
Show HN: Cross-platform open-source 3D modeling software - huxingyi
https://dust3d.org/
======
tezza
Does this use the same coordinate space[1] as Maya , or does it use the same
coordinate space as Blender ?

Blender has no end of hidden trouble importing to Unity because Unity chose to
be the same as Maya

[1] [https://blender.stackexchange.com/questions/471/is-it-
possib...](https://blender.stackexchange.com/questions/471/is-it-possible-to-
make-blender-a-y-up-world)

~~~
sneak
TIL.

The fact that gaming and Maya use one (Y-up) and that CAD and Blender use
another (Z-up) brings the classic xkcd to mind.

[https://xkcd.com/927/](https://xkcd.com/927/)

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swsieber
The fact that there are only 2 makes me think that it doesn't apply though. I
just hope nobody trise to go make a third.

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TeMPOraL
There are also left-handed and right-handed coordinate systems...

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pzone
This is correct. Most CG and 3d software (Max, Maya, Blender, CAD) uses a
right handed coordinate system, which matches the convention in physics,
however they vary in their choice of Y up or Z up. Video games almost always
use a left-handed coordinate system with Y up. This is because DirectX and
OpenGL chose to represent pixels on-screen with (X,Y) coordinates with the Z
coordinate increasing as rays extend from the eye outward.

~~~
swsieber
Wow, I had no idea it was so varied

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TeMPOraL
To add to the confusion, while in both OpenGL and DirectX treat Z axis as
depth, DirectX uses a left-handed coordinate system, while OpenGL uses
mostly[0] right-handed one.

\--

[0] - [https://stackoverflow.com/questions/4124041/is-opengl-
coordi...](https://stackoverflow.com/questions/4124041/is-opengl-coordinate-
system-left-handed-or-right-handed)

~~~
blattimwind
OpenGL-the-interface is kinda neither (screenspace aside), since the
application supplies/does all transformations (glFrustum and friends are long
deprecated).

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xyproto
It looks great, but imagine the name of the software being "Moron3D". That is
the reality for every native Norwegian speaker, since "dust" means "moron" in
Norwegian. I don't mean this in a petty way, it's just hard to ignore, for me.

In related news, Honda tried to launch a car in Norway a couple of years back
named "Honda Fitta" which roughly translates to "Honda the Cunt". The tagline
was: "Fitta is small inside, but grand when you get in. A daily pleasure!"

They quickly changed the name to just "Honda Jazz" instead.

~~~
foobarbecue
Same problem with the Chevy Nova selling in spanish-speaking countries. (No
va: doesn't go.)

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fenomas
This is an urban legend.

[https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/chevrolet-nova-name-
spanis...](https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/chevrolet-nova-name-spanish/)

~~~
foobarbecue
Oops. Thanks for pointing it out!

------
bredren
Curious to see how this performs against fusion 360. Autocorrect has gotten
real aggressive on pricing and licenses of late.

Also fusion forces you to save to autocad’s cloud and they inspect your
designs for hints you’re using it for non hobby stuff.

~~~
avhon1
Another simple libre CAD program is SolveSpace. It works more like Autodesk
Inventor - you draw 2D sketches, pull them into 3D in different ways, repeat,
and add constraints to features along the way. Very good for the
dimensionally-accurate stuff people model in Fusion360. (Nearly useless, I
might add, for organic stuff like the mosquito in the Dust video.)

[http://solvespace.com/index.pl](http://solvespace.com/index.pl)

~~~
bredren
Thanks for this. The 2d sketches to 3d is what I do with Fusion, and allows
you to build nice 2d spec sheets as well. I will have a look.

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gfodor
This is really, really cool. In 5 minutes I was able to create a quick little
palm tree (I am not an artist, it is very ugly :)) and throw it into a room in
Hubs since Dust3D exports GLB. These kind of low poly, texture-oriented models
are really excellent for VR since you have limited budgets. Nice work!

