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Show HN: Cross-platform open-source 3D modeling software
- kjullien 8y agoDoes this play nicely with 3D printing like Fusion/Cura does ? Fusion's UX makes me want to gouge my eyes out. It's almost as if they make it intentionally hard so that you have to buy a training from them...
- huxingyi 8y agoshould be ok with 3D printing, because the outcome of Dust3D generated is a watertight mesh. However, I don't have a 3D printer, cannot try yet.
- dddw 8y agolooks fun! I'll give it a try
- wolframhempel 8y agoLooks cool and I love its openness - though I hope I'm forgiven for saying that the examples, especially the guitar, doesn't quite look up to professional standards.
- huxingyi 8y agoOh, no, that guitar is my favorite :-( The main focus of this software is the modeling speed, for example, that guitar only took less than five minutes. So I can make more game asset as an indie. Actually, the model made recently is already looks far better than several months ago I made, I will keep improving the mesh generating quality of the algorithm. Thanks!
- smcameron 8y agoIt's got some flaws, but for say, Ludum Dare, it's super cool to create assets quickly. I have been using OpenSCAD for the purpose of quickly creating models. Can Dust3d import STL files? Can it export wavefront OBJ? (or, I suppose I could import to blender, then export to OBJ). UV unwrapping is something I have not so far been able to conquer. If Dust3d can import STL or OBJ and make the UV unwrapping easy, I will probably use it. Edit: I see at 21:50 in this video, it can export OBJs. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wQerDObDjOs&t=21m50s https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wQerDObDjOs&t=21m50s
- huxingyi 8y agoHi, thanks, currently support glb, fbx obj export, but without import supports, may be add in the future.
- twodave 8y agoPerhaps they aren’t perfect (definitely looks like some more time could be devoted to the algo), but to go from not having models for your scene to having something at least as a stop-gap can really unblock you if your artists are busy doing something else or (in the case of most hobbyists/indies) don’t exist.
- aurelwu 8y agototally agree, this tool seems very useful for building prototypes and instead of using grey cubes you can use something which at least has roughly the correct shape and gives you a rough idea what it should look like eventually.
- myrloc 8y agoThe "just have a reference photo" approach really appeals to me as someone who has never been great at sketching from scratch. I'm going to give this a go for creating custom assets for some little mixed reality projects.
- microcolonel 8y agoIf you have any more than zero experience modelling, Blender offers this and a great number of other tools for modelling, rigging, and animation. Also, Blender is coming up on a big release which should make it a lot simpler for newcomers to get started. If you are willing to save often, you could just start with the 2.8 Beta now, and you won't have to do any adjusting when it comes out as stable.
- tezza 8y agoDoes this use the same coordinate space[1] as Maya , or does it use the same coordinate space as Blender ? Blender has no end of hidden trouble importing to Unity because Unity chose to be the same as Maya [1] https://blender.stackexchange.com/questions/471/is-it-possible-to-make-blender-a-y-up-world https://blender.stackexchange.com/questions/471/is-it-possib...
- sneak 8y agoTIL. The fact that gaming and Maya use one (Y-up) and that CAD and Blender use another (Z-up) brings the classic xkcd to mind. https://xkcd.com/927/ https://xkcd.com/927/
- swsieber 8y agoThe fact that there are only 2 makes me think that it doesn't apply though. I just hope nobody trise to go make a third.
- TeMPOraL 8y agoThere are also left-handed and right-handed coordinate systems...
- pzone 8y agoThis is correct. Most CG and 3d software (Max, Maya, Blender, CAD) uses a right handed coordinate system, which matches the convention in physics, however they vary in their choice of Y up or Z up. Video games almost always use a left-handed coordinate system with Y up. This is because DirectX and OpenGL chose to represent pixels on-screen with (X,Y) coordinates with the Z coordinate increasing as rays extend from the eye outward.
- swsieber 8y agoWow, I had no idea it was so varied
- ArtWomb 8y agoAwesome. Thanks for supporting glTF export right out of the box. Will run some test rendering to WebGL canvas and provide further feedback directly via github ;)
- kowdermeister 8y agoCongrats on the release and major version milestone. I'll give it a try to model some weird shaped abstract stuff to make some generative art.
- 0xcoffee 8y agoI downloaded the beta for windows, clicked around a bit and it crashed. I noticed there doesn't seem to be any crash reporter. Is there somewhere I can report this bug?
