Hello, I recently encountered a 2022 research paper and it’s Youtube demonstration titled “Interactive & Robust Mesh Booleans” (Please see attached link and video) and have been quite impressed with the results. There have been other advances in real-time mesh boolean since then. I’ve been using rhino grasshopper to do volumetric mesh modeling related to Civil Modeling and the problems I often encounter when I use Mesh Boolean operations is that it often fails and is very SLOW. Painfully slow. The closest I’ve been able to models as fast as I wish through Voxel plugins like (Dendro & Octree) How long until Rhino can implement this technology, if possible? This is such a leap in performance that it’s extremely compelling. If I’m not mistaken, the software Mesh Inspector has implemented this tech. Also, autodesk maya has implemented real-time boolean operations.
There was such a development with Rhino 8 WIP, it seems it was postponed for Rhino 9.
There are nice demonstrations of real-time boolean operations here on the forum, look for them.
Thanks Inju. Can you cite me the page where this is discussed? I’ve been researching fast mesh booleans for a long time but haven’t come across it. Also, @scottd, any updates on what @inju said about interactive booleans?
@DanielPiker Hi, daniel. I tried to look up on this and I have encountered your Subd Fuse integration, and it was very FAST. Do you have anything similar to Interactive Mesh Booleans? With lots of triangles?
The SubD Fuse work is fast because the control polygons it is operating on are very simple meshes with only a few hundred faces.
Interactive booleans on meshes with 10s of thousands of faces like in that SIGGRAPH paper are a whole different thing.
There’s also an important distinction between exact mesh booleans(like shown in the first video you link) and voxel based booleans.
The former will keep all the detail and triangulation, whereas when you convert from mesh to voxel, then boolean, then convert back to mesh you’ll always lose some detail and sharpness and completely change the triangulation.
Hello @attheeast18
I agree with you. Rhino 8 has improved reliability but it is quite slow. Shrinkwrap is very fast to make offset and I find the results better than Dendro. But except merging /unioning and off-setting it lacks the other boolean operation that Dendro is offering.
Hi, Daniel. Thanks for the reply. What can we expect in the coming releases then? Is it so too far off? And lastly, what approach can you recommend to really make booleans fast? Especially in grasshopper
