3dSoftware which one?
polycounter lvl 7
Hi guys may be there was topic for disscusion but which package choose
main goal for fast creation and manipulation polygonal objects
Like Softimage with 3point manipulation tool
I see some Video about Cinema 4d but dont know its worth to use or SI the best? and yeah me need some package for tweak and fix to my mesh for zbrush
right now I'm using Siftimage and Zbrush but wtf SI dont have Shell its make me sad and its taking a lot of time for fix it Im trying use 3dmax but its to hard for me already :poly117:
so I wanted to ask who have more experence at this problem
main goal for fast creation and manipulation polygonal objects
Like Softimage with 3point manipulation tool
I see some Video about Cinema 4d but dont know its worth to use or SI the best? and yeah me need some package for tweak and fix to my mesh for zbrush
right now I'm using Siftimage and Zbrush but wtf SI dont have Shell its make me sad and its taking a lot of time for fix it Im trying use 3dmax but its to hard for me already :poly117:
so I wanted to ask who have more experence at this problem
Replies
In Softimage, Model--->Modify Poly. Mesh--->Apply Thickness, select the object, wait, choose the thickness you want.
SonicBlue ou man dont know that I still use old version dont know worth it jumping on last version because I heard only bad about SI and AD but anyway thanks man for tips ^_^
In older versions I just duplicated the polys I wanted to have thickness, inverted them and scaled them along their normals and bridged them. Thats basically what "Apply Thickness" Or "Shell" does.
If you know python you can make your own action for this and assign this to a button.
http://www.si-community.com/community/viewtopic.php?f=8&t=544&start=10
In this thread they mention Interactive Thickness and Move Normal, but from the example it looks like Move Normal is more reliable.
Shell is something I rarely need in 3ds or C4D, but you can achieve a shell by using "scale according to normals" or so in cinema, just hold shift and its extruding the stuff if im not mistaken.
I would not recommend cinema 4D as a program mainly for modeling, but by the lord, cinema 4D is a amazing suite and can compliment your workflows in so many ways.
The interface is fantastic, customizable and looks just like actual artists worked on it..., it does not crash 1/10th as often, it is a lot faster, (easily up to 100x in exporting highpoly stuff - 20mio tris took 10s in cinema and 15 minutes in 3DS, .obj)
it has many great modifiers to do all imaginable things with polys in a easy and convenient and nondestructive way, the integrated sculpting is atleast as good if not better than mudbox, (eraser brush!) and you have a 3d Painting suite with bodypaint, where you can use stuff like a 3D stamp tool to fix seams that were literally impossible in photoshop or else.
The modeling is decent, but loops are not as convenient as in 3ds and it takes a bunch longer to make it as precise as in 3ds, there are no real normal options and it cant export smoothing groups or such, and the UV tools cannot compete however, so I cannot recommend it for a game artists job as main tool.
I really love my C4D, they bring huge updates each year, and I hope I can use It as lone tool in the near future, but for now theres no way around 3DS as cinema user doing game art for your UVs, Smoothing groups and normals.
3DS is more or less the standard, it is fugly, buggy, crashes often and has the user experience of a drunken mule in a lavapit, but its sadly the way to go. The raw modeling and features are just very strong, and you very likely will need to use it in a company anyways, so I would recommend learning that. (not to forget, nearly all documentation is for 3ds)
But whatever suits you
Depends on the situation it's something you have to use at some points, I know that there are various solutions, like Split the polygons, do a Normal Move and then bridge the gaps, simply Extrude with Caps enabled or by using the ClothNURBS (now Cloth Surface), with subdivision set to 0 and Thickness, this is the less precise, but it's faster as you can edit its values and turn it off when you want.
He was already using Softimage|XSI so I suggested what I knew about it, despite being a Cinema 4D supporter myself
For modeling I find it very intuitive, CTRL+Drag to extrude faces/edges and separate vertices, also works for duplicating objects, increasing the workflow speed a lot, you can CTRL+RMB and drag to extend an axis of your manipulator, like the Y of the Scale Tool and make its operations more precise, you can do that in the Rotation Tool, to rotate with more precision, you can simply LMB it and extend but the rotation will start while you're dragging, making it less precise. You can deselect one or two axis to constraint and operation only to that specific axis, for example, you only keep X active and even if the object is not visible in the viewport at the the moment you can move it around without the needs of frame the view to it or simply because you don't to select the axis gizmo and want to move the object clicking where you want.
Probably you already know that, but there's people who's unaware of these functions, and as we are already talking about Cinema 4D, why don't mention its Navigation system with the Cursor as pivot, even if no object is selected you can click in any part and the rotation and dolly will focus on it, making navigating your scene much easier, actually the navigation of the other software will feel awkward.
You can set as many selections (Points, Edges, Polys) you want and save them (Clusters in XSI), so that you can recall a previous selection, you can even add or subtract them (Select/Deselect button).
The N~, M~ and U~ shortcut system, I mean, even if you can't remember a shortcut it will suggest you the ones available
The Object Manager (Outliner) is very clean and easy to read, keeping all your stuff well organized is not a problem, the Content Browser so that you can save your meshes/materials/textures and use them in other projects, you can even have multiple projects open at the same time, switching between them from the Window menu, so that you can copy assets from a project to another on the fly.
And then there's the Coordinate Manager, I haven't seen this in other software, but to know the distance between two points/edges, you just select them and it will give you the value, there is the Measure and Construction tool too, but this is very handy for quick precision works.
There are other stuff, but then this post will be too long and boring
Yeah, the Projection Painting can easily make you texture perfectly tiling too.
What did you mean with loops?
For the smoothing groups, yeah, but how the people with Maya or XSI do that? for example, in Maya you can set them to be either Smooth or Hard, XSI do the same thing, and Cinema 4D manage this by Breaking or Unbreaking the Phong Shading, none of them uses smoothing groups.
I don't like the UV tools neither.
I hope MAXON will bring to us a new BodyPaint engine with new UV mapping and improved painting performance, they already have improved the Sculpting module, with the Project Mesh tool for example, they need to make available the new Bake to non sculpted objects and add more maps to be generated, also a Dynamesh like option would be awesome.