Getting good bevels and fillets on compound organic shapes in blender is an absolute nightmare, even with mesh machine there's certain shapes that take hours to fix topologically before you can get clean bevels that don't break shading. I'd recommend doodling in blender because its faster and has lots of procedural tools, but once you find the shapes you want you can build them really quickly in Plasticity.
I won't ever disagree that bevels will always be better in a nurbs based program. It's true and always will be unless something mad appears in the future. Its the other things it's missing that means it's a pass for me. But that's not to say it isn't a great program.
That more of a thing with nurbs vs polygons and less about blender vs plasticity. and not to mention the applications of those models are very different as well, nurbs models are not suitable for polygonal workflows such as any deformations with displacement or rigging etc where they are much better with being precise and manufacturing for the real world.
@@rano12321 Can someone explain to me why nurbs and polygon are mentioned? The explanation I've seen on google is too abstract and why Plasticity and Blender don't both fall under NURBS modeling
6:20 Many people think 3D modeling for gaming, film or 3D printing is the same, but it isn't, you have to know exactly what you want to do with your design at the end of the day. So I think it's great that you're specifically addressing this
Thanks. Hopefully it was clear that I think Plasticity is probably really good for CG work. It just needs a bit more to be at the dame place for 3D modelling.
Plasticity looks a bit like blender, but you can never compare a nurb tool with a poly based (3D, modeling, sculping, animation, rigging, lighting, texturing, shading and render) tool. You can compare blender with cinema4d, lightwave, 3DStudioMax, SoftimageXSI, Maya or maybe Modo, but Plasticity you must compare with Moi3D, Fusion360°, Freecad, ViaCad, Rhino, Shapr3D... It is only a mini CAD Tool. I have tried to compare Moi3D with Plasticity and this alone is hard because in the CAD-Nurb world, the tools are using different CAD Kernels too, with their own pro and conts.
@@adrianscarlett Hey, you "give up under 10 minutes" Plasticity has the same Kernel like Solidworks and NX Siemens. The Power Base is there. Plasticity is in Verison 1.4 so spend more than 10 minutes.
I think the thing that’s made Plasticity so much better than Blender for me is that it may be a more limited toolset but it’s good at bare essentials so it fits my very limited skillset. It’s much easier to stay excited about the awful thing you’ve made when you can see progress between sessions a lot easier. It’s good as a sketchpad where you’re learning more than creating. I’ll be curious to see how it scales, Blender being a Swiss Army knife of tools makes it hard to see ever really dropping it.
I’ve been a product designer for a long time and I’ve had to include 3D in my workflow. This debate reminds me of the no-code debate also. Which brings me to my first point: I’d say currently that the mesh quality from Plasticity isn’t up to par. If it doesn’t have texturing and rendering, then it’s just important to make the mesh quality as good as possible. Secondly, for a new tool, telling people you’ll pay for version one and get no other update from 2.0 upwards seem very unfair. They’re a small & growing team and I see so much potential in it. They should also consider taking the Figma route. Putting it on the web. It’ll be a great game changer.
I think my biggest concern is not having a clear map of how much this new version will be. It could be more than $99 or it it could be less if you already have version 1.... who knows.... I mean it is a very impressive piece of work having come from one person though. What a legend.
It’s not a subd mesh quality so you cannot subdivide or deform it but for product renders why do you care? You can export high poly mesh which you dont subdivide in blender and it will look great when rendered. 100$ for anyone making money with rendering is total bargain especially when this modeling method saves ton of time in comparison with subd modeling
@red-x-studio because I don't produce renders. I produce STL for 3D printing and those points produce more triangles/edges in odd/unpredictable places and that isn't good.
@red-x-studio Yeah it is. To be fair my use of Blender for 3D printing is not that common (compared to for rendering) so for the majority of people you're definetly right.
I totally get your points. I have used it for 3d printing in resin for 1/24 scale model cars and the quality of the mesh and the result I get from the printer is perfect.
Good to know. Thanks man 👍🏻 Out of interest I assume that's moving it directly to 3D printing (maybe using the triangulate setting)? My concern is that I want to use it in Blender to add details and for that I'd use the ngon setting and that seems to have the issues.
Comparing Plasticity with Blender is like comparing a truck with a supercar. Which one is better? Depends on how you look at it! I think it would be much better to compare Plasticity with other Nurbs modeling softwares like Rhino or Fusion 360. What Plasticity is doing here is quite amazing, because they try to simplify 3d cad modeling and try to make it much more quicker, and more easy to learn. I personally tried to leran Rhino, Fusion 360 and even modeling in Blender, but I always hated the learning process. Simply because, as a beginner, it is very time consuming and slow. What I hated the most in these softs, was that you need to do so many steps just to achieve a simple goal. A lot of hidden features burried under complex menus. I think a lot of people have experienced, what I am saying here! Then I found out about Plasticity and I have never been so excited to learn modeling - it is really fun and I can see my progress just after a couple of hours. This is impressive in my eyes! I think it is much harder to create a software that everyone can master, rather than something complex that only a few people can learn in a longer time period. Plasticity in my eyes is like an Iphone, when other Nurbs modeling softwares are like Nokia or Blackberry :) Remember, it is a brand new software that is created by 1 or 2 people (I believe) and in a recenet years - just this fact is quite impressive. Imagine, what will they do in the upcoming years with a bigger team, more budget and more time spent on development? Blender has been around since 1995 man :D Think about it!
I don't disagree with any of your points and I think I cover these points including that it will improve over time and that Blender has a steeper learning curve. But the focus of the video is answering questions I have had recently of why I don't use Plasticity and as I am not a beginner and I need those more complex functions I think this video answers that. Also the point you have made of looking at what could happen in the future only emphasises the point that you're going to have to keep on paying for the new updates. That's no issue if you're happy to do that but it doesn't change the fact that that is way you're going to do. Don't get me wrong, I'm not hating on Plasticity, in many ways it's really impressive. But for me it just isn't "there" yet and it doesn't currently meet my needs as explained. But thanks for taking the time to explain why you like it. For your use it does seem like a great piece of software and I'm glad you've found something that's got you enthused for 3D modelling!
I think your take on Plasticity pretty much completely sums up how I feel about it. Only thing I wish it had was more formula constrained math and CAD that's a little more similar to how CAD, like putting down Sketchs on planes and stuff like that
I have been watching your videos for the last month and I truly appreciate your teaching style. This video including your response to many of the comments has demonstrated to me that you deserve support for this channel. I am going to the Patreon page and signing up for the highest tier. Keep up the great work!
Well keep doing it. I just got back from Patreon and am now a proud supporter! I support a few other channels and I must say your content production is prolific. Don’t burn out. A few of my favorite creators have.
all great points that hopefully get addressed. I really like the UX that Plasticity brings to the table of parametric modeling, something that is greatly lacking in vanilla Blender with its barebone NURBS implementation. I just want to model without dealing with vertices or sculpt tools
@@TAH1712 nurbs modelling then, or whatever the term is for this curve-based modeling workflow. I enjoy it more than working directly with vertices either way
Coming at it from a traditional CAD ownership model where licences are a) expensive b) usually internet based so always need connection and c) expire after a year or two, this is a bargain. I've been using Plasticity for a couple of weeks and I'm so impressed, i will be buying it for my 3D modelling needs.
@@ArtisansofVaul I've used other CAD tools to surface model and to be honest, they are difficult to master. Plasticity seems both intuitive and forgiving. Try lofting a square to a triangle to a circle in CATIA. The off the peg results in CATIA will be nonsense whereas Plasticity solves it perfectly.
I'd like to see something like Plasticity's NURBS modeling system integrated directly into Blender - keeping with the name "Blender" a blended modeling system.
Blender have some basic nurbs (probably not sufficient for most of the use cases), and there is also open source addon to blender called "CAD Sketcher" but idk if it uses nurbs. Also from other stuff, there is not-yet-released SDF modeling addon (Conjure SDF) which is also based on match but in other way than nurbs. Also there is some work to bring SDF to blender oficially. But I agree, It would be cool if blender would have it all oficially with all necessary features.
@@Daniel_VolumeDownCAD Sketcher uses the Kernel of SolveSpace, the problem with it is that the kernel is developed by a very small amount of people and it will take time to go to a very useful potential
Just found out about Plasticity today and just browsing videos. Regarding the low poly export isn't that just the trial version? Also I export step files for printing so that wouldn't be an issue anyways. Didn't try yet but I definitely will for the filleting and beveling looks very smooth. Coming from a surface modeler (Rhino3D) I am used to "destructive" modeling. This is mitigated by using layers and keeping backups of geometrie. I've never been a heavy user of parametric modeling but I guess they will come up with something like grasshopper for plasticity too.
There are settings you can change I believe but that still can result in the edge lines not joining up in a way that would be an annoyance if you then brought it into Blender. It just depends what you want to do though as if thats not something you need it shouldn't be a huge issue.
That's good to know, thanks 👍🏻. But does that mean that the edges will now line up on ngons? If not that's just giving more geometry to fix and doesn't solve the real issue.
I have used blender for quite a while and decided to try out plasticity. I agree with a lot of what you mention and definitely see pros of both, I recommend either starting blender and seeing how you go or if possible picking up both as there is definitely great pros to both software and always recommended to use the best tools for the task instead of having to get around some issues you may run into. Good video overall 👍
I believe you are talking about the differences between surface modeling and wireframe modeling in the design field. There are indeed significant distinctions between the two, and the handling of edges in surface modeling (PL) surpasses what wireframe modeling (BL) can achieve. I agree that combining both techniques can be very convenient. If you aim for perfect wireframing, you can import the results from surface modeling (PL) into ZBrush for topological adjustments, which can lead to relatively flawless wireframes. I think it's essential to consider these two software tools as complementary to each other, leveraging their respective strengths rather than putting them in opposition, as they have different inherent capabilities.
I mean then someone would be also paying for Zbrush, I'm not sure that's the best option to fix something that should be fixable in the software. I am aware these are very different softwares but many of these issues should be manageable in the one piece of software. Plasticity could solve these export issues and nurbs modelling doesn't stop it having non-destructive options. But if someone has these multiple softwares it's good that there is a way to fix these issues.
@@ArtisansofVaul "...nurbs modelling doesn't stop it having non-destructive options." Very true and a good point. Plasticity is using the same solid modeling kernel as Siemens NX (Parasolid). NX is arguably the best high-end CAD software currently out there and has an extensive feature relationship and curve/surface/solid associativity. I imagine adding that functionality to Plasticity would be a massive amount of work though. I would welcome it, but doing that might slow the development of other functions and likely make the software more complex to learn and use. One thing I didn't see in these comments is the point that Parasolid has a licensing fee. A "free" version would actually amount to the author of Plasticity paying for users to have access to that powerful kernel. My impression is that the $99 Plasticity license doesn't generate much income after that Parasolid license fee is subtracted. Don't get me wrong, I love free software - Blender, FreeCAD, etc. I just think it useful to understand all that goes into setting the price. As I understand it, Plasticity is significantly less expensive than any other modeling software using Parasolid. Ultimately, as you and others have mentioned, it comes down to a value question - does it do the job I need it to at the most competitive cost. ...Oh, and nice video BTW.
@markeaslick1009 Thanks and totally agree. It's not something I would argue should be free, and it isn't a lot to pay if it has the tools you need. It's just at this point for me it doesn't. 👍🏻
I really appreciate that you're careful to point out that the drawbacks to using Plasticity are based upon your needs and use case. I've pondered how to write software to re-topologize surfaces which have been booleaned in CAD, but I'm pretty sure the math would melt my head. So I understand that the quad output from complex models is a tricky beast, but I'm a little disappointed to see that Plasticity exports surfaces which would still need some cleanup before going to a slicer. To Plasticity's credit, my head exploded when I saw someone effortlessly create a 5-curve lofted surface in Plasticity.
Oh the lofting and beveling (fillets) is amazing, It does it so effortlessly and it looks amazing. In so many ways the functionality of Plasticity is amazing, with a really clean interface that just works really well. As I say Im a pretty niche case but I could see a lot of people looking at plasticity and seeing it as a really sensible 3D print modelling stepping stone from something like 3D builder or the other "block/shape" design tools. Having it then be able to not really make quads but more make ngons that line up would then also allow the transition of those shapes to Blender which would be the icing on the cake. But as its been pointed out mathematically having that work/recognise close "vertices" (I know they aren't really vertices but Im struggling for another word) might be an impossibility. It almost needs the ngon creater export setting to have a "merge by distance" function/slider.
I honestly didn't know Blender was non-destructive. I really need to sit down with that software. I'm impressed and frustrated with Plasticity. The exercises are amazing, but I quickly run into trouble when I go off script with a design, encountering many errors with no way to identify or correct them.
Blender is fantastic. That's frustrating about the errors but (and this is said without using Plasticity much) this will happen in most 3d design programs. Hopefully there are some ways to identify and correct them coming as it seems pretty important and I imagine others would find the same. I'm surprised I haven't seen more videos covering how to solve them.
Seconding this, Blender rocks. Coming from Maya and simple stuff like modeling with G,S,R feels so fluid to me now, its hard to go back to Maya. The only thing I miss in Maya is the awesome UV editor, but I'm loving everything else.
Blender's UI has hamstrung me even wanting to learn it. Its like wanting to ride a bicycle but you're confronted with the cockpit of the space shuttle. Coming from a CAD background I know the fundamentals of putting an object together and manipulating it in a 3D space, but I've suffered from information overload when trying to use Blender. For me, even basic tools seem buried away in a sub menu somewhere. I'm not bashing Blender on how powerful and versatile it is, because for a free piece of software (even in its default configuration) it blows a lot of "premium" software out of the water. The simplicity of Plasticity is what has made it the key part of my workflow. Granted, the UI appears very basic (you'd be forgiven for thinking it was a re-skin of 3D Builder) but everything you need is a a couple of keystrokes away. Even at such an early stage in its development you have everything you need to create some very complex models in a relatively short amount of time. I think your observation on the two distinct modelling philosophies is a valid one, but I think it also depends on your background in terms of what impact it has. Personally, I took to it like a duck to water and it was just like using AutoCAD in the bad old days, but I can see people who cut their teeth on Blender or ZBrush finding it irritating. As far as creating 3D models for print is concerned, I have yet to have any issues with rogue geometry or slicers throwing a fit when presented with a file from Plasticity, and I've used Plasticity to create some relatively complex models. Not so long ago I created a servo skull (for use in Inquisitor) in Plasticity which used an imported step file of a skull as its base. This was an anatomically correct skull, so a bit of judicious editing was required to get it to a stage where it would print properly (filling the interior of the skull, trimming the bones in the back of the nose cavity etc). The finished model didn't present Lychee with any errors; no awkward islands that couldn't be supported and the printed model showed no signs of any external geometry issues. Granted it as printed at 54mm scale, but I've seen some 28mm sculpts that have had visible geometry that wasn't down to the printer or slicers interpretation of the file but the actual sculpt itself (I won't point fingers, but they're out there). So far it has been very competent at creating models that are fit to print. I don't think Plasticity is for everyone, but it definitely has its use cases. I think most of it is down to your previous experience of 3D modelling.
blender is a general purpose program. so of course there will be a lot of windows, a lot of drop down menus etc. the good thing is if you practice shortcuts, it becomes very easy. you can also setup your own dropdown menu.
