Title
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A Different Perspective on Booleans
Category
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Modeling
Abstract
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Tools are just tools; they’re meant to be used.
Introduction
🫢 Booleans turned into a taboo because some artists believe that they cause problems and require clean-up. Some artists also claim that booleans are cheating and beginners should avoid them.
💬 Booleans are just tools like any other tool in a software. It’s dogmatic and inefficient to avoid using booleans.
Figure 1: N-gons and shading artifacts around intersection.
🪨 According to dogmatic artists, modeling should be done manually by cutting geo, moving vertices around, extruding etc. This essentially does the same thing with boolean operation, but in a caveman way. Manual approaches are not only a very big waste of time, but also very imprecise.
Figure 2: Inaccurate cylinder. Protruding/indent vertices.
Figure 3: Too slow.
Booleans
⚜️ In 3D, booleans are just tools used for manipulating geometry using other geometry. Boolean operations are fast, powerful, precise and usually non-destructive.
Figure 4: https://pymesh.readthedocs.io/en/latest/mesh_boolean.html
🔧 If a boolean operation results in bad topology, it is usually a result of inconsistent geo density and mismatching edges. Lacking principles of modeling or rushing blockout stage is the root cause of n-gons and messy topology. A good blockout with consistent geo density and matching segments will subdivide fine.
Figure 5: Matching segments.
Figure 6: Blockout meshes joined via a boolean operation.
Conclusion
🔨 Tools are meant to be used. It’s best to be open to all tools and new ideas for improving and being efficient. Don’t limit yourself because someone said so. Utilize boolean operations in your workflow for fast and good results.
Pass the word. 🗣️
Teacher’s Archives — March 2024