animated sculpting

[SMcQ]

What I'm requesting here is direct animation within volumetric sculpting, not animation rigging of the mesh conversion. I don't know how this could be done, but I've tried various metaball programs and found them lacking.

An example application: growth of a tree or a tumor. Trees mature by apical growth; that is, the trunk and limbs build length without stretching, while the limb girth increases in place. If you hammer a nail into a young tree, then come back in 5 years, the nail will be at the same height but partially enveloped. In 20 years the trunk will have completely enveloped the nail. If you took a time lapse of a tree over 20 years of its growth, it would seem as if there were an invisible tree template that the maturing tree was growing into, the limbs snaking along the template paths and getting fatter. A tree does not enlarge, it fills out, and it drops limbs. The kinks in a mature limb are places where branches have dropped or broken off.

All this could be animated using volumetric sculpting, I am sure, but haven't a clue how it could be set up. Keyframing? Morphing? Progressively filling out a template?

Another example application: landscape formation processes. A landslide, a volcano growing and blowing off its side, a timelapse of fault movement, an extreme timelapse (over eons) of mountain formation.

An artistic example: an alternative to mesh morphing, where the alteration added volume and details by obvious growth of mass, not just stretching. Think of horns growing out of a devil's head.

Maybe too much to ask for, but it would be cool.

EDIT:

Actually, I'm playing with the VS now for the first time, version 41, and the spike tool grows just like a tree limb. The trick to animating a tree growth would be to have several spikes active, and keyframe their simultaneous progress.

SMcQ

[SonK]

umm, not to be a buzz kill..but don't you think asking for key frame animation in such a dedicated sculpting/painting application abit, far out? :P

Alot of things would be cool but you have to ask yourself are they practical for production?

[philnolan3d]

Agreed, That sounds cool, but I think Andrew should (and wants to) focus on painting and sculpting.

[geo_n]

I think making 3dc do all things 3d is making it bloatware. Andrew should concentrate more on performance and voxel with practical use outside of 3dc which is voxel simplification. Another urgent feature was to paint on low poly non subd models. 3dc will lose customers if adobe makes cs4 better since now it can paint directly on 3d models even if it sucks in the current version.

[SMcQ]

I don't know why there's all the worry. This hostility toward brainstorming seems odd. A request is a request, not a demand. I have no power over Andrew, and he's a practical guy. It's an unconventional concept, sure, and maybe something that would not be in high demand until used creatively to produce exciting results. I broach it to Andrew because if anyone could do it >eventually< it would be Andrew. There's nothing to be gained by censoring ideas. Andrew knows how to focus. Trust him.

[SonK]

I don't know why there's all the worry. This hostility toward brainstorming seems odd. A request is a request, not a demand. I have no power over Andrew, and he's a practical guy. It's an unconventional concept, sure, and maybe something that would not be in high demand until used creatively to produce exciting results. I broach it to Andrew because if anyone could do it >eventually< it would be Andrew. There's nothing to be gained by censoring ideas. Andrew knows how to focus. Trust him.

I am sorry that you feel the replies were hostile. Its quite normal to get a reply when you post in a forum(shocker) It happens to everyone, believe it or not. Anyway, IMO 3DC is meant to be part of a pipeline, not the pipeline itself, so keyframe animation support(which is not trivial to implement) is out of the scope of application.

[SMcQ]

Thank you for making my point! I do think it self evident that the replies, including your most recent one, are hostile to new ideas that you seem to fear will knock the development progress off kilter. I think such fears underestimate Andrew. He will choose wisely the allocation of his genius. Meantime, we lose out if we practice self censorship of creativity or shout down the ideas that anyone thinks will distract Andrew. A forum is for sharing, not dominance.

You should bear in mind that I have no suggested timeline for this proposal. I expect it could not be done until voxel sculpting is mature and stable. "Someday" is soon enough for me.

There is somewhat of a precedent for keyframed voxels-type animation. The metaballs modelers I am familiar with, a very limited sample, have some keyframing capability built into the programs of which they are a part. There are 3rd party plugins that use the keyframing capability of the host application. These all use marching cubes meshes. If there are standards for keyframing across platforms, then the voxel modeler perhaps without much trouble could generate the data that various programs would need in their metaball type modelers.

Another approach would be to morph between incommensurate meshes, which I've heard can be done by some applications.

It would be fun to get a constructive riff going on using the 3D Coat voxel modeler to paint animation.

SMcQ

[Mantis]

I'm joining Sonk and all others, I think your proposal is a nonsense, that's not about self censorship that's just about common sense.

There are plenty of room in the current stage to allow your imagination to find some crazy tool who would help.

And that's not about disturbing Andrew, but right now we are talking about volumetric sculpting (VS) tools even retopologising tools are delayed because of this.

So it will just make a lost post, because if 3DCoat will take this in account it will probably be in many months.

At the end we are just saving your time

And I think that the current field of 3DCoat is large enough to be creative about proposal, there painting tools,

Uvs Tools, Retopology Tools, Sculpting tools, all of them can be perfected, so what's the point by making the list longer?

[SMcQ]

if 3DCoat will take this in account it will probably be in many months.

At the end we are just saving your time

It's not about saving time, its about making possible something that can't be done now, something that people will want when they see it.

We are all going to be happy with the outcome, eventually. You all will get what you want first. (I want it too.) And then, only after refining the tools in his current set to the satisfaction of the user base, will Andrew will turn to the challenge of keyframing the voxel sculptor. I have as much confidence in his judgment as I do his skill.

Keyframe animation is really a natural extension of the technology. View the screen animations recently posted and imagine the ability to keyframe them as exportable morphs.

http://www.3d-coat.com/v3_voxel_sculpting.html

It was never my intention to get anyone riled up, by the way. So I'll abstain from any further replies to this thread. The majority opinion is clear, but it will change.