3d objects and Boolean operations

Started by normal-thinker, August 11, 2007, 05:19:40 AM

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normal-thinker

Hi All

This is my first post on the forum.  Just got to say that TG2 is simply amazing! Value for money, intuitive use - you just can't beat it!  OK, grovelling to the TG2 gods is done.  ;D

I was wondering if (or when) TG2 will be able to support more native 3D primitives.  At the moment we have sphere, plane, disc etc.  It would be nice to have say, cubes, cones, cylinders, torus etc.  Obviously I can import 3D .obj files from other rendering programs (I use Bryce), but to have them "in situ" would be less hassle.

The other thing, is will TG2 have some support for Boolean operations in the future?  (I suppose making a ring from disc is Boolean like, I guess).

Thanks

Harvey Birdman

#1
You could probably make a ring from a disc with the current math operators. Calculate r for each fragment as it comes through the pipeline and discard anything that doesn't fall within a given range.

<edit>
I haven't actually tried this. I'm just thinking out loud, so to speak.
</edit>

But yes, word is there will be some boolean capability added at the next update. When and if that will actually happen is anyones guess.
:-X

Mr_Lamppost

The Disc object supports the creation of a simple ring as it is. 

As a long time user of POV-Ray:

http://www.povray.org/

I am definitely in favour of Boolean operations on primitive objects.

This is a quick test render of one of my works in progress.



Smoke me a kipper I'll be back for breakfast.

MooseDog

are you guys talking about texture booleans (very useful for certain rendering situations) or geometry booleans (evil)?  regarding the latter, blender is free so why not model something clean with that app?  i can't imagine tg2 would turn into a cheap-o modeling app.  mho only ;D

David Burnett

Geometry boolean being evil or not depends on how they are done.

In Pov-ray for example the shapes are often mathematical constructs rather than meshes so booleans are easy.
Booleans on meshes are not easy, with lots of tricky edge cases, and you usually often up with bad geometry.



Oshyan

We do not plan to support boolean geometry operations any time soon, if ever. TG2 is focused on landscape modeling and rendering and these functions are not generally useful for this purpose. Direct volumetric manipulation of terrain may be the exception but it would not likely be accomplished using "boolean" functions.

Additional basic primitives may be included, but they will be kept to a minimum as it's quite easy to create them in other applications and simply use the object import. TG2 is not intended to be used for object modeling and the included object primitives are useful primarily as a basis for creating other elements procedurally (e.g. a sphere into a rock or planet).

- Oshyan