15 replies to this topic

[kenmo]

I just received an e-mail notice and thought some of you maybe interested...

http://www.groboto.c...Store/Offers_3/

One Time, Two Week Sale
Purchase GroBoto v3 from January 18-24 • $45 USD
Purchase GroBoto v3 from January 25-31 • $55 USD

Cheers

Kenmo

[kenmo]

Ooops... I meant version 3....

[gbball]

Cool,

I've never heard of this program before but it looks pretty neat.

[kay_Eva]

I wanted to buy this. And I was just about to. But then I noticed that old copy of the super buggy Hexagon 3d still on my Harddrive. I was about to uninstall it because I haven't used Hexagon in years because of the bugs. But then on a hunch or a whim I tried out the Booleans in Hexagon one more time. And even though they aren't as flexible as Groboto they deliver better optimized low poly meshes. So good in fact that I don't need to retopo them when the boolean operation is complete. So thanks to your post I rediscovered Hexagon. Even though it's too buggy to rely on for most things, it appears that booleans is still something it does better than most other programs even though it hasn't seen an update in years.

Groboto is super powerful as well and is pretty fun and interesting to use. I just can't buy it at this time when I still have Hexagon though.

[JimB]

There is a free update available for Hexagon since October 2011 ,it should be waiting in your account folder it is hex 2.5.1.79

http://forum.daz3d.c...ic.php?t=175853

[chingchong]

I wanted to buy this. And I was just about to. But then I noticed that old copy of the super buggy Hexagon 3d still on my Harddrive. I was about to uninstall it because I haven't used Hexagon in years because of the bugs. But then on a hunch or a whim I tried out the Booleans in Hexagon one more time. And even though they aren't as flexible as Groboto they deliver better optimized low poly meshes. So good in fact that I don't need to retopo them when the boolean operation is complete. So thanks to your post I rediscovered Hexagon. Even though it's too buggy to rely on for most things, it appears that booleans is still something it does better than most other programs even though it hasn't seen an update in years.

Groboto is super powerful as well and is pretty fun and interesting to use. I just can't buy it at this time when I still have Hexagon though.

I like hexagon, but i'm wondering about your opinion, that hex has better topology after booleans than other progs?
I just tried a cutout between sphere and cylinder, and there is a really crappy topology, with really bad hard edges after and before smoothing.
I do not own groboto, but the meshes in their marketing vids and tuts, are looking much better to me

[kay_Eva]

Did you cap both ends of the cylinder? If you don't, it will treat the cylinder as if it has no volume inside and that will greatly effect the end result of topology.

I think this is pretty good. And it renders just fine in my game engine of choice. Well I didn't test this particular one but all of the others I tried have looked just as good without retopo as with. Which honestly I wasn't expecting. I just discovered how cool these booleans were a couple days ago and I've owned the program for years. Of course Hexagon isn't as nonmodular and procedural as Groboto. But as I said, Groboto has a completely different approach to it's topology. It seems to assume that you want to use the meshes in a subdivision environment but I really want to use it for lowpoly real time applications. Essentially I can make a bunch of custom 3d brushes in Hexagon and then piece them together in 3dCoat/Blender. Because thanks to Haikalle both of these programs are functionally one.

And as I said Groboto looks so cool I was tempted to buy it and I'm sure it is useful and powerful. Otherwise I wouldn't have bothered to comment. But to be honest I can just use flatten, scrape, and pinch to do hardsurface in 3dCoat. Anyway, if Groboto ever releases an update that creates incredible low poly results I might buy it anyway just to support them and because the program is fun to use. It's only $60 anyway when you're done with discounts.

[michalis]

1. Have you checked a "Carve Branche build" of blender? It's much faster than old booleans.
2. What about merging in 3dcoat surface mode-LC/booleans?
3. What groboto does beautifully is to create nice bevel loops around edges. A gradient texture can work as mask on them. Depends on the UVs.
4. How to use groboto with 3dcoat? Except of painting these meshes, I mean.
5. How to create and export from groboto something that won't look like a groboto-mesh from miles away?
6. groboto is basically an assist to zbrush, to have all these loops masked and grouped to make use of them as sculpting. Then drop it to dynamesh or subdivide or similar, do more work and start retopology LOL.
7. An alternative use of groboto could be : To do some crazy stuff fast, export in 3dcoat voxels and sculpt on this. Inspiration, great. Same in zbrush.
As groboto uses parametric basic shapes, a nice implementation could be to have them directly in a 3dc library. As parametric objects. Not a bad idea.

[chingchong]

@kay-Eva:
yes, i thought of subdivision

@michalis
I would go for point 7, i think


But another question: Is it possible to create alphas with 3dcoat like in groboto?
http://www.groboto.c...ideo/index.html

[michalis]

Have you checked a "Carve Branche build" of blender? It's much faster than old booleans.

I insist!
http://blenderartists.org/forum/showthread.php?243164-Check-out-the-Carve-Branche-builds-!!!&p=2039490&viewfull=1#post2039490

[chingchong]

I insist!
http://blenderartist...l=1#post2039490

just saw this on http://www.blendernation.com

[3DArtist]

But another question: Is it possible to create alphas with 3dcoat like in groboto?
http://www.groboto.c...ideo/index.html

Currently, not that I know of but it is possible with an update to a shader I'm working on.

And if we could save a render as a 16-bit tiff, then the alpha would be smoother.

@michalis
I can't wait to get some time to try out the new booleans. Thanks for the link.

[3DArtist]

I forgot about this. You can load an .obj file into the brush palette and a window will pop up allowing you to create an alpha from it.

[kay_Eva]

hello 3d Artist what theme is that you've got inyour 3dCoat?

[3DArtist]

I bought Hex a while ago, I think around the time it was taken over by Daz. It's lying around here somewhere collecting digital dust.

@kay_Eva, the theme is something I made inspired by the zbrush interface. At least for me, it's nice to have a dark interface so it doesn't visually compete with any color of the project I'm working on. Similar to matting a photo with black. I'll post it in the exchange section of the forums in case you want to use it.

[chingchong]

@ 3DArtist
thank you very much, for explanation on creating alphas with 3dcoat