V4.1 BETA (experimental 4.1.17D)

[BeatKitano]

You can try making your own with Flatten curve tweaking....its a lot of trial/error until you find the feeling you want.

I tried to go more toward a Polish brush feel....personnaly I dont like Trimdynamic,its too violent.

...I always thought it was a lot like actual SF Flatten.

Its good to blockout big Hard surface shapes but its too violent to make precise complex shapes....

True but smoothing in 3dcoat is much more violent than in zbrush so cutting fast (without that terrible hard edge effect from flatten) and smoothing is doing the trick for me.

Anyway the use of the tool is one thing but you did (and maybe it's easy but it's not here BY DEFAULT) but you nailed a specific purpose tool.

Something that the majority of the brushes in vox room don't have, they could be interchanged without real inconvenience which show how poorly crafted the default brushes are for the most part. Yet they all bear a "specific use" name which doesn't necesseraly reflect their behaviour.

Hence me thinking you should be consultant.

[artman]

True but smoothing in 3dcoat is much more violent than in zbrush so cutting fast (without that terrible hard edge effect from flatten) and smoothing is doing the trick for me.

Give it a try.Im sure you will be able to do it.

actually a lot of my discarded tweaks felt like Trimdynamic...Im sure you will be able to get what you want in half an hour.

[BeatKitano]

It's not about a "I found it by error".

Maybe I'm stubborn (surely am after all I'm from Irish descent), it's about a ready tool.

That thread in my sig wasn't there for nothing, it's the result of hours of frustrations tinkering with the settings which are self blocking/obsolete/not explained. I'm thinking about product, I open any other competitor product the default tools all do what they describe. Can you say the same with all 3dc brushes ?

Just do a quick search there's probably a dozen of thread of new user (which most of the time never come back) asking why a tool "behave like this" when in the manual it says <quote about an obsolete behaviour>.

:/

[artman]

Something that the majority of the brushes in vox room don't have, they could be interchanged without real inconvenience which show how poorly crafted the default brushes are for the most part.

I think although I dont use Voxel brushes they are very different so I dont understand what you mean when you say

"they could be interchanged without real inconvenience"..

-Grow clearly inflate in all directions while others don't

-Scrape realy ...scrape while other brushes dont.

-Airbrush is the standard brush.

-Build is like airbrush but it keeps adding as long as brush motion is going.

-Extrude work as a constant height brush very good to use alphas with

-Blob tool act to add matter in space...

-Fill tools fill ...while other tool dont.

ect...

I just think Scrape should have strenght slider...

[BeatKitano]

I don't want to talk about ONCE MORE (already did a few months ago), besides I noted a few legitimate remarks from new users on the forum on the doc we submitted to andrew 3 months ago.

I'll just take an example of what I mean.

What's the difference between carve in voxel mode and sphere brush with "draw from first point" off and "invert tool action" on ?

Now go to carve uncheck invert tool action, what do you see ? A flattened sphere, hoho reminds you of something ?

See, two brushes exact same result. Could we not MERGE brushes like that. Andrew based some brush on the same code with very little changes and called it a new brush. While it's ok when it actually does something that cannot be emulated by another brush with special settings it's NOT when you can do it, it's just another thing thrown in the mix confusing users.

Again this rant only has meaning in a redesigned/simplified ui (like the mockup a few post up)...

We have lots of duplicate brushes and lot of missing brushes that cannot be used unless you tinker with all the ui params to get somethign close to what you want. It's ok to create your own mix, it's not when you've got to create the tools that are EXPECTED as default one. Pixologic understood that right from the start and got some artist onboard to get the proper tool available from the start.

Anyway as always I'm the rant guy. But I just want to point out I would not be here if I didn't like the software and wasn't lacking the tool I expect (which are not some upper/dupper features that take years of coding !)

[artman]

It's not about a "I found it by error".

Maybe I'm stubborn (surely am after all I'm from Irish descent), it's about a ready tool.

That thread in my sig wasn't there for nothing, it's the result of hours of frustrations tinkering with the settings which are self blocking/obsolete/not explained. I'm thinking about product, I open any other competitor product the default tools all do what they describe. Can you say the same with all 3dc brushes ?

Just do a quick search there's probably a dozen of thread of new user (which most of the time never come back) asking why a tool "behave like this" when in the manual it says <quote about an obsolete behaviour>.

:/

I think in the future with more showcasing presets will become intrinsic parts of 3dC sculpting tools...like DamStandard is right now.

I think 3DCoat is right now alittle bit like Zbrush2 ....but with Zbrush5 power if you understand what I mean.

Standardization will come latter I think...patience is the key here.

Meanwhile ,we just need to post a lot a great 3DC sculpts on all major forums.

There is no excuse to not do so now....brushes are too powerful.Especially with latest improvement with "Remove Stretching".

