Sketch tool not doing what I expect

[Chilton Webb]

Hi,

I've tried this in the latest beta (4.7.24). 

When I use the Sketch tool and add a mask of a structure I want to build (see enclosed), I get edges around the masked bits, but they aren't filled. How do I fill those? If I make the white areas smaller, it fills them, or if I make them contiguous, it fills them, but not like this. 

Am I just doing something wrong, or is this a bug?

Thank you!

-Chilton

[Tony Nemo]

Are you adjusting the vertical mask?

[Chilton Webb]

Hi Tony,

 

Do you mean through the use of x and z images as well? If so, this is the image I'm using for both.

Also, I have a scaled version of this file and a smaller version of the above y axis file, and that one works much better. But it's super tiny and many of the edges are unusably thin.

-Chilton

[Tony Nemo]

I hope you have fiddled with the windows enough to discover how they work. The masks are of a size great enough for the smaller scale, make them bigger for the larger one. Also, for the smaller one, increase the volume res.

[L'Ancien Regime]

On 3/13/2017 at 4:42 PM, Chilton Webb said:

Hi,

I've tried this in the latest beta (4.7.24). 

When I use the Sketch tool and add a mask of a structure I want to build (see enclosed), I get edges around the masked bits, but they aren't filled. How do I fill those? If I make the white areas smaller, it fills them, or if I make them contiguous, it fills them, but not like this. 

Am I just doing something wrong, or is this a bug?

Thank you!

-Chilton

I've never worked with this tool before, never thought much of it from the samples of work I saw. But this is really interesting stuff. Did you draw the floor plan in an exterior program like Photoshop or did you draw this within 3d Coat?

 

I'm liking this.  Thanks..

 

 

So I increased the smoothing setting.

 

 

 

Let's see if I can produce this at almost 29 million voxels....right now it's "Not Responding". Most I've ever done is 15 million voxels. I'll give it an hour.

 

Edited April 16, 2017 by L'Ancien Regime

[L'Ancien Regime]

So I tried all sorts of approaches and I found that the lower resolutions gave solid shapes but they were crude, while the higher resolutions were seriously messed up, hollowed out.

 

Edited April 17, 2017 by L'Ancien Regime

[digman]

I figured out the problem. I was talking to L'Ancien Regime about the sketch tool today. He got me interested in the tool, as I do not use it but rarely...

The reason for the thin looking pieces is that backface culling is selected. Deselect that and you will see both sides but it will be hollow in the middle.

For the ends to have caps, make one of the x or z axis images a little taller in height than the other one.

 Backface culling does not need to be deselected when using the tool if you make sure you cap the ends correct using one of the images.

 

Side Note: After completing the operation, you can switch to surface mode and run under the Geometry tab (Object-ify). This operation will separate each separate piece into it's own layer. Of course this is up to the artist. You could just use the hide tool in voxel mode if you want to keep everything on one layer but be able to work on each piece separately.

Edited April 19, 2017 by digman

[L'Ancien Regime]

It was very kind of Digman to figure this one out which didn't take him long, being an expert on 3D Coat.  I did have problems though making it work until I took the big side slab piece, duplicated it and took one of the duplicates and painted it in Photoshop or Gimp rather than just trying to resize it in the Sculpt window with the scale tool in Sketch. Seems the tool is counting pixels to voxels and doesn't really see the scaling down...needs to actually have less pixels in the drawing.

 

He also showed me another trick to use on this model. Since it's a bunch of non contiguous parts you can turn each part into it's own individual object in the Voxel Tree.

 

1. Turn the entire piece into a Surface object instead of a Voxel Object.

2. Go to Geometry menu and  hit the Objecti-ify selection.

 

Now you have a bunch of separate pieces you can work on individually 

 

 

And thank you to the OP for bringing our attention to this much neglected tool. As soon as I saw his ground plan (what are you making with that anyway?) I thought of all the architectural ground plans I'd seen of various architectural sites, particularly of historical ruins from antiquity.  This would be an awesome way to rapidly produce the basic structure of some great temple or church or even an entire architectural site, like some Aztec pueblos. I had no idea that the Sketch tool could be used to produce such intricate 3d models  in such a rapid effortless manner.

 

 

https://www.google.ca/search?q=archaeological+sites&espv=2&source=lnms&tbm=isch&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwi-287Oy6_TAhVD-2MKHV6EAHUQ_AUIBygC&biw=1536&bih=886#tbm=isch&q=archaeological+sites+plans

 

 

 

http://www.dennisrhollowayarchitect.com/PreContact.html

 

 

Edited April 19, 2017 by L'Ancien Regime

[digman]

Cool, just darn cool L'Ancien Regime... 

[L'Ancien Regime]

1 hour ago, digman said:

Cool, just darn cool L'Ancien Regime... 

I wrote an email to the creator of these excellent Aztec pueblo models and got this letter back;

 

 

Hi Ancien Regime

Aztec model was made in late 90's using now defunct software, Presenter Pro. I currently use Cinema 4d by Maxon...

 

D.R.H.