MODO's new MeshFusion is kind of hot.
Three Wishes
Posts: 471
MeshFusion is an add-on kit that gives MODO modelers the ability to do dynamic node-based Constructive Solid Geometry (CSG) on meshes. Just mix in some basic shapes, and then unite, intersect, or subtract away for trimmed surfaces. Move any of the base meshes around in world space, and the CSG recalculates itself across all volumes and edges.
It's a li-itle temperamental, but way, WAY better than a version 1.0 kit has any right to be. Fixes are on the way for known issues.
The kit is a collaboration between Luxology/The Foundry, and Braid Art Labs, the guys who developed Groboto as the basis for this work.
When finally "frozen," meshes come out a bit on the heavy side, especially if you subdivide them once to get rid of any triangles. Getting reasonable polygon counts for a marketable DAZ asset would probably involve some serious manual retopology, although the marriage of MeshFusion and ZBrush's remesher feature is looking fairly promising, according to people who have both packages.
This is from a few hours of dorking around off and on this afternoon. I've only been fiddling with the kit for a few days.
More info on the Foundry Website.
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Considering the price of Modo 701 and MeshFusion Kit ($1495 and $395 (after introductory sale is over) accordingly) to me it seems a good idea to wait until Groboto v4 is out. There is a chance that Braid Labs would implement working with custom meshes. And, also, that the price won't go far beyond present $100.
From all the other views MeshFusion is really a break-through.
I already owned Modo so grabbed fusion straight up, ZRemesher is not the best I found you need to use Decimation Master first but even then the edge loops were dodgy it's going to be a fair bit of experimenting to get the right balance. Hey is there any tutorials on custom shapes yet ?
There's a sub-forum on MeshFusion in the Foundry forums - it's a separate screen, for kits and training, near the bottom of the main forum list.
One thing to be aware of is that you have currently to create materials and do your UVs after freezing the model, which isn't always the ideal way of working.
Yes I think I'll go off and find that forum they should have some ideas, I'm not getting much success with ZRemesher. See screen shots.
Thanks Richard !
Sounds like it is nothing more than a real time dynamic Boolean operation and we all know booleans make horrible messes... oops! I mean meshes.
I'm starting to get the hang of it now!
It was more a case of not using ZRemesher properly
leave the freeze Border and Groups alone and I got a much better result.
That's encouraging to see! I may yet have to take the plunge on ZBrush. I've been putting it off because I don't think I'm as artistically inclined as the target ZBrush user. Also, the UI is about the most psychotic thing I've ever seen :D
Yea, ZRemesher has come a long long way but it's still needs some more TLC. I'm like you when I use it I just leave those two buttons unchecked and I'm good to go. I also find that sometimes when I want a basic remesh I uncheck the Adapt button and play with the Less, Same and More buttons. Also find for keeping straight edges to bring the Curves Strength button all the way down to 0
Heh. When I first tried my hand at modeling, I naively assumed that CSG was part of the standard workflow. Imagine my delight when I discovered that Boolean operations and subd meshes don't normally play well together. I don't think I'm the only beginning hobbyist to have that painful awakening.
The whole thing behind Groboto/MeshFusion is that Braid Labs has developed a fairly reliable set of techniques for calculating the seams (or in MeshFusion, "strips") where the objects meet. Poly-heavy, but reliable.
Strips in Modo come out as first-class Item-level components, with a set of customized modifiers attached, so you can tune things per strip like number of poly rows in the strip, strip width, and "profile" (basically a point on the spectrum between "sharp edge" and "chamfer.")
It really does look promising and is a great deal of fun, both to experiment with and to produce finished renders in native MODO files.
I would strongly expect, given The Foundry's current focus on strengthening one subsystem of Modo per major release, that a serious boost to the retopology tools will come chugging out the door in the next major release or two...maybe even something to rival ZRemesher.
Braid Labs is also working relentlessly to provide more features to the kit from their side. It appears they're going to follow the main product's pricing model, where major upgrades cost something and dot-upgrades are free within the lifetime of that version.