I noticed Rhino has a plugin called T-splines.
http://www.tsplines.com/what.php
Has anybody used this for models to bring into ZB3 for detailing, and is it a good method to prep a basic model for ZB?
Hi shokan,
I am a Rhino 4.0 user and new to ZB3.1. I first bought ZB3.1 becasue I thought I could swap back and forth between the two apps, turns out this does not really work…but I have found ZB3.1 to be fantastic for organic scultping.
I too was hoping the tsplines plugin would basically give me a way to model in Rhino and export a quad based mesh into ZB3.1. I contacted the folks at tsplines and they explain it is sort of possible but there will be a “softening” of edges when you export tspline model to ZB3.1 so you lose the accuracy that rhino is so good for.
Tsplines told me they would convert one of my 3DM files into a tspline file so I could test it but they never got back to me.
Please note I have not tried tsplines so don’t take my word as gospel, I would keep asking around or contact tspline support. If I find anything out I’ll be in touch and if you find anything I would appreciate you letting me know;)
Best,
fork
I am going to be looking into T-splines as well as patch modeling, box modeling and Zspheres. I like the look of and what I have read about Silo 2 and Modo 301 as a basic prep for ZBrush. There are some videos, by the way, at the T-spline site which you’ve already probably seen. The method does soften edges. More and more, though, I’m leaning towards ZSpheres and staying in ZBrush completely until C4D or XSI. In these two other programs I can model with polygons, subDs for furniture and such. Could be that ZB can do this also, just haven’t gotten that far yet.
I agree zspheres are great but sometimes I need hard edges, flat planes, thats where I look to outside apps like Modo301, Silo or tsplines/ rhino. I also do some furniture and I would be interested in your progress with the discussed outside apps. I downloaded blender but I have not had the time to mess with it yet.
Actually, I haven’t done much yet except some modeling in Amapi. My pipeline looks like it’s going to be a variation of:
- gSculpt, Silo2 or Modo301
- ZBrush
- C4D or XSI
BTW, gSculpt is a cool program that also happens to be free (open source).
Here’s the link:
http://gsculpt.sourceforge.net/
I haven’t tried Blender because I was scared off by so many people saying “too difficult”. My loss.
Gsculpt looks interesting but I don’t think they support 64 bit OS.
Here is some info I dug up from a Tsplines rep-
- if you start out with a trimmed NURBS, which is what you have here, T-Splines isn’t useful today at all because all trimming information will be lost when you convert to T-Splines. We’re finishing some internal development on converting a trimmed NURBS to an untrimmed T-Spline, at which point we’ll be very useful (perhaps even for this workflow) but this won’t be for a few months down the road.
- The best workflow involving subdivision modelers, T-Splines, and Rhino today involves using a modeler like Silo (under $200), modo (very good, around $900), or Blender (free), generating a relatively low-poly mesh (under 5000 faces, try to use mainly quads), and then converting it to NURBS via T-Splines and using it in Rhino. There’s some notes about this on our forum and website:
http://www.tsplines.com/forum/viewtopic.php?t=5474
The problem with Zbrush is that it usually creates an incredibly dense mesh. There may be some way to get a low-poly cage from that, but I’m not familiar enough with the program to know how.
-fork