Good summary and thanks for taking the time to reply. Its good to hear of some experience not having an issue using it for 3D printing and not having any issues. I can get that Blender is quite intimidating, though matching what you said about Plasticity once you know them most things are only a few keystrokes away (and its going to take the same to learn keystrokes in any software). I personally found that Blender does need to be approached with a target in mind. Trying to learn everything watching random tutorials/etc has far too much. Instead I had something I wanted to make and looked up what to do at each stage when I came across a new function/result Id want for that step. That way I learnt as I went.
Nice video, Been looking into plasticity myself and I come from a CAD background. I like the idea of plasticity as it give me the ability to create really organic shapes but have them very mathematically constrained. Only problems I have when looking into it is that it really doesn't have a lot of the features CAD has, at least right now that would let you do things like constraining geometry by mathematical formulas which is particularly important when you do thinks like Aerodynamics or certain other geometries. I am also curious however. I know you say you work with a lot of polygons in your mesh and you say that it's to get a smoother prints, from the models you have I'm guessing you're doing Resin printing of some sorts? I looking to get more into resin parts cause I'm needing really small higher resolution parts, is that a problem you actually experience and how much does the mesh resolution really affect the part quality? I know that have really low resolutions would cause facet like geometry but does the mesh quality you get from plasticity as is really affect the print quality that much?
I think it will depend what you do but (as you have correctly suggested) I print in resin and pretty small parts for wargaming. There any facets can be seen pretty easily and will impact the paint job, especially if certain painting techniques are used like drybrushing that will pick up more on edges. For example if I have a cylinder with a 1cm diameter I will typically put it up to 128-256 sections to make sure you can't notice the facets. You can do this in Plasticity by filling with setting but if you want something more mathematical you might want to have a look at the addon for Blender called CAD sketcher 👍🏻
I'm modelling in plasticity, exporting to .obj (ngons, 1) , importing to blender, exporting to stl. great results in 3d printing :) btw, i'm printing stuff where 0.1 mm counts
6:14 There is actually a method to dramatically increase the poly count. Click on Max width and enter a small number. With density set to 1, I got a model with 300k tris. Then I set the the width max to something small and got a model with 7 million tris. Was good for importing it into zbrush for extra detailing. Speaking of 3d printing, I trust plasticity way more with watertight models over blender simply because the union Booleans are far less likely to freak out. Although if I'm honest, I would still use zbrush. Especially since zbrush got the master decimeter, better smoothing operations and no lag
@@ArtisansofVaul Sadly no. Ive tried all the settings and looked at the public documentation. So far its prob my biggest complaint. When im making the low poly versions of my models, I end up fixing all the edges by hand. I mean its fast to fix but when you got hundreds of parts, time adds up fast
I have been using Plasticity for a few months and do find it much quicker for some things. I have been bouncing back and forth and using it to get my base model setup that would be downright difficult to do in Blender and then bringing it into Blender and remeshing it if needed and detailing it out. Likewise there are some smaller details I can do quickly in Plasticity and then import and merge into my model in Blender.
Seems a good appraisal. Have you found the time saved has been worth the money? And can you give examples of the base models you've been producing faster (I'm curious)?
@@ArtisansofVaul I will have to revisit this message and give you some examples. Still learning Plasticity and it is changing, getting better at things so I am sure I will be revisiting old methods and seeing what new things I can do. Sorry, not up on replying to my comments so I missed your reply. As for being worth the money, honestly probably not in the scope of things but I do believe this developer has a lot in store for the software and it really is good as is out of the box and I really purchased it in the beginning to support his efforts. I am betting we will be revisiting this conversation a year from now and might have a different take on it. I think there are some awesome things in store for version 2.0.
@@kevinm3751 No need to say sorry at all. Thanks for coming back to check. I really hope I do hear back in a year's time of what you think as it would be great to see/hear how it has changed from someone using the software. 😁👌
oh man, thank you for this, I was ready to jump head first into plasticity, and have made a couple of items just playing, but I'm tyring to decide between Plasticity and Fusion 360 to take a full on course and learn legitimately, but now I'm considering blender more. darn.
@aeonjoey3d I mean I'm VERY bias, I love Blender. It does have more of a learning curve than Plasticity but I think it's worth it. Good luck with the decision 👍🏻
I have just been a new Plasticity indie license user and modeled a number of assets so quickly but never used my 3d printing to see how good it prints. I have been a big fan of Plasticity. I have not used my Hard Ops n Boxcutter for a while. Thanks for sharing your opinions... ❤👍
I have tried blender and haven't gotten far with it yet. This reminds me of shapr3d in a way. I like it so far and hopefully with each version it will improve. Most of the 3d printing models I have done have been in tinkercad so it took a bit of time to get my mind around sketching. Buying the new version when it has what I want is ok since I've been used to this model in the past - subscription monthly based is new to me. Thanks for the video
For what I do Blender is perfect. I would probably have missed out learning Sketchup but I don't really regret it as I learnt a lot there that I then applied to Blender. Though for other people (depending on what you want to design) Plasticity could be perfect.
@@hobonickel840 Well Plasticity used to have a free trial so you could see how that is. Blender is free but I find there are addons that are paid for that will make things much faster (but that should still work out cheaper than one year of Plasticity unless you buy a LOT of them).
@@ArtisansofVaul I really appreciate the feedback. I'll look at those. I had downloaded Autodesk360 to see what all the fuss was about. Um yeah, who needs aliens!?!
Glad you're enjoying it. If you won't get support into version 2 is may be worth the wait but have a look at the "fine print" as if version 2 is around the corner they may have changed to say you'll get support for it
yeah the destructive workflow of modeling in plasticity due to not having anything similar to modifiers is still keeping me on the fence for now hopefully it will come in further updates soon the bridging between plasticity and blender seems pretty interesting though and it would be pretty cool to see plasticity be compatible with blender modifiers through the bridge because from what i've seen from the footage changes to the mesh can only be done through plasticity and not blender
I've played around with the 1.0 free trial of plasticity, and I like what it is capable of, I haven't tried any later versions yet though. The 1.3 release with the blender live-link should be out soon. To that end, i've decided to finally give blender a serious look, as i've mostly been using maya indie for the past couple of years, as i've usually got so frustrated with blender over the past decade or so each time i've tried to use it, i've just ended up giving up.
Blender can be pretty full on and intimidating especially to begin with. If you need any help always feel free to check out some of my videos or drop a comment and I can hopefully point you in the right direction.
Thanks. Glad it helped either way. I think it's a great tool but it just isn't for me/my uses. Hopefully it was clear that I still think for many people it could be fantastic.
Good to hear some critical objective opinions about plasticity as well. Thx. I find most videos about it overly positive. Sometimes to the point wether im wondering if its sponsored
i am super new to both and don't understand a lot of what you guys are saying, but I did stumble across that Sketch CAD plugin for Blender, wouldn't that, or does that fix the beveling issues between objects that you can't do in Blender like you can in plasticity?
@JonneytheKidd It doesn't manage it in the same way in terms of them adding or removing parts and how bevels will "flow" more easily between objects. Plasticity is in a bit of a world of it's own for that (without spending huge sums of money)
@@ArtisansofVaul Thanks for the reply. IF it were you, new to this world, what would you invest your time learning? If you wanted to prototype simple products for 3D printing?
@@JonneytheKidd Thats a really good question. If the designs are going to be simple then I would say Blender as there is nothing to pay unless you decide you want some sort of addon and even then they are pretty cheap in comparison to the ongoing Plasticity cost. But I should say I am really bias in this as I love Blender and thing it has a lot more power overall than Plasticity. If your objects are going to have lots of beveled curved shapes then Plasticity would likely be an easier learning curve though.
@@ArtisansofVaul ok, well said. I have dabbled in Blender, but the process of deleting a cylinder shape out of another shape using the Boolean modifier (if i said that right) really kicked my ass, and couldn’t really get it to work fully for my. And by my expectations, it should have been a much easier process. I wasn’t doing complex shapes. I had a circle shape trying to remove the center out of a larger circle shape. Kind of like generating a quarter crescent moon, if you will.
With the first example, of the boolean cube, you can do that in Plasticity too, just select the surface of the small cube and move it around in Plasticity. Although Plasticity doesn't have a modifier or history it is fairly non destructive.
I honestly just bought it because I want to Support it. Hopefully one day it will be able to replace fusion 360 so I can get away from Autodesks short business practices and so I don’t have to be online in order to use the app.
'hopefully' - but when will it have all that you need? v3 , maybe v4 - in truth, without a roadmap you don't really know. It is developing fast I'll agree. With an established developed software, subscription works - you know exactly what your getting and if you don't like it, you stop after 1 months subscription.
Always remember folks : 3D artists have to use a bunch of niche software depending on what they want to do (artits might have to learn Maya, Max, Substance painter, Zbrush, modo, mobu, marvelous designer, houdini, unreal 5, rhino, marmoset, and more!) Plasticity and blender are different in the same way Zbrush and blender are different. One is only better than the other in certain contexts.
Exactly right 👍🏻. I hope it came across that I am specifically talking from the perspective of my usage. Other people need to make up their minds based on the functions they want/need.
The problem is, that hurts efficiency and thins skill-sets. It's a software/developer/cost problem and something that could be way better if done correctly. However, the problem is quite deep and goes all the way back to the machine level including hardware design, programming languages, etc. These type of tools are not like switching from a saw to a hammer. They're complex, difficult to master or even remember how to work them and each one added requires more brain load and reduces proficiency. Do you go to your dentist for heart surgery? How many dentist/heart surgeons are there and if they do exist, how many are top in both fields? How many gold medal Olympic swimmers have gold medals in archery? Now imagine having to do that in 12 different sports.
@@_droid it's really not that bad, considering the wide range of different aspects covered by 3D art and that usually for a job you'll be specializing in a certain subset of skills anyway. Would it be nice if there was one perfect program that could do literally everything better than every other program? Yeah, but it's not really feasible. Switching between specialized programs is the go to for now because it works the best for getting high quality results in a good time frame
Man, I agree a lot with non-destructive workflow. It is very important and it's amazing in blender. The thing is, plasticy like many cad software, by nature has a non-destructive workflow. Its not at all like blenders and every step is different but basically every action you do can be undone or edited since everything you make is based on curves and all curves are saved. Can get pretty crazy tho, most files get up to thousands of curves in matter of minutes
Yeah. For me it's just not the way I'd want to work really for so many of the things I do. But if it works for people then that's all good, it just isn't for me.
Relevant review. Thanks. My reasoning is just about the same except for the 3D printing side of things. Haven't gone there, yet. Other than all of that Plasticity is a fantastic piece of software, really impressive and looking forward to 2.0. Which i might purchase if the pricing is reasonable (which in and of itself is relatively relative).
plasticity is sneaky, I have sent them email regarding something which I am not directly going to mention here, they can't even answer directly, I just have a feeling that if they ever got big, they will be the one that screw you over with...
That's unfortunate. Previously I have heard good things about their customer service and communication, it was the thing that was really going for them.
Here's my case on why Plasticity changed my life: I've been using Blender for 9 years, I haven't bought any plugins and my focus is in hard surface models. Either I have PTSD from the built-in Bool Tool and die every time I need to make a radial array, I pay for some complicated plugin that I don't fully understand or . . . I download the 30 day trial, learn the program in 2 hours and by the time the trial ends I'm already addicted to this heroin of a program. It's not even an overstatement, adding small, non-axis aligned details is so easy in Plasticity, I haven't had more fun modelling in my life. Regarding the "destructive workflow" in most cases you can select the fillets, extrusions, etc and delete them, this doesn't fix arrays but it's something. Have you tried the trial yet? It really is like crack, once you start using it you cannot stop.
I'm glad you're enjoying Plasticity but starting with a statement like "I have modelled in Blender for 9 years. I haven't bought any plugins" but you have spent $149 on Plasticity sounds crazy. If you spent that much as a one off purchase of addons you'd be saying the same thing about Blender. Don't get me wrong I'm not saying Plasticity isn't great for your usage but after 9 years using it you're going to have spent nearly $1350 compared to purchasing some addons once. Yet you spend 9 years using Blender and didn't purchase anything.... 🤷
Haha. There is a bit of that but I can imagine a lot of their interest is genuine, it is great for lots of uses. I just think it has issues (especially for certain uses) and I wanted to address them. I definetly don't think it's a bad product.
1.4 is out and it's awesome! many new features, still on the fence 😅? The main problem lies in those beautiful and easy Plasticity fillets...if you go crazy on those (which one does because it's so damn easy to do them), Blender and QR are gonna have a hard time finding the creases/seams to properly retopologize the nurbs/ngon object. But I found a guy here (his channel's name escapes me ATM) that's finding really clever workarounds for getting QR to properly recognize creases, seams and sharp edges. I will try to put those same techniques in practice on Plasticity generated models with the objective of getting dense, quad-based printable meshes. Sharing my results when I get around to it.
I'd be interested to hear what you find. Without the ability to create usable ngon meshes it just isn't viable for my uses at the moment and it just lacks a lot of the powerful features in Blender. I'd rather not give those up for the sake of one benefit (fillets). Also it's been said they will never go the way of non-destructive modelling so that's a huge put off.
I find Plasticity very hard to use compared to Blender, simply because the UI is nonexistent (hidden behind shortcuts, with no shortcut hints unlike in Blender) and there are no context menus that give you an idea what possibilities you have when you right-click an object. Blender is a lot easier to use without knowing any shortcuts. Sure it looks easy because the UI looks as simple as Paint, but that is actually just due to a lack of buttons and that makes it harder to learn / use occasionally without having to permanently google how to do basic operations.
@@thanatosor Active parametrics take a long time to do and can very actively work against you if drastically change your mind as the design progresses as most designers do. Nearly everything you see on RUclips is videos on copying a drawing - that, dear reader, is not design. I really like Dynamic modelling, where adaption of shapes or add or deduct new shapes is done on screen without any revision to a parts history.
