jedwards

Also, what's with the private forum? Are we at the point now where a chosen few are directing where 3dcoat is heading? That's a bit disconcerting and disappointing - especially if it affected the direction of this new GUI. An entire community of people helped bring 3dcoat to where it is today, not a select few.

I am hoping that the new space bar pop-up menu will also have the option of disabling all the icons and allowing one to revert to the original sized text only buttons. While it was nice to be able to disable the icons on the left menu and essentially keep it the same as it was, I was a bit disappointed to see this doesn't carry over to the space bar menu. This is my primary method of accessing brushes in 3dcoat - in fact I turn off the left menu since it is redundant and eats up space. Now it looks like I'll be using that again and ignoring the space bar until this is resolved. Sorry to all who put hard work into the icons, I'm just not a fan of this new direction and would like to be able to revert back to what worked just fine previously, as quickly as possible. If this is already possible, that's great! I just couldn't find the option to make it so. I think I'd much rather have an option to build my own custom popups and populate them with tools I actually use, and have them look the way I like (as simple as possible). This is how I use modo as well - pretty much entirely custom keybinds and pie menus - no icons.

Checked the manual to see if maybe I'd missed this in a previous update but didn't see anything, so apologies if it exists and I am unaware... Sometimes my mesh/retopo work involves working with completed assets that need changes. These assets can often consist of multiple mesh groups that overlap and otherwise intersect in ways that complicate selection and manipulation, so I like to break them apart into new layers. This would be much easier to do if I could select all connected elements of an existing selection rather than having to painstakingly paint them by hand. Typically in modo or silo I could just double click on a polygon to select all polygons that are part of that mesh piece, or in modo, also use the "]" key as an alternative. I really miss this selection feature when doing retopology in 3dcoat. If it is there and I just haven't found it, awesome - if not, then consider it a request. =]

I've been using this app since before voxels were added and I don't really feel the same way. Andrew's approach to features has been what allowed me to continue to use the app in more and more ways. Dealing with the odd bugs and quirks has been a small price to pay for the massive amount of growth this software has seen in such a short time. I can't even complain about the lack of bug fixing really as it doesn't really seem to affect me - not in comparison to the benefits I've seen from all the new features. I feel like he has struck a great balance between growing and maintaining the software - better than almost any other application I've used. I don't think I'd want to see that change. Basically I like what he's doing and hope he continues to work this way for the life of the program.

Hey Leigh, nice work on this so far! In regard to your performance issues I'd be curious to see how you break down your sculpt into manageable chunks. In my limited liveclay testing I've tended to stick with smaller sculpt layers, no different than how I would with pure voxels. This always worked best for me for performance prior to live clay so I stuck with it. I'm pretty obsessive with building up large shapes and then breaking off pieces for detailing - probably too much in fact, but it does seem to reduce my problems with performance and stability and gives cleaner bakes in the end, which is all that matters I guess. I can see where you've done that in your last image as well as areas where I would have broken things down even further. I tend to break stuff apart even at clothing seams and overlapping materials as I go. Sometimes I think it's overkill but it does seem to help. Ultimately I think zbrush is still going to give the best performance for managing large, dense object sets. Thats just one of the huge advantages zb will continue to have over the hardware dependent sculpting programs. Llooking forward to seeing the final! James

After using dynamesh on a few things I still prefer voxels as a blockout tool. The flow is still faster in 3dcoat since I'm never really increasing the resolution until I'm happy with silhouette. I found I was babysitting my mesh resolution far too much with dynamesh, whereas in 3dc I never think about it. Zbrush continues to have the more refined toolset in several areass so I'll probably not really change my workflow between these apps with R2. One thing I much prefer with dynamesh over voxels is how the transpose tool can be used to duplicate meshes on the fly, and depending on the mode (add or subtract) you get a boolean without breaking your flow. This applies to mesh inserts as well. The workflow in 3dcoat could be streamlined in this regard.

I've definitely been taking advantage of live clay for detailing after voxels. The last 2 full characters, and 3 heads I added to firefall were sculpted entirely in 3d coat with liveclay used to sculpt details I would normally have done in zbrush. 3dcoat is edging its way towards being more than just a blockout tool for sculpting.

You have no business bringing your grudges from other forums to this one. Annoying to this community and unprofessional. keep it over there or find something more constructive to do entirely. Also, as mentioned, not the best of first posts to make an impression with.

The sketch preview vid was awesome Andrew! Looking forward to using it!

Agreed! For a long time now I've been favoring a sculpt first approach to most of my modeling and there is real potential in 3dcoat for this to apply not just to organic sculpting but towards hard surface stuff as well. More and more I'm able to use 3dcoat for this type of work. There are definitely some holes yet to be filled in this area but it is happening, and I think Andrew is making great strides to that end.

Just popped in to say thanks for the picmat eyeball trick! I don't make my way into the WIP forums nearly as often as I should so I was backtracking through your posts when I stumbled on it. Also made me realize I don't play with materials nearly enough. Cheers!

This is one of the few reasons I have to leave the app when creating content for games. As it is now my workflow is to dump all voxel layers out to objs and import them into modo, along with the retopo mesh (also from 3dc). I then do my normal and AO bake there since the results are so much better, and right now, worth the hassle of doing (sometimes massive) file transfers, especially with how many voxel objects I can end up with in a finished character sculpt.

Yes! Whatever gives the cleanest, fastest result. I'd be happy with pressing enter and have it perform the stroke. The most important requirements here are: Freeform curve control, including straight lines, compatible with most/all brushes, and controling the normal vector of the stroke either with numerical/spinner control, or with a vector control handle. This might be a nice option if it could be modified individually per control point on the curve as well. =D Something like this would really round out the excellent hard surface capabilities that 3dc already has. Booleans and cut operations work pretty well for simpler cuts and shaping efforts - especially in the early stages of creation, but for more complicated things or wanting to do refinements after creating a primitive or performing booleans I find there's no options to refine and shape other than by hand. Thanks for the input guys.

