oh indeed short term licence. well but thats for studio, if its just for modelling you might get along with the prime version and just buy it. you can interchange nurbs from rhino to C4D via Iges format, never tried the other direction but recently i model more in rhino since i slowly get the hang of how to use NURBS properly… still not a full pro but getting there 
I’m a new Clayoo user, Rhino user since the early 2000s.
First thoughts on Clayoo:
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It absolutely provides extra functionality a relatively easy learning curve, and is much faster and more nimble than trying to use Rhino’s built-in functions to create complex curved surfaces.
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It is buggy. And in some major ways. One thing I advise all users to do is to save multiple copies of any file that you’re working with before using Clayoo’s “convert to NURBs” function. I still haven’t figured out why, but often, after you use this function and then save and close, even if you choose the option to not delete the original clay object, when you re-open, the original object becomes stuck as a mesh and can’t be used as clay anymore. If your backups aren’t set up right or if you don’t set aside a duplicate file just for working in clay, you will lose work.
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While it’s pretty good, it could be a lot better. Clayoo’s in-plugin gumball, for instance, lacks a number of very useful functions that Rhino’s gumball has. You can’t easily relocate the Clayoo Gumball.
You also can’t easily snap clayoo vertices to Rhino objects, which would be extremely useful for working with guide curves, for example. Instead I’ve found myself drawing guide curves and lining up Clayoo vertices with them by eyeball. It’s a pain in the ass, and I don’t quite see why it would be hard to make this function possible. For creating compound curves with fair contours, this kind of thing is essential, without guide curves, doing it by eyeball, you can easily create objects that don’t look wrong on screen but when brought to CNC will have lumps or dents you didn’t foresee. The good news is that you can help avoid this by using the Zebra command in Rhino, which does work on Clayoo objects.
Another annoying bug: Clayoo sometimes creates ghost gumballs that clutter the workspace and that you can’t get rid of without restarting Rhino.
I don’t regret buying Clayoo, but I do hope that 3.0 will integrate better with Rhino and will fix the bugs. And I really don’t get why McNeel is so resistant to putting full fledged SubD in Rhino, native. Are there patent issues? Rhino’s reputation for stability, usability and repeatability are deserved. One would think that if they did implement SubD natively, it’d kick all their competitors’ butts.
Thanks for the detailed update Max3
I only downloaded the demo version and after trying it for a day I was appalled how buggy it was, I’m shocked that companies ship products like this that are not ready to be used in production at all.
[quote=“Max3, post:22, topic:41287”]
And I really don’t get why McNeel is so resistant to putting full fledged SubD in Rhino, native. Are there patent issues?
[/quote] I don’t think so, the reality seems much simpler and straight forward than that: they do not have enough developers to tackle all the pieces of a project like that. And it’s really challenging to find more developers.
If Clayoo solved the stability, display, gumball (use Rhino V6’s one) and snapping issues I think more people would buy it. But it looks to me that since Rafa sold the company the slow development of this product got even worse. I think this is a common problem with most plugging: too small of a market to justify putting more resources to do something right. …this is why my only hope at this point is wait for McNeel to eventually get to solve this problem and in the meantime keep working on Modo. I’m also hopefully that Autodesk can bring a decent solution to Fusion360 based on the faster Pixar SubD smoothing like they did in speedform (instead of only using tsplines) and that they also bring to F360 some of the selection and deformation workflows that Maya now has (pretty decent too as they had to up their game in this area to respond to C4D and Modo).
Yea, thanks for the detailed review. Yikes, sounds like more trouble than it is worth.
While there is certainly an ‘overhead’ issue, back-and-fourth between Rhino and Fusion is quite workable once one gets the hang of it…and further leveraging the strengths of both becomes an asset.
Here’s hoping McNeel finds a way to get its sub-d act together sooner rather than later. In my opinion, do so is the single greatest path to added value, and most pressing addition to v7.
Thank you very much for the review. I have been waiting to hear from someone who uses Clayoo2.
I used Clayoo 1 from its launch pretty much everytime I opened Rhino until about a year ago when I gave up waiting on TDMs...... Rafa and Xaviers… promises and moved to T-Splines.
In Clayoo 1 having Clayoo objects on hidden or locked layers or as locked/hidden objects when you closed a Rhino file could lead them to turning to Mesh on re opening with no ability to reclaim them as Clayoo objects. TDM were aware of this but could not fix it in Clayoo1 as I was told they were busy rewriting the entire code for Clayoo2.
To avoid this, after losing work many times… I made a habit of quarantining my Clayoo objects by periodically exporting them to their own Rhino file.
I set up an alias for this if anyone has a need for it.
!_ClaySelectClayooObjects _Export
At least it sounds like they solved the memory issue where after about 4 hours of work in Clayoo1 it would uses all 16gb of my ram and force a restart…not to mention how slow it would start to make rhino run.
Thanks again for the update. Was hoping for good news but not surprised at this.
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That’s very likely to be the condition that creates my dead clay problem.
