Cerbera

It's not my area of specialisation, but I watch developments with interest. I think most people still consider Maya the ultimate for rigging, but I don't think Cinema is doing too badly in that department either. We recently improved quite a lot about weights and symmetry workflows, and before that Character Object and C-Motion were good leaps forward in setting up these things quite quickly without a great deal of in-depth knowledge...
 
I found Noseman's recent 4 hour rigging series on the Maxon training team's YT channel particularly helpful in understanding all the rigging basics and possibilities open to us, so maybe it would help you catch up too...
 
 
Or for even more detail, and a better focus on character rather than than machine riggings, there was this excellent (and exhaustively thorough) series that preceded it.
 
 
CBR

I think the more apposite question might be 'Why is OBJ so much more inefficient than every other format?' !!
It's true OBJ files can be huge. I don't know specifically why this is, but feel sure it must have something to do with 'legacy', given that OBJ is a very old and 'first gen' format that should have been retired a while back, but (presumably) for backwards compatibility and 'library' reasons, hasn't been.
 
CBR
 
 

If you need assistance at that level of detail you may be waiting a while I'm afraid - quite a heavy workload at the moment, and those sort of posts take hours to compose. However I have built it (to proof-of-concept level), and so can give you edited highlights now...
 
There are about 4 principal stages, thusly...
 
1. Helix spline in Extrude, but with very specific settings. In the helix the number of points is 8 x number of complete rotations. The end angle is -360 x number of rotations. Do 1 more spirals at each end than you need (I did 8 total), as you will be slicing this flat at both ends later. There should be zero spline interpolation, so that each full turn contains no more than 8 points in the resulting geometry.  The Extrude should also have no (depth) segments initially, but should be deep enough to overlap itself by about an 1/8th of the depth of each band.
 

 
2. At this point we need to take an editable polygon copy of that via CStO, so we can edit and add loops to it. We need to add loops using Loop Cut (K,L)  to both top and bottom of the spiral, so that the border edges can be scaled in on XZ to fix the overlaps and tuck the wrap under itself nicely. A further loop can be added to define the narrow darker strip at the bottom of each wrap at this point.
 
3. In the next group of steps we need to re-orient the model (but not its axis) by 22.5 degrees on H, top and tail it to flat, non-spiral borders at both ends using Plane Cut (K,J), solve the ends to quads and scale groups of edges apart to better match the elongated shape, before selecting the edges and bevelling them to gain additional support loops there, and harder creases on the corners.
 
4. Last stage is FFDing that with a great many Y segments so you can match XZ curvature around the handle from top to bottom of it...
 
I will pop back to add further detail as time permits this week...
 
CBR

Yes, that theory holds water, unlike the balls themselves 😉
 

 
So here, in this fully parametric setup, we have 2 cylinders, a smaller one doing the top 4 holes, and then a larger one providing the 2 rows of 8 underneath that.
These are all variously offset radial cloners using a target effector on all 3 to make the cylinders point down Z at the centre of the sphere. Those 3 cloners are then given Y symmetry to get the other half, and dumped wholesale in a Connect where they can be used as operand B in a Boolean Set in 'A without B' mode.
 
If we set cylinder and (standard type) sphere to atypically high segmentation (64 and 192 correspondingly in my example above) then we get perfect spherical representation and no visible faceting without further help.
 
Live remeshing (ZRM mode), which is an option that can be deployed above all this, can actually have negative visual effect here, as it can compromise a) the look (no phong tag on remeshed objects by default) and b) inconsistency in edge distribution around the holes which can lead to visible artefacts you then have to work to fix. For those reasons I was getting cleaner results (though less toplogically sound) without remeshing. We mustn't forget that 99.9% of clients don't give 2 shits what the mesh looks like anyway, as long as it's fine in render...
 
Lastly we can bevel the hole edges a suitably tiny amount if we need to, which I like to do on a CStO of the main setup using a selection tag (U,N / Select All, Store Selection) for additional realism; they may be sharp, but not infinitely so.
 
Lastly we should consider that these balls are made out of weak, insubstantial plastic, and get twatted about, meaning their likelihood of remaining perfectly spherical is... low. So should we wish to show that too we can pop a crafty displacer (large scale perlin noise) or an FFD (for more directly art directable wonkiness) in with our parametric setup, or, as I would prefer, under the copy of it I made later (avoids constant remesh recalculation if you use it)...
 