I thought for sure I had seen some form of constraining stroke/brush to a curve made possible quite awhile back. I'm looking for it now and not seeing anything though. Perhaps I misinterpreted the announcement and what I'm looking to do isn't actually possible. Basically what I want is to use a voxel brush, such as scrape, to chisel away at the volume based on a curve I create that conforms to the surface. Pretty much exactly what mudbox can do with its curve tool. So you make the curve first, then just scribble away along it, forcing the stroke to adhere to the curve. If this is already possible, could someone point me to the proper tool? I'm just looking for a quick way to add beveling along a sharp organic surface with with more precision than if I were to just eyeball it, and to not have to make a boolean object or do any fancy cutoff gymnastics. A quick example would be to take a cylinder volume with its sharp caps and create a bevelled edge on it. My need is more complicated than that, thus the need to define a curve first. Cheers!

Disagree with you. I've been building tons of hard surface stuff in 3dc, and while primitives and booleans are an acceptable enough solution for simpler things like buckles, that I choose them over building poly meshes by hand, there is still plenty of room for improvement, especially with more complicated, machined components. I could build a lot of that stuff much faster by doing profiles in real(or nearly real time) time in my 3d app (3dc) I know this because I've spent quite a bit of back and forth effort trying to see what is faster between 3dc and zbrush. I'm not using sketch right now because I don't think it is useful or speeds up my process enough to bother. To me that is enough of an indicator that the tool needs improvement. I'd use it if it saved me time. Shadowbox is proof of that. It's a better implementation of sketch, esp. for poly meshes, but not perfect either. I'd rather see effort made to improve what's been added already to 3dc than have it wasted in dead end tools, which is what sketch will be if it stays as it is IMO. BTW, I'm not necessarily advocating to just copy shadowbox either. I think integrating 3d drawing planes with a preview/build button would be a good start. From there, who knows. I don't need it to generate voxel meshes on the fly. It could even use code from the viewport background planes - whatever is faster and easier to bring that process into 3dc so I don't have to go to photoshop at all to generate separate projection images through trial and error.

I found the sketch tool in 3dc to be rather convoluted, and dropped it as a potentially useful tool in my process. Pixologic's shadowbox advantage is that it is right in the app and changes appear in real time. I'd love to see sketch evolve a bit and become more integrated into 3dc itself, rather than depending on working in another app. It's kindof counter productive to the idea of sculpting where you want access to your tools and to see your results immediately. My alternative to using sketch is to use the freeform primitives and 3dc's boolean capabilities to get the same end results.

I think the detail examples you are seeing are misleading. The app installs with prefab meshes, so you are limited to customizing them from there. Try to sculpt eyelids and such on that head and you will hit a resolution wall quickly. For this reason I'd say it's more of a toy for non-sculptors than anything, even for doing block outs away from a computer. Voxels or even dynamic tessellation would make this app much more useful. Even in 3dcoat I don't often subdivide a volume until I'm done playing around with the shape. I'd love to have a stripped down version of 3dcoat on ipad for blocking stuff out. I'd actually use that and pay money for it.

I'm pretty happy so far with starting in voxels and refining in live clay. With the coming updates it will be that much sweeter. I'm seeing less need to send my meshes outside of 3dcoat for refinement, the more I use it. Did my first full character sculpt from start to finish this last week at work. Looking forward to the live clay refinements and reduction tools, etc.

I prefer not to do that, especially when I have varying resolutions in each volume, as well as different materials, which will get baked to a texture eventually.

Agree here. A more universal application of a workplane with its own control splines would be amazing to use with other brushes, especially as a hard surface refining tool.

Would be nice to be able to duplicate a heirarchy of items somehow... or even better, being able to select multiple voxel layers and duplicate the whole selection, like in photoshop. I like to build components and group them together for easier placement on a character - stuff like pouches and gear that can be comprised of several pieces becomes difficult to duplicate and place when I need multiple versions of them. Multiple selections have other uses as well, such as applying materials, and even sculpting.

I usually just dump the raw mesh over to a 3d app to do AO bakes. Sux because it's the one reason I need to leave the app. Live clay has created some instability in exporting for this process - 3dc was crashing when trying to export a 4.5 million tri mesh. Hopefully the bug gets ironed out. Someday it would be nice to do full AO bakes in 3dc though.

Just wanted to send a huge thanks your way Raul and my appreciation towards both you and Andrew for this collaboration. I've been playing around with the workflow I've always wanted in a single app and loving the results. The freedom of voxels to block out combined with detail work in surface/live clay mode is amazing! I'm getting a massive precision boost without sacrificing performance as I only use live clay on the areas I want to fine tune. Cheers and thanks for all your effort! James

Zoom Speed adjustment does nothing, nor has it since I first tried it, regardless of which settings I use. Nothing I would consider useful when detail sculpting anyway. It's still just as jittery and inaccurate as the default speed when working up close, which is all that matters to me.

Been waiting for this live clay stuff since I first started using voxels in 3dc. It'll really help realize their potential for sculpting. However, in order to zoom in and add more detail on the fly I really think it's time to address the horribly twitchy zoom controls in the 3dc viewport. Zooming has always been difficult to do with precision, and continues to frustrate me, and will probably do so even more as I try to use 3dc to do higher resolution sculpting. Please fix this, as it has been a major factor in why I don't do a lot of refined sculpting in 3dc.