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A Cool New Way For Creating Voxels !


DRAWINGTANK
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I came across this

http://www.dgp.toronto.edu/~shbae/ilovesketch.htm

Its called " I Love Sketch "

basically you sketch and the app converts the stokes into curves and before you know it you have created a sketch that is actually a 3D model

or Nurb curves that can be turned into a model :)

What if we could " sketch " inside 3DC like you would on paper ala "I love Sketch " and when you are done you can press " Make Voxels "

button and baaam.... you just turned a sketch into a voxel model !

this would give anyone who loves to sketch a new way to create models essentially " bridging " the gap between artists and modelers

I hope you guys see the potential as I do

thanks for taking the time

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Very Cool.... I wish they release an open beta

the way Andrew is from what I have seen so far He could implement this with his own flavor in

3DC before they actually have a beta out :)

in a way, half the function is already there with the sphere brush, it is just a matter of making each stroke have a temporary history... so you sketch it in one projection and it works like normal, then you rotate even a little bit, and that second stroke is instersected with the first projection. pretty simple. or rather, it works like curves, but instead of a manual curve entry, it's a stroke entry... and each stroke of your pen in a new rotation intersects with the previous stroke... and to make it a little more robust, maybe there's a slider you can access after each stroke that is a % undo... so that you can refine quite easily...

This could be extremely easy to implement since so much of it is already there... as I said, with the curve tool! :) it's just a matter of a new interface for the curves.

of course, I think zSpheres 2 is kinda doing this, or is it zSketch??? I don't know, I don't have zBrush. zBrush schmeeBrush - I want it in 3DC :)

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Possibly you will be able to get something like this if I will allow to draw with curves directly on reference images that are used in Sketch tool.

the amazing part of the shared idea here is that it is freeform. 2 projections do not need to be ortho, but only from 2 different views...

it is much more intuitive to sketch in a 3D view and follow a line of flow in a model, than to have to be limited to the projections.

also, as I mentioned... zBrush is doing something like this with zSpheres2... sketching in 3D space is WAY better than sketching on a 2D orthogonal plane.

just make it so that a new curve tool, called curve 2.

the points are a smooth version of a pen stroke, using the same method you use to create a sphere-tool stroke, with obviously smoothed out points. then while that curve is active, allow a stroke to edit that curve in the current view... aligning only it's VIEW BASED X/Y with the stroke, and leaving it's VIEW BASED Depth alone.

that way as you rotate, you can adjust the curve from the intuitive viewer's point of view.

:D

additionally, since the wacom allows pressure sensitivity, you could totally have the size of each point be based on the original stroke (probably not the adjustment strokes)

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I do think that drawing on the reference planes (as in you can draw the images within 3DC, and in place... that is a good feature, but not even close to the same as what this multi-sketch would be.

The following video doesn't even show how it would be even cooler when used while there is other reference model already in place.

here's a video to explain how working with a sketched curve in 3D is better than ortho projections.

Video to Explain

of course, one additional item that I think needs fixing is the shape of the drawn curves. right now they are wonky, because the first and last point aim toward the second. this creates really ugly curves. fine for ugly creature drawings etc, but not for elegant designs and sculpting. :D

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This is a very, very cool and potentially hugely useful sketching approach! And I certainly vote for getting something like that into 3DC -- where much of the infrastrucure clearly is in place already. Go, Andrew, go -- stop working on all this boring UV stuff, give us more and better voxel sketching-modelling tools!

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This is a very, very cool and potentially hugely useful sketching approach! And I certainly vote for getting something like that into 3DC -- where much of the infrastrucure clearly is in place already. Go, Andrew, go -- stop working on all this boring UV stuff, give us more and better voxel sketching-modelling tools!

Agree 100 % !

Andrew if you do this right ( I agree with cakeller No projection limitations please ) and make so we can Sketch in any direction with total freedom of movement

while utilizing Wacom tablets pressure sensitivity to give a natural feel for how thick or thin the line should be

For fun you can even include a paper texture as a background to give us the " authentic look & feel

+ if we could Save the Sketch like we can save a spline in " Draw by Closed Splines " and when you are ready to turn the " Line Sketch " into Voxels just click " Apply " button

this will turn 3DC without a doubt the King of the hill for it will attract so many people who are artists but at the same time are turned off

by the technical side of building models in 3D..