@ @ I only take what people said here as a practice to actually design my owb stuffs that fit my demand. So if I want my design to fit actual physical size of my device at 36.38mm then it should be... not 35.5 or 36.5mm 🤷♂️ It need to be exact assumption +/- size of nozzle/layer thickness my printer can do.
@@thanatosor Very little software would be exclusively for 3D printing (they will work for things like rendering as well). But there are now quite a few that can be used for 3D printing.
The printing topic is not relevant for me but I agree with you on the other points. Nevertheless I will get a indie license for plasticity for the potential and the support of the program. I hope it will get more powerful in time especially with the non distructive work flow. Cheers!
They claim: "...with no subscriptions, you own your software"...ok, but to have the updated version beyond 1.x, you have to pay the yearly...subscription fee 😂
If you want though, other software companies force you to update. Many updates in other software mess up existing work flows, adding features 80-90% people don't want
That is normal and has been a standard for years. It is just that previously we had Microsoft Office 2010, Microsoft Office 2011, Microsoft Office 2012 etc. And it is certainly better than the shit subscribtion model Adobe is doing.
Ok so you are telling me to spend on Blender add-ons? I mean i can do it despite coming from a country that will charge me IVA to it, but i can't find and add on that gives me that i working on CAD. Do you know about some add-ons that will be useful for someone who used to work with SolidWorks?
I mean I'm just saying that's what I'd do. Especially now plasticity is around $150. So for CAD like working I use construction lines. You can see a video on it here: ruclips.net/video/4Djrhj64kS8/видео.html And the add on here: blendermarket.com/products/construction-lines/?ref=834 There is also the free CAD sketcher which is a bit more heavily into the CAD. Its free but I haven't tried it yet.www.cadsketcher.com/
@@ArtisansofVaul for someone who does toys for 3D printing CAD Sketcher is fine, but coming fron Solidworks and then going to this it feels discouraging. CAD Sketcher uses the kernel of SolveSpace, an open source CAD software that is eye looking and interesting but is under the shadow of FreeCad (that i will not use until topological bugs and unresponsiveness that convert Freecad in a program with a more destructive modelling workflow than Blender) because it's development and update is slower than Rhinoceros development, so don't expect CAD Sketcher with SolveSpace kernel to work like Plasticity that has Parasolid kernel (that is expensive, i understand the price, Nick Allen was one of the most active users and modders of Moi3D, judging the pricing of a product made random guy and some of his friends on their freetime is just pathetic, typical gringo ego) that is the same kernel of Solidworks (my former program). I don't know but i prefer pirate Solidworks than doing CAD with Blender, is just feels unnatural and week (but rendering is very good, and geo nodes are a great tool, specially for designing foams)
As for the export density not being as high as Blender, you forgot to change the "Surface angle tolerance" and "Curve angle tolerance" to a smaller number, like 0.01 or even 0.005. I exported a complex shape to .STL at the settings in your video and produced a 1 megabyte file. Changing the Surface angle tolerance and and Curve angle tolerance to 0.01 produced a 75 megabyte file and 0.005 produced a 300+ megabyte file. It can get about as insane as your computer can handle. Just thought I'd share, since that is how you produce highly detailed exports.
Thanks, good tip. I'm not sure that will resolve the issue of the edges not aligning though. If you have a way to sort that as well that would be awesome 👍🏻
I just hope they can, in the ver 1.x updates cover some of the key issues for interop with mesh based CAD systems. It's Plasticiy that has made me love Belnder. It also made me eventually beging to us umake which i paid 3 times for, but not as good as Plasticity.
Awesome Video again! I was already wondering if I was missing out, not hopping on the plasticity train right away. But the financial aspect just killed it completely. Blender is so much stronger and when I really need CAD tools I use fusion360 for free.
I mean using both is totally an option. But I think if you are willing to take the extra time to learn a more complex program you'll end up with more you can do
If Nick wants to he can add history.... the kernel is used in SolidWorks and SolidEdge which are full paremetric history based modellers. As soon as he wants to he will be able to add editability like modifiers.
But he didn't want to...it's a direct modeller, what your saying is completely wrong and muddled thinking. Yes, Parasolid ( clues in the name) has parametric abilities, but never ever has there been any hint of a suggestion that Parameters and history could be built in latter. It started off as a direct modeller, it's not going to change... also, where's the market desire for that anyway.
@TAH1712 I mean I'm only a single person but it's stopping me considering purchasing it. I can't be the only one and I know lots of people that model that prefer a non-destructive workflow where possible for the reasons I have mentioned. I'm not saying he should or "needs" to add it in but I think it lacks an important set of functions without it.
Thats fair enough. For some uses I imagine it's brilliant. Hopefully I was clear in the video that my opinions are just based on my usage and I gave enough of its positives so that people can see the benefits of Plasticity too.
Plasticity has changed considerably since this video was made and you might just be surprised at what you can now do with booleans etc. I've been 3D modeling for over 30 years and Plasticity is a game changer when it comes to model creation. It's fast and accurate (if you want), but it is lacking as far as rendering and animation are concerned and the documentation is sparse and missing quite a few of the details and tips you can pick up from videos. Hopefully this will change - soon I hope - especially when it comes to new users.
Thats good to know but from what I understand the destructive nature is still there. Also that partially highlights one of my other issues, if I want to get these changes this basically becomes a yearly subscription to be able to use the program... I have no issue with that but I wish they would just be more up front about it. I will have to have another look at it at some point.
Very interesting, but I don't understand, in Plasticity I can work in modeling with precision like a CAD, how can I do the same thing with Blender? This isn't meant to be a criticism, I simply need a smart alternative to Sketchup and Plasticity combined with Blender seemed like the best choice. The possibility of integrating everything into Blender would be ideal, also considering addons like Mesh Machine and Fluent would be perfect.
There's lots of ways to do that in Blender. Most functions can have distances typed in or you can set specific sizes. There is also an addon called Construction Lines (and another called CAD Modeler, though I haven't used the second one much) that allows you a CAD like interface which can take that further. Below are a few videos I have done on getting specific sizes and then Construction Lines: Models to specific sizes: ruclips.net/video/s3ieJwBHcI4/видео.htmlsi=5soxsjSFeWQiiapm Construction Lines: ruclips.net/video/4Djrhj64kS8/видео.htmlsi=MF1pFt7Q90ZG9RD1 See what you think. But if you prefer the interface of Plasticity then use that, this is just my opinion based on my uses so the negatives of Plasticity for me may not impact you.
@@ArtisansofVaul Seriously!!! Construction Lines is exactly what I was looking for, I don't understand why it has been available for years and it's almost difficult to find information about it. Your channel is amazing, a Swiss army knife for my hobbies, looks great for getting started with Blender!!
@ilKamuTube 😁 Glad to be able to help. To be fair it's been in beta testing for a while so that might be why. I find it really handy for when I'm trying to create objects at specific sizes and doing things like creating arcs.
@@ArtisansofVaul Solidworks, Rhinoceros, Fusion 360 and so on have been around for a long time, special programs for CAD modeling. So I don't understand why many people still do it in Blender? Blender is convenient to some extent, but for people who work in mechanical engineering or jewelry, accuracy is important.
@TPI-du9mn Blender can be just as accurate as any of those programs in terms of size/ dimensions. What it's lacking in comparison of the constraints you can quickly add to CAD programs.
Without spending lots of time looking at it I don't think it would be fair to comment on it. But from what I have read it doesn't resolve any of my issues with how it deals with the ngon conversion. But (and its a big "but") that is just because I use Blender for design for 3D printing. If someone doesn't this probably makes little or no difference to them and they won't have any issues with that part of my issue with Plasticity. So if you're not using it for that specific person you really shouldn't let my opinion on that hold you back.
Plasticity is now $150 for indy although that now includes the updates for 12 months. Looks like the licensed solver they are using is pricey. I still agree, it doesn't do enough yet for me to drop in when I already have several hard surface addons. Maybe around 2.0.
Ouch so a 50% mark up. Damn. Do those updates include into version 2 if it comes in the 12 months? And yeah, hopefully in time it will be where I would want it to be for that price.
@@ArtisansofVaul Indeed. The price does include a major update if it occurs within the 12 months. Per the website: "All updates included for 12 months, including major releases". Also I misspoke, Indy is priced at $149.
Now with taxes Indie is for 183,27 USD , that is crazy. What is lowest price for home use (not commercial) . For homer as I see I can use only for 30 days , where Fusio360 is still for free. @@disruptive_innovator
Plasticity is semi destructive. You can move cut faces or very quickly rebuild a cut by just dragging a face back and it will rebuild. If you’ve kept your tool object you can move and re cut. I’ve not really seen videos on this but essentially the objects all still exists and all the Boolean cuts do is essentially add a mask. And that mask can be moved and edited.
Good points. It's just a bit longer winded than just moving the original and it still booleaning from its new position. I assume you could do the same with a radial array and delete the other objects and re-radial array.
Plasticity may look good but when you dive into it more deeply you start to see it's shortcomings as you have pointed out. Also it is only a modeller whereas Blender does so much more than this. Animation, rigging, sculpting, 3D printing etc etc. and of course Blender is free and constantly improving. It may be quicker to do certain things but speed isn't everything and for me at least Blender is still king.
This is not about Plasticity vs. Blender. This is more a addition as a modeling tool. The developer is also a Blender user and is currently building a Blender Bidge for Plasticity where the model you are working on is updated live in Blender. I think this is a hell of a combo especially for a hard surface workflow.
@MrDigitalWorks I am aware and mention it in the video. I'm assuming you didn't actually watch the video and just reacted to it, which is fine of course time is precious, you just might want to see why I am saying this as I don't dislike it as a program, there are just things I think meed working out.
@MrDigitalWorks Sorry my man. I saw this on my phone as a pop-up and it didn't show it was a reply to someone else's comment. I should have known better than to not actually double check 🤦 My bad.
You can go as dense as you want when exporting in Plasticity. At 3:50 You say that you'd have to delete the object or undo, also not true because you can just select any detail you don't want and delete it, just like removing fillets after applying them.
But you can't just change the amount in the array or move a boolean without undoing it/deleting it. That's more the point I was making. I'm happy if I'm wrong about the first point but can't you only take the density up to 1? I've not seen anything showing it going further than that?
@@ArtisansofVaul The "Density" part says that It's an easy to use slider when hovering over it. Enabling min and max width allows for as fine detail as needed. This is why for me, Plasticity replaced Sub-D hard surface modeling, which I had to use for 3D printing to get a smooth print.
@Ridi_MB Good to know, thanks man. If they just sort the Ngon issue that's me happy with that element. Do they have that as one of the options as looking over the videos of Plasticity I can't see it....
@@ArtisansofVaul 5:58 two unticked boxes at the top of the export menu, if that's what you meant. Yes the topology with ngons is weird but it has never been an issue for me when 3D printing or rendering. I've never had any slicing issues that you were talking about in the video. Exporting an STL for printing will triangulate your model anyway so you could just export in quads or tris to not cause any unnecessary steps.
@@Ridi_MB It's more the issue that I can't then bring it into blender with this issues and not having fix them, and that would take more time than just having made the object in Blender in the first place.
Plasticity also does not support a 3d mouse, and I had a lot of trouble navigating around; it could have been more responsive. I removed the 3d connexion driver and still had worse navigation than any videos I watched. I will wait for it to grow up before looking back to it.
Cheers, I didn't know that and I'm sure that's very useful info for people. I'm still to use a 3D mouse. I'd love to try one but I haven't found a place to try before I buy and it's quite expensive to go straight in for one. Do you find it helps/speeds up your modelling?
I would argue that the array tool in plasticity is better than Blenders. I like being able to set the position of the last item in the array and then fill in the space between with as many copies as I like. I wish they had this in Blender!
I can't disagree with that functionality being great, especially with snapping. There is a paid for add on in Blender that can do that (it can also multiply it forward as well) which gives the best of both worlds.
@Perchpole It's one of the awesome functions in Construction Lines, it's even been updated so now the way it works is to create linked objects so you can do even more with it. I've got an updated video here: ruclips.net/video/05OXefE5xr4/видео.html
I was going to grab Plasticity but noticed the price jumped to $150 and that is a bit too much. It is starting to approach Moi 3D price territory and to me for the price Moi 3D is a far more feature rich piece of kit, albeit more complex.
While Plasticity may be a good tool, after watching numerous positive videos, I am a bit suspicious about sponsored content. This video is not one of them :)
@ozgur284 I know what you mean. Things like that are always a concern on RUclips. Personally I always try to give a fair review and try to point out at least one positive and one negative about a product, be it physical or software/addon. I do think it's a good tool but it needs to do what you're looking for and for me this doesn't (yet).
Hopefully it will be an easy fix. Apparently you can set the max distance between points to be lower in the fine menu which will help. Its the points not always lining up that concerns me more personally.
I think you're missing the point on the destructive vs non-destructive workflow. Both have their place. It's like saying you wished Zbrush would be non-destructive. Plasticity is more of a companion rather than a competitor. I also enjoy the ease of modelling of plasticity and not having to solve a puzzle with verts and shading every time I try to cut or add something.
I mean I'm not really missing the point if it's a functionality that I need/want. If others don't need it that's all good but personally its a priority (and I say that in the video, many will not care about it). The other issue is until they sort out the exporting issue I mentioned it isn't a very suitable "companion" for 3D printing design (again that's my needs, for those that want it for another purpose that again may not be a bother). I did try to make that clear in the video but if that didn't come across then maybe I didn't push enough with that, thought it felt I was being pretty repetitive saying it again and again. I do agree that there's some big positives for the nurbs based modelling as you have said, it's just that (again for me) the other problems outweigh that positive by quite some way.
@@ArtisansofVaul Ture. Exporting is something we've been talking quite a bit about in the Plasticity discord. There's even a channel for 3D printing. Definitely somethings to work on but it's still a young software. Plenty of things to come.
@SkintSNIPER262 👍🏻 I don't doubt there's a lot of great stuff to come. Totally agree it's a young software, I think that's probably the big point of this video. I can see me using it in the future as its off to a great start... But I'm not going to spend $99 on something that may well not have that functionality in version 1.X and then I have to pay again. Maybe the title of the video should have been "Why I don't use Plasticity yet." 😅
@@ArtisansofVaul Yeah. I see a lot of people comparing Blender vs Plasticity when they're very different programs. And the dev himself, Nick said he's sees them more as companions rather than competitors. It's definitely fun to make organic esque designs in Blender than bring it into Plasticity for more hard surface stuff.
Honestly i will use plasticity over blender any day because its not an overbloated piece of hot garbage. Take my model into zbrush if i need for final adjustments. But ya, Blender has way too much junk going on, i want a clean and quick workflow.