- cheschire 8y agoI would imagine submitting an issue is the right answer. https://github.com/huxingyi/dust3d/issues https://github.com/huxingyi/dust3d/issues
- huxingyi 8y agoHi, some reported several hours ago, and I have released 1.0.0-beta.4 to fix it, could you help to verify if it still crash please? Download link for windows: https://github.com/huxingyi/dust3d/releases/download/1.0.0-beta.4/dust3d-1.0.0-beta.4-x86.zip https://github.com/huxingyi/dust3d/releases/download/1.0.0-b...
- CrazyPyroLinux 8y agoSeems to work ok on Windows 7. (My parents' machine, nonwithstanding my username ;)
- huxingyi 8y agoThanks for verifying :-)
- micheljansen 8y agoVery cool! Did you come up with the interaction patterns yourself or is it inspired by something else? I can also imagine using this for quickly prototyping 3D prints. Have you considered STL export?
- huxingyi 8y agoWhat interaction patterns? You mean the weird combine two profiles in one window :-) ? That is my idea. The sphere guided mesh generation is based on a paper: "B-Mesh: A Fast Modeling System for Base Meshes of 3D Articulated Shapes" Edit: I am not familiar with STL format, may have a look at it, thanks.
- Joeboy 8y agoThis looks a bit like (but also slightly different from) modeling with metaballs in Blender.
- mntmn 8y agoAwesome! Would this run on OpenGL ES2.0 or OpenGL 2.x? Asking for computers with mobile chipsets like Raspberry Pi, i.MX6 etc. I’m looking for an alternative to Blender.
- huxingyi 8y agoThanks, the underlying mesh render use the Qt/QOpenGLWidget, haven't try it with OpenGL ES2.0 and OpenGL 2.x
- criddell 8y agoWhat do you think of CGAL? Are you using a scene graph for the display?
- huxingyi 8y ago> What do you think of CGAL? I am using some function of CGAL in Dust3D, it's a great work. However, it doesn't work with iOS and it's license is more strict than MIT, may remove it in the future. > Are you using a scene graph for the display? I am using Qt/QOpenGLWidget for display.
- bredren 8y agoCurious to see how this performs against fusion 360. Autocorrect has gotten real aggressive on pricing and licenses of late. Also fusion forces you to save to autocad’s cloud and they inspect your designs for hints you’re using it for non hobby stuff.
- franzb 8y ago> Autocorrect has gotten real aggressive This sentence is meta on many levels! (He probably meant "Autodesk" but autocorrect kicked in rather aggressively, as he anticipated).
- bredren 8y agoHaha. Yes. Autodesk has a new office in Portland and I attended the Fusion 360 community meetup a few weeks back. At that meeting they debuted their new pricing plans and demoed some pretty fancy functionality called generative design that was def not useful to the largely hobbiest attendees in the crowd. It definitely feels like there is a niche of sub-fusion use case where you are doing simple commercial product design but not at a rate worth a $300 license from autocorrect
- avhon1 8y agoAnother simple libre CAD program is SolveSpace. It works more like Autodesk Inventor - you draw 2D sketches, pull them into 3D in different ways, repeat, and add constraints to features along the way. Very good for the dimensionally-accurate stuff people model in Fusion360. (Nearly useless, I might add, for organic stuff like the mosquito in the Dust video.) http://solvespace.com/index.pl http://solvespace.com/index.pl
- gfodor 8y agoThis is really, really cool. In 5 minutes I was able to create a quick little palm tree (I am not an artist, it is very ugly :)) and throw it into a room in Hubs since Dust3D exports GLB. These kind of low poly, texture-oriented models are really excellent for VR since you have limited budgets. Nice work!
- huxingyi 8y agoThanks, I am really happy to hear that it can work with VR.
- rstrduck 8y agoGreat concept! As a time-starved hobby game dev, the focus on being able to make something quickly from a reference image is really refreshing, in comparison with the more common design approach geared toward those with deep, well-practiced polygonal modeling skills. I like the direction your interface is going in. I love the Skin Modifier in Blender, but the workflow for that does feel a bit tedious, so I like the click-to-add-node approach. I also appreciate being able to move the rendered view around the window and scale it as desired.
- lostgame 8y agoThank you from the bottom of my heart for making an alternative to one of the most unfortunately convoluted, beyond unusable pieces of UI/UX garbage on the planet...(Blender)...what a nightmare to use for even a moment.
- mroche 8y agoNot sure if you’ve been following the 2.8 developments this year, but if you haven’t you should grab the latest beta. The new UI/UX is completely different from before (within reason) and is light years ahead of where it used to be.