~~~
huxingyi
Thanks, I am really happy to hear that it can work with VR.

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myrloc
The "just have a reference photo" approach really appeals to me as someone who
has never been great at sketching from scratch. I'm going to give this a go
for creating custom assets for some little mixed reality projects.

~~~
microcolonel
If you have any more than zero experience modelling, Blender offers this and a
great number of other tools for modelling, rigging, and animation.

Also, Blender is coming up on a big release which should make it a lot simpler
for newcomers to get started. If you are willing to save often, you could just
start with the 2.8 Beta now, and you won't have to do any adjusting when it
comes out as stable.

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wolframhempel
Looks cool and I love its openness - though I hope I'm forgiven for saying
that the examples, especially the guitar, doesn't quite look up to
professional standards.

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huxingyi
Oh, no, that guitar is my favorite :-( The main focus of this software is the
modeling speed, for example, that guitar only took less than five minutes. So
I can make more game asset as an indie. Actually, the model made recently is
already looks far better than several months ago I made, I will keep improving
the mesh generating quality of the algorithm. Thanks!

~~~
smcameron
It's got some flaws, but for say, Ludum Dare, it's super cool to create assets
quickly. I have been using OpenSCAD for the purpose of quickly creating
models.

Can Dust3d import STL files? Can it export wavefront OBJ? (or, I suppose I
could import to blender, then export to OBJ). UV unwrapping is something I
have not so far been able to conquer. If Dust3d can import STL or OBJ and make
the UV unwrapping easy, I will probably use it.

Edit: I see at 21:50 in this video, it can export OBJs.
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wQerDObDjOs&t=21m50s](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wQerDObDjOs&t=21m50s)

~~~
huxingyi
Hi, thanks, currently support glb, fbx obj export, but without import
supports, may be add in the future.

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rstrduck
Great concept! As a time-starved hobby game dev, the focus on being able to
make something quickly from a reference image is really refreshing, in
comparison with the more common design approach geared toward those with deep,
well-practiced polygonal modeling skills. I like the direction your interface
is going in. I love the Skin Modifier in Blender, but the workflow for that
does feel a bit tedious, so I like the click-to-add-node approach. I also
appreciate being able to move the rendered view around the window and scale it
as desired.

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ArtWomb
Awesome. Thanks for supporting glTF export right out of the box. Will run some
test rendering to WebGL canvas and provide further feedback directly via
github ;)

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Joeboy
This looks a bit like (but also slightly different from) modeling with
metaballs in Blender.

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kjullien
Does this play nicely with 3D printing like Fusion/Cura does ? Fusion's UX
makes me want to gouge my eyes out. It's almost as if they make it
intentionally hard so that you have to buy a training from them...

~~~
huxingyi
should be ok with 3D printing, because the outcome of Dust3D generated is a
watertight mesh. However, I don't have a 3D printer, cannot try yet.

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mntmn
Awesome! Would this run on OpenGL ES2.0 or OpenGL 2.x? Asking for computers
with mobile chipsets like Raspberry Pi, i.MX6 etc. I’m looking for an
alternative to Blender.

~~~
huxingyi
Thanks, the underlying mesh render use the Qt/QOpenGLWidget, haven't try it
with OpenGL ES2.0 and OpenGL 2.x

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kowdermeister
Congrats on the release and major version milestone.

I'll give it a try to model some weird shaped abstract stuff to make some
generative art.

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mrobot
This might be a stupid question but in the mosquito create video, what are the
blue smudges he draws in the left portion of the image for? What are the blue
lines dragged down in the GIMP? What exactly is going on in that part of the
video?

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huxingyi
Blue smudges! my god, LOL, That is the drawing of the front view of the
mosquito! The blue lines dragged down in the GIMP is the reference line.
Usually, when make reference sheet for Dust3D, the same position in the two
profiles(Front/Side) should sit in the same height(Y coord). This video is a
demonstration of how bad at drawing can still make good 3D model with Dust3D.