And yes, I’ve experienced it slowing rhino down, but only in Clay edit mode. I’d assumed it was because I’m running it on a three year old Mac in Bootcamp. Am I wrong? Is it some kind of a cache problem and not that I’m underpowered?
The upside for me is that it really does what I need it to do for the most part: it makes flowing, contoured curves for contemporary furniture much easier to create and edit than in Rhino’s native tools.
Does that alias just copy paste into my command shortcuts and work as is?
It is Clayoo not the Mac I would think. I am running a 5 year old i7 MBP in Parallels…T-Splines is so much better that Clayoo 1 was. I dread having to open up an old Clayoo file.
If you turn your smoothing down that should speed Clayoo up in Rhino. I used to have smoothing at 2 most of the time as 3 was really slow IIRC Turning it off all together is the fastest way to work as it is in T-Splines also.
Clayoo 2 I was told is all new code so you would hope they would have fixed that lost Clayoo property issue but perhaps not. Exporting out worked around that for me. If I lost a Clayoo object I would just import it back in.
If the memory issue is still there in C2 then you will see your available memory gradually decrease at the bottom of the Rhino GUI. Turning Clayoo off did nothing to release the memory in Clayoo 1…you had to restart. TDM acknowledged this issue on the old Clayoo forums.
Just create a new alias and paste it in. Should work unless they have changed the commands in Clayoo…which I doubt. I have “cox” assigned to call that command in the command line. Assign whatever you find easy to remember.
I really love to work with sud D what option in 360 exists to export to rhino and work with surface and not with meshes?
Some clayoo user knows if it have a command like pull points in t-splines?
I do not use Clayoo 2 but you can find all the Clayoo 2 commands here.
http://help.tdmsolutions.com/clayoo/2.0/en/Clayoo.html?SubDivision.html
Clayoo match to curve command seems to be the closest I could find to the tsPull command. HTH
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that is the option what i looking for maybe a going to try clayoo to forget T-splines
STEP export out of Fusion and import into Rhino.
Try…and if it serves your purpose, and/or if a purpose is to remain in Rhino, by all means go for it.
If you are serious and dedicated to your ID work, do yourself a favor and check them both out. One will bubble to the top for you…
but it is not a single surface right? maybe for exploration is good but at the end will have to redraw the object in Rhino.
Is there anything on the market which has the capabilities of T-Splines but is working on Rhino mac?
I guess the current answer would be Fusion 360…
It’s funny. Here I am again with the same problem, and as much as I would like to avoid the learning curve of fusion 360, I think I’m going to lease a year to get a few jobs done. I should had bought T-splines for rhino when I had the chance.
I’ll leave some feedback in a month or so.
The implementation of TS in Fusion is better than it ever was; is easier to learn; has a superior interface - IMO.
Jump in…the water is warm.
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Anyone wants to buy my new Clayoo 2.6 license? I can’t work with it. Too much time spent T-Splining…
So, anyone interested?
@martinsiegrist sorry but I don`t want it… however would love to hear how it still falls short of t-splines if you have the time. I am a t-spline user that spent a lot of time in a previous life using Clayoo 1.
Clayoo 2 has symmetry now and the memory leak is gone I assume? Does it still crash a lot?
@sochin, I had a few crashes, unfortunately. Also, it takes ages to load and I get this error that the clayoo toolbar is already loaded. Something was wrong with my installation. The issue hasn’t been solved yet. The lack of gumball functionality is my main problem. I’m using the T-Splines scale command in so many situations to flatten a series of points. To do this, it’s crucial that the gumball also snaps to geometry, otherwise it’s just not precise. Then you can’t use Rhino tools otherwise Clayoo geometry will turn into a mesh right away. In conjuction with Grasshopper, this is a hassle. The T-Splines match surface command has an option to either match a curve or surface. Surfaces can be matched with continuity. In Clayoo, you can only match a curve. Last weak command is convert to nurbs which converts every clayoo quad into a nurbs surface. T-Splines converts regions in between singularities into one surface. How difficult is it to create such a command?
Now there is a workaround for everything we do, but I believe my use of tools became very efficient over the last couple of years. I do not take a step back. I would agree that some of my workflows are special. However, exactly that, the nearly limitless way we can manipulate geometry and data in Rhino and Grasshopper is one of the major reasons why I prefer Rhino.
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@martinsiegrist thank you for taking the time to reply. For anyone that does not have a copy of t-splines then clayoo is still their only choice so hopefully someone will grab your copy.
I am the same as you, I have several features in t-splines that I cannot live without. I also love it that I can use both the tsplines and rhino gumballs on anything. I toggle between the two with macros all day.
Regarding objects losing their sub-d properties when edited using Rhino tools, I had this same conversation with the developers of Xirus. If I cannot use rhino commands like cage edit, flow to curve or surface etc with the sub-d object without it turning to mesh…then the tool is no use to me.
I read some while ago on the Clayoo forums of others complaining about the complexity of nurbs objects created by the convert to nurbs Clayoo function. Thought they might have addressed this.
Thanks again for taking the time to reply.