[artman]

I don't want to talk about ONCE MORE (already did a few months ago), besides I noted a few legitimate remarks from new users on the forum on the doc we submitted to andrew 3 months ago.

I'll just take an example of what I mean.

What's the difference between carve in voxel mode and sphere brush with "draw from first point" off and "invert tool action" on ?

Now go to carve uncheck invert tool action, what do you see ? A flattened sphere, hoho reminds you of something ?

See, two brushes exact same result. Could we not MERGE brushes like that. Andrew based some brush on the same code with very little changes and called it a new brush. While it's ok when it actually does something that cannot be emulated by another brush with special settings it's NOT when you can do it, it's just another thing thrown in the mix confusing users.

Again this rant only has meaning in a redesigned/simplified ui (like the mockup a few post up)...

You are talking about 2 brushes here...I still dont think most voxel brushes could be interchanged without real inconvenience.

It is absurd to say so.

anyway IMO Carve tool should just go...its really an obsolete tool.

.

Also about mockup above: everyone always liked it,Im sure it will make its way in the app at some point,just be patient.

I have the feeling there is still a bunch of nasty hidden bugs...

Im 100% sure there will be another big UI work up in the future ...just maybe not for V4.

[BeatKitano]

I think in the future with more showcasing presets will become intrinsic parts of 3dC sculpting tools...like DamStandard is right now.

I think 3DCoat is right now alittle bit like Zbrush2 ....but with Zbrush5 power if you understand what I mean.

Standardization will come latter I think...patience is the key here.

Meanwhile ,we just need to post a lot a great 3DC sculpts on all major forums.

There is no excuse to not do so now....brushes are too powerful.Especially with latest improvement with "Remove Stretching".

Sorry but unless v4 comes preloaded with finely tuned preset from the community I don't see the resemblance with zbrush 2 brush system.

Like you say Dam_Standard is the perfect example: something that even pixologic didn't think about that was later integrated in the package because it's a REALLY powerfull tool created by the community.

As for creating art, yes and no.

Yes 3dc is really powerful (removestretching is incredibly powerful in fact), problem is even with this new freedom you still fight with the surface to get clean results because there's zdepth fighting, because the brush system struggle to get a clean surface sampling and averaging system to avoid those bumpy/jaggy edges. You've got to powersmooth all the time to get that nice even surface which takes two strokes to get in zbrush.

Hence the rant about some love on the default brushes.

Example: Lazy pressure/Mouse average in 3dc, where are they (spacing is only half the path here, spacing which is not even uniform between the selected brush and the smoothing modifier) ?

Honestly even with all the power the dynamic tesselation in 3dcoat provides it's still easier to work with the crappy dynamesh BUT very accurate brushes of zbrush :/ (and that breaks my heart as an artist)

[Zeddicus]

Alright I now have v4 installed. Looking forward to playing with the new tools and what not once I get this retopo job done.

Is there any way to make 3DC show how many vertices/edges are selected? Like I said before, it will ony tell me how many faces are selected. I want to know with 100% certainty that if I select four vertices and move them, they are absolutely the only ones that will be affected.

I often run into trouble where vertices/edges are getting selected/tweaked which shouldn't be and I usually don't know about it until many saves later. They're either in the forground on some part of the mesh that is being clipped by the viewport camera because I'm working zoomed in, or in the background behind where I'm selecting, sometimes even on the far side of the mesh that is facing away from the camera.

I try to create new layers whenever I can to get around this, but that isn't always possible. There is also the hide tool, but it was always sluggish in v3 and now in v4 it's fast but completely inaccurate, especially with symmetry on (like shooting a blunderbuss while blind folded lol). It also doesn't work on the retopo mesh.

It would also be really nice if it didn't constantly switch to auto every time I press the escape key or CTRL+D or the clear selection button. As it is now, clicking on the canvas is the only way to deselect all without having this happen automatically. Unfortunately this is rarely possible, unless I want to zoom out repeatedly just to do so. If I choose vertex selection mode, that is my choice and I wish it to remain so while I work.

[AbnRanger]

Sorry but unless v4 comes preloaded with finely tuned preset from the community I don't see the resemblance with zbrush 2 brush system.

Like you say Dam_Standard is the perfect example: something that even pixologic didn't think about that was later integrated in the package because it's a REALLY powerfull tool created by the community.

As for creating art, yes and no.

Yes 3dc is really powerful (removestretching is incredibly powerful in fact), problem is even with this new freedom you still fight with the surface to get clean results because there's zdepth fighting, because the brush system struggle to get a clean surface sampling and averaging system to avoid those bumpy/jaggy edges. You've got to powersmooth all the time to get that nice even surface which takes two strokes to get in zbrush.

Hence the rant about some love on the default brushes.

Example: Lazy pressure/Mouse average in 3dc, where are they (spacing is only half the path here, spacing which is not even uniform between the selected brush and the smoothing modifier) ?

