Shiny things.
I got my FedEx tracking email for the second SoC payment today, thanks Google! Once I have the money, I'll be getting the rest of the components I need for a new computer, including a new Core 2 Duo. Mmm. Shiny things.
Experimentation with retopo painting continues. I hadn't originally planned to spend so much time on retopo, but I think that in many ways, it's a more important tool than multires. Thanks to a suggestion I received, I currently working on an ellipse tool that should make it easier to add edge loops around eyes and such.
Ach! I'd like more time to expand the tools, but a lot of that will just have to wait until post-SoC. In particular, I'd really like to redesign multires. I have a lot more confidence with Blender coding now, of course, and having already implemented multires once, I have a much better idea now of what works and what doesn't. I think it should be possible to make multires levels much more generic, so that each vertex and edge and face doesn't have to follow exactly the same subdivisional pattern. Right now, every level after the first one is entirely predictable in terms of its topology. This means, for example, you can't delete a subd level from the middle of the multires stack and it also makes it very difficult to handle partially subdividing the mesh.
One other (random) thought - the video of the Blender fluids demo from Siggraph (http://www.blendernation.com/2006/08/07/siggraph-fluid-demo/) is simply amazing.
layer based hiding
i've never really liked the z-brush style mesh partial visibility. Perhaps you could impliment something akin to the bone layers. One could add vertices to a layer and turn them off and on.
partial subdiv?
If you get this to work it would be .. just stunning. You should know that maya's subdivs go epileptic if you mod the topology after creating hierarchical edits. Discreet / Alias should be ashaimed.
partial subdiv?
If you get this to work it would be .. just stunning. You should know that maya's subdivs go epileptic if you mod the topology after creating hierarchical edits. Discreet / Alias should be ashaimed.
Hey, I've got deadlines to meet!
Dammit, how is a guy to get his deadlines met when there are all these new toys (sorry, tools) to play with.....and now talk of displacement mapping too! It's all very well to be creating these awesome new tools but what about some social responsibility! Next kids will be playing less ps2 and spending all their time on Blender!
neil
Awesome going. Retopo now
Awesome going.
Retopo now seems complete now you can rotate and draw. My only request now is that you can snap to the end of a line drawn with the line tool in the same way as you can snap to the end of a line drawn with the paint tool.
Keep up the great work!
Koba
Wow...so you're going to try
Wow...so you're going to try to implement partial subdivision? That would be one more amazingly cool feature on top of the already impressive improvements you've made to Blender. Keep it up!
I agree with Koba that having a way to join together different patches of a mesh that have been retopo'd would be really useful. Would it be too hard to figure out when a retopo paint stroke intersects with faces that have already been created by the retopo tool? That way, you could find the closest vertex to that intersection, and use it as one of the vertices for the newly generated faces. Previously painted patches could be quickly extended, or joined together. Of course, this might not work if there were a ton of vertices really close together, but I imagine that retopo would usually be used to create lower-density meshes so it wouldn't typically be a problem. I'll try to create a picture of what this might look like, if my explanation wasn't clear and if you think it sounds useful/interesting.
Thanks for putting so much time and effort into making this project great!
-Matt Bennett
zbrush doesn't allow you to
zbrush doesn't allow you to delete mid-res edits , and I don't think maya subdivs do either. if its an easy thing to add then great, but don't beat yourself up if its non-trivial!
if you're adding an ellipse option, then maybe other photoshop/mspaint type tools as well? rectangles, straight lines, ooooh, a polyline tool (as in the polygonal lasso tool in photoshop), the old curve tool from deluxe-paint...
First I would like to
First I would like to congratualte you on your excellent work!
I would just like to suggest a "straight line tool" to complement the ellipse tool. Essentially, like the elipse tool it would be nice to be able to see where the line is going to be and have the chance to adjust it before creating it (by letting go of the mouse button). Currently if your mouse slips, you will fail to get an intersection where you want it and then you have to start painting over again.
This is a really *essential tool* for retopo as it prevents accidents and after the ellipse tool shouldn't be too hard to implement!
There are a slew of other suggestions here: http://blenderartists.org/forum/showthread.php?t=71671&page=23
Finally, to allow topology generation around the mesh, I find myself painting some topology from one view, rotating the view, repainting the edges of the topology previously generated and extending from there. With care, the vertices from the two sets are close enough that I can "Remove doubles" to merge the patches - it would be nice if retopo could do this automatically.
Once again, great work!
Koba
amazing work
At least on my mac with the latest test build, your sculpt mode is far faster than z-brush. Amazing work. keep it up man.