Metaball Modeling

ralusek

I have no idea why I've never tried this before, it's really fun. I was just messing around at first, but now I'm starting to enjoy myself.

It's not revolutionary or anything, especially if you have access to Zsketch, but you do have a lot of control. I'm gonna put a timelapse up later, because I think it's rad.

Anybody use this?

ralusek

alright here is an example. after playing around with this, i decided i'm gonna include it in my next tutorial briefly, because there are a lot of interesting functions worth noting. here is the basic principle though:

[ame]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vGapGt25U3U[/ame]

don't know why i've never seen it

Slum

Looks like it generates a rather unusable topology (for sculpting anyway). I suppose you could use this for blocking -> retopo -> sculpt. but at that point, might as well use zbrush anyway?

ralusek

not a new feature nope, it's actually really old. i just don't hear about people using it. metaballs are primarily used for effects, from what i understand, things like lava lamps or amoebas, just weird stuff.

and slum, the topology isn't useless at all, it's actually pretty comparable to zbrush's unified skins. i just tried sculpting on a few of them and it works totally fine. but yes, the principle is that if you need to, you just retopo right after, it's just a cool way of concepting.

i'm making another video showing how you can make tubes and scale them etc, because it's a lot more effective than just messing around with the balls

Willburforce

meatballs? zbrush does this surely?

Vrav

That looks pretty useful, always meant to try it out. I imagine a mesh created using metaballs, then triangulated (or even decimated in MeshLab), would import and sculpt great in Sculptris, which is triangle-based and generates geometry dynamically.

In fact, I am going to perform said makeshift workflow, and anticipate much rejoicing. Mm, meatballs...!

hijak

yes i used that back in in the day, like 2000 2001 and at the time i used to to simulate water in blender. glad to see they still have that feature they are quite useful for effects, and they could be a good way to mass out meshes. Especially for things like creatures etc. Surprised i have not seen them in more apps. at the time when they came out they where considered quite cool.

ralusek

i remember messing around with them around that time in milkshape, or some ghetto program like that, but never tried modeling with them. they are definitely random

yiannisk

That's what i call time traveling and actually this feature is pretty cool.
But since people use other more natural sculpting methods it was abandoned i guess.

This is also available in other applications.
Houdini has such tool, cinema4d, max (although very crappy, blobMesh)... (i'm not sure about maya or xsi but probably they do too)

There was a really sweet plugin metaReyes which you would actually simulate the entire muscular structure of the body, skin it, and they would even behave as muscles.. but in general this technology was abandoned as it would generate very heavy meshes that machines couldn't handle back then.

http://www.reyes-infografica.com/imagen/meta/screen/meta01a.jpg
Perhaps now it's time to bring them back i'm sure production guys would love it as it generated very realistic skin with underlying deformable musculature that you could link on your skeleton!

This was such a sweet line of tools, (free now for VERY old versions of max) i used dirtyReyes a lot to simulate ambient occlusion, but i haven't heard of them for many years.


also clay studio from digimation.
http://www.digimation.com/home/Software.aspx?sm=ds

now offered for free up to max 2008.

you might want to play around

Progg

I've been using metaballs in Houdini for 3-4 years for particles sim's... etc. but never for modeling. *shrugs* I hate the thought of having to model again procedurally in Houdini

yiannisk

i think at some point they tried to make things more artist friendly changed the way viewports behaved.. they even had character modeling competitions etc. but...

AlecMoody

I tried this in truespace like 10 years ago. I think they are giving that software away now since its so bad.

Neox

yiannisk wrote: »

But since people use other more natural sculpting methods it was abandoned i guess.

zsketch is just metaballs so i guess we have a rivival here

pior

I love metaballs. I always hoped they would be brought back to life somehow ...
Organica FTW!

http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v242/pior_ubb/organibird_002.png

yiannisk

ah yes organica too!

see the problem back then was dense meshes. with the advancement of hardware and on directX 11 supporting tessellation.. modeling workflows for games might change to something like the above!

if you have followed the progress on tessellation technology, you might actually see that the way they are going Normal maps might just have been "a solution of the moment"

i have placed a link in this thread.
if you are not aware of what tessellation in games means you might want to take a look here:
http://boards.polycount.net/showthread.php?t=71128

all the way to the bottom

stay tuned

DarthNater

Ah man, I remember playing with metaballs. I used to have Amorphium back in like 2000 and that's the only way I knew how to model things :P That is actually a pretty fun program to mess around in.

pior

I dunno yian I have absolutely no faith in that tessellation thing. It looks impressive on videos like that but once you put it in the perspective of real production constraints it just doesn't work. Maybe for terrain, but that's it.

I could maaaaybe see it working for edge weighting, but even this would be extremely limiting and sometimes just not working. Then again just my opinion.

That goes back to my main pet peeve when it comes to game art. Tech solutions being seen as 'the next big thing' but not properly weighted against real-life art production constraints. Id rather make the most out of current tech rather than hoping that a new graphics revolution will happen. That's why I think ID is a leader in that field. They don't try to reinvent the wheel, they just shift paradigms slightly, basically improving a current tech or art pipeline.

Ex : doom3, normalmaps : they suck if baked in a different app, so lets have them baked in the engine instead. Rage : megatexture, freeing up an existing constraint instead of inventing crazy new stuff. These guys are smart!

ralusek

organica looks interesting, sort of likes Curvy 3d or whatever, another odd program.

but ya, really the only reason i think these are interesting is because of zbrush's hd sculpting. if i'm gonna export one of these after fleshing out a concept, the topology isn't hugely important. i think this tool would be a lot more limiting if you had to finish it off without hd available.

yiannisk

pior what you are saying is true.

but
have you tried it ? or seen it working?
(i am soon goin to find out first hand..)

there's nothing wrong with generating normal maps in the engine.
in fact why not if they provide you with the tools?
unity does that too! sweet engine btw.
the engine makes them exactly how it needs them.
also you got to admit megatextures are amazing. (unless that is what you meant )

remember work is not supposed to be hard. it has to be smart.
as for why some technologies don't pick up.. well...

there are so many reasons why something like that wouldn't pick up even if it was the best thing in the world.

sprunghunt

I remember building human beings with metareyes before zbrush came along:

http://www.reyes-infografica.com/freeplug/index.php

it's a similar sort of system but you can make non-spherical elements which it uses to generate the skin from. It's almost like the system PDI used for shrek.

Metaballs aren't useless though. You can animate them and use them to create all kinds of effects for water and other fluids.

Vrav

Couldn't bother with Organica, but I did whip up a nice basemesh for Sculptris using Blender's meta objects... just had to triangulate it and merge verts within 0.1 or whatever of each other, wound up with some very clean topology.

Works for me... nevermind that they're not finished,



Seems like the next update of Sculptris is going to feature bump and colour painting (with alpha brushes), which will cover the small details like texture and stitches etc. Or nose pores.

ScoobyDoofus

Yeah, I remember organica being the shizzle! 3D Coat voxels, Zbrush Zsketch, Sculptris, etc. these days we are a bit spoiled for choice in initial mesh creation methodologies, but in my experience nothing still beats Zbrush/Mudbox brute force sculpting or clean & precise SDS modeling.

I've been evangelizing 3D Coat for a bit now, but its frankly still not quite ready for prime-time in my opinion as its too easy to cock-up your sculpt while just trying to add details or move masses.

iggie

Curvy 3D is like meta-balls but you draw the 'balls' any shape you like so you end up only needing a few to make quite a complex shape (And it is very fast to draw them!). Once again the actual meta-remeshing produces a nice even surface for hi-poly sculpting.