Cineversity

I made a robot arm using the volume builder and it made quick work of some complex modeling (see attached). The only issue involves what looks like an anti-aliasing artifact. The arm is tapered from wide at the top to narrow at the bottom. This taper creates “jaggies” in volume builder and is expressed as “stair steps” in the final mesh. Because of how uniform the artifact appears, I assume it’s due to a setting related to something in the voxel calculator. I have clicked every button I can find, but it doesn’t change the number stair steps. I figure it’s an easy click once I know the secret handshake.

Or is this just a limitation of using voxels to build mechanical devices? In Athanasios Pozantzis’ superb overview he showed a model carburetor made by Glen Johnson that looks fantastic (though I notice it has no angular diversions - everything offset in 90-degree increments). So at least some mechanical devices come out OK.

I would send the model file but Cineversity is rejecting my ZIP file’s MIME type. Maybe because I’m on a Mac? Is there another compression option you can recommend?

Hi mford610,

Sorry about the mime stuff, it is pretty annoying. (I have send you an upload link) No idea what causes the problem. I have tried other compressors, no luck. My suggestion: Drop Box, Amazon or Google is my only one I use here. I avoid other clouds, as I have no idea what they do when I up or download stuff. Since “we” give access to our disks while using it, it is just not worth it to take any risks. Burnt fingers. I use a free Drop Box account for uploads here, and clean it out quickly, which works great and was from one admin way back in time suggested as the mani exchange option.

The Threshold should be very low, I have not created a lot of models with anything above 0.1%. Sometimes the Threshold can be 1% but it doesn’t seems to be a rule of thumb to go that high.
The Voxel size is certainly a factor in it, the smooth settings as well, and of course, try the Smooth Deformer on top of it.

All the best

I just got the file, mford610.

I added a “Smooth Layer” and the “Smoothing Deformer” on it. The latter is a quick fix, and so far a tiny little bit faster than to filter the Voxels, but that is perhaps an subjective impression.

Please keep in mind that the Smooth Layer has the option to use “Fields”. With those Fields you can get localized smoothing calculations, without having the whole model treated.

Since it is model dependent, it needs an evaluation what might work best, speaking about the Filter settings of the Smooth Layer. 
Athanasios Pozantzis [Noseman] hinted that there is more in work, so please stay tuned. It will be certainly worth your time.

Here is your arm back
https://www.amazon.com/clouddrive/share/Z6J49ZKwXQ3FJNj6T6EMTJLiX2dbnTlih8CTaovDkZ5

All the best

Excellent! Yes, the smooth layer resolves the issues. Very good. I figured it was something fundamental like that. Everything else was working so well it had to be a user error. Thank you!

You’re very welcome, mford610, thanks for taking the time to reply.

I guess soon we will all use Volume as it was there since ever, it is just fun to use.

Have a great weekend