Like Klaus said, " where much of the infrastrucure clearly is in place already " + your creativity & speed it would be a shame not to do this !

I found another software that has the same kind of idea it's called "Rhonda", a 3D drawing tool developed by Amit Pitaru circa 2003.

you can actually sign up for Beta Test its available for both Mac / PC

http://rhondaforever.com/

from what I can tell by playing with it for a a few minutes.. its really cool and could give you some new ideas on how to approach this

come on ... let's do it :clapping:

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While I would love to be able to do sketching in 3D that's cool, I am way more interested in directly manipulating 3D forms. think sculpting vs sketching. I want FAST form build up.

one of the things that is lacking is an elegant input for forms... which is what I got so excited about here, is the idea that you could lay down a curve, simliar to the way you can with the sphere brush, but then being able to refine that stroke from multiple angles by merely rotating the model and re-stroking and then finalizing the stroke into the voxels once it's aesthetically how you want it.

what I meant by the functionality already being there is that there are several tools that have pieces of this puzzle... curves has the - lay it down before you apply it - functionality. the muscle tool, has the fluid stroke, the sphere tool has the pen-pressure thick-to-thin ability... and the e-pallete's spline brush has the ability to edit cleaner curves than the curve tool (meaning controlling tangents at the ends... as a reminder... the curves tool NEEDS to provide access to the control vertices, or allow independent rotation of the end tangents)

putting all that together ... would essentially give 3DC all the functionality that zSpheres II touts... but in a voxel environment, instead of using a metaball idea. if you haven't watched the video of the zSpheres II / zSketching, it'd be a really good idea. I think you could do this where it just gives a perfect interface for creating forms and since it's only adding a few tweaks to the curve tool it shouldn't be too hard.

1) thickness controlled by a stroke, using wacom pressure

2) being able to re-stroke a curve that's active, allowing you to refine it from multiple ARBiTRARY projections

that's IT! really... those two things would do it...

well... and 3) allowing end tangent control to the curve tool.

- of course, I'm not saying I wouldn't enjoy a 3D sketching tool as well, but --- 3DC for me, is about virtual sculpting, and building arbitrary, and forms without constraints, and fast. voxels allow this type of sculpting and form development - adding the tweaks I just described above would seriously exponentially increase 3DC's proficiency at what it is already masterful at - FAST UNCONSTAINED FORM DEVELOPMENT - and it would improve the controllability of that form development, tremendously. Best of all - it's not a NEW interface, it's not a NEW tool - it's the addition of a refined version of an existing tool (with features from a few other tools)

:D not trying to tell you it's trivial - I'm saying it would be HUGELY beneficial!

Thanks for considering this.

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Every time I come back to the forums and read over all the posts, I keep coming back to this one... I get absolutely chills thinking about how much this would free our creative outlet... ;) mind blowing it would be, yeessss, mind blowing.

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I posted this on another thread, because it was discussing just this idea... I thought I'd re-post it here.

Here is the link to the other post Voxels Stick to...

lay down the first stoke of the curve, (looks just like a curve on the curve tool, that's fine, but with the size of the points controlled by the pressure)

then each subsequent stroke would be given a weighting...

so that each stroke is averaged, or has a weighted averaging with the final stroke.

you could make it so that the final shape was an average of all the strokes,

or you could make the current stroke equal weighted to all the previous strokes..