Actually this happens in all nurbs software that the edges of adjacent faces are not line up when exporting it to mesh. However, you can purchase quad remesher for blender to further work on that model in blender. I think the 3d printing directly from plasticity will not have any issues. This way you have flexible option to do work in cad and mesh together. I dream of something like Plasticity to blender live bridge and some sort of modifier to do retopology (already in 3ds max)
@matsy7450 I haven't tried quad remesher yet but it's on my list as it does look really handy. I thought you can change the density of the mesh you create on that add on though? Or does it break down if you go too low?
I found Blender impossibly difficult to use. I don't have the time to attend a 4 year university-grade education just to add texture to a model I want to print. I tried but it was just not intuitive enough. Plasticity is much more intuitive. Mho
Glad youve found something you find intuitive. I have to say I found it the other way around and Blender more intuitive than Plasticity. But I guess it will depend person to person
Damn I hope they improve this. I was thinking about using it for jewel design.. when modelling precise nurbs parts like the a ring.. but if the subdiv detaling can't go too dense..and if a exported object isn't manifold watertight then it's a problem.. Because hard surfacing curved models with precise scaling is something better in rhinoceros.. fusion 360, etc.. And I also thought it was non destructive...
In some ways it could feel non-destructive. Like the bevels on edges are really easy to swap later because its maths based (though you can do the same in Blender with the Mesh Machine add-on). Its more the booleans that aren't.
@wildguardian Oh that's cool. I hadn't seen that and that would be really useful. So that allows you to then move the boolean placement or change its size/shape? If that also works with the radial array that's a good thing to know.
@@ArtisansofVaul I'm not sure since I haven't installed it yet... I'm just studying the app.. before commiting to a purchase or to lose the trial time period. But from what I have read about arrays being editable, the answer I found was: "Once you commit to the Boolean the "cutters" are no longer there. SO very different from MeshFusion or MOP Booleans. You could keep a duplicate before cutting tho."
@wildguardian Sounds like you've got a sensible approach. For me this is something that's just not what I want in a program, I want those options later as well. But if it doesn't bother you the program does look pretty good. Personally I'll be waiting until I see what happens with version 2.
Okay, what I heard you say is that there may be problems with Plasticity producing 3D prints? I am looking for a 3D software to build Models compatible with my Die Cast model vehicles. I see it has been ten months since this video was posted. None of the comments are from 2024, so I hope you are still watching the comments. The last time I used CAD software was a few decades ago. At that it was architecturally oriented. High end good stuff, but still, a far cry from what is being done now. So, I was rather hoping you could point me in the right direction. I looked at Plasticity and it looked like just the ticket. But maybe not? Oh, one more thing: I was wondering if 2D photographs could be imported into these programmes and used as a baseline for the model? Ah, changed how this is sorting comments and am seeing much more recent comments. Aaaaand another edit: Reading the comments I wonder if I have to be a mathematical genus to use these softwares? 🤔 No, I never took Geometry or trig. Will I be able to 'get' these? Also, I noticed in your displays everything was metric. Is SAE available as well?
So I wouldn't say youd need to be a mathematical genius. Some basic maths will help at points but nothing difficult at all. Im sure you will be able to bring in photos to use as a modelling tool, its pretty standard in most software as it's very helpful for getting sizes and proportions right. I think you will find Plasticity capable for what you want to do. I don't know if it will be the best software for it for you, but this is because it largely depends on how you like to work (your workflow) and what feels natural for you. I would really suggest watching some videos of people modelling with it, it should give you an idea of how much it "makes sense" to you as a modelling program and thats really important.
@ArtisansofVaul it is balanced. I find some people here overly aggresive/defending. As if you may not have your own use cases/experiences.. ^^::.. You explained everything very clearly and objective. I also want non destructive flow. But its not comming if you read the plasticity feature request topic about it. Due to special parasolid siemens kernel license agreement. It also states plasticity may not compete with legacy cad apps. And it turn the license will be attactive.. This is a major concern. Combined with no road map it means the future and possible paths are limited and your investment thus a gamble. What are other features are forbidden that might "compete" with legacy apps one might wonder. So be enthusiastic with caution imo.
That may be true. But others have said they have no interest in non-destructive modelling and if it costs $100 for each version (as it currently looks like it will) that will have cost me $1300. I'll pass on that until it gets there in that case. 😅
That would be ideal. The issue is with the ngon exporter not lining up edges (as explained towards the end) it makes them pretty incompatible, at least for my use (3D printing design).
Pricing got updated, it's 150 bucks now. But you get all updates for 12 month and the Blender bridge. This should address a lot of misgivings. He is listening to feedback.
@@ArtisansofVaul 🤷♂ Young software. Will get sorted out eventually. I'm more curios about the pricing next year. If he has a reasonable "renewal" price he could be on to something. And he should up the Studio to 24 month updates. Mainly to make it more attractive for individuals. At that price point it's a no brainer for Studios anyways and just vanishes in the normal expenses.
@DerSolinski It was said by someone that the renewal cost will be the same as the cost (so $149 now) which seems rather steep to me. But that was said in a comment and I can't vouch for it being accurate.
@@ArtisansofVaul That would be a rather unwise move... I guess will see. My main interest in it is for reverse engineering 3D scans. "Intentional" software for that begins at 4 digits which is completely out of scope for me. "Rough cutting" a STEP file and post processing in a mechanical CAD software seems to be a good compromise.
@@DerSolinski Yeah I agree. I've just looked at the site and it does say that the costing will be the same as the original Indie license. It also doesnt mention there the support for 12 months including major updates (unless they haven't updated it there). EDIT: Sorry it does in the top boxes but not the text later, looks like they do need to update it. Still thats a hefty cost to continue after a year and soon adds up. Im looking here: www.plasticity.xyz/#pricing
Why not just use Fusion 360 which is free for hobbyists? It took me years to understand that Blender isn't made for engineering or mechanical parts and I wish somebody told me this at the beginning.
Because I sell a lot of my models so it wouldn't be free in that instance. Also for my purposes Blender has all the detailing and sizing that I need without huge payments. But for people just looking to model for hobby it's good it's free 👍🏻
@@arekkazmierowski9657 Definitely true for students. The issue is learning something that when they do come time to use it they are then going to have a hefty yearly fee to use it. But I do agree its great its offered for free for students.
Everyone frames Plasticity as only a one time purchase, however you only get 12 months of updates for the price you pay. I suppose that is better than purchasing one fixed version like the old days of Adobe, etc. but the wording on the site is subtly written to incentivize you to subscribe to the program's development.
Yeah I did feel that was a little bit more hidden than I feel it should be and becomes worryingly like a quite pricey subscription. I guess if you're happy staying with version 1 then it's fine 🤷 I'm not sure I would be
@@ArtisansofVaul For sure. I think that there will be plenty of people who will find that a certain version of Plasticity fills all their needs for their workflow and not need to pay again for future updates. That being said, Blender has improved quite a lot over the years, all while being FOSS. I suppose at least we get the choice to stick with a certain version, watch it progress, and choose if we want to upgrade. As a cheapskate though, the FOSS part of Blender is what will make me stick with it.
If you’re smart, you’ll use both! You can’t find any good CAD software at this price level. The amount of time put into coding this piece of software, along with other expenses like using state-of-the-art technology when it comes to kernels, must be compensated in some way. Plasticity is not funded; I’m sure Nick’s efforts are worth the dollars. To everyone reading this: make sure you take the studio version 👌
That would be idea. The issue with that (as covered in the video) is that unless something had changed the exporting of ngons just doesn't create the geometry needed for 3D modelling (for 3D printing). It would take much more time sorting that out than the little bit of extra time needed in Blender to create those filleted shapes.
@rayly7291 Except there are a lot of things that Blender does vastly better, where as plasticity is better for the main shape. So you want to turn it to Ngons to make it more efficient to bring it into Blender. If you can't do that I save more time working through the basic shape in Blender than I do making the object in plasticity and then having to sort out the topology as I bring it into Blender. No point spending $149 a year to give myself more work.
@@ArtisansofVaul Ok i can see your point with that type of workflow. Personally i would only use it for hard surface stuff, so i wouldn't need Blender after the file export.
@rayly7291 That's understandable. Hopefully I was clear in the video this was based on my usage of Blender. It's up to people individually to decide if each element matters much for them.
I agree. I will take non-destructive over destructive any day. Not even going to try Plasticity at all. I prefer the many options in Blender. Yeah, there is more to learn, but it is more powerful. I would rather have plenty of nice tools, then being limited because of the lack of tools. There is more freedom when you have more tools available. Just try to build a house with ONLY a hammer.
Yeah, I agree. I think many people will prefer plasticity but when you have the right mindset to go further and take the "long road" I think you'd be better off.
I feel the same. It just seemed an odd way to play it, especially when they repeatedly said its not a subscription, but it feels a LOT like a subscription to me....
Ive been diving into the software, being able to purchase the license is pretty cool. The software sucks for me. I use Shapr3d and it seems like this is trying to be that but insists on keyboard commands for most things. And its super unintuitive on certain thing. Ive grown to dislike it, I design useable items and it just takes way longer on Plasticity than Shapr. And Shapr is currently working out a beta for history based modeling. Plasticity is a cute science project to create for a programmer. My personal speculation.
I haven't heard much about Shapr3D, is it expensive? I think the focus on keyboard commands is the emulation of a Blender type workflow, which some will like and some won't. Thanks for the thoughts 👍🏻😁
I laugh about the turning your nose up about prices. I have been using graphics for a very long time. My first graphics was CADAM. I was a cnc programmer and one seat with programming option (and it was only 2d) was 60,000.00 back in the late 80's-90's. Oh man I am old.
@@ArtisansofVaul I'm passing on it. I tried it and it was not intuitive at all for me. I use OnShape, which is free if you don't mind OnShape owning your models. But it's a lot more complicated than my favorite program, Tinkercad. What I am really looking for is a more powerful Tinkercad.
Getting good bevels and fillets on compound organic shapes in blender is an absolute nightmare, even with mesh machine there's certain shapes that take hours to fix topologically before you can get clean bevels that don't break shading. I'd recommend doodling in blender because its faster and has lots of procedural tools, but once you find the shapes you want you can build them really quickly in Plasticity.
I won't ever disagree that bevels will always be better in a nurbs based program. It's true and always will be unless something mad appears in the future. Its the other things it's missing that means it's a pass for me. But that's not to say it isn't a great program.
There a lot of problems in nurbs modeling which are way worth than topology issues in poligonal software
That more of a thing with nurbs vs polygons and less about blender vs plasticity. and not to mention the applications of those models are very different as well, nurbs models are not suitable for polygonal workflows such as any deformations with displacement or rigging etc where they are much better with being precise and manufacturing for the real world.
@@rano12321 Can someone explain to me why nurbs and polygon are mentioned? The explanation I've seen on google is too abstract and why Plasticity and Blender don't both fall under NURBS modeling
6:20 Many people think 3D modeling for gaming, film or 3D printing is the same, but it isn't, you have to know exactly what you want to do with your design at the end of the day.
So I think it's great that you're specifically addressing this
Thanks. Hopefully it was clear that I think Plasticity is probably really good for CG work. It just needs a bit more to be at the dame place for 3D modelling.
I don't need to kn ow what I want when I just reprint everything 5 times with different tools and options
Yeah, Blender is great for video games but not so great for 3D printing.
I'm a big fan of Plasticity and Blender, but yeah, good points. Very different workflows and advantages.
For sure. Hopefully it didnt feel too one sided.
Plasticity looks a bit like blender, but you can never compare a nurb tool with a poly based (3D, modeling, sculping, animation, rigging, lighting, texturing, shading and render) tool. You can compare blender with cinema4d, lightwave, 3DStudioMax, SoftimageXSI, Maya or maybe Modo, but Plasticity you must compare with Moi3D, Fusion360°, Freecad, ViaCad, Rhino, Shapr3D... It is only a mini CAD Tool. I have tried to compare Moi3D with Plasticity and this alone is hard because in the CAD-Nurb world, the tools are using different CAD Kernels too, with their own pro and conts.
Very fair. Though I compare it in terms of its usability for a purpose in mind (3D printing) so in that instance it seems a fair comparison to make.
I agree with all what you said except one thing. rhino3d is one of the industry standards for 3D printing and you can't compare it wth plasticity.
Hey kuech how are you?
I really wouldn't compare plasticity with professional CAD systems
@@adrianscarlett Hey, you "give up under 10 minutes" Plasticity has the same Kernel like Solidworks and NX Siemens. The Power Base is there. Plasticity is in Verison 1.4 so spend more than 10 minutes.
I think the thing that’s made Plasticity so much better than Blender for me is that it may be a more limited toolset but it’s good at bare essentials so it fits my very limited skillset. It’s much easier to stay excited about the awful thing you’ve made when you can see progress between sessions a lot easier. It’s good as a sketchpad where you’re learning more than creating.
I’ll be curious to see how it scales, Blender being a Swiss Army knife of tools makes it hard to see ever really dropping it.
Really good points on all counts. It definetly looks easier to learn and also probably to "find" the tool you want.
Kind of the same thing with Tinkercad. Tinkercad is so intuitive and powerful compared to the parametric cad programs.
I’ve been a product designer for a long time and I’ve had to include 3D in my workflow. This debate reminds me of the no-code debate also. Which brings me to my first point:
I’d say currently that the mesh quality from Plasticity isn’t up to par. If it doesn’t have texturing and rendering, then it’s just important to make the mesh quality as good as possible.
Secondly, for a new tool, telling people you’ll pay for version one and get no other update from 2.0 upwards seem very unfair.
They’re a small & growing team and I see so much potential in it. They should also consider taking the Figma route. Putting it on the web. It’ll be a great game changer.
I think my biggest concern is not having a clear map of how much this new version will be. It could be more than $99 or it it could be less if you already have version 1.... who knows....
I mean it is a very impressive piece of work having come from one person though. What a legend.
It’s not a subd mesh quality so you cannot subdivide or deform it but for product renders why do you care? You can export high poly mesh which you dont subdivide in blender and it will look great when rendered. 100$ for anyone making money with rendering is total bargain especially when this modeling method saves ton of time in comparison with subd modeling
@red-x-studio because I don't produce renders. I produce STL for 3D printing and those points produce more triangles/edges in odd/unpredictable places and that isn't good.
@@ArtisansofVaul I see, right. Yeah cleaning the mesh from plasticity would be nightmare…better do subd model from start in such case
@red-x-studio Yeah it is. To be fair my use of Blender for 3D printing is not that common (compared to for rendering) so for the majority of people you're definetly right.
