I mentioned Wings3d in a previous post so I knocked out a test. This is one of my favourite apps. Forget the creatures, you'd do that eleswhere but Wings3d has an awesome workflow when it comes to rigid geometric stuff. It's perfect for making all sorts of buildings for use in TG2. You could knock out a cityscape in no time. It has a fantastic selection process. Modo doesn't even do this. Look at how simple the UI is. Everything is right click context. No glut of UI. It seems it's a waste of time trying to explain why this app is so good.
(http://img854.imageshack.us/img854/905/w3d2.jpg)
People have mentioned this one to me before too. But now that I know a lot more about modeling, I should take a closer look.
I really cut my teeth with maya. And by that I mean I suffered a lot. So what was before a passive desire for software that makes sense and is easy to use, has become a religion for me. Agony can do that to you.
I've even read that Maya got stuff recently that was in Wings for years. Not sure what they were talking about but it's the same with a lot of apps. I've seen people on the Modo forum trying to explain why some features in Wings were good. It's more to do with the workflow. Wings doesn't just hand you every every bell and whistle and let you work it out. It has a designed way of flowing through the process, especially in the way is handles selections which is fantastic. This is very important for architectural things. Say you want to select all the windows in a tower block with select similar. Things like that.
I found some work here and this demonstrates why I'm harping on about Wings here. This is all modelled in Wings and it's perfect for TG2. You don't need all the beautifully bevelled edges and such like. You can take things out of Wings and do that elsewhere but for TG2 you just want to block out stuff quickly. I've yet to get get completely stuck in ways to do things in Wings when it comes to this kind of hard edged geometry.
http://www.oyonale.com/image.php?code=319&mode=info§ion=2003&lang=en
Another thing is that for learning there is no substitute for Wings because you are using the best designed simple modeller there is.
Quote from: efflux on May 31, 2013, 02:52:15 AM
Wings doesn't just hand you every every bell and whistle and let you work it out.
Oh, I see you're familiar with Blender.
;D
Blender is OK but I don't know if I'll use it. People complain about the UI. As far as the basics of the UI is concerned, i.e. the way all the windows work etc. that bit is good but where things are is confusing. I also tried cycles and I'm getting poor results. Render engine gets upgraded and now it's harder to get good results even if better lit. This is too much hassle. I might use Modo.
I'm going to spend the next few days mastering Wings 3D. I've forgotten how the fall off works. There is a learning curve with Wings but once learnt it makes sense.
I actually want to concentrate on 2D but there are some 3D tools that help with that including TG2.
Great program! It's paradigm is directly derived from Mirai per the programmer of Wings3d.
http://www.izware.com/mirai/index.htm
I agree that this modeling workflow has had a tremendous impact on the development of the current technology. Mirai was descended from "Symbolics" one of the original SGI power apps, amazing how these connections go back.
Yeah, I wish you could have more context sensitivity at your mouse in all these apps. I notice Modo does actually have some of that. Blender doesn't though. You're constantly having to look at the keyboard all the time unlress I'm missing that you can do something like that?
In my search for a modelling program for this kind of thing I've made some new discoveries. Wings 3D is really fast and that's good but I ran into a technical difficulty. Wings 3D doesn't have snapping. It does have constraints with Ctrl and various key commands for different levels of constraint. However, this doesn't quite achieve enough because it's a distance in %. This gets troublesome when you need different objects or say faces to be very accurately lined up. There are dialogs to enter exact spacing but the one downfall is that you can't have this open all the time. This the one change I'd make to Wings. Have a panel with transform properties of whatever you have selected. That would just polish Wings off totally. Pity. I might have to do most work in Blender. I just noticed in Blender that you can drag any panel out to a new window and then have multiple panels in that. Very useful if you have two monitors.
As for Modo, it's not reliable and that's it's major flaw. It crashes a lot. Blender is WAY more stable. I also can't deal with Modo's default navigation which requires key commands. Maybe you can change that but it seems to me the most common action isn't using tools but navigating the view.
Why the hell can't somebody develop an app that works and has all of this sorted?
Maybe there is hope yet. You can assign a key commands to the "absolute commands" dialog in Wings. It's just you need to have a mental picture of the coordinates which I guess you could have if you're doing achitecture.
Update: Wings can solve the issue as always. Key commands can bring up dialog to move everything precisely. There was another issue with selecting vertex or edges all on the same line when there are others that get chosen with bounding box across complex model. You just negative select for less and you get the line. it seems like every single limit has been thought through to find a solution with this appand still be unbelievably simple.
Another point. Wings lightwave output goes to Blender and Modo and all quads etc are perfect.
How does Wings compare to say Lightwave? I use the latter, so would it be interesting to try Wings at all? I don't want too many apps to work in as the hotkeys to be used are different all the time and that gets confusing now and again. Especially after a beer.
I briefly used Lightwave years ago. I've been through lots of these apps testing but I never really got into modelling because I just found it so cumbersome. I want an app that can give me quick and precie control. It's not for sculpting stuff. There are other apps for that. I just want to lay out geometry. I don't know what Lightwave is like now but I didn't like the UI that much. I also found it a little buggy. Same programmers as Modo? It seems they create buggy code even if there is awesome stuff. The Modo renderer is really great though.
The reason I keep gravitating to Wings is that when I'm in other apps I get stuck with how to something even if it's just slowdown in work flow. When I go back to Wings I find a way but it can take a lot of searching around to find the answer. It's not that complex a program obviously but it seems there is always a way.
I've solved the problem I was having yet again in Wings. The constraints are %. This means you use Ctrl and various other keys to snap things by various amounts as you move them. This is fine in many cases. If say you create an edge loop you can slide it to 10%. Lets say it's a cube of 10 units well you can move the loop to 1 on whatever axis you are dealing with or any value depending on your constraint preferences. However, as you can imagine in some circumstances % doesn't get you to the exact place you want since you don't actually know where that % is in terms of the world position. You assign a key command to bring up a dialog and you can place the loop to an exact x, y or z position.
The problem with so much software is that it can have all the fancy features and tech possible but if it doesn't work that's a huge fail. Modo is like this. Crashes. That's useless if you're in the middle of something and a crash happens. You have to start thing of saving all the time. I never even think about that much in Wings or Blender. Crashes are very very rare. Linux is better in this respect as well. Linux itself never ever crashes and the apps seldom do. Having said that, the proprietary ones do. I think they have a serious problem with beta testing. Lots of the users are testing beta version all the time on Linux.
Check out some of these:
http://www.youtube.com/user/ggaliens?feature=watch
Particularly interesting is where you see him carving out voronoi. There is one where he carves voronoi out from a sphere to create seperated rocks.
Wings is 64 bit now. The newer versions I'm finding are 32 bit on Linux which is problematic and I don't want to install lots of 32 bit libraries. I'll have to try to compile. Probably there will be a 64 bit Windows version somewhere or at least a newer 32 bit version. Some of the newer plugins look really cool.
Its interesting Efflux.
If someone already has max or maya, can you make an argument for switching to wings for the modeling part of 3d? you have made some statements about some of the newer apps, but I didn't catch an argument comparing these three.
Also, I looked at the wings website. I did not find mention of rigging and posing, can it do that? I did see some characters in the gallery, but most of the examples were hard surface. If you can rig and pose, how does the pipe work with Maya?
The link Zaxxon posted does rig. And said the two were related. So Im just curious.
Any thoughts.
Hi.
You can't do those things. It's mostly the Nendo part of Mirai from what I can see. Basically it's a polygon modeller with materials and UVs. and that's it but it has a whole lot of ways of doing stuff without a lot of hassle and bloat. Nendo was probably more limited. A lot of tools have been added to Wings over the years but I haven't read that much into Mirai to see what it does. What's the point? Why do fantastic apps like this get ditched? It's just pathetic. Mirai must have been great. Although I've never used Mirai, Wings is basically the same workflow. To me, so many modelling apps have workflow bottlenecks.
The way I intend to use it is for modelling things that have quite specific geometric structure but that's a bit vague. It'll mostly be architecture. I'll bring into Blender just as test render and maybe do more, for example using instancing.
For character modelling, you could definitely use Wings if you think well in terms of mesh and topology. It's actualy really nice to tweak the mesh around because there is fall off. However, I wouldn't use it for this. I'd want to start from the opposite direction for that kind of thing. Not thinking about mesh at all then go to that later i.e. sculpt out characters in 3D Coat.
I've been through just about every app. I remember being in Maya somehow at one point but I didn't spend much time on it. I got put off by a ludicrously involved and impossible licencing process on Linux just to try a demo so I said - screw that I'm not dealing with this company. They also ignored emails. I wouldn't touch Autodesk with a barge pole. 3DMax was the first one I tried a long time ago so I can't comment on what that has now. It's Windows only. I even had a paper manual at the time but lost interest. I spent most time in Cinema 4D. I thought that was a good one. Reliable as well which is important. That app doesn't crash and it's quite easy to use. It was also decent value for money. I'm reasonably postive about that one but it was a few years ago when I tried it.
I generally don't look much at animation features such as rigging so can't comment on that with any app.
One advantage of Linux is that apps seem to last a long time even when ditched. I've still got Lightzone on here and it's working fine. Windows version is already screwed up. I haven't found another app that has algorithms that do the same thing. Lightzone is best for editing photos. You get this beautiful strong lighting effect. I've been in Photoshop and all the others. Can't do Lightzone type things. It's crucial to the look of my TG2 renders as well.
This is how I would sum it up. If you're already using some high end app like Maya or something you'll have your workflow methods and probably won't benefit with using Wings. However, if I was teaching about Modelling (not that I'm skilled to do that) I'd consider using Wings. On Linux it's definitely a no brainer. If you master Wings, it sets you up to understand other apps or rather how they should be, meaning their flaws will make you still use Wings for a lot of stuff.
The problem is that the best apps don't always have a wow factor. You have to sit down and properly learn. TG2 is like this.
Silo, Modo etc all have cool factor with beautifully rendered real time views including almost real time full rendering preview in Modo but if you get into the guts of it, Wings is really cool and has a good set of tools and fast workflow.
I've watched some of those Andrew Price Blender videos and it's cool that he's doing that. However, I don't like his working methods with the modelling. It's very, that'll do, eyeball it here, it looks OK. I'm making stuff with precision and Wings does the job.
See I'd watch a video like this:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gH__2wmvm6E
but then save myself the hassle and expense and do it in Wings.
Can we see a model you made in wings, in a TG2 context? That is, a rendered view.
Is that your model in the OP? or just an example you found?
Yeah, the model is mine but it's not very good. I'm just playing around. I'll continue this thread with examples eventually and hopefully use them in TG2.
I'm getting better at using Wings now and I've changed all the UI colours to something more sensibly subdued. You don't need to see even the Tool bar. It's all controllable from left click menu and key commands.
I'm finished now in my search for a modeller. Nothing tops Wings3d and it's getting new code boosts. Booleans and stuff. I need to try the newer version. It makes every other modeling app I've tried seem dismal. There is nothing that hinders your work flow.
Here's a screenshot where I've loaded a model in done by one of the developers. On Linux you have vastly superior windows managers so you can fullscreen any app. It's fantastically streamlined as you can see from that screenshot. Clicking on the 3D view window top bar brings all those dialogs over the top, otherwise you don't even see those or you can call anything up with a key command. It's one of the fastest apps to use that I've ever tried.
(http://img842.imageshack.us/img842/3621/wings3ddesktop.jpg)
I've tested the new Blender Cycles renderer further. The tricky bit is setting up lights because it's a surface that emits light and depending on it's size and placement it can be difficult. Here's that model experiment from the first Post. It's crap but I'm using it to test. Lightwave is the best format to use from Wings. I'm going to use Blender for test rendering and adding types of modelling that Wings doesn't have. Arrays including particle arrays is probably the biggest use or smoothing, subdivision modifiers etc:
(http://img694.imageshack.us/img694/1128/w3d2cycles.jpg)
I'm really questioning whether it's worth using anything except open source now except obviously unique programs like TG2. Blender's renderer isn't as fast as Modo's but then again, Blender never crashes.
I'm gathering a stack of stuff now. Hundreds of brushes for Mypaint and Krita. I'm probably going to need a website. I'm going to be on a roll soon. That's if I don't spend all my time on music.
I just pushed Wings in terms of poly count. This isn't what it's about but it can handle millions of polys.
is your last image meant to remain so geometric or will you smooth? I actually like it just the way it is but for the top cone part. I feel like that should be smoothed. Hard to say what you have in mind. But as a single image the object has a art object feel to it.
Can you smooth in Wings, and what is the smooth process? For example in maya, you can smooth preview as you work. And then add levels of smoothing permanently beginning with a multiple of two.
Do you insert edge loops to add resolution?.. Something like that term?
You can do a smooth preview. It doesn't look that great in the open GL view though and you can control the smoothing. I haven't done much of that and it's probably the kind of thing I'd do in Blender after I've done the basics in Wings.
I actually cut off the top of that Blender render because I had accidentally smoothed part of it where I hadn't meant to. The smoothing needs to be quite well controlled. The funnel parts were smoothed but the end parts shouldn't have been.
I'l eventually get into making something to try in TG2. At the moment I'm trying to compile the latest Wings on Linux because there is a bunch more feature than the one in the Arch repo. There are some problems but I'll get around it. It's partly related to the fact that too many people have chosen to use Linux versions that have strayed away from the norms. This means to use a proper Linux like Arch you are left to compile stuff because few people create up to date binary packages for insanely underused apps like Wings.
One thing I would suggest to anyone thinking of using Linux. Avoid Ubuntu if you can. Canonical are assholes in my opinion. It's purely an attempt to make money without giving anything back. Apparently they don't send many fixes upstream to Debian which is what Ubuntu is based on except Debian is much better and its a real user based maintained version. I'd rather use OSX or Windows. Ubuntu is the worst thing to ever happen to Linux. Hopefully their plumetting popularity will continue
Actually the realtime view of the smoothing is one of Wings biggest weaknesses. To check that properly, you're best to load the model to Blender but this is flaw I can acept because basically, for getting your vertexes, edges and faces in the right places by a host of methods, nothing beats Wings. If you do things right, there is not reason why when viewed in app with nice realtime smooth view it will all look fine. I'm going to use it more for hard flat surface type things anyway. This is one of the wow factors in say Modo, a beautiful realtime view. You can really see if smoothing has any issues.
Just a few updates on Wings. You can import SVG paths. This is very cool. I can lay out plans in precise detail in Inkscape then load into Wings. Wings also has tweak where you grab verts, edges or faces and the mouse right left movement with Alt controls falloff (very nice and intuitive) and you have a few various curves but It also has sculpt which just brushes the polys around without selecting any. There are also some nice controls for zooming in and out of your selected areas.
This is now one of my all time favourite apps.
As for newer versions. I had a nighmare trying to compile on Linux but now I see that my version is quite up to date anyway.
What formats import into TG2? I've never got into that yet and I'm on my Linux system so haven't checked. Are there any problems importing models or is it all pretty smooth?
TG2 Currently Imports .obj, .lwo & the native .tgo format, the current version also imports FBX scenes, but i i haven't actually played with the FBX importer yet.
obj seems to be be the best choice, that is for objects created with other 3D apps, though i think TG2 seems to work better with .obj's that exported with the PoseRay app
i've never had any problems with any objects i have made, i think the only thing to watch out for is no objects with N-gons.
OK. I'll get around to that end eventually. Wings is a great modeller but god, Blender is absolutely dire. I'm using Blender for a few things like test rendering and it's fine to build up scenes of already modelled stuff and sorting lighting for renders and maybe it's OK for animation, but the way the modelling flow works is appalling and the UV mapping has similar type manipulation tools.
Going off topic a bit here but I think all this stuff is useful and related to use for TG2, especially since a lot of people here may not have fortunes to spend on software.
I'm bogged down in Blender here now but struggling on with open source stuff. This screenshot shows you a few things. Gimp is open on the Cintiq (first monitor is Eizo) and I used it to take the screenshot. You see a render of a model done in Wings3d. The model demos why Wings is great. This took about 30 seconds to create. You can get very organic forms but there is no randomness. That model could be exactly reproduced again with the same procedure. Gimp is single window mode now, in case you tried it before when it wasn't. That's a big improvement. You also see the tabs for images open. Much better.
Obviously you see Blender open here. Notice it now has fancy matcap shaders for the realtime view. That vastly improves viewing of sculpted forms. In this case it's just a cube that has the matcap applied but it seriously enhances the realtime view for sculpting. You also notice the floating window for the node network. You can now create as many separate windows as you want and on Linux this is great because I'm using Xfwm which is part of the XFCE desktop. The Linux windows managers allow you to do things like roll the windows up to just bars and always be in front and such like. The Blender theme is one I've done. The reason I did it was because the default one is poor, especially in the way the title bars for the expandable editing boxes aren't hilighted, making the whole UI just look like a mass of ungrouped gray buttons. I've also discovered that a lot of the terrible interfacing things can be changed. That god awful moving cursor with mouse click crap can be disabled and the mouse and keys are so customisable that you can pretty much make it like other apps. No competition for Wings3d though in the modelling department. Blenders modeling is poor but this version has a few tool improvements that I've noticed. You need to change the key and mouse commands to your own likings since the Blender defaults are unlikely to please you. However, it takes days just to configure Blender to your liking. It's ludicrously complex even in just configuring the UI but at least you can do it.
The Planetside logo that you see was taken into Inkscape with trace bitmap. That's an awesome feature that works really well. Then the svg was loaded into Blender to make it 3D from a path. Wings instantly makes imported svg into 3D polys which is really cool but I found that it doesn't like some svg forms like that complex logo for example.
Gimp and Blender can also play together really nicely to edit textures.
When all this workflow finally arrives at getting useful stuff into TG2, I'm not sure. Blender is going to bog me down for weeks but I'm now an expert at Gimp, Inkscape, Mypaint, Krita and Wings3d. 3D Coat is going to take a bit of time and Blender is going to take ages.
I've also spent a lot of time on 2D stuff.
The point is that a really good setup can be had and all you pay for is the hardware. It's worth donating money to these people as well. I did donate to Ardour project but ditched open source for audio in the end so I don't donate now. These apps work on all operating systems. There is no need to spend a fortune. Better to save that and buy the few apps that need paying for and are worth it like 3D Coat or TG2.
I would say the main issue is that you're laying some groundwork if you do things the way I'm doing because you have to learn a lot and sometimes the info simply isn't available. Archlinux alone took some time but that beats Windows or OSX for this set up any day of the week and I can duplicate the same set up on masses of computers easily if I wanted.
I also have Modo but I'm not sure when I'll use it. It's buggy and I'm waiting to see how that goes on Linux.
(http://img708.imageshack.us/img708/4669/blender267.jpg)
Just another free thing I found which is high quality are thes filters. Yeah, the site doesn't exactly suggest it but these are really good:
http://gmic.sourceforge.net/
Sadly, they are not multithreaded so can take time on a big image but the results are very good.
I couldn't resist posting another weird Wings model but I'll stop soon. This stuff needs to go into TG2. I wll probably work some more but eventusally ity will get into TG2.
(http://img259.imageshack.us/img259/4588/wingsfruit.jpg)
Nice.
Quote from: TheBadger on June 02, 2013, 07:32:53 AMDo you insert edge loops to add resolution?.. Something like that term?
I think that we can say that on Wings it is done by Flow Connect (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PXbxIL5yWSo).
Quote from: TheBadger on June 02, 2013, 07:32:53 AMCan you smooth in Wings, and what is the smooth process? For example in maya, you can smooth preview as you work. And then add levels of smoothing permanently beginning with a multiple of two.
Quote from: efflux on June 03, 2013, 08:02:27 AMActually the realtime view of the smoothing is one of Wings biggest weaknesses.
Not exactly. If you have a good video card with OpenCL support you will be able to set several levels of subdivision in smooth proxy (preview mode too) - it was added in Dec/2011- Latests snapshot (http://www.wings3d.com/forum/showthread.php?tid=132&pid=2712#pid2712). For instance, I used 2 for this one:
(http://i1330.photobucket.com/albums/w578/Micheus/Wings3D%20-%20Forum/th_wings3d_smooth_openCL_zps2b5fc856.jpg) (http://s1330.photobucket.com/user/Micheus/media/Wings3D%20-%20Forum/wings3d_smooth_openCL_zps2b5fc856.jpg.html)
This way we can model in low resolution almost the time and then smooth the model at the end - or when exporting (the exported dialog has an option for that).
Cheers
Hi Micheus.
I'll have to look into that smoothing. Maybe it's better now and I haven't used Wings for a while. I use Linux so I'm not sure what the differences are there.
Wings3D is the most under appreciated app of all in my opinion. It's really great so keep up the good work. It does exactly what it's supposed to do with minimum complexity of UI. It's absolutely one of my favourites and I've been using Modo so I'm comparing to serious commercial software.
It's a great modeller for use with Terragen for anyone who wants to build content although I'm not using Terragen now because it's simply too time consuming.
Quote from: efflux on September 21, 2013, 06:39:39 AMMaybe it's better now and I haven't used Wings for a while. I use Linux so I'm not sure what the differences are there.
Unfortunately I use Linux under a VirtualBox and there is some limitation, so I cannot also be sure about if OpenCL will be available for it.
We should have a stable release available soon.
p.s. this is a image I was searching to post here:
(http://imageshack.us/a/img502/3469/openclproxylevel.jpg)
I actually had Wings3D but I couldn't figure out the UI, so I scrapped it. To be honest, however, I didn't really give it a serious try. This thread has inspired me to give it a second chance. Not that I'm getting tired of Hexagon, mind you. Having Hexagon crash on me after working on a particular detail for 40 minutes is almost kind of fulfilling at this point. Sometimes I'll crash it "on purpose" just to prove it doesn't bother me...but yeah, I'll check out Wings again, for sure.
^^lol