1) (stroke 1 + strok 2... stroke n) / n

2) (((stroke 1 + stroke 2... stroke n-1) / n-1 ) + stroke n ) / 2

weighted versions

3) this method allows user to change the weighting for each stroke, to control how much or little each additional stroke will affect the shape of the current curve

Stroke 1:

result = Stroke 1

Stroke 2:

result = ((result * (1-weight 2)) + (stroke 2 * weight 2) / 2

Stroke 3:

result = ((result * (1-weight 3)) + (stroke 3 * weight 3) / 2

Stroke ...n:

result = ((result * (1-weight n)) + (strokee n * weight n) / 2

4) this method would allow user to only control how the previous entire set of strokes compare to the latest stroke

Stroke 1:

result = Stroke 1

Stroke n:

result = (((Stroke 1 + Stroke 2... Stroke n-1) * (1-weight) + (stroke n * weight n)) / 2

the difference is that in method 4, 3DC would have to track all strokes, but in method 3 it could save only the last result, and use the current stroke.

in addition to having the "shape" of the spline be weighted, it would be critical to separate the blending of the spline shape and the pressure weights... thereby allowing the user to separately dial in the thickness properties, and the shape of the curve, or do both at the same time.

in addition, I would highly suggest that the number of points NOT change after the first stroke.... sure let the user add points, since this would be a "CURVE" just like in the current curve tool... but... those points maybe be placed strategically along the length, and if the number of points changes, it could become very frustrating.

On the other hand, I suppose you may want to be able to relax the spline, and re-distribute the points by a smoothing operation (hold down the shift key perhaps?)

I'm going to re-post this exact post on another thread, because it's the same request/topic. :)

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Hey guys :)

after watching Zbrush 3.5 R3 in action ... makes this thread even more urgent...

ZBrush's Z Sphere 2 is in my opinion the biggest advantage over 3dc, by that I mean the ability to lay down a stroke and have the total

freedom to shape as you like by rotating, scaling, deleting, moving

The control, that you have with Z Sphere 2 is amazing, with brush Depth as I have mentioned.. I guess this is the same as I LOve Sketch

I hope Andrew will make this his N1 priority, so we can have total freedom very soon

thank you for taking the time :clapping::good:

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Hey guys :)

after watching Zbrush 3.5 R3 in action ... makes this thread even more urgent...

ZBrush's Z Sphere 2 is in my opinion the biggest advantage over 3dc, by that I mean the ability to lay down a stroke and have the total

freedom to shape as you like by rotating, scaling, deleting, moving

The control, that you have with Z Sphere 2 is amazing, with brush Depth as I have mentioned.. I guess this is the same as I LOve Sketch

I hope Andrew will make this his N1 priority, so we can have total freedom very soon

thank you for taking the time :clapping::good:

Yes the new zSpheres are really strong. I will take a indepth look into zBrush soon. A friend of mine gives tutorials in zBrush, and I am very curious. Pixologic released a new update some days ago, and there are some more important features that came new. Now you are able to make clean boolean operations in zBrush. This makes zBrush much stronger and more independent.

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Zspheres arent that great compared to voxels. Its a whole extra disconnected step in creating a model. Putting down the strokes can be awkward inconsistant, its hard to understand how these little bubbles work, and to get them to flow how you want them to. And thats only

It wouldnt be to hard (probably) to just adapt the spheres tool to work something like that. Just have instead of its direction being always in the view space, have its direction that the brush is pointing or normal of the surface.

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Zspheres arent that great compared to voxels. Its a whole extra disconnected step in creating a model. Putting down the strokes can be awkward inconsistant, its hard to understand how these little bubbles work, and to get them to flow how you want them to. And thats only

It wouldnt be to hard (probably) to just adapt the spheres tool to work something like that. Just have instead of its direction being always in the view space, have its direction that the brush is pointing or normal of the surface.

They are NOT talking about zSpheres which are REALLY LAME,

they are talking zSpheres 2 which are incredible, intuitive and AMAZINGLY easy to adjust and readjust... this is not your same old zSpheres, this is zSpheres on steroids, mixed with spinach, mixed with sunshine!

that said, I still hate the interface and the rest of the disjoint implementation of zBrush...

and all the benefits zPheres 2.0 without all the drawbacks of zBrush could easily be had with Curves 2.0 in 3DC... I've proposed a number of things that could really easily be done with the curves tool to provide these benefits with, what I think is, not an extreme amount of work. I REALLY think this one sculpting feature would be a GIANT addition to the tool set... almost like voxels are to the whole tool...

what I mean is...

having this type of tool would be as important as having voxels - you could create new objects SO easily from nothing...

