Alexey Vanzhula has released Direct Modelling HDA, an extended and improved version of his previous Mesh Fusion inspired boolean modelling tool for Houdini called Flux HDA. The new version improves the quality of the resultant mesh, adds a new geometry library, adds an insert mesh system which enables the user to replace faces with geometry from the library, a new array system, and many new general modelling tools. The tool retains the previous price of $100 and can be purchased from Gumroad.
Holy crap!
Now thats impressive
As a person who comes Class A surfacing world (ICEM and Alias) this is nice to see. Too bad that the triangles and quads on the edges of the Insert Mesh element cause a distortion in the shading.
He should try an additional technique for folks who can live with extra polygons it would create – something like locally subdividing (with matching curvature so the shading is continuous) the polygons intersected with the inserted mesh and matching the edge vertices of the quads to the inserted element edges.
Easier said than done but who knows. Maybe it can work :))
Hi. I disagree with you.
1. “Soft Boolean” system takes into account surface curvature
2. As for “Insert Mesh”. I think you do not fully understand what it is intended for. Please show me any of “Insert Mesh” alternative polygonal tool where the curvature is taken into account.
Maybe you can show on my videos where it is shading distortions. Anyway all is very customizable…
Hey Alexey, what I’m of course talking about is an inherent problem to the gradient shading of polygonal meshes when triangles meet quads and you clearly showed some compensation parameters you have in your plugin – I’m not disputing that. What i’m saying it’s not 100 percent perfect, “only” 98 percent (which is enough) 🙂
Same thing happens even in NURBS when they are turned to polygons and you have trimmed surfaces (surfaces with non-natural boundaries). We had a few times a customer rambled because few pixels were off in a commercial rendering on such boundaries and the highlights and reflections were not perfect (my colleague had not increased tasselation on the mesh properly).
http://postimg.cz/i/NpLQh
(long triangles causing distortion of the highlight shading)
This is in fact an issue that has not been elegantly solved yet anywhere. Local continuous refinement like Dyadic T-mesh Subdivision (T-joints, T-splines) work strictly geometrically great but I haven’t seen anything for shading issues with boolean edges on pure polygonal models.
Hope you understand. I’m just musing if anyone can come up with a solution that can be 99,8 percent perfect and shading is continuous and non distorted even on lower polygonal models.
Thanks for image. You showed the picture before the correction (6:31). What about 7:15?
Anyway in next update insert mesh will have better connection quality and someday I will add transition by curvature
It looks Awesome! As for insert-mesh with curvature, have a look at this vid around 22sec, you can see it conform to the curvature: https://vimeo.com/227201133
He talked about another curvature
As for 3ds max plugin look at this around 6:40 https://vimeo.com/247998192
No mention of a 3ds Max plugin at that time?
Alexey Vanzhula i also had contact with Class A surfacing and if you want to check what kind of surfacing you are making, a zebra analysis(zebra reflection) is very good to know the surface flow and check if there are distortions.
http://docs.mcneel.com/rhino/5/help/en-us/commands/zebra.htm
If you see the zebra stripes not flowing without islands then unless it is intended the surface is not correct.
Thanks, but I perfectly understand what is surface continuity and zebra 🙂
In the past I used CATIA.
Okay. Alexey. I am not into Houdini but keep a close eye.
DM 1.0 update
https://vimeo.com/251036214
OMG !
ExMax users will be happy. And many other non “old school” to.
Something serious going on in the Houdini realm (: Hats off for this one! Finally sold on the idea of moving to Houdini he he. Also a special thanks for some of the “Brat 2” soundtrack – really makes me watch the film over again (: