Yeah! I follow every Chipp's tutorial but when it comes to metaballs i give up .. but this addon is perfect to get the smoothness of metaballs and keeping the normal approach to modelling !

@@dinocroon6287 mmmmmm . . . . . smooth metaballs . . . . . . . . . . :D

@@mickdixon2942 smooth them vertices 😝

@@mickdixon2942 😂

I really did think they were meatballs first time i used them. Thought it was an apt and cute description of how they work. Then I watched a tutorial.

Ended up with 30,000 tris faucet. Thanks but no thanks

The only problem is that you can't use separate objects to do the same thing. They will all need to be boolean unioned.

And that's where a product like quad remesher comes in. You can take this form that you're able to create quickly and apply a high quality professional level rematch to it and now have something that you can perform subdivision surfaces on

Haha. I was just speaking with Jama about that and I didn't know that he had a similar tool!

If we're lucky we'll get the csg features back into the remesh modifier soon™ so we definitely wont need this addon.

can you show a tutorial

any tutorial ?

Please can you make a tutorial on it

pretty sure he was trolling you guys

Absolutely! And I do!

it's exactly the same thing as doing vdb from poly + vdb smooth sdf + vdb convert

Not really lol. For a single faucet or entire bathroom? No, man. Could be a bit much for games tho.

underrated comment

It's actually the opposite. *Because* Blender's Booleans modifiers are so good-- it makes this possible.

Absolutely, and I always do *exactly* that. Really good point!

i think it just uses the remesh modifier -.-

Ok. I think I see it. Seems like a handy tool tho.

He's also using geometry nodes and some sweet smoothing magic🙂

This addon just makes use of boolean + remesh pair, and does it perfectly fast, instead of doing it by hand you just apply the Concept "modifier pack"

Yes, it's bool tools, an addon that comes with Blender

Yep!

And? We should care what Modo has? We are talking about Blender, not comparing dicks.

Modo has Mesh Fusion, a totally different, albeit more powerful solution, but it only works with proper quad surfaces. This tool can work with just about any topology. And when combined with a state-of-the-art remesher addon, like Quad Remesher, this can give as good or even better final results.

I'm using a 11th Gen Intel(R) Core(TM) i9-11900KF @ 3.50GHz, 3504 Mhz, 8 Core(s), 16 Logical Processor(s), and NVIDIA GeForce RTX 3090, and 64 GB memory. Blender render settings are probably the default. I think this was rendered in Cycles.

I'm sorry, but I neglected to mention in the video the main advantage of this approach. And that is the fact that it is extremely easy to fine-tune and tweak your designs using an iterative method of just moving around the different shapes. So, for a designer, it's a great way to explore new forms. And, when combined with hard surface modeling tools, you can create some pretty amazing shapes and objects. Think of robot arms with intricate mechanisms built inside. Things like that. Hope that helps.

I use some EEVEE Material System mats and some basic lighting. My startup scene is up at my $1 Patreon: patreon.com/chippwalters

@@ChippWalters Awesome! Thank you.

yes, from what I saw, it pretty much looks like what you would get out of a remesh modifier, however, the rounded edges would be kinda hard to create. (maybe a bevel modifier?) edit: straight put of the blender manual (for the bevel modifier): Angle Only bevels edges whose angle of adjacent faces plus the defined Angle is less than 180 degrees. Intended to allow you to bevel only the sharp edges of an object without affecting its smooth surfaces.

You also need to add a smooth modifier asking with a number of Booleans modifiers.

No, the smoothness setting managers all objects at once.

That's just a simple cube, flattened out, and Boolean differenced, using the Bool Tools addon (comes with Blender).

@@ChippWalters when i hit control minus it just zooms out the view

@@SonictheHedgehogInRealLife turn on booltool in blender addons. After that Ctrl + minus

You should download the add-on and find out. There's a lot more to it.

No, because you can adjust this in real time.

Not to mention it's going to be a huge file in comparison if you'd start low poly. When he made it 128 vertices my brain was like 'no'.

128 makes no difference as the model is voxelized at a new resolution. The 128 is just the "scaffolding."

@@ChippWalters This will still result in an ineffective geometry, as your video proves. I do use similar techniques in ZBrush, but the retopo there is way more efficient than Blender's voxelisation. Still, the results are pretty high poly then. Sure, if that doesn't matter, it seems to work quite well. For 3d printing, this is probably very usable. But for a simple prop, I would like something lighter. In a scene with dozens of props, this will add up pretty fast.

@@Fley1965 You use Blender much? haha. Sounds like not. There are many ways to reduce polys and clean up meshes in Blender, including using Z Brushes own retopo tool.

