United3dArtists Archive

Dennis Leahy · Post by **Dennis Leahy** » 11 Sep 2009, 19:14

Boolean subtraction was always one of my great disappointments with TS, and with each new version, I hoped like a child on Christmas eve... only to be let down when I tried the latest version.

To be fair, the last time I tried was version 6.0, so maybe I should just try 7.61 and see.

I have started making acoustic guitars - my own designs and engineering - and had hoped that I could do modeling of new prototype ideas in TS before committing the time to making a set of guitar molds and bending wood. I mean, I do have a good imagination and sense of visualization, so the physical guitars are not big surprises, but a 3D model might show something in need of refinement that a 2D CAD drawing just does not display.

The top and back of most modern acoustic guitars are sections of a sphere. What I had tried before to create a guitar top was to Boolean subtract a sphere within a sphere (creating a hollow sphere), and then subtract a solid that is the outline of my guitar top, extruded into a 3D object (sort of a reverse cookie cutter approach.) I don't really care how long it takes to process the Boolean subtraction, or how long it takes to render the solid, I wanted a very smooth (not faceted) spherical surface for the guitar top and back. Most versions of TS crashed during this moderately complex Boolean subtraction. If I got past that step, then the guitar sides would be the object where Boolean subtraction would fail.

So, has Boolean subtraction "grown up" or evolved to the point where TS 7.61 will handle it? Or, should I be looking at some different way to create these objects (for example, do all the Boolean subtraction in a CAD program, and then import the parts into TS, assemble, texture, etc.)?

Thanks!

Dennis

clintonman · Post by **clintonman** » 11 Sep 2009, 22:19

I would say 7.61 booleans(workspace) are better than modelspace(truespace6) booleans, but the only way to know is to try it yourself. It is free so there's nothing to lose by trying.

RAYMAN · Post by **RAYMAN** » 12 Sep 2009, 00:01

Dennis Leahy wrote:
So, has Boolean subtraction "grown up" or evolved to the point where TS 7.61 will handle it? Or, should I be looking at some different way to create these objects (for example, do all the Boolean subtraction in a CAD program, and then import the parts into TS, assemble, texture, etc.)?

Thanks!

Dennis

This isnt a problem of Truespace but a general problem for polygon modelers ....
As you said cad programs and nurbs programs dont have those problems.
So if you want to do a lot of boolean operations you are better off using a cad program or nurbs program.
I use Moi3d for that and actually do most of my technical modeling with it.
But any of them would do. The most expensive ones are parametric and let you change the boolean subtraction object even after the boolean operation
and many operations after that....

(Picture modeled in Moi3d and rendered in kerkythea with a hdri)

RAYMAN · Post by **RAYMAN** » 12 Sep 2009, 07:59

you can bend those shapes or use any kind of deformation on them even use an exploder

Dennis Leahy · Post by **Dennis Leahy** » 12 Sep 2009, 19:44

Thanks clintonman and Rayman

I don't own a great 3D CAD application, just DesignCAD 3D (which I often use in 2D mode), because I could never justify the cost. In the past, I have had AutoCAD at places where I worked, but never bought myself a copy.

I note that PTC is offering a limited version of their 3D CAD/modeling application free: CoCreate The "personal" version is limited to assemblies with 60 parts, but if it has good Boolean subtraction and union features, I could always create the parts in there and assemble and texture them in TS.

I downloaded a copy, and will try it out when I have time.

Dennis

Emmanuel · Post by **Emmanuel** » 13 Sep 2009, 16:30

The new boolean tool (on Workspace side) is rather good.
I do all my work in Modeler but sometime switch to Workspace to boolean a stubborn object, and most of the time, it does the job !

On Modeler side, I recommend to slice the problematic objects with the Slice Object By Selecte Line/PLane. It helps tS's boolean to read the geometry. Also it is important to make sure that your objects have no errors like holes and/or inverted faces.

Galane · Post by **Galane** » 22 Sep 2009, 07:33

Instead of doing a boolean subtract use the shell button. Then cut off the part you want to keep with a subtract or intersection of a simple cube.

I whipped up a quicky guitari-ish shaped object and shelled it. See the attached zip. Chop off the top and bottom and you have the outer edge part of the body really quick, no crashes or "I'm sorry Dave. I can't boolean that." BS from the software.

To make the shape, I popped in a cylinder, scaled it to an oval, copied it, scaled it up a bit then moved it. Next I copied the larger one and rotated it to make a smoothly curved transition between the other two on one side. Normalized location and rotation of the axes then copied and mirrored. Final step was scaling two sides of a cube so it intersected where the end ovals and side cutter ovals intersected. Joined the cube and end ovals then subtracted the side ovals.

Then I had the shape to use the shell function on, which works way better than making a copy and scaling it down to subtract a hunk out of the middle.

If I was actually going to do a guitar I'd put an image on a plane to trace the shape then extrude and shell, but not going to all *that* effort for a simple demo of the shell function.

Dennis Leahy · Post by **Dennis Leahy** » 24 Sep 2009, 14:40

Galane wrote:...I whipped up a quicky guitari-ish shaped object and shelled it. See the attached zip. ...

Emmanuel and Galane, thanks for the replies. Sorry I'm slow to respond, but have been away from my office for over a week.

Galane, Thanks for taking the time to do this. Unfortunately, I am unable to see your work. I unzipped and tried to load the shelled shape.cob object but got the error: Load Object: Invalid version 22048

Dennis
{edit} Steinie let me know that my color choices for text were invisible, depending on the UI Color settings. So, I switched 'em back to defaults.

