How to cut into many pieces (3d print)?

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mc_axe
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How to cut into many pieces (3d print)?

Post by mc_axe » 11 Jun 2017, 22:25

Hello everyone

Im trying to find a way to cut complex 3D fractal meshes in to many pieces (in all axes), in order to 3d print them later. My test scene for now is ~1M trs and im trying to cut in 27 pieces.
Image

Due to the nature of the mesh (complexity) manual ways like:
Booleans intersect with cubes.
or Slices then Extract curves from edges, to later edit and produce planar parts etc..
either take too long (to do manually) or compute, or i get incorect results or crashes.

I want to automate this process somehow.
CutinPieces compound worked nicely on a sphere even when i uped the polycount but it doesnt work here.
Maybe because a slice of a 3D fractal is complex it self (holes inside and "islands" outside).
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I dont mind doing this on a different software, my 3D print software cant help me unfortunately.

Any suggestions ?? :-\

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Rork
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Re: How to cut into many pieces (3d print)?

Post by Rork » 12 Jun 2017, 11:54

you might give Houdini a go?
The new boolean tools are very good.

rob
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rray
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Re: How to cut into many pieces (3d print)?

Post by rray » 12 Jun 2017, 12:01

Yep would be a good test for Houdini's new booleans
Meshmixer could also be worth trying.
3d coat in voxel mode maybe, but not sure how clean the edges would come out. usually voxel rounds them off a little when they're not exactly aligned to a voxell cell.

would be curious to see the printed result B-)
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sant0s
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Re: How to cut into many pieces (3d print)?

Post by sant0s » 13 Jun 2017, 10:53

if Softimage only, IFX is still a strong and stable tool to do boolean ops.
just made a test with 1,75 mil tris and its like warm knife through butter ^^
and in SI its quite easy to make it at least semi automatic :)
took about 35 secs per op.
Attachments
booltest.jpg

NNois
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Re: How to cut into many pieces (3d print)?

Post by NNois » 13 Jun 2017, 20:35

Hello, you could use houdini for that, that's very easy to make a loop and cut each pieces.
The apprentice version do export in obj if I remember well

juanloredo
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Re: How to cut into many pieces (3d print)?

Post by juanloredo » 14 Jun 2017, 07:46

The new Zbrush R8 has some nice live boolean tools.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fgjTLKD-qR0

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mc_axe
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Re: How to cut into many pieces (3d print)?

Post by mc_axe » 14 Jun 2017, 15:31

Thnx evryone for all the cool suggestions lots of testing ahead :ymhug:

-I will basically try mesh mixer right away
-Then houdini booleans but im completely clueless.
-A soulution like IFX would be superb and the coolest but i dont own the plugin atm.
-I was hoping that this might be somehow very eazy case for zBrush, ill check out what is in r8.
-3D Coat another app that I want but never tried. Is the voxel mode based on the points of the mesh or you need a pointcloud? A litl rounding is not major problem since mesh is alrdy generated in a simmilar way to polygonizer based on a traced 'pointcloud' that has a specific volumetric resolution.

-Im going to try also to export raw points.
Later i might upload some 3d fractals just in case anyone wants to run some tests.

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Mathaeus
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Re: How to cut into many pieces (3d print)?

Post by Mathaeus » 14 Jun 2017, 16:23

mc_axe wrote: -3D Coat another app that I want but never tried. Is the voxel mode based on the points of the mesh or you need a pointcloud? A litl rounding is not major problem since mesh is alrdy generated in a simmilar way to polygonizer based on a traced 'pointcloud' that has a specific volumetric resolution.
If you're in voxel mode, it will try to recognize the volume of mesh (so, anything created by polygons is fine, obj format or else), and fill it with voxels. If mesh is closed, should not be any problem with this. More or less the same applies to Open VDB in Houdini (or VDB at all, maybe in some custom plugin for SI, too) - if there's hole in mesh, generally it should be smaller than size of one voxel.

Personally I'd go with Houdini, with VDB volumes or Boooleans, as you wish. While Houdini is of course a way more ''technical'' it's also a way more logically organized. If you're in 3d Coat for first time, perhaps best idea is to closely follow the wizards.

