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I haven't done much designing. Starting with a cube and sculpting, transforming seems the Blender's approach. Are there any other approaches for designing 3-D s

by zkmon 1y ago

I haven't done much designing. Starting with a cube and sculpting, transforming seems the Blender's approach. Are there any other approaches for designing 3-D shapes and assembling them? Basically, Blender says "start with a cube". I want to ask why and what are the other options.

knolan 1y ago
Open a new blender file and select Sculpt and you start with a high poly sphere. The default cube is not suitable for sculpting unless you subdivide it several times. You can create whatever start up file you want. Other approaches include subsurface workflows, metaballs, signed distance functions, procedural (geometry nodes) and grease pencil.
mikepurvis 1y ago
I'm curious about this too. On the engineering side, tools like Solidworks and Fusion start from extruding a planar sketch— which is a model that maps well to conventional manufacturing techniques, but isn't very artistic.
- an_aparallel 1y ago
  You want Rhino3d for creative + manufacture
- the__alchemist 1y ago
  Of note, there is an interesting parallel between this sketch/extrude/cut approach that Solidworks uses, and the Brush approach you used to use to make Half-Life and Source engine maps. (I don't know what the current tools, e.g. for Unreal use).
MyOutfitIsVague 1y ago
Blender doesn't say "start with a cube". Its default "General" scene has a cube. You can add whatever mesh, text, curves, metaballs, grease pencil, volumes, etc you want. As far as workflows go, there are far too many to list, and most artists use multiple, but common ones are: * Sculpt from a base mesh, increasing resolution as you go with remeshing, subdivision, dyntopo, etc. * Constructively model with primitives and boolean modifiers. * Constructively model with metaballs. * Do everything via extrusion and joining, as well as other basic face and edge-oriented operators. * Use geometry nodes and/or shaders to programmatically end up with the result you want.
- diggan 1y ago
  Finally, since we're a lot of programmers here, all of Blenders functionality is exposed as a Python API, that can be run directly from within Blender or as an addon/extension. Handy when you're doing a bunch of repetitive stuff. https://docs.blender.org/api/current/index.html https://docs.blender.org/api/current/index.html
weinzierl 1y ago
I think "hard surface modeling" is a keyword you might want to look up. Also look into traditional CAD and "parametric design". All of these have considerable overlap and are focussed on mostly "boxy shapes" with some "free form surfaces" added. On the other end of the spectrum you have "sculping" for organic shapes and you might want dig into the community around ZBrush, if you want to fill the gap from "start with a cube" to real sculpting. More niche, but where I feel home, is the model with coordinates and text input approach. I don't know if it has a real name, but here istwhere is pops up and where I worked with it: - In original AutoCAD (think 90s) a lot of the heavy lifting was done on an integrated command line hacking in many coordinates - POVRay (and its predecessors and relatives) has a really nice DSL to do CSG with algebraic hypersurfaces. Sounds way more scary than it is. Mark Shuttleworth used it on his space trip to make a render for example. - Professionally I worked for a couple of years with a tool called FEMAP. I used a lot of coordinate entry and formulas to define stuff and FEMAP is well suited for that. - Finally OpenSCAD for a contemporary example of the approach.
thejefflarson 1y ago
Every Blender tutorial starts with "hit a, hit x to delete the default objects." I don't think this is a valid point.
quitit 1y ago
For skulpted works (best for organic and free-form style character and object designs) starting with a "clay sphere" is also common. In terms of app for the iPad: Nomad Skulpt is well favoured there. Other popular approaches to designing shapes are using live addition/subtraction, Nomad supports that as well, but it's not as intentional as say 3D Studio Max (for Windows) - where animating those interactions is purposely included as their point of difference. There's also solid geometry modelling, this is intended for items that would be manufactured, for that SolidWorks is common. Then finally you have software like Maya which lets you take all manner of approaches, including a few I haven't listed here (such as scripted or procedural modelling.) The disadvantage here is that the learning curve is a mountain. And if you like a bit of history, PovRay is still around where you feed it text mark-up to produce a render.
dagmx 1y ago
There are lots of way to construct geometry. - sculpting. You start with a high density mesh and drag the points like clay. - poly modeling. You start with a plane and extend the edges until you make the topology you want. - box modelling. You start with a cube or other primitive shape and extend the faces until you make the shape you want. - nurbs / patches : you create parts of a model by moving Bézier curves around and creating a surface between them - B-reps / parametric / csg / cad / sdf / BSP : these are all similar in that you start with mathematically defined shapes and then combine or subtract them from each other to get what you want. They’re all different in implementation though - photogrammetry / scans : you take imagery from multiple angles and correlate points between them to create a mesh
lucasoshiro 1y ago
There are many approaches. For example, constructive solid geometry, where you use boolean operations on simple 3D shapes to create a more complex object. Another one is the extrusion of 2D shapes, which adds volume to 2D shapes. My main tool is OpenSCAD, as I am a programmer and I model for 3D printing, which support both CSG and extrusion, but not the mesh manipulation like Blender. One paradigm is not better than the other. Blender is nice for modelling, for example, characters, but it's really painful for doing precise shapes. For modelling multi-part action figures for 3D printing you'll need both things, sometimes modelling something in a tool and finishing it in other
tickettotranai 1y ago
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by zkmon 1y ago

knolan 1y ago

Open a new blender file and select Sculpt and you start with a high poly sphere. The default cube is not suitable for sculpting unless you subdivide it several times. You can create whatever start up file you want. Other approaches include subsurface workflows, metaballs, signed distance functions, procedural (geometry nodes) and grease pencil.

