[Released] Gescon, CSG plugin for Daz Studio [commercial]

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Comments

  • Rod Wise DriggoRod Wise Driggo Posts: 2,144

    Probably might skip Gescon but that clothing thickness thing will be a must have. Hope you will support Mac with this as well.

  • AlbertoAlberto Posts: 1,381

    Rod Wise Driggo said:

    Probably might skip Gescon but that clothing thickness thing will be a must have. Hope you will support Mac with this as well.

    Of course! 

  • marblemarble Posts: 7,449

    I'm wondering about this product and whether it might be useful for a project I have. I need to show some internal anatomy (I have the DAZ V4 internal Organs) but I have not found a good way of exposing them. I mean like a forensic or pathology lab scene from a TV cop show. I've tried to make opacity maps for the skin but it doesn't do the trick.

  • AlbertoAlberto Posts: 1,381

    marble said:

    I'm wondering about this product and whether it might be useful for a project I have. I need to show some internal anatomy (I have the DAZ V4 internal Organs) but I have not found a good way of exposing them. I mean like a forensic or pathology lab scene from a TV cop show. I've tried to make opacity maps for the skin but it doesn't do the trick.

    You could use one o more Difference operations on a V4 figure to get the effect. 

  • FirePro9FirePro9 Posts: 455

    marble said:

    I'm wondering about this product and whether it might be useful for a project I have. I need to show some internal anatomy (I have the DAZ V4 internal Organs) but I have not found a good way of exposing them. I mean like a forensic or pathology lab scene from a TV cop show. I've tried to make opacity maps for the skin but it doesn't do the trick.

  • FirePro9FirePro9 Posts: 455

    Maybe an Iray Section Plane would work for this.

  • marblemarble Posts: 7,449

    FirePro9 said:

    Maybe an Iray Section Plane would work for this.

    As far as I know, those are just flat planes. I want specific shapes as though a surgeon or pathologist had opened up the "victim". I don't really understand what "difference" means or how to create that shape with this tool.

    By the way, I rhink the V4 internals will work with G8F with a bit of manipulation but I'm not sure. 

  • AlbertoAlberto Posts: 1,381

    marble said:

    FirePro9 said:

    Maybe an Iray Section Plane would work for this.

    As far as I know, those are just flat planes. I want specific shapes as though a surgeon or pathologist had opened up the "victim". I don't really understand what "difference" means or how to create that shape with this tool.

    By the way, I rhink the V4 internals will work with G8F with a bit of manipulation but I'm not sure. 

    The Difference operation is a cutting of an object with another. See the next example. The cylinder cut a hole in the ball (in the video https://youtu.be/kdZnvwlRyiQ you can see the procedure).

     

    Here are another example of Difference:

    https://www.daz3d.com/forums/discussion/comment/6719581/#Comment_6719581

    popup_02.jpg
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  • DaventakiDaventaki Posts: 1,621

    So to maybe clear this up a bit and help marble out, you need a specific shape to create the difference?  So I am assuming that using an opacity map on say a cube to make a specific shape and use it to make the cutout?

  • cobraridgecobraridge Posts: 44

    For intersection, I get different results depending on which object is A, and which object is B.  One result renders instantly and is crude, but the other ordering takes a while to compute and has a very good result.  So, if you get bad intersection result, try swapping which object you select as A and for B.

  • ChaosophiaChaosophia Posts: 137

    Can the meshes made via this tool be redistributed from using it on a model I made. Example: I make a box use the utility to cut it up or shatter it, then save out that output made from the utility as an obj. 

  • Bought the tool. A little disappointed Daz didn't include the cutters. I've logged a ticket as suggested.

    I'm attempting to blow a hole out of one of Stonemason's Ubran Sprawl 2 and 3 buildings. I've tried with both but I flat out can't get it work. I've tried substituting the cutter for various primitives and also some debris props. No luck. It flat out won't cut. I've confirmed there's plenty of polys in the building mesh. Nothing happens when I hit fracture. Any suggestions?

    Screenshot attached.

     

    Gescon.JPG
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  • LoonyLoony Posts: 1,798

    Georgehaze said:

    Correct me if I'm wrong, but it seems like most (maybe not all) of what this offeres is already available in Bryce, which DAZ gives away for free.

    Other than working as a module within DAZ Studio, am I missing something?

    you can also do a lot in blender or hexagon, but best thing with any daz plugin is, that you dont need to drag things first out, adjust and throw in again.

    Thats why I love Meshgrabber, before meshgrabber excisted, a lot peoples used blender or zbrush to modify things and reimported it, now you can do all in daz3d ;)

    But if you love to import and export... have fun with 3-4 softwares instead of one ;)

  • LoonyLoony Posts: 1,798

    Alberto said:

    Mark_e593e0a5 said:

    Alberto said:

    However, I'm creating a plugin that could thicken open-mesh objects.

    If that can be used to add some thickness to paper-thin clothing items, I would consider that one a must-have wink 

    Yes, it's precisely its purpose smiley.

     

    ohhh are you the Next manfriday? :D (he got sadly very silent.... did hope to see much more from him).

     

  • LoonyLoony Posts: 1,798
    edited May 2021

    marble said:

    I'm wondering about this product and whether it might be useful for a project I have. I need to show some internal anatomy (I have the DAZ V4 internal Organs) but I have not found a good way of exposing them. I mean like a forensic or pathology lab scene from a TV cop show. I've tried to make opacity maps for the skin but it doesn't do the trick.

    There should be sure many ways to show it ;) opacity maps are already a great way, so you made something wrong :)

     

    The G3F here is with a Iray shader and it looks weird! but this is only in the viewport!

    If you activate iray:

    you see it works fine, and you can see what is inside, if you want to make the cutted region bloody, you could do this easy in Postwork with gimp or whatever you want to use ;)

    The cutoutmap does btw. not need to be big! Main image of the texture is 4K, but cutout map is just 1280x1280.

    If you want a bloody look on the cutted region and want it for every image the same, I recommend you play with a custom texture.

    made in Gimp, saved as new bloody texture, I moved the black cutout region there and colored around.

    You see... its possible ;)

    (wasnt perfect now, but was only to showcase ;) )

    Post edited by Loony on
  • TenTen71TenTen71 Posts: 67

    Alberto said:

    Rod Wise Driggo said:

    Probably might skip Gescon but that clothing thickness thing will be a must have. Hope you will support Mac with this as well.

    Of course! 

    Would it be possible to give the next plugin the ability to make ANY non-solid object thicker? I absolutely hate paper walls and ceilings and floors.

  • GordigGordig Posts: 9,024

    Georgehaze said:

    Correct me if I'm wrong, but it seems like most (maybe not all) of what this offeres is already available in Bryce, which DAZ gives away for free.

    Other than working as a module within DAZ Studio, am I missing something?

    Most of Alberto's products in general focus on bring functionality into Daz Studio that has long existed in other software. I'm comfortable working in C4D (and, to a lesser extent, Houdini), so I have no problem working in other apps to accomplish what I want, so I have little use for what he offers. The same is not true of every other DS user, so there is definitely still value for people who those who don't want to leave DS or learn other programs.

  • TenTen71TenTen71 Posts: 67

    The MAC download is 16 MBs larger than the WIN version. Is that because of the content (cutters) issue? Would we be able to use the MAC content in Windows? Just asking incase those particular files are not OS specific.

  • AlbertoAlberto Posts: 1,381

    Chaosophia said:

    Can the meshes made via this tool be redistributed from using it on a model I made. Example: I make a box use the utility to cut it up or shatter it, then save out that output made from the utility as an obj. 

    Yes, if the original model is yours, then the products generated by Gescon are yours, too. 

