Boolean Blunders: A heartfelt request.

[Rykka]

Hello everyone! I am struggling with a model for print that.. I just cannot seem to wrap my head around for whatever reason and I was hoping to glean knowledge from those more experienced than myself.
I am working on a mold of sorts involving a heart. (heartfelt request? Eh? Eh... okay.) It is going to require several layers and variants, and I just do not seem to be able to figure out a way to make one of them work. I have access to and decent experience with Zbrush, Blender, and Tinkercad, so any workarounds that are compatible with those would be super helpful.

Diagram.jpg

In the example above, you can see that I have the organ booleaned out of a solid block. But the trouble is, now I need a hallow version of /both filled areas/ with the empty spaced filled. Essentially reversing the polarities as it were. I am certain there is some sort of obvious process for this but for the life of me I keep just making a mess of the thing. Would anyone be able to shine some light on this dillema for me and potentially help me solve it? I would be deeply grateful.

Thank you,
Rykka.

[LambdaFF]

Why dont you make a box that has the same external dimensions and substract your model from that ? Is there something stopping you ?

[Roxy]

Blender lets you do Boolean operations like intersection, union and difference. You should be able to get what you want.

You would select your object, and you then select the wrench (which is modifiers), select Boolean and then the flavor you want with the object you want.

[Rykka]

Thank you for the reply! The problem is that I essentially need a model of the /inside/ of the heart, and nothing else. And the space /between/ the heart and the box, and nothing else. And since the heart is hallow, subtracting it from the box also has the interior of the heart still left behind? I apologize if I am not making much sense, it is kind of abstract to explain. But I essentially have the heart in a box, but I need the two zero spaces as separate models. The inside of the heart. And the space between the outside of the heart and the box.

I keep going through different boolean process trying to figure out some combination that will allow me to do this, but one process seems to undo another and I am really kind of lost. Is there a way to "fill in" the heart model?

[LambdaFF]

Is there a way to "fill in" the heart model?

Hence the advantage of working with solids and not meshes.

[Hugues]

Hence the advantage of working with solids and not meshes.

I was gonna comment too,

indeed if your problem is caused by hollow mesh, then try 3dCoat, http://3d-coat.com/3d-coat-45/
they have a free trial functional demo,
you convert your hollow mesh into voxels and do your boolean operations on voxels instead, it should work.

if you don't find your way around 3dcoat, send me your mesh by PM and i'll try to find some time to look at it,
just be sure to explain which part you want at the end, maybe using color codes, i0m a little thick. LOL

[LambdaFF]

you convert your hollow mesh into voxels and do your boolean operations on voxels instead, it should work.

This looks a bit like a "dressing on a wooden leg" to me.