- gmueckl 8y agoThamks for the heads up. I might have to try it out. It seems to take a few ideas from Moonlight|3D that I put in there more than a decade ago. Others seem inspired by Maya, which I also like a lot.
- blensor 8y agoThat seems overly harsh. Are you saying the same about vi or emacs? As soon as someone has put in the time to familiarize with the UI the speed with which you can achieve things is impressive. I've been using blender since the 2.4 branch and the amount of work the devs have been putting into improving it (not only the UI) is simply astonishing. And whats the point of making an UI beginner friendly if it hinders you after you have reached a certain level of proficiency (a period which realyl isn't that long).
- gfodor 8y agoThis comment is truly shameful. Blender is an amazing open source project created by volunteers and this kind of mean spirited criticsm is toxic. Your ignorance about the amazing effort going into 2.8 only adds to it. You should delete it.
- Joeboy 8y agoI think Blender is primarily developed by people who get paid to work on it. I don't think I'd object to the comment if Blender actually had a bad UI, but I don't think it does. It just has an unusual UI and a steep initial learning curve. Clearly many people manage to do amazing work with it.
- xyproto 8y agoIt looks great, but imagine the name of the software being "Moron3D". That is the reality for every native Norwegian speaker, since "dust" means "moron" in Norwegian. I don't mean this in a petty way, it's just hard to ignore, for me. In related news, Honda tried to launch a car in Norway a couple of years back named "Honda Fitta" which roughly translates to "Honda the Cunt". The tagline was: "Fitta is small inside, but grand when you get in. A daily pleasure!" They quickly changed the name to just "Honda Jazz" instead.
- Krasnol 8y agoI'd say it's worth a consideration if it would be some weird word like "Fitta" but since it's a pretty well known english word, I'd say, you have to live with it. Greeting from Poland where you find versions of "kurwa" (literally: "whore" but used like "fuck" in english) in all kinds of languages as a word for "curve" ;)
- huxingyi 8y agoThanks, but it's a little too late to rename, too many things need to sync, such as domain.
- themodelplumber 8y agoI would just put a note on the site that says: "Also known as 'Jazz3D' in Norway" or something. The use case being Norwegian Neckbeards looking to name drop your stuff without risking their intellectual reputation.
- aklemm 8y agoAnd that would be kind of a funny insider joke that would endear you to any dusts who would further hassle you.
- blattimwind 8y agoMongoDB... e: MongoDB is a perfectly valid example of a brand name that's somewhere in the "very offensive" area in some languages. Like GasjewsDB an easily avoidable cultural pitfall.
- dplgk 8y agoDoes it allow precision input of sizes, quickly like sketchup? I'm looking for sketchup replacement.
- huxingyi 8y agoInput by direct type number of position and radius? Not yet.
- dplgk 8y agoIn sketchup you can draw something (rectangle, circle, line) and after you drag and release, you can then just type exact size in iches that you want, it will resize what you just drew. Makes architectural or woodworking design extremely fast and easy to work with. Sketchup basically has a monopoly on the casual woodworking, interior designer crowd because there is not an easy to use alternative. But the app sucks in so many ways and is way overpriced and the current company seems to just want to milk it for profits than improve it. Sketchup users are dying for an alternative.
- huxingyi 8y agoThanks for the info, may have a try to see how Dust3D could benefit from this.
- mrobot 8y agoThis might be a stupid question but in the mosquito create video, what are the blue smudges he draws in the left portion of the image for? What are the blue lines dragged down in the GIMP? What exactly is going on in that part of the video?
- huxingyi 8y agoBlue smudges! my god, LOL, That is the drawing of the front view of the mosquito! The blue lines dragged down in the GIMP is the reference line. Usually, when make reference sheet for Dust3D, the same position in the two profiles(Front/Side) should sit in the same height(Y coord). This video is a demonstration of how bad at drawing can still make good 3D model with Dust3D.
- mrobot 8y agoThank you i'm very stupid.
- mrobot 8y agoI have always wanted something like this.
- rjplatte 8y agoWhat's your roadmap for new features?
- huxingyi 8y agoThanks for asking, there is a target in my mind that generate highly detailed mesh but maintained the easy usability. I don't know how far the target is away. The near roadmap is making this software could be used in the game I am developing exclusively(Without use other modeler), if something is missing, I would add it.
- parfamz 8y agoHow do you do the cross platform releases? One painful thing about cpp is how tedius is to cross compile compared to managed languages or the go runtime. Great work, the product looks really nice.
- huxingyi 8y agoThanks. Yes, it’s painful of manage cpp with different compilers, the cross platform of Dust3D mainly benefit from Qt.