  • AlbertoAlberto Posts: 1,381

    nicktechnical said:

    Bought the tool. A little disappointed Daz didn't include the cutters. I've logged a ticket as suggested.

    I'm attempting to blow a hole out of one of Stonemason's Ubran Sprawl 2 and 3 buildings. I've tried with both but I flat out can't get it work. I've tried substituting the cutter for various primitives and also some debris props. No luck. It flat out won't cut. I've confirmed there's plenty of polys in the building mesh. Nothing happens when I hit fracture. Any suggestions?

    Screenshot attached.

     

    They're open-mesh, not solid objects. This is the Building 17 of your image. 

     

    us2Build17.jpg
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  • AlbertoAlberto Posts: 1,381

    TenTen71 said:

    Alberto said:

    Rod Wise Driggo said:

    Probably might skip Gescon but that clothing thickness thing will be a must have. Hope you will support Mac with this as well.

    Of course! 

    Would it be possible to give the next plugin the ability to make ANY non-solid object thicker? I absolutely hate paper walls and ceilings and floors.

    Yes. It will thicken any open-mesh object (that is a non-solid geometric object). No more paper walls!

  • AlbertoAlberto Posts: 1,381
    edited May 2021

    TenTen71 said:

    The MAC download is 16 MBs larger than the WIN version. Is that because of the content (cutters) issue? Would we be able to use the MAC content in Windows? Just asking incase those particular files are not OS specific.

    The 16 MB files are the plugin's files for the Mac (they're more library files). They're not the content. The content are 11 props, nothing OS specific. 

    Post edited by Alberto on
  • AlbertoAlberto Posts: 1,381

    cobraridge said:

    For intersection, I get different results depending on which object is A, and which object is B.  One result renders instantly and is crude, but the other ordering takes a while to compute and has a very good result.  So, if you get bad intersection result, try swapping which object you select as A and for B.

    Or you can increase the precision. 

  • AlbertoAlberto Posts: 1,381

    Loony said:

    ohhh are you the Next manfriday? :D

    No, I'm not .smiley

    Loony said:

     (he got sadly very silent.... did hope to see much more from him).

    Don't worry, he's active. 

  • HavosHavos Posts: 5,294
    edited May 2021

    I rarely buy stuff when they are first released, however this looked interesting enough that I wanted to try it out now, so I picked it up. First impressions are mixed, somethings I liked, others things less so, as I will describe in the next few posts in the hope that some people find it useful. Firstly to me by far the most useful was the "Difference" function. I am sure I can think of somethings for which union and intersection that would be useful, but it was difference that I spent most time testing. Here are a few real world usages I need for this as follows:

    a) Adding liquid into a glass/jar/bottle or other vessel which does not have this already as part of the model. You can also use it to have the liquid tipped at an angle to match the angle in which it will be held. I found not all glasses were suitable for this, for example if it was not a closed mesh, or if the glass was too thin, however I found some where you could add liquid by using the difference with a solid cube, and then using the geometry editor to hide the residue outside the glass. See image below.

    b) Using a Primitive cube to create a wall I could punch appropriate sized holes into the mesh in order to put doors and windows in positions of my choosing. It is a shame the plug in can not work on simple planes, as most rooms available on the market use single plane walls, and in some cases it would be great to punch in a door or window when needed. See image below for where I add a single door and window.

    c) Adding bites into food, as already mentioned as a use case by Alvin, I added two examples of my own, one for a slice of toast, and the other a steak. For these I needed to use the original UVs rather than new ones, which I believe means that I have no control over how the UV was created for the border and interior. See images.

    4) Adding a hole to a table or other piece of furniture.

