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Let's Imagine What Andrew Could Do With This . . .


Psmith
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First - wouldn't you love to get your hands on something like this?

Digital Slate

It's pressure sensitive, Wacom equipped.

And, having run down to your local dealer and picked one up, start "Sketching" in 3D using a new process that requires very little hardware power and overhead.

Dynamic Tesselation

Now, I'm really NOT promoting Blender, but, rather hoping Andrew will see the potential for designing a new, custom app and plug-in (for 3D-Coat), tailor made to be used with this hardware, (which will blow away the iPad).

What do you think?

Greg Smith

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Personally, I don't much care for iPads and such. Bigger IS usually better, IMHO, when it comes to PC performance, and to get the most out of 3DC, you need serious hardware (RAM, CPU, Video Card). This is one reason why I don't even like the small towers you find from the major (store bought) PC Brands, like Dell, HP, Gateway, etc. They don't have any room for proper airflow/ventilation, nor expansion. Laptops have come a long way, but there is still a HUGE gap in performance...especially when using CG programs like 3DC, 3ds Max, Maya, etc.

Even with a top end system, there is much more optimization still needed (in 3DC) for voxel sculpting to hit it's stride (if it's going to be considered as a serious alternative to ZB and MB in this market). I think it's on the threshold and perhaps new approaches such as dynamic tessellation would work...I just don't see how it would with Voxels, though.

Perhaps one good target for Andrew (maybe make it's introduction coincide with the release of v4) is to finally mirror the Surface Mode engine/tools to the current Sculpt Room, and there, it might be possible to utilize dynamic tessellation. Even without that, I still would love to see the Surface tools and engine in the Sculpt room

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About dynamic topology then. Yes, I tried this.

What about boolean operations? To cut huge parts of volume at once? Voxels method is a much better way IMO.

Still, real digital sculpting starts after topology. You don't believe it? The thighs - hip area is waiting somewhere for other solutions LOL. Topology is the armature of digital sculpture. An armature will always exist in sculpting process.

Recently I'm playing with this fascinating groboto app. Its great for hard surface modeling but its also great as a base mesh maker for organic surface sculpting (zb, mb, blender). Have you tried it this way? A tool for organizing loops, hmm interesting. ;)

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Well, though I hate to admit it - I'm a coffee shop 3D guy. It's all there is to do in this one horse town I live in - and wireless abounds. I live so close to our "downtown", that the temptation is simply too great to work there - in a casual environment.

And, besides, I get such cabin fever - staying in my house to work.

So, you can see where I'm going with this, Don. Portability is more valuable to me, (and I believe the numbers are ever expanding), and to lots more like me, than are "Big Guns", so to speak. Just look at how much time people spend looking at those tiny cell phone screens.

So, my leanings are for an independent app, specially tailored for the kind of hardware I mentioned above - for a number of reasons:

1) Dynamic Tesselation is a low powered, (hardware-wise), substitute for voxels, with nearly the same flexibility, (with the exception of powerful boolean functions).

2) Andrew's AUTOPO functions can, fairly simply, be adapted to "skin" a polygonal shape, such as is made by means of Dynamic Tesselation.

3) A huge 3D "sketching" market will open up once this hardware is released, (very soon). The trend is leaning toward lower powered hardware in favor of portability, convenience and Wacom "on the screen/stylus based" pressure sensitive technology.

4) Although this specialty app should be developed independently of 3D-Coat, it could be supplied to the users of 3D-Coat as a plug-in, at some future date.

5) Since AUTOPO naturally fits the 3D "Sketching" paradigm, it follows that AUTOMERGE functions for Painting/Texturing would be included - as would standard .obj and .3b export functions.

Michalis: Yes, I've seen the demonstrations of using Groboto 3 functionality with Zbrush, (for smoothing and detailing) - even on human subjects - lots of possibilities there. Dynamic Tesselation sculpting naturally would include the "standard" 3D sculpting tools and functions found in "Brand X".

No reason to think that multi-resolution sculpting would not, at the earliest stages of development, be included with this specialty app., made specifically for the hardware in question.

Greg Smith

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