;)

a 3D model based on curves that have thickness and then having that convert to voxels for further refinement... FANTASMAGORICAL!

Sure there are some aspects of the spheres brush, but the toothpaste, snakes, and curves tools all have stuff that could be utilized too... the CLOSEST matching tool is the CURVES tool, just adding the ability to STROKE the curves out with the tablet, and then re-shape them from multipl angles, would give you EVERYTHING you need... of course with a few enhancements to the curve tool's editing functionality, and you've got a killer tool for the tool-belt!

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They are NOT talking about zSpheres which are REALLY LAME,

they are talking zSpheres 2 which are incredible, intuitive and AMAZINGLY easy to adjust and readjust... this is not your same old zSpheres, this is zSpheres on steroids, mixed with spinach, mixed with sunshine!

that said, I still hate the interface and the rest of the disjoint implementation of zBrush...

and all the benefits zPheres 2.0 without all the drawbacks of zBrush could easily be had with Curves 2.0 in 3DC... I've proposed a number of things that could really easily be done with the curves tool to provide these benefits with, what I think is, not an extreme amount of work. I REALLY think this one sculpting feature would be a GIANT addition to the tool set... almost like voxels are to the whole tool...

what I mean is...

having this type of tool would be as important as having voxels - you could create new objects SO easily from nothing...

;)

a 3D model based on curves that have thickness and then having that convert to voxels for further refinement... FANTASMAGORICAL!

Sure there are some aspects of the spheres brush, but the toothpaste, snakes, and curves tools all have stuff that could be utilized too... the CLOSEST matching tool is the CURVES tool, just adding the ability to STROKE the curves out with the tablet, and then re-shape them from multipl angles, would give you EVERYTHING you need... of course with a few enhancements to the curve tool's editing functionality, and you've got a killer tool for the tool-belt!

I was talking about Zsphere2. Getting them to work on the ends of skeletons and building up the masses in a less uniform way is difficult at least for me anyway, and it is just a nowhere near finished surface.

I agree about the ability to draw the geometry straight out would be perfect with voxels, it should be one of its defining features. I just dont think it needs to be done with the curves. It can be done a lot simpler with the tools already. You just use the geometry already created as references and draw the new geometry off of that.

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I was talking about Zsphere2. Getting them to work on the ends of skeletons and building up the masses in a less uniform way is difficult at least for me anyway, and it is just a nowhere near finished surface.

I agree about the ability to draw the geometry straight out would be perfect with voxels, it should be one of its defining features. I just dont think it needs to be done with the curves. It can be done a lot simpler with the tools already. You just use the geometry already created as references and draw the new geometry off of that.

ok... I can see that.

the thing is, what I LIKE about the use of curves, and zSpheres2 is the history behavior...

Basically voxels are like working on an image, but curves are like working in illustrator... Yes, there are things that you can do in photoshop (or whatever) that are way cooler than illustrator, but once you convert to image, the resolution is done. Waht is neat about curves and zSpheres is the non-dependence on resolution.

THAT is why I want to be able to control curves in a sketch-like way.... that is why I love the idea of zSpheres2...

being able to go back and refine strokes is a HUGE benefit..

really, the concept is simple... allow the curves to be re-shaped by drawing strokes with pressure. and having some method of blending several strokes together, so you can re-work the same "curve"

your dislike of curves is understandable in their current version - they need better tangency control to make them useful...

but what I think you are missing is... imagine if the curves had the sensitivity of form that the sphere brush has, but the post-editing that the curves tool has, plus a bit of refinement so the curves could be re-shaped.

all of that would make the "curves2" tool, the best thing EVER!

of course, that's not saying your idea isn't valid, it's just that your idea doesn't fulfill the needs that "CURVES2" would...

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I dont know, I'm just having trouble understanding it, it sounds complicated. Having to do repeated strokes exactly over a first stroke, and being reliant on a tablet. And how do you set which area is reshaped. How is it any better than just adjusting things using right click or the gizmo?

