"3D sculpting software" Topic

Sculpting model vehicles for 3D printing.

If it were a choice between Sketchup or Blender, which should it be?

Or something else.

Any thoughts from someone with experience in this area (ie plainly not me!) would be useful.

Ta in advance

John T

I've heard that Rhino is (or was) popular, but I'm sure that someone who actually does this will be along shortly!

-Will

It depends on what you want to do and the skill of the modeler. If you are a beginner, Sketchup is really good for hard surface modeling. I use it myself as I know my skills aren't that great at modeling and I can get really pro looking results.

If we're talking character modeling, blender is far better. However, if we're talking pro modeling, then neither. 3D Studio Max and Maya are the two major pro packages out there (the latter being more of an animation package), and if you want to do really detailed character models, then Zbrush and Mudbox are the big players in this space.

For entry level sculpting, there's Sculptris (free), which my artist daughter in law swears by (and sometimes at). There's also Curvy 3D, for about $100 USD, which is pitched at entry level sculptors. For vehicles, buildings, etc, you might look at 3D Crafter Pro from Amabilis, which is what I use. There's a free version so you can try it, but the export options are so limited as to be useless. The basic version is cheap, and the pro version not too hard on the pocketbook. I just couldn't get past Blender's steep learning curve.

Thanks

I have a copy of Blender and wonder about getting sketchup (it would be for vehicle not figure modelling) and I was looking to buy some training and I didn't want to wast £750.00 GBP on training on the wrong product (never mind buy the wrong software….!).

I'm a great believer in actual training rather than trying to figure everything out for myself.

John

Hi john

Drop me an email and is be happy to go through the ideas with you and other tools you will need
Keith

While free, Blender has a steep learning curve and requires a few odd head space wraps to do hard edged stuff well. There are some really good video tutorials available for free, though.

Rhino is awesome for mechanical items. Price is the drawback here. I got my copy using the student licensing so it was about $140 USD instead of the usual $400 USD-$600.

I used sketch up before I became interested in organic forms. It's slick and fairly easy to use. Some functionality is limited until you get the paid version.

Sculptris is not a good choice for hard edged modeling.

Silo is another low cost ($150?), easy learning curve option. It acts a good bit like Rhino.

I use the free version of Sketchup for everything and was able to pick it up without any formal training. I've tried Blender and can't get it to do a damn thing! And I fail to understand how any software developer can product a product without a basic "tool tips" feature in this day and age.

Sketchup isn't great for organic surfaces, but for modeling hard-edged vehicles, it works pretty well. Here are a few things I've done with it:

While I was trained in LightWave, for hard surface modeling I am finding Moments of Inspiration both easy to use and price-competitive.

My son has used a lot of these, and has recommended both to me, though Sketchup is much easier to learn.

As mentioned above, Blender has a steep learning curve.

Thanks all: some good food for thought.

John T

There are numerous sketchup tutorials on youtube.

YouTube link

Keep meaning to play with it.

There are numerous sketchup tutorials on youtube.

Thanks – they were useful links.

Might have to try the sketchup route

Ta

John

Oh ya, Sketchup is a breeze. Some printers hate it though, as you have to be really careful about double-sided planes and leaving little artifacts from trimming and deleting lines. I use it a ton at the day job, but have never tried to export anything from it to STL format for printing.

As stated, don't expect curves to come out well Sketchup, no matter how many divisions you set it for…

Personally, I prefer a more solid NURBS modeler, and use Lightwave more than anything (but mostly because it's what I started on with this…)

Yeah, one thing I do with my models is run them through Netfabb, which takes STL models and cleans up a lot of those redundant faces and vertices.

Hi John, I use and prefer Rhino for hard surface models and Zbrush for Organics.

If cash is an issues most of the free programs will get the where you need to go with a bit of work.

Mark
DreamForge-Games

Thanks again for the input, guys.

Are there any links out there to freebies I can try out for any of this?

John T

Rhino gives you the full version to try for 90 days. After that, it stops saving your work, but it can still function if you want to learn it.

rhino3d.com/download

Best,
JBR

found another free one: Autodesk 123D Design.

123dapp.com/design

Fab chaps.

I think I'll start with Sketchup

John

I started getting into sketchup last week and if you follow the tutorials its surprisingly easy to learn. Well, maybe not easy but easier than I imagined.
I downloaded Autodesk 123 and while its very user friendly there doesn't seem to be a way of adding 2d images (i.e. plans or schematics) to work from, which is severely limiting. Or perhaps I'm missing something?

try this sort of add-on:

123dapp.com/catch

123 catch.

Might Help.

regards

Hmm, gave that a go, but it seems to be for constructing 3d models from multiple angled photos of a real world object, so it seems to want at least three images before it gets going. I was hoping to fool it into importing one image.

May want to look at one of the 3d mice as well.

Lfseeney – gosh I hadn't even considered that. Currently I'm using a standard 3 button (wheel) mouse on my pc

John T