Sooo...What's this?

[stepalibre]

I don't mean rendered inside of Alibre, but a "Open In Relief Maker" or "Export to Relief Maker" button, similar to KeyShot. An integration via commands not the viewport or a panel. That's what I meant when I said a paid addon.

If the relief code were a separate DLL it could still be used by Alibre features later if you choose to integrate the mesh capabilities. Thanks Max and Jonathan I appreciate the response to this thread.

 

[HaroldL]

It’s just not the most important question for AD right now.

Other than PDM and those enhancements already indicated being worked on, (and do you expect them to be done?) are there any other enhancements in the pipeline that will enhance the Alibre user experience? I know there must be several that have been suggested on several occasions, like fully constrained and dimensioned sketch offset, some sheet metal features that are integrated into Alibre without having to rely on Boolean functions. I've sent in some suggestions only to be reminded that I had already suggested them and they have been given to Dev.

 

[stepalibre]

This is how I thought Relief Maker would work with Alibre before I knew more about it. The concept involves those buttons on the Send To tab. Your file can be turned into a relief.

 

[Max]

This is how I thought Relief Maker would work with Alibre before I knew more about it. The concept involves those buttons on the Send To tab. Your file can be turned into a relief.
View attachment 41518

I mean that's possible I suppose. What I do not yet fully understand is why. Most of the reliefs that you'll find in real life are of organic subjects, such as a deer or a skull or whatever. Reliefs of mechanical objects are not super common, relatively speaking. So what is the use case here? Especially as Relief Maker is often the starting point to a broader design, not the endpoint.

It was my belief that it was likely some Alibre customers would have a use for Relief Maker, just not that the source of the starting models would be coming from Alibre Design. I could certainly be wrong - we are here to learn. Our current standpoint on this particular topic is "even though we can, we're not sure we should".

 

[stepalibre]

@Max WOW! Using AI tools, I researched 3D relief technical papers and general technology. I'm familiar with similar techniques using Rhino/Grasshopper, 3D heightmaps to nurbs, but hadn't heard of 3D relief. Cool tech. Can it create detailed 3D models for CAD with detail baked in? The issue I see is the edge detail is not sharp. You would want the topology from the model. I think if you could match the angle at which the relief was generated you could merge it with the edges from the CAD model. The surfaces are detailed enough to determine where edges should be. It could create low poly details for CAD models. AI generation is another path I’ll research. I started a Grasshopper system to understand what’s possible. My goal now is to review the open source alternatives. Blender added new features under sculpting that allow you to generate topology from imaged based height maps placeable by brush. That’s where I’ll start. Zbrush and other software have this tech. My interest is in CAD applications. The technique can be flipped where the mesh is generated from the CAD model.

Different results from the Relief Maker mesh are shown for:

• quad remesh
• instant mesh
• quad remesh to nurbs
• quad remesh to sub-d
• and few shrinkwrapped versions

File sizes:


Rendered 3D Reliefs:

https://testbed-for-alibre-design.github.io/Alibre-Logos/b.html

I forgot to add AI generation and other techniques combined with various new technologies. Image to 3D model is already possible. Not image to parametric CAD or BREP model.

My post was waiting for GitHub pages to deploy the 3D render.

I mean that's possible I suppose. What I do not yet fully understand is why. Most of the reliefs that you'll find in real life are of organic subjects, such as a deer or a skull or whatever. Reliefs of mechanical objects are not super common, relatively speaking. So what is the use case here? Especially as Relief Maker is often the starting point to a broader design, not the endpoint.

It was my belief that it was likely some Alibre customers would have a use for Relief Maker, just not that the source of the starting models would be coming from Alibre Design. I could certainly be wrong - we are here to learn. Our current standpoint on this particular topic is "even though we can, we're not sure we should".

That was meant to clarify what I expected to see. I'm not the target user for the product.

@HaroldL sorry for the hijacking I'll stop here.

 

[Max]

Can it create detailed 3D models for CAD with detail baked in? The issue I see is the edge detail is not sharp. You would want the topology from the model. I think if you could match the angle at which the relief was generated you could merge it with the edges from the CAD model. The surfaces are detailed enough to determine where edges should be. It could create low poly details for CAD models.

Again, I’m not sure why one would want this. Like what is the point or use case?

Blender added new features under sculpting that allow you to generate topology from imaged based height maps placeable by brush. That’s where I’ll start. Zbrush and other software have this tech.

This is how one would consume the outputs of Relief Maker. Lots of programs can go from heightmap to mesh, it’s very common. The relief maker tutorials show this on many different applications.

The technique can be flipped where the mesh is generated from the CAD model.

Sounds easy It’s not. It’s easy to do poorly. There are all kinds of software that make reliefs poorly. Relief generation is vastly more complex than it initially sounds like it would be. Relief Maker is currently, by far, the best in the world at it. Better by a large margin than second place, Zbrush. And, with relief maker, you can already generate a relief mesh from a CAD model. Unless I’m misunderstanding most of what you are saying in that sentence.

If you want to start a rabbit hole, play with mist pass depth buffers in blender, or even zbuffer shaders in mesh lab. Those are the lowest hanging, most naive approaches to the technical challenge, and will give you an idea of where the complexity lies when you see the results.

 

[stepalibre]

Totally agree with you, RM is fast and produces great results. My workflow is CLI driven. Using async staged batch processing techniques to get as much of a real time experience is possible. Custom windows app GUI/CLI with Alibre, Dynamo, and Rhino/Grasshopper GUI/CLI integration. Anything with a CLI can be used to process data. Any work related to this topic would be an experiment. I'll go down that rabbit hole. My research lead me to MeshLab and CGAL rabbit holes papers link to them.