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I dont know, I'm just having trouble understanding it, it sounds complicated. Having to do repeated strokes exactly over a first stroke, and being reliant on a tablet. And how do you set which area is reshaped. How is it any better than just adjusting things using right click or the gizmo?

why do you need to stroke exactly over the top of a previous stroke? the idea is to BLEND multiple strokes to be able to re-work strokes and reshape them. How is it better than adjusting individual points? - uh, because it's an artists intuitive stroke! that's why...

the idea here is to have a "sensitivity" similar to the way an artist thinks / draws / sculpts.

NEVER EVER, except in rare savant type cases does an artist lay down their strokes perfectly on the first go. think blue-line drawing as comic book artist do before inking. or sketching of any kind....

the tablet is integral to using a program like this, if you don't have a tablet ! GET ONE ! it isn't required, but if you're serious about doing any kind of meaningful work - I would highly recomend it.

it would be AWEFUL if it were not intuitive, but it's quite simple....

mode = shape, then additional strokes on a curve "re-shape" the curve, blending the previous strokes with the current stroke. hold control to select a different curve segment to re-shape.

mode = create, lay down curve strokes like snakes tool / sphere brush

if you're so in love with the sphere brush, you should really check out the snakes tool - it creates almost the same type of stroke, except it's a smoooooooth curve, where the pressure is thick to thin etc in a smooth way, not like the sphere's chunkiness.

anyway... I've already suggested the pseudo-math for this, and it seems really really really easy to me, I don't know why it would be confusing, but then that depends on how much other 3DC stuff is new to you...

This is a concept we've been discussing here for several months - A lot of thought and effort has gone into this, and it's pretty well thought out.

Feel free to add new thoughts, but hopefully you try and thoroughly understand what has already been discussed before dismissing it.

of all the requests out there, this is my #1 request - I WANT CURVES II... a 3D sketching tool with the ability to re-shape the strokes. there's no other way to do it unless you can stroke, rotated the view, stroke, etc... unless you manually edit (which is NOT artistically fluid)

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I'm not trying to purposefully dis your idea, I just think that every idea should be questioned and until it is something, then it is rubbish(including my own). Ideas are easy, implementing is hard.

I do have a tablet, but even with that it can be hard to get the exact pressure I want(but then it does only have 512 levels). But I dont think any software should be dependant on it. But then it need not be you just set the pressure the same way you do with the size of the brushes.

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I'm not trying to purposefully dis your idea, I just think that every idea should be questioned and until it is something, then it is rubbish(including my own). Ideas are easy, implementing is hard.

I do have a tablet, but even with that it can be hard to get the exact pressure I want(but then it does only have 512 levels). But I dont think any software should be dependant on it. But then it need not be you just set the pressure the same way you do with the size of the brushes.

Fair enough, I guess.

Regarding your tablet complaint, THAT IS EXACTLY WHY the multi-stroke concept would work AWESOME and intuitively, and I thought I had explained why - but if not, here goes again.

A signle stroke is difficult to get just right. there is a visual and physical disconnect between the tablet and the screen, which makes getting a precise stroke, challenging.

However, with practice a stroke can become better, but rarely perfect.

Enter the multi-stroke concept.

Forget for a moment, about 3DC and think only in terms of a pencil stroke on paper. Have you ever watched an artist sketch, where they lay down light sketchy lines until they find the line they really want, and then they begin to push harder where they know the line is good... they might even rotate the paper to get a better physical angle to move the pencil. In the end, the line will have character and motion and emphasis where the artist determined it.

Imagine suggesting to that artist, ok - make your line on the paper, then we'll make it rubbery, and you can have little points to move it around - ugh, AWEFUL! not intuitive, not fluid, and very inorganic, ESPECIALLY for thick and thin lines etc....

on the other hand a combination of the two methods would be great... do the direct sketching/resketching and then have the ability to go in and edit the curve based on the spin, and such.

so the idea here, is taking that into 3 D... but same basic idea... the direct manipulation of the curve by the artists hand, not through widgets and gizmos, but the extension of their mind - meaning their hand.

so --- back to the multi-stroke

If you can make multiple strokes averaging them, it will be MUCH smoother, but allow you to hone in on your desired shape.