I totally get your points. I have used it for 3d printing in resin for 1/24 scale model cars and the quality of the mesh and the result I get from the printer is perfect.
Good to know. Thanks man 👍🏻 Out of interest I assume that's moving it directly to 3D printing (maybe using the triangulate setting)? My concern is that I want to use it in Blender to add details and for that I'd use the ngon setting and that seems to have the issues.
Comparing Plasticity with Blender is like comparing a truck with a supercar. Which one is better? Depends on how you look at it! I think it would be much better to compare Plasticity with other Nurbs modeling softwares like Rhino or Fusion 360.
What Plasticity is doing here is quite amazing, because they try to simplify 3d cad modeling and try to make it much more quicker, and more easy to learn. I personally tried to leran Rhino, Fusion 360 and even modeling in Blender, but I always hated the learning process. Simply because, as a beginner, it is very time consuming and slow. What I hated the most in these softs, was that you need to do so many steps just to achieve a simple goal. A lot of hidden features burried under complex menus. I think a lot of people have experienced, what I am saying here!
Then I found out about Plasticity and I have never been so excited to learn modeling - it is really fun and I can see my progress just after a couple of hours. This is impressive in my eyes! I think it is much harder to create a software that everyone can master, rather than something complex that only a few people can learn in a longer time period. Plasticity in my eyes is like an Iphone, when other Nurbs modeling softwares are like Nokia or Blackberry :)
Remember, it is a brand new software that is created by 1 or 2 people (I believe) and in a recenet years - just this fact is quite impressive. Imagine, what will they do in the upcoming years with a bigger team, more budget and more time spent on development? Blender has been around since 1995 man :D Think about it!
I don't disagree with any of your points and I think I cover these points including that it will improve over time and that Blender has a steeper learning curve. But the focus of the video is answering questions I have had recently of why I don't use Plasticity and as I am not a beginner and I need those more complex functions I think this video answers that. Also the point you have made of looking at what could happen in the future only emphasises the point that you're going to have to keep on paying for the new updates. That's no issue if you're happy to do that but it doesn't change the fact that that is way you're going to do.
Don't get me wrong, I'm not hating on Plasticity, in many ways it's really impressive. But for me it just isn't "there" yet and it doesn't currently meet my needs as explained. But thanks for taking the time to explain why you like it. For your use it does seem like a great piece of software and I'm glad you've found something that's got you enthused for 3D modelling!
I think your take on Plasticity pretty much completely sums up how I feel about it. Only thing I wish it had was more formula constrained math and CAD that's a little more similar to how CAD, like putting down Sketchs on planes and stuff like that
I have been watching your videos for the last month and I truly appreciate your teaching style. This video including your response to many of the comments has demonstrated to me that you deserve support for this channel. I am going to the Patreon page and signing up for the highest tier. Keep up the great work!
@paulthomann7911 Thanks so much Paul. That's appreciated so much as the Patreon is what allows me to dedicate the time to this that I do. 👌🏼😁😁😁
Well keep doing it. I just got back from Patreon and am now a proud supporter! I support a few other channels and I must say your content production is prolific. Don’t burn out. A few of my favorite creators have.
all great points that hopefully get addressed. I really like the UX that Plasticity brings to the table of parametric modeling, something that is greatly lacking in vanilla Blender with its barebone NURBS implementation. I just want to model without dealing with vertices or sculpt tools
I can see why people would prefer it for sure, especially for CG work. And as you say, I can see them adding more in the future.
it's nothing to do with parametric modelling - Plasticity is direct modelling.
@@TAH1712 nurbs modelling then, or whatever the term is for this curve-based modeling workflow. I enjoy it more than working directly with vertices either way
Coming at it from a traditional CAD ownership model where licences are a) expensive b) usually internet based so always need connection and c) expire after a year or two, this is a bargain. I've been using Plasticity for a couple of weeks and I'm so impressed, i will be buying it for my 3D modelling needs.
Nice 👍🏻 Is it just those factors that have made you want to buy it? Are there things about the program itself you particularly enjoy?
@@ArtisansofVaul I've used other CAD tools to surface model and to be honest, they are difficult to master. Plasticity seems both intuitive and forgiving. Try lofting a square to a triangle to a circle in CATIA. The off the peg results in CATIA will be nonsense whereas Plasticity solves it perfectly.
I'd like to see something like Plasticity's NURBS modeling system integrated directly into Blender - keeping with the name "Blender" a blended modeling system.
If that was possible it would be amazing.
Blender have some basic nurbs (probably not sufficient for most of the use cases), and there is also open source addon to blender called "CAD Sketcher" but idk if it uses nurbs.
Also from other stuff, there is not-yet-released SDF modeling addon (Conjure SDF) which is also based on match but in other way than nurbs. Also there is some work to bring SDF to blender oficially.
But I agree, It would be cool if blender would have it all oficially with all necessary features.
@@Daniel_VolumeDown Oh the SDF stuff is SO exciting. I absolutely cant wait!
@@Daniel_VolumeDownCAD Sketcher uses the Kernel of SolveSpace, the problem with it is that the kernel is developed by a very small amount of people and it will take time to go to a very useful potential
There is a live link now between Plasticity and Blender
This is really helpful. Thank you ! I really want to try it out, specifically for the ease of fillet creation
Its ability to make fillets is superb. So much more efficient than vertex based software
Just found out about Plasticity today and just browsing videos. Regarding the low poly export isn't that just the trial version? Also I export step files for printing so that wouldn't be an issue anyways.
Didn't try yet but I definitely will for the filleting and beveling looks very smooth. Coming from a surface modeler (Rhino3D) I am used to "destructive" modeling. This is mitigated by using layers and keeping backups of geometrie. I've never been a heavy user of parametric modeling but I guess they will come up with something like grasshopper for plasticity too.
There are settings you can change I believe but that still can result in the edge lines not joining up in a way that would be an annoyance if you then brought it into Blender. It just depends what you want to do though as if thats not something you need it shouldn't be a huge issue.
You adjust the tolerances to increase the poly count. I've exported things out of plasticity that are multi million polys. You're just doing it wrong.
That's good to know, thanks 👍🏻. But does that mean that the edges will now line up on ngons? If not that's just giving more geometry to fix and doesn't solve the real issue.
I have used blender for quite a while and decided to try out plasticity. I agree with a lot of what you mention and definitely see pros of both, I recommend either starting blender and seeing how you go or if possible picking up both as there is definitely great pros to both software and always recommended to use the best tools for the task instead of having to get around some issues you may run into. Good video overall 👍
Thanks for the comment. I agree both have their positives and negatives. Blender has so much to it it can feel pretty imposing to beginners.
I believe you are talking about the differences between surface modeling and wireframe modeling in the design field. There are indeed significant distinctions between the two, and the handling of edges in surface modeling (PL) surpasses what wireframe modeling (BL) can achieve. I agree that combining both techniques can be very convenient. If you aim for perfect wireframing, you can import the results from surface modeling (PL) into ZBrush for topological adjustments, which can lead to relatively flawless wireframes. I think it's essential to consider these two software tools as complementary to each other, leveraging their respective strengths rather than putting them in opposition, as they have different inherent capabilities.
I mean then someone would be also paying for Zbrush, I'm not sure that's the best option to fix something that should be fixable in the software. I am aware these are very different softwares but many of these issues should be manageable in the one piece of software. Plasticity could solve these export issues and nurbs modelling doesn't stop it having non-destructive options.
But if someone has these multiple softwares it's good that there is a way to fix these issues.
@@ArtisansofVaul "...nurbs modelling doesn't stop it having non-destructive options." Very true and a good point. Plasticity is using the same solid modeling kernel as Siemens NX (Parasolid). NX is arguably the best high-end CAD software currently out there and has an extensive feature relationship and curve/surface/solid associativity. I imagine adding that functionality to Plasticity would be a massive amount of work though. I would welcome it, but doing that might slow the development of other functions and likely make the software more complex to learn and use.
One thing I didn't see in these comments is the point that Parasolid has a licensing fee. A "free" version would actually amount to the author of Plasticity paying for users to have access to that powerful kernel. My impression is that the $99 Plasticity license doesn't generate much income after that Parasolid license fee is subtracted. Don't get me wrong, I love free software - Blender, FreeCAD, etc. I just think it useful to understand all that goes into setting the price. As I understand it, Plasticity is significantly less expensive than any other modeling software using Parasolid. Ultimately, as you and others have mentioned, it comes down to a value question - does it do the job I need it to at the most competitive cost. ...Oh, and nice video BTW.
@markeaslick1009 Thanks and totally agree. It's not something I would argue should be free, and it isn't a lot to pay if it has the tools you need. It's just at this point for me it doesn't. 👍🏻
I really appreciate that you're careful to point out that the drawbacks to using Plasticity are based upon your needs and use case. I've pondered how to write software to re-topologize surfaces which have been booleaned in CAD, but I'm pretty sure the math would melt my head. So I understand that the quad output from complex models is a tricky beast, but I'm a little disappointed to see that Plasticity exports surfaces which would still need some cleanup before going to a slicer.
To Plasticity's credit, my head exploded when I saw someone effortlessly create a 5-curve lofted surface in Plasticity.
Oh the lofting and beveling (fillets) is amazing, It does it so effortlessly and it looks amazing. In so many ways the functionality of Plasticity is amazing, with a really clean interface that just works really well.
As I say Im a pretty niche case but I could see a lot of people looking at plasticity and seeing it as a really sensible 3D print modelling stepping stone from something like 3D builder or the other "block/shape" design tools. Having it then be able to not really make quads but more make ngons that line up would then also allow the transition of those shapes to Blender which would be the icing on the cake. But as its been pointed out mathematically having that work/recognise close "vertices" (I know they aren't really vertices but Im struggling for another word) might be an impossibility. It almost needs the ngon creater export setting to have a "merge by distance" function/slider.
All extremely valid points, and why I'm looking into alternatives. The export issues are the biggest ones to me.
Agreed. Hopefully it will be sorted at some point as the program does look great for so many things.
I honestly didn't know Blender was non-destructive. I really need to sit down with that software. I'm impressed and frustrated with Plasticity. The exercises are amazing, but I quickly run into trouble when I go off script with a design, encountering many errors with no way to identify or correct them.
Blender is fantastic. That's frustrating about the errors but (and this is said without using Plasticity much) this will happen in most 3d design programs. Hopefully there are some ways to identify and correct them coming as it seems pretty important and I imagine others would find the same. I'm surprised I haven't seen more videos covering how to solve them.
Seconding this, Blender rocks. Coming from Maya and simple stuff like modeling with G,S,R feels so fluid to me now, its hard to go back to Maya. The only thing I miss in Maya is the awesome UV editor, but I'm loving everything else.
Blender's UI has hamstrung me even wanting to learn it. Its like wanting to ride a bicycle but you're confronted with the cockpit of the space shuttle. Coming from a CAD background I know the fundamentals of putting an object together and manipulating it in a 3D space, but I've suffered from information overload when trying to use Blender. For me, even basic tools seem buried away in a sub menu somewhere.
I'm not bashing Blender on how powerful and versatile it is, because for a free piece of software (even in its default configuration) it blows a lot of "premium" software out of the water.
The simplicity of Plasticity is what has made it the key part of my workflow. Granted, the UI appears very basic (you'd be forgiven for thinking it was a re-skin of 3D Builder) but everything you need is a a couple of keystrokes away. Even at such an early stage in its development you have everything you need to create some very complex models in a relatively short amount of time.
I think your observation on the two distinct modelling philosophies is a valid one, but I think it also depends on your background in terms of what impact it has. Personally, I took to it like a duck to water and it was just like using AutoCAD in the bad old days, but I can see people who cut their teeth on Blender or ZBrush finding it irritating.
As far as creating 3D models for print is concerned, I have yet to have any issues with rogue geometry or slicers throwing a fit when presented with a file from Plasticity, and I've used Plasticity to create some relatively complex models. Not so long ago I created a servo skull (for use in Inquisitor) in Plasticity which used an imported step file of a skull as its base. This was an anatomically correct skull, so a bit of judicious editing was required to get it to a stage where it would print properly (filling the interior of the skull, trimming the bones in the back of the nose cavity etc). The finished model didn't present Lychee with any errors; no awkward islands that couldn't be supported and the printed model showed no signs of any external geometry issues. Granted it as printed at 54mm scale, but I've seen some 28mm sculpts that have had visible geometry that wasn't down to the printer or slicers interpretation of the file but the actual sculpt itself (I won't point fingers, but they're out there). So far it has been very competent at creating models that are fit to print.
I don't think Plasticity is for everyone, but it definitely has its use cases. I think most of it is down to your previous experience of 3D modelling.
why not use FreeCAD instead with Blender, far better combo!
blender is a general purpose program. so of course there will be a lot of windows, a lot of drop down menus etc. the good thing is if you practice shortcuts, it becomes very easy. you can also setup your own dropdown menu.
@@GaryParris I'll have to have a look at that. 👍
Good summary and thanks for taking the time to reply. Its good to hear of some experience not having an issue using it for 3D printing and not having any issues.
I can get that Blender is quite intimidating, though matching what you said about Plasticity once you know them most things are only a few keystrokes away (and its going to take the same to learn keystrokes in any software).
I personally found that Blender does need to be approached with a target in mind. Trying to learn everything watching random tutorials/etc has far too much. Instead I had something I wanted to make and looked up what to do at each stage when I came across a new function/result Id want for that step. That way I learnt as I went.
LOL - that is the main reason I gave up on Blender. Just totally overwhelmed with the UI.
Nice video, Been looking into plasticity myself and I come from a CAD background. I like the idea of plasticity as it give me the ability to create really organic shapes but have them very mathematically constrained. Only problems I have when looking into it is that it really doesn't have a lot of the features CAD has, at least right now that would let you do things like constraining geometry by mathematical formulas which is particularly important when you do thinks like Aerodynamics or certain other geometries.
I am also curious however. I know you say you work with a lot of polygons in your mesh and you say that it's to get a smoother prints, from the models you have I'm guessing you're doing Resin printing of some sorts? I looking to get more into resin parts cause I'm needing really small higher resolution parts, is that a problem you actually experience and how much does the mesh resolution really affect the part quality? I know that have really low resolutions would cause facet like geometry but does the mesh quality you get from plasticity as is really affect the print quality that much?
I think it will depend what you do but (as you have correctly suggested) I print in resin and pretty small parts for wargaming. There any facets can be seen pretty easily and will impact the paint job, especially if certain painting techniques are used like drybrushing that will pick up more on edges. For example if I have a cylinder with a 1cm diameter I will typically put it up to 128-256 sections to make sure you can't notice the facets. You can do this in Plasticity by filling with setting but if you want something more mathematical you might want to have a look at the addon for Blender called CAD sketcher 👍🏻
The potential for bridging between plasticity and blender in the future is very interesting.