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Hirazi Blue
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Re: How to cut into many pieces (3d print)?

Post by Hirazi Blue » 14 Jun 2017, 18:42

mc_axe wrote:-A soulution like IFX would be superb and the coolest but i dont own the plugin atm.
Momentum & ImplosiaFX for free

edit:
But I can't recall if the boolean ICE compound is part of that version. It is however still available in the local backup @ rray as part of "Implosia FX 1.1" (which always was free)...
Stay safe, sane & healthy!

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sant0s
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Re: How to cut into many pieces (3d print)?

Post by sant0s » 14 Jun 2017, 19:18

mc_axe wrote: -A soulution like IFX would be superb and the coolest but i dont own the plugin atm.
.
yea, like HB mentioned, IFX is for free. :)
and I also used that version.

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gaboraa
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Re: How to cut into many pieces (3d print)?

Post by gaboraa » 15 Jun 2017, 12:59

as juanloredo said Zbrush 4R8 introduced interactive booleans so it seems there is no need for an external modeler just for boolean work.

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mc_axe
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Re: How to cut into many pieces (3d print)?

Post by mc_axe » 16 Jun 2017, 01:29

Allright i did some tests and because support was gr8 in this thread :ymhug: Im going to turn this to a small benchmark. I desided to test with some lower polycount fractal mesh like 590k trs. My cpu is a relatively good i7 a few generations old like 3 years

Test 1 Softimage boolean OP:
(Took ages, and didnt work in the end cpu was 15% all times, viewport turned black and then white when i tried to check if is dead (move some window), responded after a few mins). But Polymesh result was just one of the two meshes no intersection ever happened.
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Test 2 Mesh Mixer Booleans:
Im trying it first time not familiar at all, I was expecting something relatively fast, so tried the default boolean by selecting both.
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proccecing time was ~10% faster than Softimage default Boolean OP, but result had some artifacts. Maybe i had to understand and adjust settings prior to the boolean, because when i tried afterwards process started all-over and even got a crash. CPU was also at a low 15% during all 3 refinment passes.
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3rd test Implosia FX Giga Boollean (ICE Solution)

First off i dont knwo how to install properly, so i just opened a demo scene that worked right away. I simplified the ICE tree to try one single intersection. After connecting the execute I just seen CPU pick at 28% then back to 15% and i was like oh no another single core process. However I didnt even relaxed in my chair and i had to stop timer at a time 18,36 x faster than the native boolean OP!
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Ok i know i need to test Hudini and zBrush to understand how fast it rly is but yeah what an upgrade..
--
And here a bonus render for no reason haha
Image

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rray
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Re: How to cut into many pieces (3d print)?

Post by rray » 16 Jun 2017, 16:24

just trying out the new zbrush 4r8 booleans..

no issue whatsoever with cutting up a 11 million poly mesh into 27 parts .. took 15 seconds on my 7 yr old core i7, the boolean preview is even "live" with 5-10 fps...

(for cutting used 1 object made up of 27 cubes each 1/100th unit away from another)

Image
softimage resources section updated Jan 5th 2024

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mc_axe
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Re: How to cut into many pieces (3d print)?

Post by mc_axe » 16 Jun 2017, 20:22

Awesomeness ^:)^

Bullit
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Re: How to cut into many pieces (3d print)?

Post by Bullit » 17 Jun 2017, 17:56

20 years later and still an artist has to find a reliable way to do booleans with polygons in many applications.

A real badge of shame for all coding people.

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Mathaeus
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Re: How to cut into many pieces (3d print)?

Post by Mathaeus » 18 Jun 2017, 19:04

rray wrote:just trying out the new zbrush 4r8 booleans..

no issue whatsoever with cutting up a 11 million poly mesh into 27 parts .. took 15 seconds on my 7 yr old core i7, the boolean preview is even "live" with 5-10 fps...

(for cutting used 1 object made up of 27 cubes each 1/100th unit away from another)
This seems to be a way stronger than VDB, in Houdini or else. When looking at these cuts, without any visible 'voxelizing' artifacts, I'm feeling jealous :). So, zBrush is winner...

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