CBR

You may be forgetting that with Loft objects the resolution is not derived from source splines but from the object itself.
Massively increase U segments in Loft Object...
 

 
I don't like this method for doing this sort of thing because it is quite difficult to get (and verify) identical segmentation on each side unless you symmetrize later. Also note distribution of edges, which is kinda arbitrary and not that great if we're honest.
 
By the time you have sorted that out for regular spacing and whatnot, you may as well have modelled it from polygons with symmetry and got a more usable base going forward ! If we definitely want to use splines, then Extrude is the better generator because that does take its interpolation and point counts from the spline, and it is trivially easy to add the little ridge bit on one end later...
 

 
Of course if you need splines for further modelling tasks you can still use the ones you have, or generate them anew from your evenly divided model using Edge to Spline...
 
CBR
 
 

STEP import improves with every recent release - it is already leagues better than it used to be, and will continue to improve further as time goes on, but for now it is not perfect. Geo tends to come in just fine and fully controllably via the import controls (max edge length / angle etc) but materials are less robust currently - at the moment we are lucky to get material tags / selections assigned different colours, and that is about the best we can hope for IME. Generally, you need to redo the textures in Cinema / PS etc...
 
CBR
 
 

I can sort of understand why that might happen, but it's not helpful behaviour; if the segments are the same in both cylinders they should align regardless of  segmentation being even or not. That's what everyone'll expect to happen.
 
Also a regression, as this doesn't happen in 2023.x.x.. anyway - I reported it, and thanks for sharing.
 
CBR

Still there, albeit renamed and in slightly different place...
 

 
CBR

Generated polys, as opposed to physical ones, such as the ones added by for example SDS, or sweeps / lathes / extrudes etc etc...
 
CBR

Nope. But there is VAMP which can be used to transfer UVs between meshes of radically different points counts and orders.
 

 
2024.x.x includes a new evaluation method, Nearest Polygon, which is pretty effective.
 
 
CBR

Correct. I presume that's why we have spline chamfer as well, but that is a node rather than a node operator, so don't think it can be dragged into OM like (geo) Chamfer can.
 
CBR

If you use a simulation scene object rather than the default back-end one, then that, (together with all the forces and sim tags it contains) can be disabled globally using its green tick and keyframed via the enabled checkbox button under Basic...
 
CBR

You should still have the various options, Tiny-Huge, but they are under Scene (previously called Project) Settings, under Display section. Or you can set it to custom to set both limits.
 

 
CBR

When I open that file, I see the hair is not linked to any geometry, despite the hair appearing on it, which means it must have been there at some point ! i don't know what caused it to not be there now, but if you drag the mesh into the link field it fixes your problem.
 
CBR
 

I would guess that the stacked booles and the various modes chosen therein, in combination with an incredibly small voxel size in the the VB are what is breaking that. I remain confused about why there is any boolean action needed here at all when using the volume builder, which viably replaces all of its functionality ! 
 
Here is what happens if you simply put the Cube, and Right and Left 'Big Circles' directly under the VB with no booles required... now your rotation segments have an actual effect on the smoothness....
 

 
After that, you can start to subtract other operands, also children of the VB, which is how I removed the small circle block on the left there, and could go on if so minded to complete the whole model using this sort of approach, which is how the Volume Builder workflow is meant to work...
 
To get the result above my stack is simply this...
 

 
Now, as you have seen, booleans can be used inside VBs but I have not yet found any circumstance where doing that helps the workflow more than confounding / obstructing it, or making it needlessly complex and even more calculation-full !
 
We could also talk about whether VB is the best approach for this kind of object - and I would say it is, IF the primary focus for the project is massive speed at the expense of polygon efficiency !
 
If you had a bit more time to throw at it you could model this via regular Sub-D modelling (no booles) quite easily and you'll get a nicer overall result, with about a 1/100th to 1/1000th of the polygons required to do it the VB way, and it would also be eminently more suitable for easy UVs and any subsequent animation, were that to be required... just a thought...
 
Hope that helps
 
CBR

Hi Brandon
 
Yeah we can do that. If you pop up here...
 

 
... you can double click the Instance icon to select all the instances in the scene in one go...
 
Then you can right-click one of them, choose Add to New Layer, and then hide that layer from the object manager, or anywhere else should we need to...
 