~~~
mrobot
Thank you i'm very stupid.

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parfamz
How do you do the cross platform releases? One painful thing about cpp is how
tedius is to cross compile compared to managed languages or the go runtime.
Great work, the product looks really nice.

~~~
huxingyi
Thanks. Yes, it’s painful of manage cpp with different compilers, the cross
platform of Dust3D mainly benefit from Qt.

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micheljansen
Very cool! Did you come up with the interaction patterns yourself or is it
inspired by something else?

I can also imagine using this for quickly prototyping 3D prints. Have you
considered STL export?

~~~
huxingyi
What interaction patterns? You mean the weird combine two profiles in one
window :-) ? That is my idea. The sphere guided mesh generation is based on a
paper: "B-Mesh: A Fast Modeling System for Base Meshes of 3D Articulated
Shapes"

Edit: I am not familiar with STL format, may have a look at it, thanks.

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0xcoffee
I downloaded the beta for windows, clicked around a bit and it crashed. I
noticed there doesn't seem to be any crash reporter. Is there somewhere I can
report this bug?

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huxingyi
Hi, some reported several hours ago, and I have released 1.0.0-beta.4 to fix
it, could you help to verify if it still crash please? Download link for
windows:
[https://github.com/huxingyi/dust3d/releases/download/1.0.0-b...](https://github.com/huxingyi/dust3d/releases/download/1.0.0-beta.4/dust3d-1.0.0-beta.4-x86.zip)

~~~
CrazyPyroLinux
Seems to work ok on Windows 7. (My parents' machine, nonwithstanding my
username ;)

~~~
huxingyi
Thanks for verifying :-)

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criddell
What do you think of CGAL?

Are you using a scene graph for the display?

~~~
huxingyi
> What do you think of CGAL? I am using some function of CGAL in Dust3D, it's
> a great work. However, it doesn't work with iOS and it's license is more
> strict than MIT, may remove it in the future.

> Are you using a scene graph for the display? I am using Qt/QOpenGLWidget for
> display.

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rjplatte
What's your roadmap for new features?

~~~
huxingyi
Thanks for asking, there is a target in my mind that generate highly detailed
mesh but maintained the easy usability. I don't know how far the target is
away. The near roadmap is making this software could be used in the game I am
developing exclusively(Without use other modeler), if something is missing, I
would add it.

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mrobot
I have always wanted something like this.

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dplgk
Does it allow precision input of sizes, quickly like sketchup? I'm looking for
sketchup replacement.

~~~
huxingyi
Input by direct type number of position and radius? Not yet.

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dplgk
In sketchup you can draw something (rectangle, circle, line) and after you
drag and release, you can then just type exact size in iches that you want, it
will resize what you just drew. Makes architectural or woodworking design
extremely fast and easy to work with. Sketchup basically has a monopoly on the
casual woodworking, interior designer crowd because there is not an easy to
use alternative. But the app sucks in so many ways and is way overpriced and
the current company seems to just want to milk it for profits than improve it.
Sketchup users are dying for an alternative.

~~~
huxingyi
Thanks for the info, may have a try to see how Dust3D could benefit from this.

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dddw
looks fun! I'll give it a try

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lostgame
Thank you from the bottom of my heart for making an alternative to one of the
most unfortunately convoluted, beyond unusable pieces of UI/UX garbage on the
planet...(Blender)...what a nightmare to use for even a moment.

~~~
gfodor
This comment is truly shameful. Blender is an amazing open source project
created by volunteers and this kind of mean spirited criticsm is toxic. Your
ignorance about the amazing effort going into 2.8 only adds to it. You should
delete it.

~~~
Joeboy
I think Blender is primarily developed by people who get paid to work on it.

I don't think I'd object to the comment if Blender _actually_ had a bad UI,
but I don't think it does. It just has an unusual UI and a steep initial
learning curve. Clearly many people manage to do amazing work with it.

