Tinker Code

New spring-based mesh relaxation algorithm for Unlimited Clay

Hi all! 🙂

Last week I announced to the dev mailing list that I was working on a new relaxation algorithm for improving the topology of Unlimited Clay: it is still under development/research but I’m getting pretty nice results and the main advantage is that the method will converge to the correct topological solution from any equivalent starting mesh configuration …
in plain english it means that it could clean and make as even as possible your mesh no matter how cumbersome you have made it 😉

see for yourself, i have made a simple test comparing the current smooth vertex tool and the new spring relaxation algorithm

Hope you like it
Farsthary

27 responses to “New spring-based mesh relaxation algorithm for Unlimited Clay”

  1. kram1032 Avatar
    kram1032

    Sounds awesome 😀
    Curiously waiting for the video to be processed…

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  2. roger Avatar
    roger

    Hmm, I knew you had a plan for world domination! Why dont you go straight to the point and make Blender model just by voice commands? Like “make a little green alien”?

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  3. kram1032 Avatar
    kram1032

    From what I can tell, this is WAY superior over both the standard smoothing and the relax addon. Awesome 😀

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  4. n-pigeon Avatar
    n-pigeon

    I want this relax modifier and tool based on it in my toolset for modelling! It could be awesome tool not only for unlimitedclay! 😀 What I see here its faster and as good as relax addon.

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  5. Damaged Avatar
    Damaged

    hi Farsthary!
    Can this feature be added to UV editing too?

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  6. n-pigeon Avatar
    n-pigeon

    Hmmm unlimitedclay, modeling tool, modifier, UV tool 😀 I’m sure there is even more use for it xD hehe

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  7. Damaged Avatar
    Damaged

    simple – It’s like a brand:
    “Farsthary” – always care about you!” 🙂

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  8. yoyo Avatar
    yoyo

    I didn’t understood that much but you look happy and you made a post for that so it’s cool for sure 🙂
    keep going

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  9. loopduplicate Avatar
    loopduplicate

    Farsthary!
    I’m still trying to get over how awesome your planet texture is and already you bring us this sweet mesh relaxation! Thanks a lot. You are making Blender even more badass!

    Like

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  10. Andreas Galster Avatar
    Andreas Galster

    Oh man dude this is so awesome … Whenever I see one of your videos I want to sculp, sculpt, sculpt until my fingers bleed! I wish we would have this already into trunk :(. Your projects are really the best out there! Thanks for your commitment :)!

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  11. Marcus Avatar
    Marcus

    Hi,
    the video was a bit too fast for my eyes.
    I would like to see this on a real model. To me it seems that it makes really big changes to the shape of the original, but shouldn’t it just move the vertices along the surface instead of changing it?

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    1. farsthary Avatar
      farsthary

      Hi 🙂

      It do moves the vertices along the surface, there’s several approaches to perform smooth/relaxation, one that preserves edges (in open shapes) and the other that don’t prevserves the edges and both have different use cases. For Unlimited clay I don’t need to care about edge preservation because what I really need are good polygons, as even as possible , in either case I don’t think there’s a relaxation out there that does not change the base mesh … for those cases exist remeshing: you build an entire new mesh with similar shape but a new topology under the hood.
      The current smooth verts tool in Blender does not preserve edges either and it tends to shrink the shapes, this implementation is stable enough to not srink volumes after the solution shape is reached 🙂

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  12. Shane Avatar
    Shane

    CODE CODE CODE – we want the code so WE can play!!!!

    awesome work as usual.

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  13. FreeMind Avatar
    FreeMind

    I believe/Guess on what it will do:
    1) The smooth brush will work a lot faster with this, and will smooth everything out as quickly, no matter how much vertexes there are under the brush.
    2) Unlimited clay will use this to smooth out the topology, and it will add the displacement on top of that. It will allways perform smooth-redisplace-smooth-redisplace, so the model won’t loose any detail, but the topology will be extremely clean.

    Am I right, Farsthary?

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    1. farsthary Avatar
      farsthary

      1) is fast but there’s no tool that don’t get performance in some proportion to the number of verts under the brush, is mathematically impossible 😉

      2) yes, that’s the main reason why I develop this but if prove useful I could separate it to be reusable to other parts of Blender that need smoothing tools.

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      1. FreeMind Avatar
        FreeMind

        Bt “Smooth everything as quickly” i meant that you are required to crack up the strength to smooth out parts of the model where the topology is more dense.
        For example, if a human face is high poly, and the back of the head is low poly, the current smooth would collapse the back of the head into the face.

        Thank you for your hard work.
        You are my favorite dev.

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  14. Moolah Avatar
    Moolah

    Looks very promising! 🙂 It’s interesting how this will be in UnlimitedClay sculpt mode…

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  15. Nik Avatar
    Nik

    Now this is great! One of the more important pieces of the puzzle for Unlimited Clay are falling into place! Proper relaxation has been a big problem until now, but this seems to have it covered quite nicely.

    Another great part is how improvements like this could be used in other parts of the software like regular EditMode/SculptMode mesh editing, or perhaps as a modifier.

    All of this spring stuff is pretty interesting!

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  16. blenderificus Avatar
    blenderificus

    impressive new work!! Cant wait to see more on unlimited clay !

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  17. delic Avatar
    delic

    Nice !

    Seen this ?

    http://project-nion.net/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=113

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  18. FreeMind Avatar
    FreeMind

    Delic, you are out of topic 😉

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  19. Max Puliero Avatar
    Max Puliero

    gnam gnam!! very cool stuff

    thankyou!

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  20. coschi Avatar
    coschi

    Hey Farsthary, NICE WORK!
    I want this now 😛

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  21. eks Avatar
    eks

    every day i am checking for a patch

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  22. FreeMind Avatar
    FreeMind

    I refresh your blog page at least two times a day to see for an update.

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  23. X_H_N Avatar
    X_H_N

    Hi
    Its very cool. Plans you use algorithm for uv edit?

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  24. mobile samsung Avatar
    mobile samsung

    End of thread. No more comments.

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