Advanced modeling - Converting CAD to Blender EP19c

[@StaticPhotons]

History lesson and technical info in one! A lot of my early blender experiments were with those kitbash kits, but I had no idea how they were made. Very insightful, thankyou!

[@klaudioladavac]

I suggest opening that extra options in Moi3D OBJ export dialog. Those are really useful. It has option to Weld vertices (skip doing it in Blender). "Divide larger then" option could be useful to make quite nice topo to use deformers on it without doing full on retopo - if you ever need quick and dirty thing. "Avoid smaller then" option is really useful to prune a LOT of edges especially on those tiny bevels. You can slide toward more polygons but it will never add like 200 division on tiny bevels while adding more necessary edges on larger curves and bevels. There some more options there but they all work together and that is where true power of Moi3D obj export is....probably 99% of people just do obj export and move slider toward "more polygons".

[@BlenderBob]

Hi Klaudio! Well, coming from the guy who actually introduced me to MOI3D, I can’t argue with you. :-) Thanks for the tips.

[@ganapathym3664]

2:25 Great work. You are this much talented, 25 years before. Amazing

[@kreynusr4242]

The quality of information present here is mind blowing. Sir one of the reasons I think your channel hasn't blown up yet is no where in the title nor in the description it says industry professional or something. People use hastags and stuff to make their videos easy to find. If you added stuff like that I think this channel would blow up in no time.

[@BlenderBob]

Thanks for the nice comments. Apparently when you reach 5k subscribers KZbin places you higher in the search results. I usually put blender and the main topic in the title. But I know a lot of stuff I teach is too advanced for many people.

[@kreynusr4242]

@@BlenderBob But your content is not just blender. You're an entertaining person too.

[@drumboarder1]

@@BlenderBob I wouldn't say it's too complicated, years ago I started "working" with 3ds max to make models for vice city and I would've killed for someone like you back then

[@siddhantsingh7018]

This is a criminally under-subscribed channel.

[@llibertferrernoguera1251]

Men this video is gold, im stucked whit that a lot of time and you helped me to much. There's not only a tutorial, it's a introduction to the industry this is awesome... thankyou very much, I mean really thannksss.

[@wallerron]

4:45 , as a Swede I felt that. xD Excellent info here.

[@dolphkawalec3527]

Thanks sooooo much for this. I occasionally need to do work with CAD models and I've been looking for a solution for the f-ed up geometry once it gets imported to Blender. Going to check out MOI 3D right now! Love your channel!

[@BlenderBob]

Glad I could help!

[@BlenderBob]

Next week it will be about cleaning up that geometry

[@alexandreancel6423]

Jurassic Park's dinosaurs were NURBS !! OMG, didn't expected that !

[@hutcheson3D]

Brilliant video, thanks for your tips!

[@Monkok3D]

Holy shit, I never knew nurbs were that powerful at the time. I only saw it used to model some retrofuturistic round blasters, nothing as fancy as freaking Matrix mecha or a T-Rex, hot damn

[@NeverTooLate_23]

Thanks Blender Bob! This is super useful.

[@micemincer]

there is also rhino - where you can control many parameters while converting to mesh (or exporting - since nurbs are displayed as polygons/triangles so same rules apply to just see the nurbs).

[@BlenderBob]

Can you convert with nGones in Rhino?

[@micemincer]

@@BlenderBob nope - only triangles mixed with quads - but I can control for example maximum edge length, or maximum surface deviation. maximum angle between faces etc - mesh is ugly af but smooth.

[@RunTheTape]

@@BlenderBob actually rhino 7 now has a special version of quadremesher built in. It is aware of some aspects of nurbs so it will help with some params for a cleaner output. This will work though only for not so detailed models. Pro tip: it will work better if every edge is chamfered/beveled, even a little bit.

[@blendercomp]

That was hilarious mr Bob! :)

[@BlenderBob]

It's Blender Bob! Mr Bob is a Peruvian porn actor of the 70s, I don't want to confuse people. ;-)

[@-BONELESS-]

Blender Bob? More like MrWorldWide !

[@benveasey7474]

Can you update this video? Unreal has an experimental CAD Kernel for nurbs. Unreal can also import STEP files with it's Datasmith CAD Importer. It can also export a lovely obj to Blender (triangles and not ngons - but well ordered ones that behave well like children that went to school with the cane). Going from Mesh to CAD is also interesting - Revit 2023 does some sort of magic on objs that removes all of the tessellation lines - they are even gone when exporting out of Revit to other file formats.

