Idea to go along with groups/hierarchy someday

Feature Request
1

Kind of rambling, and I don’t even know if this is possible, but:

Object hierarchy will go a long way, IMO, toward satisfying the posing features that have been requested almost as much as hierarchy. The gap between hierarchy posing and real mesh deformation posing is, I think, seams where objects meet up.

Anyway, if/when object groups arrive, would it be possible to have something like a temporary voxel merge “effect” on an entire group? So the contents of the group are still stored as separate objects, but rendered (and can be sculpted on) as a single mesh. Kind of like C4D’s metaballs, I guess, or MudBun.

This is probably only really a useful feature, though, if posing isn’t planned (though, anything nondestructive is nice for other reasons, too), and there are probably a hundred reasons why it would be more of a pain than just doing posing/skeletons or some other route. It was just an idea I had and thought might be a good compromise if it was easier to implement.

I also recognize that it would likely be pretty taxing on the system, but if it’s optional, that’s probably not too big of a concern. Maybe? :man_shrugging:

2

like magica csg or c4d csg dynamic boolean integration, it could be cool but it’s proc or gpu or both cost effective no? i don’t know if it’s compatible with ipad or android tablettes or phones?

3

Yeah, that’s what I’m not sure of. I have guesses as to how it could work, code-wise, but they are basically stabs in the dark, since the level of programming Stephane is doing is well above my head (in other words, everything I’m about to say is probably super-wrong and Stephane is likely to pop in and be like “yeah … no.”)

Like, I picture the sculpt data at least being stored and utilized similar to how layers are, but the placeholder voxel mesh … I’m not sure.

Processor-wise, I feel like it would only need to get recalculated or regenerated if a child object is moved, and that could really be a manual process. Move your child objects into position, generate the temp voxel mesh, and start sculpting on it.

Though, obviously now, I’m realizing that from a workflow/end-result standpoint, once object hierarchy is in, this isn’t significantly different from just manually having a backup, unmerged copy of your object group, duplicating it, hiding the backup, posing the duplicate, then merging and sculpting on the posed copy.

The only real difference is that, if doing it manually like that, you’d have to re-do the seam sculpting/cleanup after every pose change. I’m just not sure if there’s a remotely-feasible way to do it the way I outlined in my original post.

I suspect that I’m vastly underestimating how large the difference is between reprojecting layers during the voxel remesh process and reprojecting layers onto an entirely new voxel mesh based on a (potentially-heavily) modified object group. Among other likely underestimations, of course. :slight_smile:

4

That’s basically Rigging?

5

Hahaha, I guess so? Without having to design the UI for adding bones and whatnot, though. Just trying to save you some work (again, no clue if it actually does).