3D Brush Strokes

Discussion and updates on Curvy 3D Beta development.
Simon
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3D Brush Strokes

Post by Simon »

I've had requests for different shaped Line object cross-sections. You can now draw with 3D brushes, creating the shapes below with a single stroke (nothing you couldn't do before but now you can skip setting up arrays, rail curves, actions and so on!)

Once drawn the strokes are fully editable, both in 3D and in their brush style. And you can bake strokes into meshes for further sculpting and editing as normal. For example the two chains are identical except for one radius change. The skulls are the same, with different stroke curves and a couple of brush parameter tweaks.

You will also be able to draw strokes over the surface of other objects, and use them as trim for mesh edges. They will orient to follow the surface, making detailing fun.

Image
Simon
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Re: Brush Strokes

Post by Simon »

You can now draw mesh strokes directly onto the surface of other objects, they wrap around the surface correctly.

Also you can now cut and add trim to objects and the trim can be any cross section, and will orient to fit the surface correctly.

Here is an example of painting with a mesh (the little shape on the left) over the surface of a Lathe. Again this is a single stroke in Curvy, no tricky editing required. I've used a square shape for simplicity - but you can just as easily draw with any of the shapes above.

Image
weswes
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Re: 3D Brush Strokes

Post by weswes »

holy moly
weswes
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Re: 3D Brush Strokes

Post by weswes »

I'm going to play around with this today, i can't wait.
Simon
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Re: 3D Brush Strokes

Post by Simon »

Funnily enough I've not had much chance myself to play with this either! Apart from a few tests I'm yet to make some real models with it. You are likely to be breaking new ground :D
weswes
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Re: 3D Brush Strokes

Post by weswes »

Hey,

I have version 5.01 so some things may not work the way they work on your program. The scale of the mesh when stroked is way different than the original mesh. Also, restroke doesn't seem to work for this. How do I stroke onto meshes?

THanks!
Wes
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Simon
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Re: 3D Brush Strokes

Post by Simon »

Brush Strokes uses the radius of the curve for the item size (like a Curvy Line Object) So you can alter the size and number interactively.

At the moment you draw onto Frozen meshes. The little Snowflake on the groups panel to freeze an object.
weswes
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Re: 3D Brush Strokes

Post by weswes »

My goodness, it works so well! The POSSIBILITIES! thank you so much for your prompt replies and hard work.
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Re: 3D Brush Strokes

Post by Simon »

I feel like I've barely scratched the surface of what you can do with this tool. It's stopped me thinking about just sculpting a surface and started me thinking about intertwined forms, muscle systems, organic growth.

I remember a long time ago when I was learning Computer Science that it would be really cool to grow thick jungle vines over the surface of an object. It's been a few years since then and I finally have the tech to do it. I know there are cool particle mesh systems in Movie Effects programs like Houdini, but it it fun to play with the same kind of stuff in realtime editors.

I am working on a related tech - while Brush Strokes applies a mesh to a curve in various ways with nice live editing, I'm planing a version of Mesh Wrap that does a similar thing applying a Mesh to an entire surface. Again - it's been done as particle systems over a surface in other Apps - but I'm thinking much more interactive and responsive - being able to use painted strokes to manipulate them en masse. Like placing 100,000 dragon scales on a monster (with correct rythmn of alignment and scale to suit the anatomy), or 10,000 soldiers charging down a hill in a tumbled mess of currents and flows. It's another case of thinking up interesting applications once the tech exists. I hope I can find some other uses for it than slightly quicker to make chainmail.

As an added bonus - you can mix and match particle objects with XYZ 3D Texture Alphas to distort the surface at each point of contact as well as placing a distinct mesh there. For example if you wanted an army of zombies rising from the grave you'd dig holes and pile up earth with the XYZ distortion, while placing a zombie mesh (from a selection of poses) coming out of each hole (I say 'place' you could auto-spawn 1000's of them at once, or paint them on a surface like sprinkling seeds on a garden). It would be nigh on impossible to do simply with a high-res mesh and a 3D displacement map. Likewise something simpler like stitching on a coat - the small dimples on the fabric are displacement, but the loops of thread can be distinct meshes (akin to a Brush Strokes mesh) to give a high quality finish with a tiny fraction of the polygon density. Much as I hate to make it - stitching is one of the things I love about HD models.
weswes
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Re: 3D Brush Strokes

Post by weswes »

I see what you are saying.

Say I make a hierarchy of meshes. zombie1, zombie2, zombie3. 3 different meshes that I created. Could I paint a stroke that randomizes their appearance in the stroke? So it would go z1,z2,z3,z2,z1 etc. Could I have a normal sequence of those as well determined by the hierarchy order. I could stroke a night sky, I could Stroke animals near a river. I COULD BECOME A GOD....and so forth
Simon
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Re: 3D Brush Strokes

Post by Simon »

Yes. Just make a group of Zombies and use them as the Brush (not in current build yet).

In fact I think Brush Strokes are too slow. When you get a stroke with, say, 10,000 copies of the same Zombie it will slow down. That's no good if you need 100,000 zombies on a stroke (or a surface.) I'll see how many Zombies I can get working with dynamic editing in realtime. I know my PC can cope with 50,000,000 triangles per frame (as I've seen in sculpting tests) so at 5,000 triangles per zombie - perhaps 10,000 Zombies, or if you can cope with Low-Poly Zombies, maybe around 100,000 Zombies as per the plan. A smart system would use Level of Detail groups as part of the Brush setup (Nest Lo/Med/Hi groups when you setup the groups of Zombies) and use the right LoD for different sizes of Zombie (but here size means real world size, not size in perspective). If you were extra spicy you would muck about with the LoD groups and replace detail levels with some other progression - for example the amount they were climbing out of the grave - then you could paint on the surface areas where they were fully out and walking ahead, compared to areas where they were just breaking a hand out of the surface of the earth.

If I combine this with the new Bones posing code - you'll won't need to create Brush Groups - you can just use anim clips instead. Or multiple anim clips if you want some more variation between Zombies.

If you add an animated parameter for LoD bias to the timeline, you get 100,000 zombies breaking out of the ground and marching forward in realtime in the editor. No idea what the point of that would be - but it might have applications to sculpting somehow.

Don't actually need a surface for this to work, could model a flock of birds with the same tools.

Watch this space.
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Re: 3D Brush Strokes

Post by Simon »

I've done it. First anim on https://www.patreon.com/curvy3d
weswes
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Re: 3D Brush Strokes

Post by weswes »

Its incredible. I see so many applications for this. I'll pm you some of my ideas. I couldn't possibly pull them off but you could.
Simon
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Re: 3D Brush Strokes

Post by Simon »

Yes please on the applications. I want to try dragon scales next - but that means sculpting a dragon first and I'm not sure I can find the time :?

I like my old methods - but they feel like dead mesh, complicated and slow to model with - whereas sculpting with live meshes is much more dynamic. I'm thinking using the sculpting tools on a mesh and seeing all the scales adapt and reform to fit my sculpting, rather than the old sculpt then hi-poly workflow.

You could pretty easily animate the big Zombie while all the little Zombies walked all over it - not so interesting as an animation - but if the realtime framerates are there it will make for silky smooth posing of quite intricate models.
weswes
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Re: 3D Brush Strokes

Post by weswes »

you can always download objects from sites. https://www.turbosquid.com/3d-models/fr ... del/533105
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