    GlassOfOrange.jpg
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    WallWithWindowAndDoor.jpg
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    BittenToast.jpg
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    BittenSteak.jpg
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    TableWithHole.jpg
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    Post edited by Havos on
  • HavosHavos Posts: 5,294
    edited May 2021

    Someone mentioned earlier if this could be used to chop hair to make it easier to fit under hats. I did not expect this to work, as most hair does not consist of closed meshes, however it did cut the hair as I wanted, but unfortunately also cut out a lot of the mesh I wanted to keep, which is my main gripe with this plug in, as I will mention in my final post. Below are two images, the first shows the hair after it was sliced by the plugin, and the second shows it after I added back the original hair but hid the top section using the geometry editor. At least that image is somewhat useable.

    I also used the plugin for the following rather macbre example of cutting off the head of the genesis figure. It worked, but naturally the join could look better.

     

    HairWithHat1.jpg
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    HairWithHat2.jpg
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    Headless Figure.jpg
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    Post edited by Havos on
  • HavosHavos Posts: 5,294
    edited May 2021

    So in summary, I do believe this is a useful plug-in, and I will almost certainly not return it, but it has some disadvantages that I would be very happy if they were addressed.

    The main issue is that I do not want the original mesh to be touched where the vertices and polygons lie completely outside of the area of union or difference. It this was an option, that would be fine, and I would also be okay if this was limited to just cuts with primitives like rects or spheres, since obviously in these cases the mathematics of calculating which vertices are outside the area would be a lot easier. 

    You can see this issue when you union two squares. The squares will become dice. This can be mitigated by using a higher precision, but this will take longer and often create a final mesh with a huge number of polys (over a million in one case I tried). The squares would still be slightly rounded, even in this case. The high poly count problem can be reduced by using the "Surface Adaptivity" option, but I would still prefer to keep my original mesh where possible.

    If the original mesh is mostly retained, I believe it will allow the plugin to do a better job when retaining the original UV. For example in the headless sample above, the final mesh and UV was not the same, even though I choose "Retain the original UV". The poor girl lost half her nipples, even though this part of the mesh is a long way off where the cut was performed.

     

     

    Post edited by Havos on
  • marblemarble Posts: 7,449

    Loony said:

    marble said:

    I'm wondering about this product and whether it might be useful for a project I have. I need to show some internal anatomy (I have the DAZ V4 internal Organs) but I have not found a good way of exposing them. I mean like a forensic or pathology lab scene from a TV cop show. I've tried to make opacity maps for the skin but it doesn't do the trick.

    There should be sure many ways to show it ;) opacity maps are already a great way, so you made something wrong :)

     

    The G3F here is with a Iray shader and it looks weird! but this is only in the viewport!

    If you activate iray:

    you see it works fine, and you can see what is inside, if you want to make the cutted region bloody, you could do this easy in Postwork with gimp or whatever you want to use ;)

    The cutoutmap does btw. not need to be big! Main image of the texture is 4K, but cutout map is just 1280x1280.

    If you want a bloody look on the cutted region and want it for every image the same, I recommend you play with a custom texture.

    made in Gimp, saved as new bloody texture, I moved the black cutout region there and colored around.

    You see... its possible ;)

    (wasnt perfect now, but was only to showcase ;) )

     

    Ok, right. Opacity maps are what I have tried and what you show is, of course, quite easy to do. Unfortunately, DAZ skin has no thickness so there's no flesh. Also, I am hopeless at aligning the opacity map on a flattened UV image. If you want a different angle other than top view and if you want the opacity map to traverse UV seams, you have problems. I'm sure that some of the users here are very skilled at working with 2D flat maps but I find them a real PITA. 

  • Slightly off-topic, but I believe people are successfully using the strand hair creation tools as a way to directly paint over the figure. That may help you make opacity maps that are better suited to your needs.

  • marblemarble Posts: 7,449

    Uthgard said:

    Slightly off-topic, but I believe people are successfully using the strand hair creation tools as a way to directly paint over the figure. That may help you make opacity maps that are better suited to your needs.

    That's interesting. I have not used the Strand Hair tools but I have the Garibaldi plugin from years ago so I have an idea of what you mean. I didn't know that it could make maps though. I'll take a look. 

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