Anything like Sketch tool, but with splines?

[paulrus]

After years and years of owning 3DC (since it was 3D Brush), I finally am getting around to doing more than just UVs and paint. So I've been working with voxels and had a few issues pop up here and there when doing hard-surface work.

The first thing I am having a problem with is - while kit bashing is fun, what do you do when you need to make a very precise, hard-surface shape in the voxel room? I understand how the sketch function works, but to me it seems like way too many extra steps. Is there a way to do the same thing, but from within 3DC? Much like spline patching, can't I draw a profile, top view and front view using spline curves and then ask 3DC to simple fill in what I've drawn with voxels just like it does with the bitmaps?

Or, is there a way to define a beginning and ending shape and then blend an extrusion between the two? So if I started with a sphere, ended with a cube, it would create a shape that was round on one side, then slowly became square until it ended with a cube shape? In Softimage there are a few tools that let you do this (and a lot more, like having multiple shape targets within the extrusion, twist parameters, scaling, etc.)

I find myself having a ton of fun with voxels for a while, then getting stuck when I really need precision. I can't seem to avoid getting lumpy shapes sometimes, and that's just not going to work for a hard-surface model.

Thanks for any advice you guys can share.

Paul

[Digital777]

One way to quickly make shapes with curves is the Voxels > Carve tool.

There is a few options for the edge style but for no edge bevel you can select Sharp border and then for the BorderFormParam set it to 0. You can then set the distance it extrudes by the Radius amount.

[kay_Eva]

I think Farsthary posted that procedural geometry was going into LC. So I think that is what u want, well depending on how far they go with it. For example they could very well make it into some kind of Houdini or ICE like functionality and because of the nature of LC it might end up being more powerful than either one of them.

[digman]

A often overlooked feature of 3DCoat is the cut and clone and the clone tools. It does not do what you ask exactly but once you can the hang of, it's really a blast. You might call it kit-bashing but I think it's more of designing cutting tools (similar to a tool and dye maker) to make your model.

You can make almost limitless type of hard surface models using them. The mindset of a tool and dye maker is what is good to have. You make tools to make your cuts or additions.

Here is an link to an old thread of some wire crimpers I never finished. I think it's not the very best example of what you can do with the above tools but I think there is some more information in that thread.

http://3d-coat.com/forum/index.php?showtopic=7030&st=0&p=53749&hl=crimpers&fromsearch=1entry53749

If you decide to try it, be sure to set your Split border width to "0" Located in the top menu...

Set your E-panel Border width to "0"

Set depth in the E-panel if you only want to cut in so far into the voxel model.

Have fun...

In the picture ever cut was made using the above tools in a few minutes... It can very precise in it's operation...

[AbnRanger]

A often overlooked feature of 3DCoat is the cut and clone and the clone tools. It does not do what you ask exactly but once you can the hang of, it's really a blast. You might call it kit-bashing but I think it's more of designing cutting tools (similar to a tool and dye maker) to make your model.

You can make almost limitless type of hard surface models using them. The mindset of a tool and dye maker is what is good to have. You make tools to make your cuts or additions.

Here is an link to an old thread of some wire crimpers I never finished. I think it's not the very best example of what you can do with the above tools but I think there is some more information in that thread.

http://3d-coat.com/forum/index.php?showtopic=7030&st=0&p=53749&hl=crimpers&fromsearch=1entry53749

If you decide to try it, be sure to set your Split border width to "0" Located in the top menu...

Set your E-panel Border width to "0"

Set depth in the E-panel if you only want to cut in so far into the voxel model.

Have fun...

In the picture ever cut was made using the above tools in a few minutes... It can very precise in it's operation...

I keep forgetting to ask Andrew to set the default values to "0" because 90% of the time, you want the cut to be precise, without any overlapping. I don't know how many times I have to UNDO because that darn thing is huge by default, when it should be 0.