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OT: GROBOTO spread the news deal


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I've been curious about this program for awhile... more since I started seeing how crisp a lot of the derived meshes are from booleans in version 3. The examples seem to show a stronger capability for generating fast, complex hard surface meshes that I can bring into a 3d app and better incorporate into my polygon modeling than say taking the voxel approach and using the auto retopo functionality - which isn't well suited to that kind of work. Anyway... the new marketing scheme has me interested, so I signed up. 100 bux for the full program isn't so bad... but saving 40 - 60 bux puts another tank of gas in my gas guzzler so I can be patient for a week I suppose. =]

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I looked at the video. The mesh is super dense and full of tris for a simple shaped object. I guess manual retopo is still the way to fix this.

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Groboto aims zbrush users mostly. It exports masks there, some great hard surfaces sculpting with a few strokes.

But it can also export difficult boolean results as ~1k meshes. Not good for more sculpting as lot of triangles there. But never too stretched. Great for static models.

You're right though, I had great results starting with groboto, did some sculpting and retopo in 3dcoat. why not? My new avater pic is made like this. Its a single mesh from top to bottom. Just for fun. A challenge.

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Oh I'm sorry did not mean to be cynical. I still do not get why the topology is so important to everybody and nobody can explain me for it is probably so obvious I'm the only one not to understand it.

One reason for clean topology. Editability

There are more reasons why.

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geo_n, take it easy, I really believe in topology. But you have to aim there. Different topology for sculpting in zb, different for decimated static meshes, different for animated figures. Still topology. Not an enemy but a great friend after all. I don't get right what's happening.

I know where this fear comes from. When you have some nice sculpting in vox room and trying to save it. Wrong workflow, its my opinion. Repeating myself. LOL

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If a hard surfaced model is either static or animated in separate pieces, there is absolutely no good reason to worry about triangles.

We are talking about machines, here. They don't generally "morph" or bend - because they are made of rigid materials.

Groboto 3 is excellent at making machine-like objects. Its automatic meshing routine (that finds edges and bevels - and even smooths them) is brilliant.

Just try importing one of them into 3D-Coat for per-pixel painting and try out some texturing - FANTASTIC!

Groboto is a natural counterpart for 3D-Coat. It fills the gap where 3D-Coat is weak.

From what I can see, there are more users of 3D-Coat that like making hard surfaced models rather than organic ones - so we would be extremely privileged to have this technology inside 3D-Coat, if you ask me.

And, if you need to edit an existing hard surfaced model, you would naturally do that in Groboto 3 - then run the automatic meshing routine again. Any existing 3D-Coat textures could then be baked to the different topology of the edited mesh (within reason).

Greg Smith

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Psmith, just play with broad move tool on these groboto meshes. Quite interesting shapes. There's a misunderstanding about hard surfaces. It isn't about machines, robots and cars. Its about the human figure too. Its about serious sculpting. I'll repeat myself, this bad guy as avatar pic is sculpted as one mesh in zbrush using groboto exported mesh. At a 20k base. Too much for low dens figures but not bad for sculpting.

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geo_n, take it easy, I really believe in topology. But you have to aim there. Different topology for sculpting in zb, different for decimated static meshes, different for animated figures. Still topology. Not an enemy but a great friend after all. I don't get right what's happening.

I know where this fear comes from. When you have some nice sculpting in vox room and trying to save it. Wrong workflow, its my opinion. Repeating myself. LOL

I'm not being hard :drinks: I just posted video sample.

But its true if you were editing that kind of model which is a mess or too high poly without much sense, trying to uv map that will be a pain. So it will be manual retopo again to get good meshflow that's easy to understand and edit. Its not even about animation yet which is the next problem to face if the topology is not good.

I think booleans in groboto plus retopo in 3dcoat would be a good combo though.

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I paid for a reduced V3 update ages ago now, this says does not apply to upgrades though so it looks like it targets new users.

If anyone does not know about this program though it is very good, it is a great app for abstract 3d structures and the newer versions allow a interesting way to model with boolean shapes. The only annoying thing is the new V3 developments have mainly been for Mac and i only have windows which is not as updated yet.

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This is the main page of groboto

http://www.groboto.com/v3/

This for downloads

http://www.groboto.com/v3/Downloads/index.html

You may notice that windows beta is a 2.99 f

This build is exactly the same v3 for mac. Its just in beta as mac was a month ago. It works fine, some internal video related issues, not much to care about.

OBJ exports work fine as I know.

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I looked at the video. The mesh is super dense and full of tris for a simple shaped object. I guess manual retopo is still the way to fix this.

Hi

I have Groboto 3 Beta and have tested a little.

The mesh density and some other parameters can be set before export so

you may export a very low poly version suitable for gaming.

From Groboto you may export one low-poly version and one high.

Then import the high version as Voxel object and make your details.

After that you may use the low-poly version as retopology object.

This is described very good here

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bD0-bZKNrvU

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@rstralberg

what a simple yet excellent idea!

One problem though. Groboto meshes need further tweaking (move tool etc) you can't if you gonna use low poly as retopo.

The major issue is that groboto mesh can be seen from miles. I prefer using them as bases for more sculpting. It produces great shapes after tweaking (in zbrush with the use of masks) and I always perform retopo-autopo in the end.

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@rstralberg

what a simple yet excellent idea!

One problem though. Groboto meshes need further tweaking (move tool etc) you can't if you gonna use low poly as retopo.

The major issue is that groboto mesh can be seen from miles. I prefer using them as bases for more sculpting. It produces great shapes after tweaking (in zbrush with the use of masks) and I always perform retopo-autopo in the end.

Yes, I can see what you mean. I also do some tweaking on the low-poly mesh in Modo before using it.

But as you say. The retopo tools in 3DC are so great that its probably a better way to go. I depends

on the actual situation I guess.

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Of course, another question is we may use low and high density meshes for baking shaders but what else can we bake? We better directly paint depth in paint -low density room (PPP or MV)

Here a test using a groboto mesh, exported as 1k faces and just painted depth - nor_maps in PPP.

http://www.3d-coat.com/forum/index.php?showtopic=6706&view=findpost&p=60332

Newer blender builds are maya compatible now.

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