[@alvarocafe]

Oooooh I'm a mechanical engineer and I used NURBS in my PhD, these curves are soooo haaaardddd

[@alvarocafe]

aaaah hmmm I guess I liked the n-gons idea

[@alvarocafe]

This is a great workflow for working with NURBS, may I ask what format you used to export the SolidWorks model to MOI? IGES? Just a curiosity

[@BlenderBob]

IGES or STEP. If one doesn't work, try the other one. But I think STEP is more robust. Today I tried SAT and it worked version well also.

[@alvarocafe]

@@BlenderBob That's great. I wish MOI was free software though. Well, some bright mind might still make a Blender addon with this functionality soon enough!

[@stephanechataignie]

MoI et toi vous faites un bon duo 😁 Et en plus tu es polyglotte 😂 Merci pour les astuces et felicitations pour avoir réussi à travailler avec des nurbs, c'était l'esclavage en ce temps là

[@BlenderBob]

Les NURBS se travaillaient bien dans PowerAnimator mais dans Maya ça n'a jamais bien fonctionné.

[@stephanechataignie]

@@BlenderBob Dans Max non plus et je ne suis pas sûr que ce soit mieux dans Blender

[@ProjectAtlasmodling]

ok that joke was good

[@narumeia]

Hi Bob, I occasionally get that issue with the mouse getting stucked at 12:42. I generally find the issue that somehow, blender is registering all my keys including mouse clicks with an extra "Alt" command even if I'm not pressing it. I have this issue on my laptop, on my windows pc and even on the mac at work. I've gotten used to it and whenever I get that issue, simply clicking Alt on windows and Option on Mac fixes the problem.

[@BlenderBob]

CTRL middle mouse button works for me

[@luten4824]

A entendre vos R je me disais bien que vous parliez français mais j'étais pas trop sûr même avec le mot sortie dans l'hôpital 😅... Vous faite de belles vidéos merci pour tout, je pense que je vais vous présenter des trucs sur votre Facebook à propos de hardsurface que j'ai commencé récemment

[@BlenderBob]

Merci beaucoup! Eh oui, je parle français. Québécois.

[@luten4824]

@@BlenderBob ah c'est cool, un artiste 3D vfx de votre niveau qui parle français aussi ça soulage même si on fait l'effort de s'améliorer en anglais. j'aurais vraiment pas deviné à vous entendre parler. bonne continuation en tout cas et surtout modeling on apprend vraiment des trucs utiles

[@BlenderBob]

@@luten4824 Bien disons que pour l'anglais, ça aide pas mal de travailler aux US, en Angleterre et à Vancouver. :-)

[@chielsaro2501]

I can confirm @12:42 I also occasionally have this problem where the viewport camera gets bound to the mouse.

[@alvarocafe]

Here it comes!!

[@kenliuuzaki3655]

Hi, I wonder if there is any open source alternative to moi's "NURBS to mesh" part... Don't want to spend $300 only for format converting...

[@picosdrivethru]

Curious what you would do for the shape at 11 mins... this isnt terribly complex for sub-d modeling but there are shapes, especially complex varible fillets that are so much easier to do in CAD, but you do need to get the retopo / export settings right to be worthwhile I guess?

[@BlenderBob]

It’s always very tricky to convert CAD to polys. Sure, doing a complete retopo would be the best but it takes time and you need to be very good at it especially for parts like this one. So, bevel shader it the fastest and easiest way to do with donc you don’t need to touch the geometry at all

[@picosdrivethru]

@@BlenderBob Interesting, but for a film modeling portfolio, can you use CAD for sci fi greeble style detail or is that a bad idea? (parts like the above) What about in production?

[@MalmqvistM]

Maybe you could keep a copy of the original imported mesh and use the Data transfer modifier to transfer the custom normals back again? Never used it but I saw it says Custom Normals under Face corner data.

[@BlenderBob]

If the topology changed, I don't think it's possible but I will try. Thanks.

[@rbettsx]

@@BlenderBob First time commenter.. can't believe I haven't come across your channel before. Great content. Data Transfer from clean copy should work.. could have demonstrated maybe if original in file. It's raycast in most options.. not topology dependent. Can be aimed at vertex groups to isolate the effect (away from your fresh bevels).

[@izvarzone]

Nurbs have G2,G3,G4,G5 curvatures I wish subdivs had them too. Idk if it's even possible do with polygons, if there any scripts or plugins.

[@BlenderBob]

Polys don’t have curvature precision settings. Can you explain more about your questions please?

[@izvarzone]

Yeah I've been wondering maybe it's possible to push vertices along normal on bevels with some math formula, to emulate G3-5 look. But so far I never found answer. Got it almost right in Houdini by measuring curvature, blurring it, then using it to push points position along normals * blurred curvature.... almost worked probably need different formula.