 

[Max]

RM has a command line interface btw, though there is currently no documentation for it. Just some info for your back pocket.

 

[HaroldL]

@HaroldL sorry for the hijacking I'll stop here.

No problem. Although I don't fully understand most of your posts it certainly sounds like you're excited about this new program and its capabilities. From your posts here and elsewhere on the forum it appears that your interest is more in programming and AI than the actual use of Alibre for private/home use or industrial/commercial output. It would be nice if someone with that interest and skill could write some AddOns for Alibre to enlarge and/or enhance its tool set that could be run from an icon click and did not require using script, which takes a while to launch.

It was my belief that it was likely some Alibre customers would have a use for Relief Maker, just not that the source of the starting models would be coming from Alibre Design. I could certainly be wrong - we are here to learn. Our current standpoint on this particular topic is "even though we can, we're not sure we should".

As a business your are free to explore any avenue of product development and hope I hope RM is successful for you but were there any enhancement requests that indicated the need for a Relief Maker product? From what I've seen of the questions and posts here on the forum a lot of them have to do with enhancing the current product, adding to and fine tuning some of its functions. It would be nice, for example, to have seen some progress updates on the state of new PDM system and the work on the GUI dialogs. Maybe the GUI could have been a dot release while the PDM was being finalized. Just sayin'.
I have been using Alibre for a long time and, as far as I'm concerned, it is my go to CAD program. I do find it a bit frustrating though to see other CAD programs that launch with functions that are appear to be better/easier or more intuitive than Alibre.

 

[Max]

As a business your are free to explore any avenue of product development and hope I hope RM is successful for you but were there any enhancement requests that indicated the need for a Relief Maker product? From what I've seen of the questions and posts here on the forum a lot of them have to do with enhancing the current product, adding to and fine tuning some of its functions. It would be nice, for example, to have seen some progress updates on the state of new PDM system and the work on the GUI dialogs. Maybe the GUI could have been a dot release while the PDM was being finalized. Just sayin'.

Relief Maker was not created as a response to the existing Alibre customer base - it's an opportunity to create and address a new market segment for us, while exposing lots of otherwise non-customers to Alibre Design as well. It's important to stress as well that Relief Maker didn't use our development team and otherwise does not compete with Alibre Design core resources. There were clear signs to us that this market existed, and was underserved, it just didn't come from you all.

PDM is currently undergoing final internal testing and within a month or two may be rolled out in beta to customers. The timeline has always been PDM, then in the following major release the UI overhaul - the UI overhaul is not a small project and not for a dot release. It is also underway, but we have vastly more resources devoted to PDM than UI at this point in time.

I hear you on the intuitive side of things - a lot of that is what we're aiming to address as part of the UI overhaul. It's just a massive project that cannot be effectively pieced out. We can't, for example, have one UI for Part, and another UI for the other workspaces. I mean we could, but I imagine no one would like that, including us. Training would be a nightmare, etc.

 

[Stu3d]

PDM is currently undergoing final internal testing and within a month or two may be rolled out in beta to customers.

As a mainly hobby user I try and maximise my bang for buck when it comes to upgrades.
I looked at the upgrade timing for the last few years and came up with an average that resulted in me upgrading from V23 to V27 in late November. As V27 was mid August I think, I thought I was good for V28 and V29, oh well serves me right for trying to game the system.
I got lots of good features moving to V27. PDM doesn't really interest me although I do get in a bit of a mess sometimes as I use several computers. The AHK scripts I wrote, with help from the forum, have been an excellent upgrade for me.
I think I recall PDM is only for Expert so I wonder what the Atom and Pro users will get that gives value to their maintenance. I know there is a list of potential knew features somewhere but can't locate it at the moment.

 

[stepalibre]

No problem. Although I don't fully understand most of your posts it certainly sounds like you're excited about this new program and its capabilities. From your posts here and elsewhere on the forum it appears that your interest is more in programming and AI than the actual use of Alibre for private/home use or industrial/commercial output. It would be nice if someone with that interest and skill could write some AddOns for Alibre to enlarge and/or enhance its tool set that could be run from an icon click and did not require using script, which takes a while to launch.

Alibre is key to my work. ~20 GUI / 80 Headless. In 2022 I started to formalize personal CAD research projects into real solutions. A little more about me. My professional background is CAD design mostly in AEC structural teams. My first job was in tooling design, and my interest has always been design and development. In a greater context Alibre is utilized for CAD model generation, it owns the base parametric model used in my work. devDept Eyeshot is a CAD component that I pair with Alibre data. AI tech. changed how I develop and research while my core focus is real world use cases. My commercial work will use Alibre data. Lol it’s not a clear cut path from research to commercial (someone with zero business skills).

 

[JimCad]

I have a 6090 CNC router and use Aspire V11.5
I can create a 3D relief from an STL etc. but on the couple of times I've done it I didn't get results as good as the one in the video.
If it's not silly money I'll take a look at RM when I get a free minute.
If it's expensive then I won't bother.
Jim

 

[M00m137]

we have vastly more resources devoted to PDM than UI at this point in time

Very glad to hear it! A smoother UI is nice, but a buggy PDM is a sh1tstorm.
With a sharknado on top.
And a cherry on top of that.

 

[JimCad]

I watched some tutorials on RM last night and so far I'm VERY impressed. Time is my constraint here so I'll keep watching as & when I can and then I'll download the trial.
Aspire has an "Emboss" tool which flattens a 3D model so it can be carved but RM looks FAR better.
I'm rather excited about this.
Jim