Agreed. That's a very powerful tool. I'd just love it to also be able to deal with ngons better.
When that release I’ll get plastisicty
I'm modelling in plasticity, exporting to .obj (ngons, 1) , importing to blender, exporting to stl. great results in 3d printing :) btw, i'm printing stuff where 0.1 mm counts
@@superkgy 👍🏻 Good for you.
6:14 There is actually a method to dramatically increase the poly count. Click on Max width and enter a small number. With density set to 1, I got a model with 300k tris. Then I set the the width max to something small and got a model with 7 million tris. Was good for importing it into zbrush for extra detailing. Speaking of 3d printing, I trust plasticity way more with watertight models over blender simply because the union Booleans are far less likely to freak out. Although if I'm honest, I would still use zbrush. Especially since zbrush got the master decimeter, better smoothing operations and no lag
Good to know and thanks for the comment. Is there a way to deal with the other issue and get the edges to correctly align for use in Blender later?
@@ArtisansofVaul Sadly no. Ive tried all the settings and looked at the public documentation. So far its prob my biggest complaint. When im making the low poly versions of my models, I end up fixing all the edges by hand. I mean its fast to fix but when you got hundreds of parts, time adds up fast
@@bobsteven2363 That I'd a shame and totally agree on the time that would take to fix
I have been using Plasticity for a few months and do find it much quicker for some things. I have been bouncing back and forth and using it to get my base model setup that would be downright difficult to do in Blender and then bringing it into Blender and remeshing it if needed and detailing it out. Likewise there are some smaller details I can do quickly in Plasticity and then import and merge into my model in Blender.
Seems a good appraisal. Have you found the time saved has been worth the money? And can you give examples of the base models you've been producing faster (I'm curious)?
@@ArtisansofVaul I will have to revisit this message and give you some examples. Still learning Plasticity and it is changing, getting better at things so I am sure I will be revisiting old methods and seeing what new things I can do. Sorry, not up on replying to my comments so I missed your reply. As for being worth the money, honestly probably not in the scope of things but I do believe this developer has a lot in store for the software and it really is good as is out of the box and I really purchased it in the beginning to support his efforts. I am betting we will be revisiting this conversation a year from now and might have a different take on it. I think there are some awesome things in store for version 2.0.
@@kevinm3751 No need to say sorry at all. Thanks for coming back to check. I really hope I do hear back in a year's time of what you think as it would be great to see/hear how it has changed from someone using the software. 😁👌
oh man, thank you for this, I was ready to jump head first into plasticity, and have made a couple of items just playing, but I'm tyring to decide between Plasticity and Fusion 360 to take a full on course and learn legitimately, but now I'm considering blender more. darn.
@aeonjoey3d I mean I'm VERY bias, I love Blender. It does have more of a learning curve than Plasticity but I think it's worth it. Good luck with the decision 👍🏻
I have just been a new Plasticity indie license user and modeled a number of assets so quickly but never used my 3d printing to see how good it prints. I have been a big fan of Plasticity. I have not used my Hard Ops n Boxcutter for a while. Thanks for sharing your opinions... ❤👍
Great to hear you've been enjoying it! I have seen some great things produced in it so there's no doubting its a powerful tool. 😁👍
I use plasticity for 3d printig. Works very well.
I have tried blender and haven't gotten far with it yet. This reminds me of shapr3d in a way. I like it so far and hopefully with each version it will improve. Most of the 3d printing models I have done have been in tinkercad so it took a bit of time to get my mind around sketching. Buying the new version when it has what I want is ok since I've been used to this model in the past - subscription monthly based is new to me. Thanks for the video
👍 Good to hear you're enjoying it 😁
Thanks for the inference...
If you could go back where would you start with 3D modeling for printing as home hobbiest?
For what I do Blender is perfect. I would probably have missed out learning Sketchup but I don't really regret it as I learnt a lot there that I then applied to Blender.
Though for other people (depending on what you want to design) Plasticity could be perfect.
@@ArtisansofVaul Thanks ... I just want to learn to create things for 3d printing
@@hobonickel840 Well Plasticity used to have a free trial so you could see how that is. Blender is free but I find there are addons that are paid for that will make things much faster (but that should still work out cheaper than one year of Plasticity unless you buy a LOT of them).
@@ArtisansofVaul I really appreciate the feedback. I'll look at those. I had downloaded Autodesk360 to see what all the fuss was about. Um yeah, who needs aliens!?!
I think an Editable History in Plasticity would make the results more editable. Maya has a construction history and 3ds Max has modifiers.
That would be really cool.
If you need so then I think you should go for parametric cad tools like solidworks.
@rajendrameena7763 Fair cool. How much does Solidworks cost though (I genuinely don't know)?
@@ArtisansofVaul4000$ upfront and 1300$ annual.
@rajendrameena7763 Ouch. I think I might pass on that, well outside the casual user budget
The more I use it the more I like it! How ever not sure if I should wait until version 2?
Glad you're enjoying it. If you won't get support into version 2 is may be worth the wait but have a look at the "fine print" as if version 2 is around the corner they may have changed to say you'll get support for it
yeah the destructive workflow of modeling in plasticity due to not having anything similar to modifiers is still keeping me on the fence for now hopefully it will come in further updates soon
the bridging between plasticity and blender seems pretty interesting though and it would be pretty cool to see plasticity be compatible with blender modifiers through the bridge
because from what i've seen from the footage changes to the mesh can only be done through plasticity and not blender
Agree on all points. I wonder if there would be a way for the bridge to work both ways. That would be amazing
I've played around with the 1.0 free trial of plasticity, and I like what it is capable of, I haven't tried any later versions yet though. The 1.3 release with the blender live-link should be out soon. To that end, i've decided to finally give blender a serious look, as i've mostly been using maya indie for the past couple of years, as i've usually got so frustrated with blender over the past decade or so each time i've tried to use it, i've just ended up giving up.
Blender can be pretty full on and intimidating especially to begin with. If you need any help always feel free to check out some of my videos or drop a comment and I can hopefully point you in the right direction.
Fair points, i love blender!
Thanks 😁 👍🏻
very good take on this topic! Thanks for honesty
My pleasure. As is hopefully clear it's great software, just not for my purposes.
I have seen a lot of people using these and wondered if I should try it, this video helped me a lot (your content always does!).
Thanks. Glad it helped either way. I think it's a great tool but it just isn't for me/my uses. Hopefully it was clear that I still think for many people it could be fantastic.
Good to hear some critical objective opinions about plasticity as well. Thx. I find most videos about it overly positive. Sometimes to the point wether im wondering if its sponsored
I found the same. But at the same time I hope this seems balanced. Also I believe people being hyped is pretty genuine as it does have a lot to offer
i am super new to both and don't understand a lot of what you guys are saying, but I did stumble across that Sketch CAD plugin for Blender, wouldn't that, or does that fix the beveling issues between objects that you can't do in Blender like you can in plasticity?
@JonneytheKidd It doesn't manage it in the same way in terms of them adding or removing parts and how bevels will "flow" more easily between objects. Plasticity is in a bit of a world of it's own for that (without spending huge sums of money)
@@ArtisansofVaul Thanks for the reply. IF it were you, new to this world, what would you invest your time learning? If you wanted to prototype simple products for 3D printing?
@@JonneytheKidd Thats a really good question. If the designs are going to be simple then I would say Blender as there is nothing to pay unless you decide you want some sort of addon and even then they are pretty cheap in comparison to the ongoing Plasticity cost.
But I should say I am really bias in this as I love Blender and thing it has a lot more power overall than Plasticity.
If your objects are going to have lots of beveled curved shapes then Plasticity would likely be an easier learning curve though.
@@ArtisansofVaul ok, well said. I have dabbled in Blender, but the process of deleting a cylinder shape out of another shape using the Boolean modifier (if i said that right) really kicked my ass, and couldn’t really get it to work fully for my. And by my expectations, it should have been a much easier process. I wasn’t doing complex shapes. I had a circle shape trying to remove the center out of a larger circle shape. Kind of like generating a quarter crescent moon, if you will.
With the first example, of the boolean cube, you can do that in Plasticity too, just select the surface of the small cube and move it around in Plasticity. Although Plasticity doesn't have a modifier or history it is fairly non destructive.
I thought you can't select the cube once it was booleaned? You can select the faces but not the cube.
I honestly just bought it because I want to Support it. Hopefully one day it will be able to replace fusion 360 so I can get away from Autodesks short business practices and so I don’t have to be online in order to use the app.
I mean that's a great reason to purchase it. Any developer always appreciated support and knowing that support is our there. 👍🏻👍🏻👍🏻
'hopefully' - but when will it have all that you need? v3 , maybe v4 - in truth, without a roadmap you don't really know. It is developing fast I'll agree. With an established developed software, subscription works - you know exactly what your getting and if you don't like it, you stop after 1 months subscription.
Always remember folks : 3D artists have to use a bunch of niche software depending on what they want to do (artits might have to learn Maya, Max, Substance painter, Zbrush, modo, mobu, marvelous designer, houdini, unreal 5, rhino, marmoset, and more!) Plasticity and blender are different in the same way Zbrush and blender are different. One is only better than the other in certain contexts.
Exactly right 👍🏻. I hope it came across that I am specifically talking from the perspective of my usage. Other people need to make up their minds based on the functions they want/need.
The problem is, that hurts efficiency and thins skill-sets. It's a software/developer/cost problem and something that could be way better if done correctly. However, the problem is quite deep and goes all the way back to the machine level including hardware design, programming languages, etc.
These type of tools are not like switching from a saw to a hammer. They're complex, difficult to master or even remember how to work them and each one added requires more brain load and reduces proficiency.
Do you go to your dentist for heart surgery? How many dentist/heart surgeons are there and if they do exist, how many are top in both fields? How many gold medal Olympic swimmers have gold medals in archery? Now imagine having to do that in 12 different sports.
@@_droid it's really not that bad, considering the wide range of different aspects covered by 3D art and that usually for a job you'll be specializing in a certain subset of skills anyway. Would it be nice if there was one perfect program that could do literally everything better than every other program? Yeah, but it's not really feasible. Switching between specialized programs is the go to for now because it works the best for getting high quality results in a good time frame
Man, I agree a lot with non-destructive workflow. It is very important and it's amazing in blender. The thing is, plasticy like many cad software, by nature has a non-destructive workflow. Its not at all like blenders and every step is different but basically every action you do can be undone or edited since everything you make is based on curves and all curves are saved. Can get pretty crazy tho, most files get up to thousands of curves in matter of minutes
Yeah. For me it's just not the way I'd want to work really for so many of the things I do. But if it works for people then that's all good, it just isn't for me.
Relevant review. Thanks. My reasoning is just about the same except for the 3D printing side of things. Haven't gone there, yet. Other than all of that Plasticity is a fantastic piece of software, really impressive and looking forward to 2.0. Which i might purchase if the pricing is reasonable (which in and of itself is relatively relative).
It does some really impressive work and the functionality for the modelling side of it is great 👍
plasticity is sneaky, I have sent them email regarding something which I am not directly going to mention here, they can't even answer directly, I just have a feeling that if they ever got big, they will be the one that screw you over with...
That's unfortunate. Previously I have heard good things about their customer service and communication, it was the thing that was really going for them.
Here's my case on why Plasticity changed my life: I've been using Blender for 9 years, I haven't bought any plugins and my focus is in hard surface models. Either I have PTSD from the built-in Bool Tool and die every time I need to make a radial array, I pay for some complicated plugin that I don't fully understand or . . . I download the 30 day trial, learn the program in 2 hours and by the time the trial ends I'm already addicted to this heroin of a program.
It's not even an overstatement, adding small, non-axis aligned details is so easy in Plasticity, I haven't had more fun modelling in my life. Regarding the "destructive workflow" in most cases you can select the fillets, extrusions, etc and delete them, this doesn't fix arrays but it's something.
Have you tried the trial yet? It really is like crack, once you start using it you cannot stop.
I'm glad you're enjoying Plasticity but starting with a statement like "I have modelled in Blender for 9 years. I haven't bought any plugins" but you have spent $149 on Plasticity sounds crazy. If you spent that much as a one off purchase of addons you'd be saying the same thing about Blender. Don't get me wrong I'm not saying Plasticity isn't great for your usage but after 9 years using it you're going to have spent nearly $1350 compared to purchasing some addons once. Yet you spend 9 years using Blender and didn't purchase anything.... 🤷
Thanks I was kinda getting interested in it because of the major creators shilling this !
Haha. There is a bit of that but I can imagine a lot of their interest is genuine, it is great for lots of uses. I just think it has issues (especially for certain uses) and I wanted to address them. I definetly don't think it's a bad product.
1.4 is out and it's awesome! many new features, still on the fence 😅? The main problem lies in those beautiful and easy Plasticity fillets...if you go crazy on those (which one does because it's so damn easy to do them), Blender and QR are gonna have a hard time finding the creases/seams to properly retopologize the nurbs/ngon object. But I found a guy here (his channel's name escapes me ATM) that's finding really clever workarounds for getting QR to properly recognize creases, seams and sharp edges. I will try to put those same techniques in practice on Plasticity generated models with the objective of getting dense, quad-based printable meshes. Sharing my results when I get around to it.
I'd be interested to hear what you find. Without the ability to create usable ngon meshes it just isn't viable for my uses at the moment and it just lacks a lot of the powerful features in Blender. I'd rather not give those up for the sake of one benefit (fillets). Also it's been said they will never go the way of non-destructive modelling so that's a huge put off.
I find Plasticity very hard to use compared to Blender, simply because the UI is nonexistent (hidden behind shortcuts, with no shortcut hints unlike in Blender) and there are no context menus that give you an idea what possibilities you have when you right-click an object. Blender is a lot easier to use without knowing any shortcuts.
Sure it looks easy because the UI looks as simple as Paint, but that is actually just due to a lack of buttons and that makes it harder to learn / use occasionally without having to permanently google how to do basic operations.
@@AirsoftKeksTV That's frustrating. I hadn't realised it was that hidden.
Is there an open source software that you would recommend? FreeCAD?
I don't know CAD that well to be honest. This was me looking to see if its a viable alternative to Blender.
Even when it's CAD for Artist, not having active parametric editing is hard to consider it's a CAD.
@thanatosor Yeah it's an interesting/odd mix between the two. People seem to be enjoying it though.