[@memnok9980]

Love the history. I am a bit of an idiot myself. Hey, I have spent a lot of hours in moi3d over the past few years and I love it for some things. I’m trying to use some modeling in blender. My problem is, I can’t use box cutter because the exported mesh from moi3d has locked normals. Do you know of any solution? I’m about to just give up and start using dynamesh(zbrush) to polish the final parts of the concept and then just retopo(always trying to avoid this..lol)

[@BlenderBob]

Object data properties, clear custom split normal data :-)

[@memnok9980]

@@BlenderBob will check it out. Thank you Bob!

[@memnok9980]

@@BlenderBob that felt kinda like the holy grail for me. You just saved me so much time. Thanks so much!

[@izvarzone]

Can you make bevels in MoI from file someone else made in Solidworks?

[@BlenderBob]

I don’t use Moi for anything else but conversion so I wouldn’t know. Sorry!

[@micemincer]

I woudl make a copy of the object before beveling, then copy its normal to the beveled - "normal edit" modifier - can't test it without original mesh ;)

[@ferencszabo3504]

and Rhino can do quadmesh now 😁...

[@DarrenLGoldsmith]

Did anyone solve the normals issue? I've just started working with MoI. My plan is to use it for more complex hard surface objects (though I also use Hardops/Boxcutter), and then export to Blender.

[@darrell9294]

Good places to find CAD models?

[@BlenderBob]

No idea. The goal is to get away from them ;-)

[@RunTheTape]

Check out InstaLOD. It has some very nice conversion tools with almost decent automatic UVs for CAD data.

[@BlenderBob]

I will! Thanks!

[@RunTheTape]

@@BlenderBob Go to my artstation page, search for dlbogdan. I have there a few assets all made in Fusion 360, processed by InstaLOD, very importantly: just load the STEP file directly into InstaLOD. Then I packed the UVs a bit with Blender with UVPackMaster2 and very lazily textured with Substance Painter.

[@BlenderBob]

@@RunTheTape Converting CAD to polys is not the complicated part. Getting a clean geo is. I'd like to see the wireframe version of the conversion :-)

[@RunTheTape]

@@BlenderBob a clean sub-dividable geo from cad or Boolean work will only be accomplished when someone takes automatic retopology to the next level involving AI/deep learning. Quadremesher gets it close on some simple geo and the new integrated Max retopology tool, even closer still. But for non deformable meshes, for indie gamedevs/modelers/game designer/texture artists/level designers/programmers all in one such as myself, with a full time job and a 2 yr old kid, this is a God sent. I can model machinery, robots, hard surface in general about 10 times faster in Fusion 360 than in any poly modeling app. Also, I think Fusion 360 can be even faster than Moi3D in some cases. And in all cases, having the possibility of changing parametrically things in the timeline, is by far the best feature of all in Fusion 360.

[@BlenderBob]

@@RunTheTape Yep! We have to deal with that often and it's total hell!

[@CyberWolf755]

5:46 hey, that's not Croat.... oh

[@azerqerty2277]

Robert Rioux est francophone ? Français ? Canadien ? Autres ? Salut de ma part en tout cas 🖐

[@BlenderBob]

Québécois!

[@azerqerty2277]

@@BlenderBob Québec ❤

[@woolenwoods665]

wait u are chinese? i am chinese and i want to know why u look different ~!

[@BlenderBob]

Plastic surgery. I’m a spy... don’t tell anyone.

[@BlenderBob]

kzbin.info/www/bejne/nV6Ym5malJ6ZiMk

[@StaticPhotons]

"Now I am writing in binary" Uses I and O instead of 1 and 0

[@BlenderBob]

Binary only means two choices. Could be bananas and cars, pizzas and elephants. Computers don't actually calculate with 0s ans 1s. It's more current passe, current doesn't pass. And now I'm just being a smart ass. OK' YOU'RE RIGHT, I'M WRONG! (That's also binary) ;-)

[@StaticPhotons]

@@BlenderBob You know what, that's a fair point, the file name wasn't for computer compiling. If humans know the convention then it gets the job done (even if it's I=0, O=1).

[@Tarex_]

Well and there the point crystallizes to model something properly right from the start, input garbage, output a hot pile of sh.. oh right, i'm actually too lazy to model properly and end up fixing single vertices for hours in Blender :D

[@izvarzone]

About solution... I'd probably just retopo it.

[@BlenderBob]

Personably I think retopo works well on organic models but for hard surface I prefer to do a manual clean up. But the important thing is not how you do it but the end result.

[@graphikeye]

Rhino users start sweating...