ShapeShop B4 is up. The big changes are 1) Decal texturing is back and 2) my highly experimental Layered Surface Editing tools have been enabled.

Decal Texturing has been re-enabled in this version. Any scene files you made in ShapeShop 002 that have decals in them should now load properly, and you should be able to save and load new scenes with decal textures. (At least, in theory - I did just hack this in for a demo a few weeks ago, so your mileage may vary.)

But the big news is that I have enabled the Layered Surface Editing tools that I implemented as part of my PhD research at the University of Toronto. The idea is to extend the procedural style of creating 3D volumes that ShapeShop uses to more traditional surface editing, like you would find in more conventional 3D modeling tools. But unlike those tools, when you apply a surface edit in ShapeShop, you can always go back and change it later. We call this a Surface Tree. Here is an example of what you can do with layered surface edits:

If you want to know more, check out the research paper. If you aren’t interested in the “science”, the YouTube video below has all the key info, like what sort of edits ShapeShop supports, and how to make them. I haven’t had time to update the manual yet, so this video is the only documentation you’re going to have. But the basic approach is very similar to existing ShapeShop tools - you draw something on the object, and you get options in the suggestion toolbar. Oh, and because this is a new and not-very-stable feature, I have disabled it by default. To turn on surface edits, check Suggest Surface Edits in the Shapes menu.

Please keep in mind that this stuff is extremely experimental. It will cause ShapeShop to crash and hang, frequently. Some things (like the linking between copies) will not be saved.

I have also enabled .OBJ mesh import (File->Import->Import Mesh). Be warned that this feature only works with layered edits. You won’t be able to perform regular ShapeShop blending, cutting, or remeshing on an imported mesh. You also won’t be able to create any other “base” shapes - once you’ve imported a mesh, all you can do is apply layered edits to it, and then export the new .OBJ mesh. Don’t bother trying to save the scene, it won’t load. But you will be able to play with layered edits on meshes you made with other tools. Good luck!

As always, I love hearing from artists, so don’t hesitate to let me know what you think at feedback@shapeshop3d.com. I am particularly interested in what you have to say about the layered surface editing, as well as the gestural 3D manipulation from B3, because I will be presenting them next week at the Eurographics 2008 computer graphics conference in Crete. So, feedback - please!

What are you waiting for? Download it!

When I released ShapeShop B1, I said I was going to try to keep posting monthly beta updates. Clearly, that didn’t happen. But, at long last, ShapeShop B3 is available.

This one took a while because you’re getting a major new feature - I’ve completely re-designed the 3D manipulation widgets and interface. The new system is based on gestures, which can be combined to do 3D rotation / translation / scaling (yes, scaling, at long last!), easy access to world/object coordinate systems, transformation around arbitrary pivots points (with their own frames), snapping, etc - the list goes on. To demonstrate, here is a YouTube video:

Pretty neat, huh? Well, I hope you like it, anyway. If you do like it, or even if you don’t like it, and especially if you completely love it or absolutely hate it (no! never!), please let me know your thoughts at feedback@shapeshop3d.com. If you’re interested in the “science” behind it, you can check out the paper that I will be presenting at Eurographics 2008 in Crete.

Other new stuff in B3:

• As mentioned, support for scaling. Note that scaling is limited to object-space axes of individual primitives
• Flip (again, only object axes for now)
• Bug fixes, including a major bug with file loading that
• Visual & UI enhancements

So, what are you waiting for? Head over the download area!

A few weeks ago I promised a version of ShapeShop that would run on AMD processors. I haven’t forgotten. But I have discovered something….distressing. I seem to have…misplaced…the source code for ShapeShop v002.

I really thought I had a backup “checkpoint” (aka zip file) of the v002 source, but it turns out that the closest checkpoint I have is the code I used for my SIGGRAPH 06 paper. The release version wasn’t done for a few more months. Now, I’m not completely clueless - I do use source control, so in theory I should be able to pull the exact release codebase from CVS.  Except that I switched from CVS to SVN last summer when I changed universities, at which point I deleted the CVS repository. I do have a backup of the CVS repository, so I might be able to get the code, but it’s not going to be as easy as just re-compiling.

I could do an AMD release of the older code - it has all the interface features that people seem to actually use. It looks like the main thing missing is the XML save-file format. I initially had a binary format, but I realized that was going to be a nightmare for maintaining backwards-compatibility*. This binary format does load in v002, but it probably won’t in v003. Which I can imagine will be pretty frustrating for any users who download it…

Any suggestions?

* You would not believe how much extra work is necessary to release research software, if you want to make it actually usable. This is why you hardly ever see those cool SIGGRAPH demos released into the wild…

So, I haven’t upgraded to Windows Vista yet, but it seems that the ShapeShop installer doesn’t work on Vista. Also, ShapeShop has never worked on AMD processors. Well, good news - about a month ago a friend of mine “donated” an Athlon machine to me, so I now have a build of ShapeShop v002 with 3DNow! support. Meaning it will run on an Athlon. I am going to put that up next week after SIGGRAPH. I’m also going to try to find a way to get a Vista version going - it may end up just being a .zip file, but it should work until v003 comes out.

(Actually, if you have a friend or access to a non-Vista machine, you could try just copying the C:\Program Files\UnknownWare\ShapeShop 002\ folder to your Vista machine. If you do that, and it works, please let me know!)

ShapeShop v002 has been released - click here to download it. Unfortunately the current version only runs on hardware that supports SSE2, which basically means Intel P4 or newer (or, apparently, an AMD Opteron/Athlon64). So you might have to buy a new computer. But otherwise, ShapeShop v002 is completely free.

ShapeShop is a sketch-based 3D modeling tool for creating procedural hierarchical implicit volume models, also known as “BlobTrees”. At least, that’s the technical description. The short version is that ShapeShop is a fun tool for quickly sketching 3D models, which just happens to have some very powerful features that aren’t available in any of the state-of-the-art commercial 3D modeling systems. If you’re familiar with Metaballs, then you might have some sense of what ShapeShop’s BlobTrees can do. But BlobTrees go way beyond what is possible with Metaballs. If Metaballs are gin-and-tonic, BlobTrees are red bull spiked with crack. In fact, ShapeShop only scratches the surface of what is possible with BlobTrees - there is much more to come.

Unfortunately, that means you can’t load ShapeShop models into any other programs (yet). However, ShapeShop does export nice triangle meshes in .OBJ format (make sure you use the QuickRefine button first ! )

ShapeShop also has a novel decal texturing system. Of course, right now you can’t actually export the composited texture map (although you can export each decal OBJ individually, and you could technically load them all into some other program for rendering. It just might take a while). Texture export is coming soon, as are lots of other features (some high-priority things on the list include speeding up the interactive remeshing and making it possible to import existing meshes).

To get a feel for how fast and easy it is too use ShapeShop, check out the video below. Then go give it a try!