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Nurbs like surfacing tools


manticor
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Loving 3d Coat ,amzing tool .Especially for hard surface stuff .But I think what would be great would be the addition of some nurbs like surfacing tools.

i.e Birail ,loft and filleting tools.Also another good idea would be to have surfaces stay "live" so you can adjust intersecting surfaces after you have placed them much the same as other standard 3d packages allow you to do with Booleans and fillets.

Just an idea ,

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Loving 3d Coat ,amzing tool .Especially for hard surface stuff .But I think what would be great would be the addition of some nurbs like surfacing tools.

i.e Birail ,loft and filleting tools.Also another good idea would be to have surfaces stay "live" so you can adjust intersecting surfaces after you have placed them much the same as other standard 3d packages allow you to do with Booleans and fillets.

Just an idea ,

Down the road, I would like to see it, as I think it could be quicker to retopo some objects. But there is already so much to do with the application, it will likely be a year or two before I could see Andrew even entertain something on this scale. In the mean time, I export the dense mesh straight from the voxel layer, into 3ds Max and then (with snapping enabled) use PowerNurbs to trace the object....effectively retopologizing in Nurbs.

You could do the same in Maya, Blender, and I think Softimage has NURBS as well. Not sure.

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The more fun Zen Nurbs programm is Moment of Inspiration (Moi)

it has the best mesher nurbs-->Poly

It has the more clear Interface

A neat drawing on the screen

A cool system of selection

You can use it with only the Pen grafic tablet ;) (with also mouse if you want ;)

You have an infinite demo without save ;)

etc... it's a true little gem !

By Mario

hat1.png

By PaQ

NXColor.jpg

WireF_01.jpg

CatBurner-Wire.jpg

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Gordon Surfaces using B2-splines + upcoming Surface mode Booleans is all user need to recreate any objects.

http://www.cg.tuwien.ac.at/hostings/cescg/CESCG99/MKuklisova/node6.html

It would be much better than 3DC'S Sketchtool or Zbrush shadowbox....those tools are good to approximate some objects shape but not good enough to make precise objects.

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Down the road, I would like to see it, as I think it could be quicker to retopo some objects much more quickly. But there is already so much to do with the application, it will likely be a year or two before I could see Andrew even entertain something on this scale. In the mean time, I export the dense mesh straight from the voxel layer, into Max and then use PowerNurbs to trace the object....effectively retopologizing in Nurbs.

You could do the same in Maya, Blender, and I think Softimage has NURBS as well. Not sure.

Yeah they would be nice feature.Just thought that as the hard surface modeling was so good in 3dc that they would be very welcome additions.FOr the time being flipping in and out of another modeling package is good enough

Frenchy...that MOI prog looks awesome.Gonna give it a test drive now.

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If MOI made a plugin for 3D Coat (there was talk about it at one point), I would buy it, because having a B-Splines option in the Strokes tool and using surface tangency handles, you really have little to no need for snapping (which is often times very problematic when subdividing or relaxing). You also would need fewer control splines (edgeloops). With Andrew making an SDK, I really hope MOI revisits this idea. It could open up a new market for them...fast prototyping (with Voxels) > production-ready NURBS/Solid Surface format (IGES, STEP, etc).

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Hi Phil,

I can see it happening at some point. Before 3DC I believe the only voxel app was Clay Tools, which has tools like you're asking for, unfortunately it's very expensive, requires an expensive haptic device, and is lacking in many areas where 3DC excels.

FWIW, ClayTools is the "cheaper & lesser optioned" version of FreeForm, both are made by SensAble.

Last time that I priced them, ClayTools was about $6.5K US, FreeForm was closer to $30K US...

...added to that are your "yearly maintenance" fees.

Those costs are a large part of why I decided to go with 3D-Coat for the sculpting side of my jewellery designs.

The other reason was that NURBS data was to be added as an Import option, this alone sold me on 3DC, as I'm using both MoI & Rhino.

Obviously the main usage & sales of 3D-Coat are to those making parts, elements for 3D Games.

So I gather from what I've read on the Forum here, that the majority of 3DC users don't need or really use NURBS for any of their work.

At this point I'll patiently wait & hope to see it implemented in the not too distant future.

regards Colin

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