@@ChippWalters ZRemesher is only in ZBrush, to my knowledge at least. There is Quadremesher for Blender and others, which is done by a developer who also worked on ZRemesher. I don't know if the mesh quality in on par with the actual version of ZRemesher, since I use ZBrush longer than I use Blender so can use ZRemesher in the actual version. I also know Tesselator, DynRemesh and Instant Meshes Remesh (not really a plugin, AFAIK, but free). I would expect all of these plugins to give a better result as a voxel remesh. None of these solutions, including ZRemesher, makes a good topology just by clicking on one button. Since I've worked a lot with STL files for 3d printing and made them editable, I know a thing or two about these automatic processes. Getting good results take time and multiple tries in many cases. I doubt that I would save that much time working that way with simple props. But that's really the point here - I can spend this time to get a reasonable lean mesh by some automatic retopo, or I can model stuff like this with a good topology in mind. Automated retopo is great when working with sculpted meshes, or with 3d scans. Still, often the edge loops are not where I would need them. For an organic look, great. But for that, there is already sculpting. My usual workflow for making low poly geometry look good are bevels and subdivision, in some cases also multires. Don't get me wrong, this plugin can be useful for some people. It's just not a game changer, a must-have or something that makes modeling a lot easier for someone with limited skills. Your presentation in this video does show how to make a high-poly version of a simple prop, which in many cases would be so far away from the camera that a low-poly version out of primitives would not make much of a difference. Make a whole scene with these and it will impact viewport speed, render speed, loading and saving time, without a real benefit. Please accept that I don't like that. We are all noobs in some way, probably there are things that I don't see. I found none of them in your answer, though.

or Modo's MeshFusion

Yes it creates a smoothing effect between two objects. To do this manually would have to be done with some retopo and subd and take a long time-- too long for a tutorial.

to do it manually: 1. CTRL+J all of the objects 2. add a Remesh modifier, set to Voxel mode 3. set the size to about 0.00015 m or so 4. enable Smooth Shading 5. apply when happy having done this, you'll end up with a very high poly object (probably over 100,000 polygons). to reduce the number of polygons, visit the Object Data Properties (green triangle symbol), scroll down to Remesh and select Quad and perform the QuadriFlow Remesh

yeah, same exactly same were my thoughts. thanks for asking...

... and thanks @@ChippWalters for answering. got it now why u keep saying metaballs - as they also auto join smoothly. also, maybe pin this thread??!

@@alex15095 Better use booleans instead of Ctrl+J since remesher can fail in some cases with intersections, while additive booleans make no intersections at all (if made correctly)

Yeah, but with Fusion, it's much more powerful. And that's because Fusion results in a really nice subd mesh. But, that can be done very easily with this technique by subsequently using the quad remesher plugin which is the same remesher that ZBrush uses so it's a state-of-the-art remesher.

@@ChippWalters What really? If I compare both remeshers ZRemesher gives me way better results than Blender QuadRemesh.

@@therealjones-o6x Dude, Zbrush remesher is made by the same guy. exoside.com/quadremesher/

Then... are they... metaball bearings? No, I'm not sorry.

Not that I'm aware of

It's blender intern addon called "Bool Tool" turn it on and use this shortcut. It will work!

@@SimplySlawa ahhhhhhhh nice thank you for that tidbit!

You can sort of do that with the smoothness setting

yep

@@ChippWalters there isnt much control though

And a smooth modifier

It works great with the industry best in class Quad Remesher addon $$$

Boolean tools in your PREFS. Ctrl+Numpad minus

That is the standard theme for blender that I'm using. The plugin is the free kit ops plugin and it comes with a free set of materials that you can use to add to your objects.

You mean the final model or the workflow?

@@MrTomyCJ Workflow

First, add boolean modifiers to each of the separate objects, then add a remesh and play with the voxel density, then add a smooth. That will get you close.

@@ChippWalters Thanks

5 on the keypad. there is also a button on the far right of the 3d view (icon is a grid)

@@anpapz Thanks!

It should. Or check out DESIGN MAGIC which I know works with 3.1

@@ChippWalters Thank you! I'll check it

It uses geometry notes to add different types of modifiers to the mesh

@Master Monkey Yeah but the extra steps in this case are pretty rudimentary, it seems to just slap everything in one menu which I guess is easier but it's just as quick doing it without the addon.

@Master Monkey I don't know if there is a huge reduction in clicks really, it just seems to throw all the buttons into a singular menu, it's arguably more when you take into account the fact you have to individually select each part and "Add To Concept" wheras vanilla would you have you box select or shift select each, ctrl+j and remesh. Seems around the same, if not more, I don't see it being worth $24.

Yeah, why don't you try and do it? Make a video and show everyone how easy it is. I think you'll find out it's not so easy.

No, metaballs are not the same. Please see my videos on metaballs and you'll understand.

Used an addon to combine primitives.

@@ChippWalters the result is very clean.

It's all about the ability to quickly and non-destructively create softer forms

@@ChippWalters Okay thanks a lot.

just tried the remesh modifier and the results look pretty ugly, no matter which voxelsize. This addon seems to do a way better job.

@@blenderer3191 you have to try a bit more you get the results. I have

Then your guess would be wrong. Haha. Helps if you know a little bit about Blender. Use Bools, a remesh modifier, and a smooth modifier and adjust.