefoundry.co.uk/tv/training/view.aspx?id=689
Major difference with Max is it's not live and editable after "dropping" the tool or switching to another tool. In Max you can fatten or poly reduce a spline tube anytime unless you flatten your stack.
In modo, it'll be a pain tweaking your hoses or cables. You'd probably just let zbrush do your tubes if you have zbrush and modo.
Warren: Wires!
/dismiss Adam
not that Ive been able to work out
http://community.thefoundry.co.uk/discussion/topic.aspx?f=9&t=84109&page=0
The days of spontaneous hard surface doodles are upon us.
I'm glad I learned Modo last year, being a Max/Maya user it did take a while to get used to Modo's conventions, and I hated most of the default settings.
That being said, if you take your time and customize it(and install a few scripts), it become one beast of a modelling package. Will try that plugin soon and hope that comes natively in 801(and hope the price doesnt skyrocket).
But this is a killer for me:
Is there nothing comparable to FFDs in Modo? Some kind of control cage to slap on top of polygon selections or models?
Pfff. The better fix damn axis conversion for FBX export ;/
Sorry for rant, but because of that small issue I just can't force my self to learn modo properly ;/.
Other than that, plugin is mind boggling. It will definitely make modelling in mode even better than before.
Yeah, Modo still has some cringeworthy shortcomings, but it is getting better, hopefully.