Curvy 4 Wishlist

[Simon]

I'm openning the floor for ideas for the next version of Curvy. I've gathered some from the forum already, but I know I missed some too.
My priorities are firstly sculpting large forms (eg: with primitives/merging). Secondly surface sculpting. Then painting. I am less interested in things that take Curvy in a new direction - for example animation or rendering.

I am also interested if you have requests for specific tutorials to make something, or demonstrate certain existing tools.

Alpha brushes
Painting on top/cavities
arbitrary images as brush shapes
resize or move the UV coordinates
Painting on Alpha channel + TGA saving
Grid-snap
Painting with textures
Cube/Cylinder with more triangles

[weswes]

vector plotting would be lovely so I could create cube like objects easily. I would love to be able to easily insert x,y,z and have points be connected by straight lines.

I know this is more a cad thing to do but this to me is the only feature that curvy lacks and that I have to go to another program to accomplish well that falls under the umbrella of "3d modeling".

Now that you can hide the "x" icon which allows you to video capture animation, maybe curvy3d could have a capture/export to video file feature built in!

[Simon]

Straight edge modelling is done very well in other software (I use Blender). I think it is helpful to work with several 3D tools alongside each other.

Although there are also some tricks to work with boxy objects in Curvy - namely using the Ruler tool to create straight edges, and a small move tool to position the points. I do most of my straight edges using tricks like that in Curvy. You can also use Inflate Image in curvy to bring in some more accurate shapes.

If you really want text input for shapes I recommend the OBJ format. It is a simple text file with info on the vertices and faces of a model, and you can load it straight ino Curvy.

-

Video capture is hard to get right, and when there are so many great programs you can use for the task it seems unecessary. I use FRAPS, but there are loads of others.

[weswes]

It would be nice to have an inflate curve option that is like the inflate image option however instead of creating a mesh it gives you a number of curves created out of the "inflate curve" image. This would allow me to continue to adjust the obj until it is better suited for my needs using copy curve and adjusting the curves transform and other parameters.

[Simon]

Getting the curves out of an image would be helpful along side a few other new Curve commands to copy/paste/new objects of different types from Curves (At the moment for example you can't take a curve from a "Lathe" and reuse it in a "Slab").

[weswes]

Getting the curves out of an image would be helpful along side a few other new Curve commands to copy/paste/new objects of different types from Curves (At the moment for example you can't take a curve from a "Lathe" and reuse it in a "Slab").

yes, i had not considered transposing curves from one mesh type to another. It would be fantastic tbh.

[weswes]

Simon,

I think that a lathe manager, like PD howler has a brush manager, with shapes the user has created and the manager has stored. There are reasons for me to want to have the same lathe but voxel merged differently for effect. Also i use lathe templates and adjust them for similiarly shaped but slightly different models.

[weswes]

Simon,

I think that a lathe manager, like PD howler has a brush manager, with shapes the user has created and the manager has stored. There are reasons for me to want to have the same lathe but voxel merged differently for effect. Also i use lathe templates and adjust them for similiarly shaped but slightly different models.

[weswes]

A repeat script hotkey shortcut would be nice. It would reload and run the last script used. I use scripts to control snapshots.

[Simon]

A library of useful Lathe shapes would be cool. I do find myself repeating certain shapes and tricky forms on different models.

A 'replay last script' would be helpful. I'm thinking of adding a hotkey manager so you can assign any action to any key.

[weswes]

a hotkey manager is always great!

[weswes]

When I create a selected mesh area I would like to be able to

1) mirror the selected area like one can mirror a mesh over the y axis.

2) create UV maps with mesh selections.


Also,

is there anyway to keep imported obj with quad meshes to remain quad meshes in curvy. I am asking this because smart UV unwrapping in blender seems to be identical to curvy uv maping, however, curvy seems to change the quad meshes to tris which causes the uv to be distorted. i am still playing with this but i will let you know.

my purpose for this is using curvy for quick low poly modeling to import into blender and vice versa. this is for game development.

[Simon]

Good wishlist points for mirror and uv setup with selections.

Curvy does mainly use triangles internally. They should get turned back to quads on export - but this can easily get confused if the object is edited in Curvy. I would use the "Quadify" command in Blender to get the quads back from triangles where possible. Although realistically I would probably do all the UV work directly in Blender, it has good tools for that.

[weswes]

A few things,

When using the line tool twice in succession, I would like for its A and B radius to remain the same because when i use it, i seem to use the same kinds of lines more often than not.

i would like to more easily rename objects. Maybe holding shift and clicking the objects to a group and then a rename function. Some sort of pop up window comes out.

I would also like a rotate obj,curve,or camera by set degree, ie 45 degrees, 90 degrees

i can see it fitting on the bottom right of the gui near the orange file menu

[Simon]

Line tool - Some progs let you "Set Default" for a primitive. Perhaps a little button on the GUI to lock the current line's settings for newly drawn lines.

45-90 degree turns are very useful! An in-view tool for this would be cool - and it wouldn't need to be big on screen to be very useful from time to time.

I'm not sure what you mean by easier naming, or naming multiple things. Do you mean you want to name items in the groups list rather than the properties panel... I can imagine multiple selections being named with "Name1" "Name2" etc when you enter "Name", if that is useful. (I tend to group objects and name the group rather than the individuals).