Galane · Post by **Galane** » 25 Sep 2009, 01:44

I made that with tS 6.6. It should load OK in 7.x. Do you have the full version of 7.6 or 7.61 with the trueSpace 6 tab?

Dennis Leahy · Post by **Dennis Leahy** » 25 Sep 2009, 02:53

Galane wrote:I made that with tS 6.6. It should load OK in 7.x. Do you have the full version of 7.6 or 7.61 with the trueSpace 6 tab?

"...with the trueSpace 6 tab..."

I don't know what you mean by that. I do have v6.0 still loaded, and didn't even think of trying to open the COB in there.

As for the new install, I have installed 7.61 - I'll have to look around and see if there is a ts6 tab somewhere.

Thanks,

Dennis

Galane · Post by **Galane** » 25 Sep 2009, 03:06

You need the full version download of 7.6 or 7.6.1, not the Workspace only download that's smaller. The full version can use most 6.x compatible TSX plugins in its TS6 mode.

If you can lay hands on 6.6, there's quite a lot of stuff updated and added to what 6.0 had.

Dennis Leahy · Post by **Dennis Leahy** » 25 Sep 2009, 05:22

Galane wrote:You need the full version download of 7.6 or 7.6.1, not the Workspace only download that's smaller. The full version can use most 6.x compatible TSX plugins in its TS6 mode.

If you can lay hands on 6.6, there's quite a lot of stuff updated and added to what 6.0 had.

I downloaded ts761b8.exe, 129,759kb. Now that I looked (jeez, how obvious), I see the trueSpace6 tab.

Obviously, there are a bunch of folks that feel that 6.6 was the pinnacle of ts development, and they don't like what happened in 7.6x, and they plan to stick with 6.6. On the other hand, there are bunch of folks here that did make that leap, and are using 7.6x. I'd like to give 7.61 a shot, rather than having to learn 2 more versions that are both different than 6.0 was. I can also tell you, and maybe it is because I am a software developer that understood the power of accepting some paradigm for a user interface, I have always hated trueSpace's interface incarnations - from the earliest version I ever ran (I think it may have been 1.0.) I always felt like Roman was simply stubbornly not acquiescing to any software development standards - cutting off our noses to spite his face. I'd hate to have to learn 2 versions of ts that are new to me.

Oops, sorry for the rant. Got lost on a tangent.

But anyway, I'd love to see the sample you created.

Dennis

Galane · Post by **Galane** » 25 Sep 2009, 05:49

OK here it is in tS 7.61 format. I just clicked on the Model tab and used the TS6 files menu to load it then the other menu to save it as an rsobj.

The image was done in 6.6. I cut the top off and did a little coloring to show the uniform wall thickness the shell feature provides. Scaling down a copy evenly can't do that with odd-shaped objects. You can fudge it by scaling different amounts on each axis but it still won't be that even.

Shelled Shape.zip: (20.15 KiB) Downloaded 240 times

Dennis Leahy · Post by **Dennis Leahy** » 25 Sep 2009, 22:53

Thanks, Galane!

In CAD software, it is pretty easy to create the guitar body outer shape, then create a line .080" away from the original line, yielding the inside and outside lines of an acoustic guitar body. That can then be extruded in either the same CAD application or in trueSpace. The next step is what I was asking about. The sides of an acoustic guitar not only undulate, but the width of the sides (depth of the guitar) varies depending on where the side intersects the dome that forms the top and back of a guitar. I tried creating a hollow thick-walled sphere, and placing it to intersect the guitar sides, and attempted a Boolean subtraction of the sphere from the guitar sides. trueSpace crashed, or locked-up, or gave an error (can't remember.) So, I was just wondering if any of you 3D artists had tried Booleans before and were disappointed, and were able to jump for joy that maybe 7.61 can handle Boolean functions now with ease. I can and I will experiment, but just wanted to hear if there was a breakthrough in Boolean functionality since tS v6.0.

Dennis

RAYMAN · Post by **RAYMAN** » 25 Sep 2009, 23:27

No breakthrough as far as I know in "ANY" polygon modeler although there is some progress in the last version of Max.
If modeling with cutting and booleans is your thing you can try Moi3d.... thats what I did.
As this thing is nurbs you get 100 % clean cuts and booleans - always - no exceptions.
same as with any other up to Solid thinking.
There is a trial one that you can save for 30 days and one that is save disabled with no limits.
I do 60 % of my modeling with it the rest i also use Sketchup for buildings.....
At least if you can go to the fgorum as a guest and look at all the posts and examples you will learn to understand the
issues.... there are very helpfull people there too and lots of examples.
Polygon modeling and sds is cool for characterwork and organic !

Steinie · Post by **Steinie** » 26 Sep 2009, 00:11

If the question is tS7.61 Boolean subtraction of the sphere better in workSpace
then on the Modeler side the answer is YES. Much better.
Modeler always seemed to crash on me. Not so on the workSpace side.

Galane · Post by **Galane** » 26 Sep 2009, 00:32

Does the workspace side have a shell feature? Could model the body as a solid then shell it *then* use really thin cubes to cut the top and bottom off the body, if you're wanting to more realistically model the guitar.

RAYMAN · Post by **RAYMAN** » 26 Sep 2009, 09:18

The shell feature only works if the wallthickness is the same all around..... if its not you dependant on boolean tools...
Here is a car that was made with the cutting method in Solidthinking (price out of reach of most) and shows how it can be made.
Note that this modeler is parametric and you can even change the cut you made many steps after you made them....
Moi 3d doesnt do that (not yet) but thats why parametric modelers are that much more expensive.

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