Advertisement

You're blocking ads, which pay for BlenderNation. Read about other ways to support us.

New script: Surface Sketching

80

From the same guy that brought you the array sketching script, comes a new feature: Surface sketching.

This clever script allows the user to paint the basic outline of a mesh with a grease pencil, and the script fills in the gaps. As the video demonstrates, this new technique for modeling can be an incredibly fast way to model complex shapes.

The only downside I can spot is that because the grease pencil doesn't show perspective very well, the user may get confused/disorientated whilst painting.

Potential uses for this script include: terrain creation, retopology, clothing for characters and modeling difficult shapes. It will be interesting to see where this script goes.

80 Comments

  1. Indeed, this guy is great!! Who is he anyway? Is he in a Blender coders team already? If not, someone should kindly invite him.. :)

  2. john leigh London uk on

    this is looking so great - very useful it gives us a more interactive approach in being able to sketch out an idea organically as an alternative to more usual technical approach and can help sidestep a lot of head scratching in terms of how best to put something together or at least be a good starting point.
    excellent work!

  3. Super.
    Going to use this for shure. First thing that comes to mind is shoes. I guess I will not get a shoe job soon though.
    Another usefull addition might be straight line drawing. Then is would be a very handy bridge tool.

  4. So are these eventually going to be put into the build, or will we have to get them as separate scripts for 2.5/2.6?

    You know, if he does like one more 'sketching' script, they'll have to add a new mode: sketching mode.

  5. @A saursu1: I was wondering which build / where to get it from myself. I suspect the blendernation thread will hold a link or two which will give us the latest version.

    Amazing scripts, simply amazing work all round.

    J

  6. Fastest retopo I've ever seen. It looks like the lines are already affected by current retopo tools, otherwise the whole time he was using it might have caused some mesh distortions. This is going to be a great tool in our arsenal and should really help expand people's abilities otherwise limited by their technical inability to model properly. Everybody can pretty much draw the main defining lines of what they want to accomplish more than they can probably just model it.

  7. Wow! Simply amazing... great job! Until this came along, it was always faster for me to retopo in Silo -- not anymore! This has to be the cleanest Retopology workflow I have seen...and it was done in Python? Simply incredible!

  8. Amazing tool ! I always model with too many details and after I have difficulties to retopo in low poly for animation. I was dreaming of this tool for ages ! Thank you and congratulations ! Its a wonderful thing !

  9. Eclectiel (Blend_ideas at Vimeo) on

    Really fun to see all the enthusiams around this tool. Really glad for the reaction. and thanks for all the comments.

    (thanks redbyte for posting it here)

    One thing I forgot to show in the videos is that you can build surfaces starting from curves directly, without needing necessarily to start with the grease pencil. That may allow more control and more smoothed shapes.

    Just remember to keep your curves in order of creation. And before adding the surface it might be good to subdivide them a couple of times, the resulting mesh will be more accurate that way (didn't test it much, but I think it should work fine).

    If you have any doubt check the thread at blenderartists.org (posted above by Crouch).

    well.... enjoy!

  10. differentsmoke on

    THIS IS SO FREAKING COOOOOOOOL!!!!!

    but couldn't we more technical less draw capable people get surface drafting instead of sketching?? I just think this makes me believe in Blender for serious architectural use again.

  11. @tichy - a DW reference in a here is a thing of beauty my friend!!

    @Eclectiel (Blend_ideas at Vimeo) - as many have commented, have you submitted this to the main trunk for release? This isn't just a new script - this is a whole new way to model in Blender!!! It should be a mandatory and unable to live without piece of Blender, after only a few hours with it I'm realizing the possibilities in modeling organics that I have never been able to do... Simply lifesaving stuff my friend!!!

  12. Craig Massey on

    Array sketching was close, but surely this must mean that Blender can be scripted to emulate Curvy3D's functionality. And again, I love this because it's not modifying Blender's core code to add new functionality, it's taking what's already there and stringing it together in new and very interesting ways. The ability to extend Blender like this is exciting. I suspect we'll see Blender doing so much more than it apparently can now as others take advantage of the new APIs.
    Extremely well done.

  13. My brain still refuses to believe that a feature of such greatness can come to blender over night, without any anxious waiting for the development to finish (like with BMesh, Freestyle and so on).

    I'm so glad this isn't the first of April.

    Please code this out of beta state, so that it can go into trunk!

  14. This guys was fired from Z brush team and decided to release Zbrush feature to the blender
    community.
    God Bless you man.

  15. So I can see how much this could help with retopo. What I'd love to see would be a workflow for using this to model complex shapes from scratch, for example the face example we saw here, but without the pre-existing mesh for curves to snap to.

    If we could see something modeled without a pre-existing mesh, even 80% as easily as the retopo in this video, it would be revolutionary, indeed. Kind of like Sketchup but in a higher end tool (Blender).

    Thankyou for creating this and sharit it with the Blender community, and please post a modeling example video if you can! :D

  16. Durian Team need see it!!!!

    Where is Ton??

    Blender is like a child that grow fast... and with steroids XD

    Greetings

    God need bless you man!! ;)

    PD: pixnlove: "This guys was fired from Z brush team and decided to release Zbrush feature to the blender
    community"

    That is true? o_o

  17. @Blendiac- head to his blog (linked in from the forum) and you'll see his other script- which allows "sketching" of 3D meshes from nothing- it's modelled along the same lines as the new ZBrush "Zspheres II" sketch modelling. It's designed for quite hi res meshes but with retopo using the first script, it'd rapidly produce useable organic meshes :)

    It is awesome- I own ZB and STILL think this should be in Blender!

  18. Awesome! I got "shock" bcoz it's Blender's "Topogun" :)
    Thanks for the explanations and the tutorial and BIG THANK YOU for this cool script Blend_Ideas!

  19. wow this is so great !
    BLENDER and ALL the developers are so coooooooooooooool !
    thanks for this great script !
    I'm going to use it for shure !
    BLENDER is so great !

  20. Wow it's great but it's not running on my pc i have blener 4.5 and python 2.6 other scripts work it says on the consele " surface_sketch.py , line 789 blaa blaa ...expected a type subclassed from a registable rna type (no register supported)

  21. Great script man! :) I could see this coming after your last one!

    I think this type of modelling is what disney had for their studio after they decided not to use pixar anymore.

    I remember seeing the how-it-was-made for one of their films, and watching them do something like this with envy!

    Are you gonna get these tools included in trunk as they are really awesome?

Leave A Reply

To add a profile picture to your message, register your email address with Gravatar.com. To protect your email address, create an account on BlenderNation and log in when posting a message.

Advertisement

×