Google SoC Progress Report: Sculpting Tools Video

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sculpt1.pngYou might remember when we reported on Blender’s accepted Google Summer of Code (GSoC) projects for 2006. There were three accepted through Blender Foundation, and a fourth accepted through Python. Recently, a development build has been posted with the progress of Nicholas Bishop’s project entitled “Interactive Sculpting with Multi-Resolution Models” (Nicholas is also the author of Sharpconstruct, which makes him the right man for the job for a project like this). Rather than describing the build, we decided to show you!

Keep in mind that the build I use here is in the very early stages and may crash every so often because of that fact. I also mention where I got it, so I will link to the thread by lguillaume here, and I will and the direct link to the files here.

See the overview here. (26MB Quicktime) Be sure to right click and Save As!

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    • http://niel.seyanim.com madman

      dOWNLOADInG the video.

    • http://www.brillsoft.com roy

      THAT is sooo amazing, I bet pixologic are worried…

    • Hos

      I’d enjoy seeing the video, but the codec used seems to defy
      both mplayer and xine under linux.

      Chris

    • haggis

      This video doesn’t do MRM modelling justice – I just downloaded SharpConstruct, and it blew me away with how easy it is to use. Really, it’s child’s play. If the Sculpting tool in Blender adds all the functionality of SharpConstruct (particularly the spray-can like colorising feature), there’s going to be a lot of happy Blenderheads, and I’m going to be one of them.

      It’s great that so many different modelling techniques can co-exist peacefully in Blender. I just hope we don’t have to wait till next year’s GSoC for NGons and voxels etc…

      Seriously. Get SharpConstruct for a preview of what Nicholas Bishop is bringing to Blender – it’ll make you smile.

    • MadMartin

      Just downloaded Blendersculpt. Even in its limited “beta” state it works fine on my system, faster than SharpConstruct itself and no crashes while I was being sensible. It would have been nice to have watched the demo video, I got the audio but no pictures under Windows.

    • http://www.blendernation.com etr9j

      @haggis
      It wasn’t meant to do sculpting justice at all (it was me who did it after all! :) It was just to show the build was out there and that the project is coming along nicely.

      @Everyone with video issues.
      It’s an H.264 coded .mov file so it should work with the latest Quicktime player (version 7.0.X)

      @Hos
      MPlayer not working is weird… what version do you have? 1.0 pre 8?

      @MadMartin
      How are you playing the video? Using Windows media player?

    • RobWalker

      If you plan to view the video in Linux, use VLC, which can play the video just fine.

      I’m glad Blender is starting to get brush-style modelling in its arsenal.

      But since a lot of the new brush-style organic modelling in the 3D industry was spurred on by Zbrush, I think the most-wanted feature that Blender needs is the Zsphere sort of modelling workflow.

      I’d often thought about this. We already have meta-shapes (i.e. metablobs), so perhaps the meta-shape functionality could be modified to:

      1. Allow skinning over the meta-shapes (e.g. to make a cleaner resulting mesh also with less clumpiness of an appearance that metablob sort of modelling is known for; perhaps there could be a setting for the smoothness factor)
      2. Allow each individual meta-shape to be set to decide which others it can influence. The problem with blobs is that all blobs affect all neighboring blobs. You can’t easily add isolated detail.

      Together with the new brush features, organic modelling should be a lot quicker in Blender. (Zbrush is the only other 3D app I’d consider using, but that need would be negated if Blender had these features. Perhaps with the exception of how easy it is in apps like Zbrush to brush on (i.e. create) various texture maps.)

    • Roja

      Thanks for the video, great to see something like this come into Blender! :)

    • Eugene (etr9j)

      @RobWalker
      Good call on the Zsphere functionality and some good ideas. That is a big thing that separates ZBrush from the rest. An experienced user can model *crazy* fast with them along with the ZBrush sculpting tools.

      Since this build is certaily isn’t final, who knows what the end result of the GSoC will be. Maybe Nicholas is thinking about a similar technique for Blender or Sharpconstruct!

    • Hos

      Hey RobWalker,

      I just tried VLC and I am able to view the video, thanks!

      Chris

    • Keen

      oooh cant wait till its fully finished!

    • Claas

      i am actualy curious if that will at the end result into a displacement map for a low poly model.

      otherwise i think that this modeling approach is limited through the high amount of polygones you would need to get very fine details like wrinkels.

      with a reyes rendering (true displacement) this coul dmake very much a lot of sense.

      however i can see that work for many other applications which will welcome a more free sculpting tool that the traditional push and pull mode.

      claas

    • Mantar

      Worked under the mplayer (with w32codecs) that’s in Ubuntu 6.06 (“Dapper Drake”).. Though there were some funky-looking spots in the video where I got a bit of ghosting.

    • MadMartin

      @etr9j

      No I was not using Windows Media Player. I tried playing it with RealPlayer and then Quicktime 6.5.2 with exactly the same problem in both of them.

    • http://www.blendernation.com bart

      @MadMartin: you need Quicktime 7 to play this video as it is encoded using the H.264 codec.

    • Milky

      Wow, nice progress on this project. Never thought it’d come along so fast. :)

    • 3Dobject

      God this is program is becoming more amazing day by day. The power of open source with eye candy to match.

    • http://salvador.mata.com.mx/blog Mataii

      I really liked that tool in blender, I just wondering when will be avaliable ;)

      This is an example I did some time ago, with the first test build with the tool:

      http://mata.nolachifles.com/head2.jpg

    • Lazareus

      Wow.
      I’m bummed that I waited so long to give this a try.
      Very cool.
      Hope this makes it into next release.