MakerGear Forum

Hi

Am wading through intuitive 3D modelling software, trying to avoid anything remotely Autocad/Rhino ish (I find them impenetrable) and found the following:

http://pixologic.com/sculptris/

And:

http://www.meshmixer.com/

I have to say after a quick 45 mins fiddling with both I am blown away by their usefulness and quite simple use, especially Sculptris but they are both incredible.

Sculptris is purposefully a lead into the pro ZBrush so doubles up usefully. Meshmixer allows you to clash together other models and shapes. It is great...

R

Meshmixer... Talk about impenetrable. I saw someone write recently, can't remember where, that it was a big collection of the most current algorithms implemented to research quality, I.e., just good enough to get a paper out of. No question it is very powerful, if you can avoid it crashing long enough.

Yep, doing awesome things on the cutting edge of difficult can have its drama.

It is still amazing and if it gets more reliable then frankly can't wait.

R

I'm going for zbrush.... one of these days when my piggy bank is full. Check out the user galleries if you haven't seen them before:

http://www.zbrushcentral.com/zbc-top-row-gallery.php

http://www.zbrushcentral.com/zbc-thumbnail-gallery.php

I'm so finicky about software though. I can't stand the whole "look at the screen while not looking at your hand and conceptualize everything you want to do before you do it and turn it into mouse clicks according to the rules of our software." I feel like a robot.

I'm trying to get around it by writing my own software using a laptop/tablet with the screen that has a built in digitizer. So I can draw and see what my hand is doing at the same time, and try to develop a set of software tools that are more gesture based and less conceptual than the usual fare. I'd be sunk if I had to make my living this way, but as a hobby it's a lot of fun.

Hello again.

Try a Wacom tablet, awesome and makes everything intuitive. Not worth reinventing the wheel IMO.

I use a small ish one, A5 iirc. no bigger than A4 is needed. Very useful. you'll like it.

R

Try Sculptris. It is free and works.

Like you, I couldn't find modeling software that I really could be comfortable with (that I could afford at that). While I still do a lot of work in OpenSCAD, I stumbled upon Moment Of Inspiration (moi3d.com) and I could not be happier. It's available for both Mac and Windows and the support from the developer has been incredible. The newest version in beta will import step files also.

It's a NURBS modeler - the developer was one of the initial Rhino developers- however the interface is very approachable and it's completely script able in JavaScript.

Scott