@@ArtisansofVaul Sorry but I'm still trying out various softwares to see which one may work exclusively for 3D Printing.
@@thanatosor Active parametrics take a long time to do and can very actively work against you if drastically change your mind as the design progresses as most designers do. Nearly everything you see on RUclips is videos on copying a drawing - that, dear reader, is not design. I really like Dynamic modelling, where adaption of shapes or add or deduct new shapes is done on screen without any revision to a parts history.
@ @ I only take what people said here as a practice to actually design my owb stuffs that fit my demand.
So if I want my design to fit actual physical size of my device at 36.38mm then it should be... not 35.5 or 36.5mm 🤷♂️
It need to be exact assumption +/- size of nozzle/layer thickness my printer can do.
@@thanatosor Very little software would be exclusively for 3D printing (they will work for things like rendering as well). But there are now quite a few that can be used for 3D printing.
The siemens parasolid engine in plasticity does allow a timeline like fusion360. That could be added in plasticity later on.
I heard. But apparently there are no plans to implement it (this is going off what others have said)
@@ArtisansofVaul this timeline feature gives shapr3d a leg up on plasticity
The printing topic is not relevant for me but I agree with you on the other points. Nevertheless I will get a indie license for plasticity for the potential and the support of the program. I hope it will get more powerful in time especially with the non distructive work flow. Cheers!
👍🏻 Good man 😁
hey how can you change the structure in plasticity that structure also changes in blender
I believe that's something they have shown off as coming soon but not actually in the current version.
The one big reason i like plasticity is you can use it offline especially if your internet goes down.that is a big plus in my book
I mean thats huge in comparison to some other software. It would infuriate me if I got stuck not being able to work without there being internet.
They claim: "...with no subscriptions, you own your software"...ok, but to have the updated version beyond 1.x, you have to pay the yearly...subscription fee 😂
Yeah... It all feels a little hidden. Some people clearly are fine with that, so all good, bur just be explicitly clear about it
If you want though, other software companies force you to update. Many updates in other software mess up existing work flows, adding features 80-90% people don't want
That is normal and has been a standard for years. It is just that previously we had Microsoft Office 2010, Microsoft Office 2011, Microsoft Office 2012 etc. And it is certainly better than the shit subscribtion model Adobe is doing.
Ok so you are telling me to spend on Blender add-ons? I mean i can do it despite coming from a country that will charge me IVA to it, but i can't find and add on that gives me that i working on CAD.
Do you know about some add-ons that will be useful for someone who used to work with SolidWorks?
I mean I'm just saying that's what I'd do. Especially now plasticity is around $150.
So for CAD like working I use construction lines.
You can see a video on it here: ruclips.net/video/4Djrhj64kS8/видео.html
And the add on here: blendermarket.com/products/construction-lines/?ref=834
There is also the free CAD sketcher which is a bit more heavily into the CAD. Its free but I haven't tried it yet.www.cadsketcher.com/
@@ArtisansofVaul for someone who does toys for 3D printing CAD Sketcher is fine, but coming fron Solidworks and then going to this it feels discouraging.
CAD Sketcher uses the kernel of SolveSpace, an open source CAD software that is eye looking and interesting but is under the shadow of FreeCad (that i will not use until topological bugs and unresponsiveness that convert Freecad in a program with a more destructive modelling workflow than Blender) because it's development and update is slower than Rhinoceros development, so don't expect CAD Sketcher with SolveSpace kernel to work like Plasticity that has Parasolid kernel (that is expensive, i understand the price, Nick Allen was one of the most active users and modders of Moi3D, judging the pricing of a product made random guy and some of his friends on their freetime is just pathetic, typical gringo ego) that is the same kernel of Solidworks (my former program).
I don't know but i prefer pirate Solidworks than doing CAD with Blender, is just feels unnatural and week (but rendering is very good, and geo nodes are a great tool, specially for designing foams)
The export density can be be more dense with the min width option.
Thanks
As for the export density not being as high as Blender, you forgot to change the "Surface angle tolerance" and "Curve angle tolerance" to a smaller number, like 0.01 or even 0.005. I exported a complex shape to .STL at the settings in your video and produced a 1 megabyte file. Changing the Surface angle tolerance and and Curve angle tolerance to 0.01 produced a 75 megabyte file and 0.005 produced a 300+ megabyte file. It can get about as insane as your computer can handle.
Just thought I'd share, since that is how you produce highly detailed exports.
Thanks, good tip. I'm not sure that will resolve the issue of the edges not aligning though. If you have a way to sort that as well that would be awesome 👍🏻
I just hope they can, in the ver 1.x updates cover some of the key issues for interop with mesh based CAD systems. It's Plasticiy that has made me love Belnder. It also made me eventually beging to us umake which i paid 3 times for, but not as good as Plasticity.
I really hope they cover it in that time as well.
Awesome Video again! I was already wondering if I was missing out, not hopping on the plasticity train right away. But the financial aspect just killed it completely. Blender is so much stronger and when I really need CAD tools I use fusion360 for free.
I think for now I'd recommend leaving it from what I have seen. But perhaps in the future, I just doubt it will be before version 2.0
ya i'll just get a blender update and get back into it.
i was so convinced but now i'm seeing the comparison of the 2, one might as well use blender.
I mean using both is totally an option. But I think if you are willing to take the extra time to learn a more complex program you'll end up with more you can do
If Nick wants to he can add history.... the kernel is used in SolidWorks and SolidEdge which are full paremetric history based modellers. As soon as he wants to he will be able to add editability like modifiers.
That would be great 👍🏻
Why wouldn't he want to, from the get-go?
@@imacmill Because he's aiming it at people making assets for films and games, not industrial designers
But he didn't want to...it's a direct modeller, what your saying is completely wrong and muddled thinking. Yes, Parasolid ( clues in the name) has parametric abilities, but never ever has there been any hint of a suggestion that Parameters and history could be built in latter. It started off as a direct modeller, it's not going to change... also, where's the market desire for that anyway.
@TAH1712 I mean I'm only a single person but it's stopping me considering purchasing it. I can't be the only one and I know lots of people that model that prefer a non-destructive workflow where possible for the reasons I have mentioned. I'm not saying he should or "needs" to add it in but I think it lacks an important set of functions without it.
I mostly do SubD modelling for game assets. Plasticity is excellent for that, but the Ngons and topology fix will consume too much time
Thats fair enough. For some uses I imagine it's brilliant. Hopefully I was clear in the video that my opinions are just based on my usage and I gave enough of its positives so that people can see the benefits of Plasticity too.
Plasticity has changed considerably since this video was made and you might just be surprised at what you can now do with booleans etc. I've been 3D modeling for over 30 years and Plasticity is a game changer when it comes to model creation. It's fast and accurate (if you want), but it is lacking as far as rendering and animation are concerned and the documentation is sparse and missing quite a few of the details and tips you can pick up from videos. Hopefully this will change - soon I hope - especially when it comes to new users.
Thats good to know but from what I understand the destructive nature is still there. Also that partially highlights one of my other issues, if I want to get these changes this basically becomes a yearly subscription to be able to use the program... I have no issue with that but I wish they would just be more up front about it.
I will have to have another look at it at some point.
Very interesting, but I don't understand, in Plasticity I can work in modeling with precision like a CAD, how can I do the same thing with Blender?
This isn't meant to be a criticism, I simply need a smart alternative to Sketchup and Plasticity combined with Blender seemed like the best choice.
The possibility of integrating everything into Blender would be ideal, also considering addons like Mesh Machine and Fluent would be perfect.
There's lots of ways to do that in Blender. Most functions can have distances typed in or you can set specific sizes. There is also an addon called Construction Lines (and another called CAD Modeler, though I haven't used the second one much) that allows you a CAD like interface which can take that further. Below are a few videos I have done on getting specific sizes and then Construction Lines:
Models to specific sizes: ruclips.net/video/s3ieJwBHcI4/видео.htmlsi=5soxsjSFeWQiiapm
Construction Lines: ruclips.net/video/4Djrhj64kS8/видео.htmlsi=MF1pFt7Q90ZG9RD1
See what you think. But if you prefer the interface of Plasticity then use that, this is just my opinion based on my uses so the negatives of Plasticity for me may not impact you.
@@ArtisansofVaul Seriously!!! Construction Lines is exactly what I was looking for, I don't understand why it has been available for years and it's almost difficult to find information about it.
Your channel is amazing, a Swiss army knife for my hobbies, looks great for getting started with Blender!!
@ilKamuTube 😁 Glad to be able to help. To be fair it's been in beta testing for a while so that might be why. I find it really handy for when I'm trying to create objects at specific sizes and doing things like creating arcs.
@@ArtisansofVaul Solidworks, Rhinoceros, Fusion 360 and so on have been around for a long time, special programs for CAD modeling. So I don't understand why many people still do it in Blender? Blender is convenient to some extent, but for people who work in mechanical engineering or jewelry, accuracy is important.
@TPI-du9mn Blender can be just as accurate as any of those programs in terms of size/ dimensions. What it's lacking in comparison of the constraints you can quickly add to CAD programs.
So it's good for creating concepts quickly but little else?
I've seen people making amazing things on it. But for my purposes it just doesn't so what I need. 👍🏻
Now that Plasticity has the Blender bridge, do you think it's better now that you can switch between the two in real time?
Without spending lots of time looking at it I don't think it would be fair to comment on it. But from what I have read it doesn't resolve any of my issues with how it deals with the ngon conversion. But (and its a big "but") that is just because I use Blender for design for 3D printing. If someone doesn't this probably makes little or no difference to them and they won't have any issues with that part of my issue with Plasticity. So if you're not using it for that specific person you really shouldn't let my opinion on that hold you back.
Plasticity is now $150 for indy although that now includes the updates for 12 months. Looks like the licensed solver they are using is pricey.
I still agree, it doesn't do enough yet for me to drop in when I already have several hard surface addons. Maybe around 2.0.
Ouch so a 50% mark up. Damn. Do those updates include into version 2 if it comes in the 12 months? And yeah, hopefully in time it will be where I would want it to be for that price.
@@ArtisansofVaul Indeed. The price does include a major update if it occurs within the 12 months. Per the website: "All updates included for 12 months, including major releases". Also I misspoke, Indy is priced at $149.
Now with taxes Indie is for 183,27 USD , that is crazy. What is lowest price for home use (not commercial) . For homer as I see I can use only for 30 days , where Fusio360 is still for free. @@disruptive_innovator
MOI 3D?
I've never had a chance to use it. You like it?
@@ArtisansofVaul I've not use yet but is an older CAD Artist software
@@pieralessi7426 Ah, cool.
@@pieralessi7426I use Moi3d and Plasticity together.
The destructive workflow is why I don’t use it; however, if they add “design history” like Fusion 360, this will be a no-brainer for me.
Agreed, it would resolve one of the major issues for me.
This, after using Plasticity and enjoying it, it is one of the main reasons I am back to FreeCAD, more precisely Ondsel version of FreeCAD.
Plasticity is semi destructive. You can move cut faces or very quickly rebuild a cut by just dragging a face back and it will rebuild. If you’ve kept your tool object you can move and re cut.
I’ve not really seen videos on this but essentially the objects all still exists and all the Boolean cuts do is essentially add a mask. And that mask can be moved and edited.
Good points. It's just a bit longer winded than just moving the original and it still booleaning from its new position. I assume you could do the same with a radial array and delete the other objects and re-radial array.
Plasticity may look good but when you dive into it more deeply you start to see it's shortcomings as you have pointed out. Also it is only a modeller whereas Blender does so much more than this. Animation, rigging, sculpting, 3D printing etc etc. and of course Blender is free and constantly improving. It may be quicker to do certain things but speed isn't everything and for me at least Blender is still king.
I obviously agree, Blender is awesome. I think Plasticity does have a lot going for it but at the moment it seems to need more work.
This is not about Plasticity vs. Blender. This is more a addition as a modeling tool. The developer is also a Blender user and is currently building a Blender Bidge for Plasticity where the model you are working on is updated live in Blender. I think this is a hell of a combo especially for a hard surface workflow.
@MrDigitalWorks I am aware and mention it in the video. I'm assuming you didn't actually watch the video and just reacted to it, which is fine of course time is precious, you just might want to see why I am saying this as I don't dislike it as a program, there are just things I think meed working out.
@@ArtisansofVaul This was more a response to BlueJohn 😉
@MrDigitalWorks Sorry my man. I saw this on my phone as a pop-up and it didn't show it was a reply to someone else's comment. I should have known better than to not actually double check 🤦 My bad.
You can go as dense as you want when exporting in Plasticity.
At 3:50 You say that you'd have to delete the object or undo, also not true because you can just select any detail you don't want and delete it, just like removing fillets after applying them.
But you can't just change the amount in the array or move a boolean without undoing it/deleting it. That's more the point I was making.
I'm happy if I'm wrong about the first point but can't you only take the density up to 1? I've not seen anything showing it going further than that?
@@ArtisansofVaul The "Density" part says that It's an easy to use slider when hovering over it. Enabling min and max width allows for as fine detail as needed. This is why for me, Plasticity replaced Sub-D hard surface modeling, which I had to use for 3D printing to get a smooth print.
@Ridi_MB Good to know, thanks man. If they just sort the Ngon issue that's me happy with that element. Do they have that as one of the options as looking over the videos of Plasticity I can't see it....
@@ArtisansofVaul 5:58 two unticked boxes at the top of the export menu, if that's what you meant. Yes the topology with ngons is weird but it has never been an issue for me when 3D printing or rendering. I've never had any slicing issues that you were talking about in the video. Exporting an STL for printing will triangulate your model anyway so you could just export in quads or tris to not cause any unnecessary steps.
@@Ridi_MB It's more the issue that I can't then bring it into blender with this issues and not having fix them, and that would take more time than just having made the object in Blender in the first place.
Plasticity also does not support a 3d mouse, and I had a lot of trouble navigating around; it could have been more responsive. I removed the 3d connexion driver and still had worse navigation than any videos I watched. I will wait for it to grow up before looking back to it.
Cheers, I didn't know that and I'm sure that's very useful info for people.
I'm still to use a 3D mouse. I'd love to try one but I haven't found a place to try before I buy and it's quite expensive to go straight in for one. Do you find it helps/speeds up your modelling?
I would argue that the array tool in plasticity is better than Blenders. I like being able to set the position of the last item in the array and then fill in the space between with as many copies as I like. I wish they had this in Blender!
I can't disagree with that functionality being great, especially with snapping.
There is a paid for add on in Blender that can do that (it can also multiply it forward as well) which gives the best of both worlds.