your complaint about tablet is exactly the benefit you would see with a multi-stroke shaping of a curve... (see the math above for how the strokes could be combine)

in addition, it's completely reasonable to think that you could limit further strokes to affect only X, Y, Z, or Screen Space, or PRESSURE

The point is, the implementation I envision would be incredibly user/artist friendly

to stroke a curve at any time - pick the curve-entity, not a whole curve tree, but one branch (or the trunk)... this is already the way curves works anyway.

stroke along the curve (or not along it, so you can reshape it), with varying pressure, and from multiple views each time the shape is being averaged with the current stroke and previous strokes....

the curves are then averaged based on a weighting... you could set the weight so that each additional stroke only contributes 20% compared to the original which contributes 80%... therefore you'd have to stroke the same stroke 4-5 times to get the original curve to move half way between the two curves. or if you set the weighting to 50%, it'd take about 5-6 strokes to get almost to the new stroke.

keep in mind, the cool part of the idea is that if the curve is only allowed to move in screen space (depth from screen is not changed) then you can create complex curves by sketching. there really isn't a 3D interface that can do that with a single stroke - since the stroke itself is 2D. so the only real way to get 3D is either manipulate manually (not intuitive, or fluid) OR intersect 2 strokes... but better, is to be able to intersect multipl strokes and be able to continue to reshape it.

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...

wall of text

...

;)

Or Andrew could look at how Zbrush implements it's LazyMouse stroke and fix the current 'SoftStroke'

so we have greater control over how 'mechanical' we want it. Currently, it's still way too 'jittery'

to be of real use, but it seems the tech is already in place...just needs more attention and user control.

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;)

Or Andrew could look at how Zbrush implements it's LazyMouse stroke and fix the current 'SoftStroke'

so we have greater control over how 'mechanical' we want it. Currently, it's still way too 'jittery'

to be of real use, but it seems the tech is already in place...just needs more attention and user control.

wall of text :) hah :) funny...

but this is nothing like soft stroke - soft stroke is another good feature, but doesn't in any way fulfill this feature request. HISTORICAL STROKES that are EDITABLE!... do I need to draw a picture here guys?

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wall of text :) hah :) funny...

but this is nothing like soft stroke - soft stroke is another good feature, but doesn't in any way fulfill this feature request. HISTORICAL STROKES that are EDITABLE!... do I need to draw a picture here guys?

no picture necessary...I get what you're after and think it'd be pretty handy. I'm just saying that greater control

over the original stroke would alleviate the need to re-edit an already placed stroke. (my own opinion, obviously)

But hey, maybe you should draw up some graphics to further flesh out your idea. Might help distill it further and show

some potential areas of avoidance. Also, how would the actual stroke 'spline' be manipulated and how would said manipulation

affect areas further up and down the spline? Percentage influence? B-spline style? Tangent handles?

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no picture necessary...I get what you're after and think it'd be pretty handy. I'm just saying that greater control

over the original stroke would alleviate the need to re-edit an already placed stroke. (my own opinion, obviously)

But hey, maybe you should draw up some graphics to further flesh out your idea. Might help distill it further and show

some potential areas of avoidance. Also, how would the actual stroke 'spline' be manipulated and how would said manipulation

affect areas further up and down the spline? Percentage influence? B-spline style? Tangent handles?

What's confusing about blending 2 curves?

Case 1 - pure blend (think of a surface ruled between the two curves... and the new curve is some % from one curve to the other... and all the attributes could also be blended at the same weighting, or even individual weightings.

Case 2 - modifying a sub-segment of the original curve... the new stroke is shorter than the original curve and close to a portion of the original, there would need to be a blend beyond the ends (simple) or within segment... to create a smooth transition (just leave it up to the artist to blend - like well it'd be your responsiblity to align the beginning and ending or feather it out.

Case 3 - limited movemement allowing the blend of the original and new stroke to occur in only some of the axes etc ... meaning settings to make the averaging work only along the X axis or only X and Y, or such that the only movement is in screen space, so the projection of the new curve from the viewpoint, and then the original is blended such that the entire curve is still parametrcially at the same depth, but from the camera, it is blended with the new stroke.

