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Its a perennial and interesting problem... I should check that you are intending to use this with SDS, right ? And that you are wanting to do this properly, and therefore would be discounting the quick and lazy cheats style approaches, like re-meshed boole or volume builder methods ? If so, you are thinking along the right sort of lines, but the implementation of it is unideal so far, in that you have ended up with triangles on the inside and error-state concavity problems at the corners of the outside. You can't have concave quads like this; no internal poly angles should be greater than 180 degrees. More info on that here in case its unclear... So those arrow shaped polys are wrong, or at least technically bad. I would be surprised if they render OK, without any tearing. Anyway, you want to find a density of tube segmentation so that the block sits slightly inside the topology on both sides, like so. Of course it will be different per side. Then you inset each poly group the once, and then you are setup to do the 180 degree cut thing, as demo'd here by Shepard O'Neill a few years back. I am mad busy this week on my own modelling nightmares, otherwise I would have demo'd it for you, but hopefully this should send you n the right direction... CBR

I haven't tried the Affinity software but remember it getting a mention here before. I think it was in one of the Black Friday deals. Wonder what the big reveal will be tomorrow

Let's hope that 'one big thing you've been waiting for' is the ability to easily and directly modify alpha channels just like any other channel... a request that has been around for years on the Affinity Photo forum - with absolutely no response from them. A.Photo is a good application in many respects - but is tripped up by weakness in a few key areas. I have a copy, but Photoshop still reigns supreme for the stuff I do. I'll be interested to see what the Affinity crew deliver. PS: I agree about the Ps / Adobe splash screens : )

Re After Effects, Left Angle's Autograph launches very soon and numerous Reddit folk posting in the After Effects "Why is AE so crashy?" threads are waiting for it. Does a lot of the same stuff, newly written code.

Er.... no I disagree. It is a practically evidenced thing across multiple applications that concave polygons are just incorrect technique with SDS, and arguably without it also. It is always possible to avoid them, and so we should ! 🙂 Yes to that 🙂 I've always hated that old light blue on puce grey ! Anyway, here is an SDS result - how do you rate its viewport appearance and quality ? Are we seeing any artefacts, deviation from cylindrical, lumpiness or smoothing problems ? I've even given it some blurred metal action so we can really see. Pretty decent I reckon. And predictably, yes, that was a horrible boole inside Cinema's Z-remesher with a hard edge selection defined. So I wouldn't be so quick to dismiss that option - the topology might not be as good as we could get by hand, but it's perfectly serviceable as far as SDS is concerned, and took roughly 1 minute to sort out. UVs would be somewhat less than ideal though, so there's that... But I don't think that makes this issue moot, even in a world where fewer and fewer people place any importance on doing things 'properly' - it is good that there is a thread discussing the best approaches for doing so ! CBR

A new one - twist deformer prototype! This can be expanded into included one and even improved. In Viewport OM Strength control i nAM Graph is simple 71_Twist_Deformer.c4d

delete this tag and it will work:

Really Cool CBR Jacobite

That is 'correct' (as in expected behaviour), and 'twas ever thus ! If there is another object selected as well as a spline, then the spline's tangents will be unavailable. So, whilst not a bug, I agree it shouldn't be this way, and will make a suggestion to that effect, although I feel sure that has been done before now, so there is probably a technical limitation or reason it remains the case. Of course there are ways around it in the case of multiple splines - combine them all (or create them as islanded segments within a single spline), make your co-dependent edits, then split them up again ! Correct. That's one that does exactly what it says on the tin ! 🙂 CBR

I think there is something sinister about AI. Its engine goes beyond what is seen and into the unseen areas of our psyche with the art it creates. How does it do that? I have no idea but check out this example and you tell me if it is not scary: I entered the text "Self Portrait of what Cerbera is thinking while he models"... ....and I got this disturbing result...... Nothing but triangles!!!! And in a pleasant and artistic arrangement as well. NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!!!!!!!! That shook me to my very core!!! Dave

Hope this is not the future... it looks more like a nightmare to me... Why should I let an AI algorithm decide for myself? beside the fact that many low end artist will loose the job since poor quality one click solutions will be available for everyone. Technology should be here to help our job, not make it redundant..