3d

[erico]

Do we get this 3d next update??
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fAsg_xNzhcQ&NR=1

[Ian Price]

That's pretty amazing. Very lifelike lighting and shadows there

[Hatonastick]

Wow!  On one hand it is amazing, but it is also extremely freaky. 

(Bad joke intended)

[Ian Price]

Reminds me of "Thing" from "The Addams family"

[erico]

yep, I was so into the effects that the flying hand concept escaped me totally...
maybe it´s Luke´s lost hand?

On another off topic subject, 3d modelling, I always thought the best way to do it was by mixing spline modelling and non-destructive boleans and bla bla... point is that such technic can model organic and non-organinc things.

I never came by a program that could do such, but yesterday I saw something interesting on this front.
Check here: http://www.groboto.com/v3/index.html

I goes for 100$ so it´s not really expensive if it really works.

They have a nice but weird page, if such modelling thing interests you, look for vidOsoup-PrimToZBs.mov on tutorial/videos.
It´s the video that bought me in to trying this out. Beware, it´s a bit long and the narration is weird.

[doimus]

duhduduhdum... the Adams Family! 

That Sponza courtyard refuses to die, really... it was made some 10 years ago and it's still a staple in online rendering examples.
The guy that modeled it is an established architect now, actually.
Nice lighting tecnique though... voxel techniques rock as always.

As for modeling, as I come from engineering/architectural background I always model stuff as if it was developed from a technical drawing - adding stuff to empty plane. It's really difficult for me to model like a sculptor, "subtracting from the box".

I liked Rhino3D and it's NURBS modeling, but conversion to polygons is really crappy there... not useful for games at all.
I like Lightwave's polygonal modeler, but it's splines suck (LWCAD is an amazing plugin, though).

But I have recently discovered Maya's modeling paradigm and I must admit I like it more and more as I explore it. You can basically model everything in NURBS and then convert it parametrically to polygons. Amazing stuff.
I have to check out groboto as it seems like it uses the same modeling principle.

[erico]

As for modeling, as I come from engineering/architectural background I always model stuff as if it was developed from a technical drawing - adding stuff to empty plane. It's really difficult for me to model like a sculptor, "subtracting from the box".

Same with me and most of these small "groundbreaking" tools that shows up once in a while have this style.
For work I need it to be technical, things must be on scale and so on.

I gave a few goes on GROBOTO and the interface is a bit unique as moving around differs a little from all conventional 3d tools.That is also bad for me too hehe. It seems their converted models comes out great as geometry(all quads) and you also seem to have some control on the smoothness of the joinned stuff.

I would have to take a look at this MAYA modelling stuff, I have been away a little from their news.