@@ArtisansofVaul which addon is that? I thought I had everything! 🤣🤣
@Perchpole It's one of the awesome functions in Construction Lines, it's even been updated so now the way it works is to create linked objects so you can do even more with it.
I've got an updated video here: ruclips.net/video/05OXefE5xr4/видео.html
@@Perchpole Doesn't hard ops do that?
@@floyd1411 No. It's just the same as the Blender linear array. The radial array is much better though.
I was going to grab Plasticity but noticed the price jumped to $150 and that is a bit too much. It is starting to approach Moi 3D price territory and to me for the price Moi 3D is a far more feature rich piece of kit, albeit more complex.
Yeah it's starting to hit a little hard in the wallet.
While Plasticity may be a good tool, after watching numerous positive videos, I am a bit suspicious about sponsored content. This video is not one of them :)
@ozgur284 I know what you mean. Things like that are always a concern on RUclips. Personally I always try to give a fair review and try to point out at least one positive and one negative about a product, be it physical or software/addon. I do think it's a good tool but it needs to do what you're looking for and for me this doesn't (yet).
I agree about the mesh density in export.
Hopefully it will be an easy fix. Apparently you can set the max distance between points to be lower in the fine menu which will help. Its the points not always lining up that concerns me more personally.
@@ArtisansofVaul yes I use same method too!
I think you're missing the point on the destructive vs non-destructive workflow. Both have their place. It's like saying you wished Zbrush would be non-destructive. Plasticity is more of a companion rather than a competitor. I also enjoy the ease of modelling of plasticity and not having to solve a puzzle with verts and shading every time I try to cut or add something.
I mean I'm not really missing the point if it's a functionality that I need/want. If others don't need it that's all good but personally its a priority (and I say that in the video, many will not care about it). The other issue is until they sort out the exporting issue I mentioned it isn't a very suitable "companion" for 3D printing design (again that's my needs, for those that want it for another purpose that again may not be a bother). I did try to make that clear in the video but if that didn't come across then maybe I didn't push enough with that, thought it felt I was being pretty repetitive saying it again and again.
I do agree that there's some big positives for the nurbs based modelling as you have said, it's just that (again for me) the other problems outweigh that positive by quite some way.
@@ArtisansofVaul Ture. Exporting is something we've been talking quite a bit about in the Plasticity discord. There's even a channel for 3D printing. Definitely somethings to work on but it's still a young software. Plenty of things to come.
@SkintSNIPER262 👍🏻 I don't doubt there's a lot of great stuff to come. Totally agree it's a young software, I think that's probably the big point of this video. I can see me using it in the future as its off to a great start... But I'm not going to spend $99 on something that may well not have that functionality in version 1.X and then I have to pay again. Maybe the title of the video should have been "Why I don't use Plasticity yet." 😅
@@ArtisansofVaul Yeah. I see a lot of people comparing Blender vs Plasticity when they're very different programs. And the dev himself, Nick said he's sees them more as companions rather than competitors. It's definitely fun to make organic esque designs in Blender than bring it into Plasticity for more hard surface stuff.
Honestly i will use plasticity over blender any day because its not an overbloated piece of hot garbage. Take my model into zbrush if i need for final adjustments. But ya, Blender has way too much junk going on, i want a clean and quick workflow.
😂
I fully get what you mean. I think it boils down to the level of work ones does.
Actually this happens in all nurbs software that the edges of adjacent faces are not line up when exporting it to mesh. However, you can purchase quad remesher for blender to further work on that model in blender. I think the 3d printing directly from plasticity will not have any issues.
This way you have flexible option to do work in cad and mesh together.
I dream of something like Plasticity to blender live bridge and some sort of modifier to do retopology (already in 3ds max)
The bridge idea is awesome. So clever. Good to hear quad remesher should be able to fix the issue, I do need to buy that add on at some point.
@matsy7450 I haven't tried quad remesher yet but it's on my list as it does look really handy. I thought you can change the density of the mesh you create on that add on though? Or does it break down if you go too low?
I found Blender impossibly difficult to use. I don't have the time to attend a 4 year university-grade education just to add texture to a model I want to print. I tried but it was just not intuitive enough. Plasticity is much more intuitive. Mho
Glad youve found something you find intuitive. I have to say I found it the other way around and Blender more intuitive than Plasticity. But I guess it will depend person to person
Damn I hope they improve this.
I was thinking about using it for jewel design.. when modelling precise nurbs parts like the a ring.. but if the subdiv detaling can't go too dense..and if a exported object isn't manifold watertight then it's a problem..
Because hard surfacing curved models with precise scaling is something better in rhinoceros.. fusion 360, etc..
And I also thought it was non destructive...
In some ways it could feel non-destructive. Like the bevels on edges are really easy to swap later because its maths based (though you can do the same in Blender with the Mesh Machine add-on). Its more the booleans that aren't.
@@ArtisansofVaul there's also the "keep tools" on bolleans interactions by pressing T.. from a tutorial that I've seen. "Ghost booleans"
@wildguardian Oh that's cool. I hadn't seen that and that would be really useful. So that allows you to then move the boolean placement or change its size/shape? If that also works with the radial array that's a good thing to know.
@@ArtisansofVaul I'm not sure since I haven't installed it yet... I'm just studying the app.. before commiting to a purchase or to lose the trial time period. But from what I have read about arrays being editable, the answer I found was:
"Once you commit to the Boolean the "cutters" are no longer there. SO very different from MeshFusion or MOP Booleans. You could keep a duplicate before cutting tho."
@wildguardian Sounds like you've got a sensible approach. For me this is something that's just not what I want in a program, I want those options later as well. But if it doesn't bother you the program does look pretty good. Personally I'll be waiting until I see what happens with version 2.
And the code for one button bloom and lens distortion for cycles of course 😅
Haha. I can't say I do a lot of rendering (just 3D design for 3D printing) but some of scenes I see people are making on Blender are just unbelievable
@@ArtisansofVaul no doubts, no limits😅
Okay, what I heard you say is that there may be problems with Plasticity producing 3D prints? I am looking for a 3D software to build Models compatible with my Die Cast model vehicles. I see it has been ten months since this video was posted. None of the comments are from 2024, so I hope you are still watching the comments. The last time I used CAD software was a few decades ago. At that it was architecturally oriented. High end good stuff, but still, a far cry from what is being done now. So, I was rather hoping you could point me in the right direction. I looked at Plasticity and it looked like just the ticket. But maybe not?
Oh, one more thing: I was wondering if 2D photographs could be imported into these programmes and used as a baseline for the model?
Ah, changed how this is sorting comments and am seeing much more recent comments.
Aaaaand another edit: Reading the comments I wonder if I have to be a mathematical genus to use these softwares? 🤔 No, I never took Geometry or trig. Will I be able to 'get' these? Also, I noticed in your displays everything was metric. Is SAE available as well?
So I wouldn't say youd need to be a mathematical genius. Some basic maths will help at points but nothing difficult at all.
Im sure you will be able to bring in photos to use as a modelling tool, its pretty standard in most software as it's very helpful for getting sizes and proportions right.
I think you will find Plasticity capable for what you want to do. I don't know if it will be the best software for it for you, but this is because it largely depends on how you like to work (your workflow) and what feels natural for you. I would really suggest watching some videos of people modelling with it, it should give you an idea of how much it "makes sense" to you as a modelling program and thats really important.
@ArtisansofVaul it is balanced. I find some people here overly aggresive/defending. As if you may not have your own use cases/experiences.. ^^::..
You explained everything very clearly and objective.
I also want non destructive flow. But its not comming if you read the plasticity feature request topic about it. Due to special parasolid siemens kernel license agreement. It also states plasticity may not compete with legacy cad apps. And it turn the license will be attactive..
This is a major concern. Combined with no road map it means the future and possible paths are limited and your investment thus a gamble. What are other features are forbidden that might "compete" with legacy apps one might wonder. So be enthusiastic with caution imo.
Thanks man and good info about them not exploring the non-destructive workflow, it's good to let people know.
Plasticity is only in the initial phase of development (v1.2), I think that when Plasticity v13 comes, you will forget about Blender....🙂🙃🙂
That may be true. But others have said they have no interest in non-destructive modelling and if it costs $100 for each version (as it currently looks like it will) that will have cost me $1300. I'll pass on that until it gets there in that case. 😅
why not both?
That would be ideal. The issue is with the ngon exporter not lining up edges (as explained towards the end) it makes them pretty incompatible, at least for my use (3D printing design).
Pricing got updated, it's 150 bucks now.
But you get all updates for 12 month and the Blender bridge.
This should address a lot of misgivings.
He is listening to feedback.
That should help a lot of people. For me without the ngon issue being sorted I'm out. Bit for others that great.
@@ArtisansofVaul 🤷♂ Young software.
Will get sorted out eventually.
I'm more curios about the pricing next year.
If he has a reasonable "renewal" price he could be on to something.
And he should up the Studio to 24 month updates.
Mainly to make it more attractive for individuals.
At that price point it's a no brainer for Studios anyways and just vanishes in the normal expenses.
@DerSolinski It was said by someone that the renewal cost will be the same as the cost (so $149 now) which seems rather steep to me. But that was said in a comment and I can't vouch for it being accurate.
@@ArtisansofVaul That would be a rather unwise move...
I guess will see.
My main interest in it is for reverse engineering 3D scans.
"Intentional" software for that begins at 4 digits which is completely out of scope for me.
"Rough cutting" a STEP file and post processing in a mechanical CAD software seems to be a good compromise.
@@DerSolinski Yeah I agree. I've just looked at the site and it does say that the costing will be the same as the original Indie license. It also doesnt mention there the support for 12 months including major updates (unless they haven't updated it there). EDIT: Sorry it does in the top boxes but not the text later, looks like they do need to update it. Still thats a hefty cost to continue after a year and soon adds up.
Im looking here:
www.plasticity.xyz/#pricing
Why not just use Fusion 360 which is free for hobbyists? It took me years to understand that Blender isn't made for engineering or mechanical parts and I wish somebody told me this at the beginning.
Because I sell a lot of my models so it wouldn't be free in that instance. Also for my purposes Blender has all the detailing and sizing that I need without huge payments. But for people just looking to model for hobby it's good it's free 👍🏻
@@ArtisansofVaul Yes, it stops being free if you sell and exceed some income. But you mentioned students or similar, for them Fusion is perfect.
@@arekkazmierowski9657 Definitely true for students. The issue is learning something that when they do come time to use it they are then going to have a hefty yearly fee to use it. But I do agree its great its offered for free for students.
Everyone frames Plasticity as only a one time purchase, however you only get 12 months of updates for the price you pay. I suppose that is better than purchasing one fixed version like the old days of Adobe, etc. but the wording on the site is subtly written to incentivize you to subscribe to the program's development.
Yeah I did feel that was a little bit more hidden than I feel it should be and becomes worryingly like a quite pricey subscription. I guess if you're happy staying with version 1 then it's fine 🤷 I'm not sure I would be
@@ArtisansofVaul For sure. I think that there will be plenty of people who will find that a certain version of Plasticity fills all their needs for their workflow and not need to pay again for future updates. That being said, Blender has improved quite a lot over the years, all while being FOSS. I suppose at least we get the choice to stick with a certain version, watch it progress, and choose if we want to upgrade. As a cheapskate though, the FOSS part of Blender is what will make me stick with it.
If you’re smart, you’ll use both! You can’t find any good CAD software at this price level. The amount of time put into coding this piece of software, along with other expenses like using state-of-the-art technology when it comes to kernels, must be compensated in some way. Plasticity is not funded; I’m sure Nick’s efforts are worth the dollars. To everyone reading this: make sure you take the studio version 👌
That would be idea. The issue with that (as covered in the video) is that unless something had changed the exporting of ngons just doesn't create the geometry needed for 3D modelling (for 3D printing). It would take much more time sorting that out than the little bit of extra time needed in Blender to create those filleted shapes.
@@ArtisansofVaul STL uses only tris so you could just export as tris only, no problem with that. The ngon workflow is for artists/ retopology...
@rayly7291 Except there are a lot of things that Blender does vastly better, where as plasticity is better for the main shape. So you want to turn it to Ngons to make it more efficient to bring it into Blender. If you can't do that I save more time working through the basic shape in Blender than I do making the object in plasticity and then having to sort out the topology as I bring it into Blender. No point spending $149 a year to give myself more work.
@@ArtisansofVaul Ok i can see your point with that type of workflow. Personally i would only use it for hard surface stuff, so i wouldn't need Blender after the file export.
@rayly7291 That's understandable. Hopefully I was clear in the video this was based on my usage of Blender. It's up to people individually to decide if each element matters much for them.
I agree. I will take non-destructive over destructive any day. Not even going to try Plasticity at all. I prefer the many options in Blender. Yeah, there is more to learn, but it is more powerful. I would rather have plenty of nice tools, then being limited because of the lack of tools. There is more freedom when you have more tools available. Just try to build a house with ONLY a hammer.
Yeah, I agree. I think many people will prefer plasticity but when you have the right mindset to go further and take the "long road" I think you'd be better off.
Well made points. The version 1.x gamble is definitely not a feel good play
I feel the same. It just seemed an odd way to play it, especially when they repeatedly said its not a subscription, but it feels a LOT like a subscription to me....
The Blender Bridge is great for Blender user.
Yeah, when that's up and running that will be really powerful
Ive been diving into the software, being able to purchase the license is pretty cool. The software sucks for me. I use Shapr3d and it seems like this is trying to be that but insists on keyboard commands for most things. And its super unintuitive on certain thing. Ive grown to dislike it, I design useable items and it just takes way longer on Plasticity than Shapr.
And Shapr is currently working out a beta for history based modeling.
Plasticity is a cute science project to create for a programmer.
My personal speculation.
I haven't heard much about Shapr3D, is it expensive? I think the focus on keyboard commands is the emulation of a Blender type workflow, which some will like and some won't.
Thanks for the thoughts 👍🏻😁
Use what works for you. All good.
Exactly 👌🏼
I laugh about the turning your nose up about prices. I have been using graphics for a very long time. My first graphics was CADAM. I was a cnc programmer and one seat with programming option (and it was only 2d) was 60,000.00 back in the late 80's-90's. Oh man I am old.
Haha. I mean in comparison that's a fair point but I just dislike the lack of clarity about the pricing (or what I feel is a lack of clarity)
It's $149 now. Did they change it to give you more for your money or just raised the price?
Good question. The price seems to be going up pretty fast....
@@ArtisansofVaul I'm passing on it. I tried it and it was not intuitive at all for me. I use OnShape, which is free if you don't mind OnShape owning your models. But it's a lot more complicated than my favorite program, Tinkercad. What I am really looking for is a more powerful Tinkercad.