SDF -- The Future of 3D Modelling?

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So sad that dreams was never a public PC application. It is one of the most impressive apps I have ever seen.

I see a few comments here claiming that «Metaballs» and «SDF» is «the same thing». However, in the original «Metaballs» paper by Blinn, called «A Generalization of Algebraic Surface Drawing», he used an Algebraic method to calculate intersections between a ray and a shape directly. SDFs uses a Geometric method; an iterative approach, which is a bit less optimized, but much easier to work with when constructing more complex shapes. The original SDF paper was called «Sphere tracing: a geometric method for the antialiased ray tracing of implicit surfaces» and was written by Hart. Both papers are amazing; I can highly recommend them.

I can say as someone who sculpted religiously on dreams VR when I had my PS4 it feels fantastic and is very intuitive to use. I honestly think it’s the best implementation of 3d modelling I’ve ever seen.

Another Dreams user wanting for a good SDF app for PC. It's so different and feels so good ...

Dreams did use the SDF Method for modeling, but I believe the models we're saved as point clouds. That's why it wasn't easy to export or import models from other applications.

That Sony shut down Dreams was a very stupid decision.

SDFs are also the foundation of unreal engine's lumen.

So it's kinda mix of boolean and metaballs?

Love your video man! I'm making a video game called Hard Chip (on steam), where you build huge semiconductor chip. It uses SDF with a raymarching algo and voxel to split the render into discreet cells (and with Monogame/C#!). Like you said SDF is old, and various implementation/use cases exist. My two cents on the topic from my own experience: SDF has major drawbacks and major advantages. If you don't play into its strengths, it’ll be a huge pain. So it’s hard for people to use it because you have to understand what it is good at first. If you use it for something for what it is inefficient. You’ll get poor results and then it’s easy to just discard it and forget about it. It’s not a good all round solution. But when you play into its strengths, that’s really game changer! For Hard Chip, it allows the game’s circuits to scale like crazy, without having to resort on cube like aesthetic.

You can also create SDFs in Material Maker

Wow, I did not know Media Molecule was using this!!!

Modeler was Oculus Medium and Facebook sold it, because they didn’t know what they had.

It's not the future simply because creating meshes in Blender will always be faster for someone who is good at it. It's cool tech for those who can't though.

that's awesome! I was hoping for something like dreams to come to PC, didn't know this kinda technology was called SDF. Always liked the more organic kinda look you would get from dreams models compared to blender

Super interesting video. Thank you for that. I'm getting more and more annoyed with modeling in Max and Blender. Clavicula will be tried out right away.

I remember you covering Neobarok once and you said it was weird then! Nice to see your pronunciation of "weird" has changed almost exponentially with its weirdness. 🤓

omg, thank you for mentioning Dreams <3

One thing I like about SDFs is that you don't need the world space mesh conversion until the very end (if you want to use the model later in traditional 3D software). Instead, what you see on screen can be splats or adaptative mesh or raymarching or whatever, essentially having infinite resolution for curved surfaces. Mudbun or Clayxels for Unity come to mind.

What is up with conjureSDF pricing? just have one final price of a finished product, so strange