 
CBR
 
 

Not sure I understand the question. You haven't pressed C on the SDS or it would be editable and isn't in your screenshots. That would be what you wanted to do next when your low poly base mesh doesn't permit any more refinement of the shape, and you didn't want to manually insert extra loops but merely wanted to apply the existing subdivision. Still not sure what you are asking though...
 
Perhaps you are confused about isoline editing ? If that is turned on in view settings, and display mode is also set to isoparms then you should be able to directly edit points on the subdivided mesh result, and the outer low poly cage should be hidden. Is that what you want to happen ?
 
Here is a similar fish under isoline editing in poly mode - is that what you want yours to look like ?
 

 
CBR
 

No idea which formula we'd need, but I can get very much that sort of thing merely using honeycomb array mode of cloner and some R transform on the clone...
 

 

 
Just a thought... and I still don't understand why I don't have to do 45 degrees of rotation on all 3 axes, but results are results !
 
CBR

The Subdivision Surface object is a generator, so you are not operating at its level - only its inputs, in this case a single face of the cube that drives it, which is selected. If you want to select faces on the generated SDS result then you need to make that editable via the 'C' command, bearing in mind that it will use the Render subdivision level OR assign a Correction deformer which will allow you access to component level whilst keeping things procedural.
 
CBR

Yep, bevel deformer is procedural, so needs to be baked down into geometry before you can acknowledge it in material selections.
Current State to object is the command you need for that.
 
CBR

Hover over any of those parameters and pause - a pop up tells you what the XP tag is attached to and what it is doing...
 

 
CBR

Cylindrical smoothness under SDS is almost entirely dependent on even radial spacing of polygons.
 
In the original model we have way too much density, lots of mesh problems, tons of triangles and none of it is even, so predictably, it can't subdivide, and will look horrible and creased regardless of what you do with it !
 
Remesh can sort this of course (ZRM far better than Instant Meshes in this case) but I would remove the thickness before you apply it, and sort the object axis out so you can use its symmetry features.
 
But I would use that model as the guide to do it again, which, if you use 2 way symmetry, is only a few polys to wrangle. Final topology should be along these sorts of lines... I couldn't see your photo reference, so had to approximate, but you get the general idea... kite quads on sharp corners so you don't need to compromise rotational edge evenness to support them, and minimal poly density required to support the curves.
 

 
Hope that helps.
 
CBR

Yeah, no Cinema simulated components are going to make it into an exchange format without being baked first.
 
If that is for animation, then bake to Alembic or Bake object are reasonable options, but if it's only a still you need, then cache the simulation, move to the frame you want, and do Current State to Object on the simulated object / remove any sim tags from copy, and you should get a baked still at the right frame, that doesn't reset on timeline 0 and can be exported anywhere, anyhow...
 
CBR

Measure and Construction cannot be accused of being intuitive to use, but once you can use it, it is actually quite helpful, and can do what you are asking for IF your models meet its requirements, which are, basically, that your meshes are editable poly objects, and that you set it up carefully enough.
 
The procedure is as follows:
 
1. Prep - make sure your meshes are editable, and have their axes in the correct place for rotation.
2. Activate point snapping. The Tool itself should auto-snap even without this, but this aspect of it is flaky, so rely on proper snap instead !
3. Get M&C Tool from Tools / Guide / M&C. A red line should appear arbitrarily placed in viewport.
4. Drag the start of the red arrow to the nearest vertex to your intended hinge point, then the end of it to an equivalent point at the end of the object.
5. Hold control and click again to establish a second measure (green line), and snap / align that relative to the first.
 
At this point the angle between the 2 should be displayed and selectable for editing simply by changing the rotation value in the M&C attributes. Here is a quick video in which I attempt to demonstrate that...
 
 

MandC Wrangling.mp4 CBR

What you are seeing here is SDS-based tension Distortion, not UV distortion.
 
It is caused by the inconsistent polygon density, changing edge loop directions, and only half the control edges in place.
 
Therefore we need to change the underlying topology so the SDS distortion is much more confined in where it can run to. This we can achieve by doing 2 things:
 
1. Add another edge loop on the other side of the jutting out edge sections, and run this and its equivalent the other side up to the top where you can solve them back down again on a flat section away from borders where it doesn't matter. Like this...
 

 
2. Apply 1 level of subdivision to the mesh before you UV map it, which will increase resolution, which will restrict SDS distortion by half. Like this...
 

 
...which, when we UV that, and put it in a new SDS (max L2), then we find our SDS distortion has all but disappeared...
 

 
CBR