Easy way to hollow stuff? So I’m wondering if there’s a tool I’m missing or an easier way to do this I’ve looked on the forums but haven’t found exactly what I’m looking for. I’m making a articulated figure but not with the common articulated joints that are on most 3D prints. I’m doing a stringed doll style with a string running through the whole figure pulling the joints together. I’ve been doing it by duplicating the object I’m gonna hollow shrinking it and then doing the negative voxel merge where it subtracts the smaller shape from the inside but then I have to make sometimes four more shapes to lead the inner hollow to the joints of the figure so the string can go through those holes into the hollow I made with the voxel merge. This isn’t super precise and uniform as I’d like. 3D slicer programs can hollow models uniformly which is what I’m looking for in nomad if there’s a way. It’s been working how I do it but sometimes gets really complicated and hard to see what’s going on with a bunch of shapes and voxel merges and all that. Any help would be great! Sorry this is so long but other hollowing based posts I’ve looked at weren’t what I was looking for or I didn’t see it.
You can use the Mask and Extract tools.
In a nutshell:
o Mask the part you want hollowed
o In the mask menu, set the Shell Thickness
- Positive number puts the shell inside
- Negative number puts the shell outside
o Tap Engrave/Emboss
The new shell will be a separate object.
o For the inner object, you’ll need to check the Inverse Culling option in the Materials menu.
o Turn off visibility of the inner object
o Select both parts
o Voxel merge them
You should now have a hollowed part.
I would suggest you hollow out by activating the polygon selection tool, then select the faces/or parts you want to hollow and do away with it. Maybe you can watch this video to understand my point: Shell Tool | How do you hollow out an object in @SelfCAD - YouTube
@Moses-Zikei9 That doesn’t work though if you don’t want a hole in your object.
I see that this post is about a year old now but your comment is the only mention I’ve been able to find of being able to create an inner shell to a complex mesh using a negative value once a mesh is masked and extracted. Is this still a feature or has it been moved somewhere else?
In the current version, carve and extract shell with a negative thickness value will give you the finished merged part already (named “… ext”).
With complex shapes there might be self intersections in the inner shell, it’s not a voxel based hollow method like what 3d printing slicer software/meshmixer does.
In the scene menu (“…” button), you can separate the ext object to work on the inner shell and try to fix these intersections (would need the inverse culling option active during sculpting)
When merging the inner and outer shells back together (after toggling inverse culling back on the inner!), no need to use voxel merge btw. normal ‘join’ will work fine and not modify the topolgy.
I didn’t know I had to separate the extraction!!! This was the missing piece that was stumping me 
Thank you so much!