---- but all of this SOUNDS complicated... just like trying to explain to someone how a car works, how to shift, and clutch, and gas etc... but in practice it's so easy ----

all of thise could be done simply by adding a few small changes to the curves tool -

I would appreciate specific thoughtful questions about how this would work - but would appreciate it if folks would refrain from saying "I think this isn't necessary" since that's literally pointing out that they don't get what I am talking about. Call it arrogance, ok, but I KNOW this would rock - an if you have a specific question, or ask for clarification - I'm happy to oblige, but I'm not going to try and re-explain, until I actually have some time to illustrate it...

besides, this has been around for a long time - and I haven't heard Andrew mention being interested in it, so - - - maybe it's just a lost cause - - - and that makes me sad.

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Don't worry

It is a great idea to be able to make complex structures this way, i.e. more intuitive control over curves.

Dont make the mistake to get impatience in your enthousiasm.

Andrew reads everything I'm sure but is commited to his physical body which makes magic less possible.

So eventually your fine ideas will trickle into 3d coat for sure, just give it some time.

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Don't worry

It is a great idea to be able to make complex structures this way, i.e. more intuitive control over curves.

Dont make the mistake to get impatience in your enthousiasm.

Andrew reads everything I'm sure but is commited to his physical body which makes magic less possible.

So eventually your fine ideas will trickle into 3d coat for sure, just give it some time.

That's true... physical limitations yup yup... and yet somehow he still does things that others would not given the same physical limitations - almost seems like magic already?!

In truth, although I spent time re-explaining something that I thought was already explained enough to implement, it did cause me to have a couple of thoughts about special cases, and what happens if (...) ?

things like...

what if you want to edit just a portion of the curve segment, how do you limit the modification to a smaller region?

knowledge assumptions: using NURBS curves - and assuming regular parameterization from 0 -> 1 along a single segment, or a signle change, excluding branches.

1) you could have a limiter along the curve that has a start and a stop for the region of effect, and a soft start and soft stop, to allow fo clean blending. these could be manually placed along the active curve parametrically, or using a gizmo of some kind. However, as an only method of interacting, this would be clunky and slow. this would be better suited for specific and precise reshaping of an area.

2) using the preceeding concept of a start, soft start, soft stop, and stop, as contribution parameters, with equivalent values of 0, 1, 1, and 0... and not related to the overall contribution weight, but like layer alpha in PS, it is not related to the layer's overall opacity. so with that, the start and stop are determined by one of the following -

comparing the screen space old stroke to the start and stop point of the new stroke, to determine the closest projected point on the old curve, and mapping the new stroke to the curve using closest point for start mapping to start on the new stroke. if start (param 0) on the new stroke is closest to param 0.34 on the original curve, and end (param 1) of the new stroke is closest to param .37 on the original curve, then map the new curve's shape to the area between 0.34, and 0.37. 0 maps to 0.34, 0.5 maps to 0.355, and 1.0 maps to 0.37... there should probably be a percentage of beginning and ending of strokes that is consider the soft region. e.g. if 20%, then at parameter 0 on the new curve, there is no effect, at parameter 0.2 the effect is at maximum, until parameter 0.8, and then fades back to no effect at parameter 1.0

anyway... the point is, although I've spent more time than I would like to have spent on this typing and not sculpting, there was at least SOME good thought that came out..

[EDIT:] turns out I had done a screen capture video somewhat showing what I was thinking WAY BACK... I just never posted it, I think. it's my attempt to show approximately what would happen with the curves tool. all it really shows is imaginary stroke shapes, and then I go in and edit the points to show what I envision happening from each stroke. I guess I didnt' post it because I thought it might be more confusing as to what I was showing than just trying to use words.... but maybe now it could help? hopefully it doesn't fuel the confusion fire.

Mock-up video

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intriguing thread. i have just brought coat so it might take me a while to fully appreciate the concepts presented here in context with the tools already in the box. one of the things i do wish for thus far however is a tighter connection between my drawings and the beginnings of a sculpt. my work will be 99% character work though.

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