mikepurvis 1y ago

I'm curious about this too. On the engineering side, tools like Solidworks and Fusion start from extruding a planar sketch— which is a model that maps well to conventional manufacturing techniques, but isn't very artistic.

an_aparallel 1y ago
You want Rhino3d for creative + manufacture
the__alchemist 1y ago
Of note, there is an interesting parallel between this sketch/extrude/cut approach that Solidworks uses, and the Brush approach you used to use to make Half-Life and Source engine maps. (I don't know what the current tools, e.g. for Unreal use).

MyOutfitIsVague 1y ago

Blender doesn't say "start with a cube". Its default "General" scene has a cube. You can add whatever mesh, text, curves, metaballs, grease pencil, volumes, etc you want. As far as workflows go, there are far too many to list, and most artists use multiple, but common ones are: * Sculpt from a base mesh, increasing resolution as you go with remeshing, subdivision, dyntopo, etc. * Constructively model with primitives and boolean modifiers. * Constructively model with metaballs. * Do everything via extrusion and joining, as well as other basic face and edge-oriented operators. * Use geometry nodes and/or shaders to programmatically end up with the result you want.

diggan 1y ago
Finally, since we're a lot of programmers here, all of Blenders functionality is exposed as a Python API, that can be run directly from within Blender or as an addon/extension. Handy when you're doing a bunch of repetitive stuff. https://docs.blender.org/api/current/index.html https://docs.blender.org/api/current/index.html

weinzierl 1y ago

I think "hard surface modeling" is a keyword you might want to look up. Also look into traditional CAD and "parametric design". All of these have considerable overlap and are focussed on mostly "boxy shapes" with some "free form surfaces" added. On the other end of the spectrum you have "sculping" for organic shapes and you might want dig into the community around ZBrush, if you want to fill the gap from "start with a cube" to real sculpting. More niche, but where I feel home, is the model with coordinates and text input approach. I don't know if it has a real name, but here istwhere is pops up and where I worked with it: - In original AutoCAD (think 90s) a lot of the heavy lifting was done on an integrated command line hacking in many coordinates - POVRay (and its predecessors and relatives) has a really nice DSL to do CSG with algebraic hypersurfaces. Sounds way more scary than it is. Mark Shuttleworth used it on his space trip to make a render for example. - Professionally I worked for a couple of years with a tool called FEMAP. I used a lot of coordinate entry and formulas to define stuff and FEMAP is well suited for that. - Finally OpenSCAD for a contemporary example of the approach.

thejefflarson 1y ago

Every Blender tutorial starts with "hit a, hit x to delete the default objects." I don't think this is a valid point.

quitit 1y ago

For skulpted works (best for organic and free-form style character and object designs) starting with a "clay sphere" is also common. In terms of app for the iPad: Nomad Skulpt is well favoured there. Other popular approaches to designing shapes are using live addition/subtraction, Nomad supports that as well, but it's not as intentional as say 3D Studio Max (for Windows) - where animating those interactions is purposely included as their point of difference. There's also solid geometry modelling, this is intended for items that would be manufactured, for that SolidWorks is common. Then finally you have software like Maya which lets you take all manner of approaches, including a few I haven't listed here (such as scripted or procedural modelling.) The disadvantage here is that the learning curve is a mountain. And if you like a bit of history, PovRay is still around where you feed it text mark-up to produce a render.

dagmx 1y ago

There are lots of way to construct geometry. - sculpting. You start with a high density mesh and drag the points like clay. - poly modeling. You start with a plane and extend the edges until you make the topology you want. - box modelling. You start with a cube or other primitive shape and extend the faces until you make the shape you want. - nurbs / patches : you create parts of a model by moving Bézier curves around and creating a surface between them - B-reps / parametric / csg / cad / sdf / BSP : these are all similar in that you start with mathematically defined shapes and then combine or subtract them from each other to get what you want. They’re all different in implementation though - photogrammetry / scans : you take imagery from multiple angles and correlate points between them to create a mesh

lucasoshiro 1y ago

There are many approaches. For example, constructive solid geometry, where you use boolean operations on simple 3D shapes to create a more complex object. Another one is the extrusion of 2D shapes, which adds volume to 2D shapes. My main tool is OpenSCAD, as I am a programmer and I model for 3D printing, which support both CSG and extrusion, but not the mesh manipulation like Blender. One paradigm is not better than the other. Blender is nice for modelling, for example, characters, but it's really painful for doing precise shapes. For modelling multi-part action figures for 3D printing you'll need both things, sometimes modelling something in a tool and finishing it in other

tickettotranai 1y ago

[dead]