Our studio tested Maya for poly modelling a couple of years ago, and we didn´t like it back than.
It seems that Modo and blender is better in many ways…
My Background is Alias automotive modelling in Alias as well.
So Im used to some tools that let me evaluate and control my model at any time.
Tools or functiones like:
Curvature analysis shading
Zebra shading
Sectioning
Snapping to nurbs curves
… and others.
Has blender tools like that or plugins that extend blenders functionality in that direction?
in nurbs editing its a bit behind i think, for the other things please include some images.
cycles is verry powerfull in procedural shaders, (and it also supports osl), you can make pretty good carpaints with it, metalic paints etc
people have been making lots of cars with Blender,
There happened to be a talk just about “Automotive design in Blender” during this year`s Blender Conference. It may or may not shed some light onto your questions (though probably not in particular, AFAIR):
In any case, you might still just try to contact the very company (Tata Motors European Technical Centre (TMETC)) an employee (Mathilde Ampe) of which gave the talk. They might just be the right people to ask, I guess.
Other than that, if I correctly understand what you mean by “sectioning”, Blender should be able to do it: Bisect
As far as “curvature analysis shading” goes, there are some tools kind of related to that, though maybe not the sophisticated thing you`re looking for: Mesh Analysis
greetings, Kologe
Well Alias is a spline and NURBS surface modelling program, Blender is a polygonal modelling program and thus the workflow is completely different. If you’re coming from Alias why exactly do you want to use a polygonal program for automotive modelling. It can be done, in-fact the process is pretty much the same as any other program. You start with a block-out, use smoothing groups and subdivide the geometry till you have a shell and then gradually increase the detail until you have the final product. In-fact I made a pretty lengthy post a while back on doing such things…
However, if you want accuracy then use Alias, with SubD modelling you’ll have to accommodate some faults or else deal with exceedingly complex geometry…
To answer your questions however, Blender has a sleuth of different viewport shading methods. You use use the real-time renderer, GLSL shader or a node based system. For your curvature analysis you can use the GLSL shader and apply a Fresnel type shader… Zebra shading isn’t something Blender supports natively, you can unwrap the model and apply a checkerboard pattern but this isn’t what you’ll want initially. You may be able to composite an elaborate Cycles shader to do this but it isn’t exactly practical.
Not sure what sectioning is…?
Snapping to NURBS curves is possible simply by using the snapping tool, you can define the geometric complexity of a curve and similarly snap to individual vertices like you would do on a mesh model. One thing to note however is that NURBS surfaces are lack-luster in Blender, I wouldn’t advise modelling anything complex with them. Use Alias for this or-else become acquainted with SubD automotive modelling. Of-course you can download a whole host of plug-ins and if you’re able to program in Python then Blender offers a relatively explanatory API for creating your own add-ons.
I´m quiet aware that blender is a poly and sub d modeller, and I know that I should never touch nurbs tools in blender
I ahve been working with blender in my freetime for a while now, and really like it.
Poly modelling is nothing that should replace nurbs (alias) modelling, but it is really fast and fexible for a volume and form exploration in an early design process…
I know that. I was just wandering if It could provide something similar to a few of the used tools and functionality of an automotive workflow as the ones mentioned above.
maybe I should explain what i wrote earlier.
snapping to nurbs Curves- If I can somehow import nurbs curves/surfeces from cad software as a reference or package and then snap
I could make sure that I meet some tecnical requierements.
Curvature analysis shading ist a shading mode in CAD that shows areas of your model which have positiv or negative curvature (meshanaysis panel in blender might do the trick, but I havent figured out how it works yet)
Zebra-stripes can be done with a pligin called Bling in Modo- seems to be do-able via matcaps.
And sections are not quiet what the bisect tool offers… again modo seems to be able to do what I need with the slicing/contours tool.
Its kind of what bisect does, but its not ditructive, it adds a new object showing you the intersection line as meshline or curve.
maybe bisect is also able to do this? am I missing something?
I have an active object, in editmode I select all verts.
then i hit n for the sidebar, i scroll down to mesh analysis, then i check the box- nothing happening…
how do I activate the tool?
has anyone an Idea how I can make the bisect tool create an new object from the split line, and not to cut my actual model?
I want to keep my model intact, and have the cut or section line as a seperate mesh…
I kind of got it but its not comfortable.
I have an mesh, edit mode, select all verts, duplicate them,hit esc to keep them in place,now I use bisect tool,
create a cut, in options I say clear inner and outer, this leaves me with just the cut line, now I use seperate verts by selection… voila
I end up with to seperate opjects, one is my unaltered model, the other is just a section line. this is what I want, but the workflow is terrible…
Is there a way to change the bisect tool to do all this for me?
Or is it possible to write this as a macro and bind it to a hotkey?
That would be moderately easy to do as a python script. at one point, I made a script that bisect-sliced a model in even increments to export the shapes to autocad in order to loft them into a solid. Actually, it was for automotive design as well, it was a faux dashboard that we were getting CNC’d out of structural foam for a tradeshow display. I had sculpted the dash in blender, and getting that data into cad took some wrestling.
Nope, you cannot snap to nurbs in Blender without converting it to a mesh first.
There is a geometry pointiness attribute available for rendering in Cycles. However, keep in mind that this is resolution dependent, so it may not quite be what you want. A resolution-independent raytraced solution is possible via an OSL shader, but it’s not exactly easy to do it well, and it’d be quite slow.
Either that, or I’m sure you can create an appropriate shader in Cycles.
Bisect doesn’t exactly fit the bill, but it should be pretty easy to make yourself an addon which does what you want.
The script I used was very specific, wouldn’t be much use to you. But look around for some BPY tutorials, it’s a really powerful tool for technical work.
HEY everyone, i was going to create a new topic but thought of posting in this one here.
So you guys might have seen the Blender Conference 2019 videos.
I want to mention this video specifically.
I found the pie menus used by them are pretty good and if made available can help others too in car modelling.
The Material pie menu and few others. Here are the screenshots.
If someone expert here can make these Pie menus. That would be awesome. I don’t know scripting, so I can’t make it for myself.
Lets see if someone can make them !