Honestly even with all the power the dynamic tesselation in 3dcoat provides it's still easier to work with the crappy dynamesh BUT very accurate brushes of zbrush :/ (and that breaks my heart as an artist)

To even be in the same conversation with ZBrush, in this regard, is quite an accomplishment, as it really wasn't all that long ago that 3D Coat was little more than a wonky 3D Texture Painting app. It has made some Herculean strides to reach this point. So, I'll think it'll be closer to what you expect sooner rather than later.

[T.H. ROCK]

^{Was wondering if anyone has had a problem with large UV sets crashing beta 4 3DCoat? What I mean by large UV set is the UV's extend outside the grid of my 3D software program, so I take it into 3DCoat to retopo or get a standard auto UV. If I arrange the UV set within the grid of 3D Software and export it, there are no crashes. Is this just a 'duh' moment on my part or can anyone duplicate it?}

[BeatKitano]

I hope AbnRanger, I really hope. Because the advantages that 3dc got on zbrush so far are easily taken away, and if the sculpting comfort is not on par with zbrush the status of 3dcoat will get back to where it was a while ago :/

Because even if 3dcoat got the best tech, if the user doesn't feel at home the software doesn't get into pipelines, you know it.

Don't get me wrong I admire Andrew's work here, even if it may not be showing through my rants, but it's because I see how much was done I would hate that he doesn't get the recognition he deserves because the competition is catching up (Zb 5 64bits is confirmed, and I've heard "rumours" of optional gpu acceleration coming up a few point updates after that, for instance.)

[ajz3d]

Zeddicus, I have the same problems with all the things you described. I was just going to report a few of them to Mantis.

[Tony Nemo]

^{Was wondering if anyone has had a problem with large UV sets crashing beta 4 3DCoat? What I mean by large UV set is the UV's extend outside the grid of my 3D software program, so I take it into 3DCoat to retopo or get a standard auto UV. If I arrange the UV set within the grid of 3D Software and export it, there are no crashes. Is this just a 'duh' moment on my part or can anyone duplicate it?}

This appears to be a RAM issue and you have hit upon the work-around to avoid crashes.

[artman]

Andrew when I try to download latest Stable v3 release I actually got v4beta1...file is still labeled 3d-Coat-V37-18H-SIMP64 but user get all beta tools in there...

[Carlosan]

what i saw from version 3.5 until now, the software Growth to Maturity.

and now, to be a strong professional app it deserves to be... only need one more thing

a strong populated development team.

nothing less nothing more

there is a lot of work to do, the schedule is full... how do you get more time to achieve it ?

adding more people to development

my humble opinion

[ajz3d]

Alright I now have v4 installed. Looking forward to playing with the new tools and what not once I get this retopo job done.

Is there any way to make 3DC show how many vertices/edges are selected? Like I said before, it will ony tell me how many faces are selected. I want to know with 100% certainty that if I select four vertices and move them, they are absolutely the only ones that will be affected.

I often run into trouble where vertices/edges are getting selected/tweaked which shouldn't be and I usually don't know about it until many saves later. They're either in the forground on some part of the mesh that is being clipped by the viewport camera because I'm working zoomed in, or in the background behind where I'm selecting, sometimes even on the far side of the mesh that is facing away from the camera.

I try to create new layers whenever I can to get around this, but that isn't always possible. There is also the hide tool, but it was always sluggish in v3 and now in v4 it's fast but completely inaccurate, especially with symmetry on (like shooting a blunderbuss while blind folded lol). It also doesn't work on the retopo mesh.

It would also be really nice if it didn't constantly switch to auto every time I press the escape key or CTRL+D or the clear selection button. As it is now, clicking on the canvas is the only way to deselect all without having this happen automatically. Unfortunately this is rarely possible, unless I want to zoom out repeatedly just to do so. If I choose vertex selection mode, that is my choice and I wish it to remain so while I work.

Just reported as:

http://3d-coat.com:8081/mantis/view.php?id=862

http://3d-coat.com:8081/mantis/view.php?id=863

By the way, a short question: Is it possible to delete points left by Points/Faces tool? I'm sometimes left with a couple of them in the scene, but they seem to be very resistant to all my attempts of removal.

[artman]

By the way, a short question: Is it possible to delete points left by Points/Faces tool? I'm sometimes left with a couple of them in the scene, but they seem to be very resistant to all my attempts of removal.

Put yoursel in orthogonal view toggle visibility off of all retopo groups and voxel/reference objects....now you should be able to delete your points.

I agree "clear all points" and slect/delete with lasso is needed in that tool....

[artman]

what i saw from version 3.5 until now, the software Growth to Maturity.

and now, to be a strong professional app it deserves to be... only need one more thing

a strong populated development team.

nothing less nothing more

there is a lot of work to do, the schedule is full... how do you get more time to achieve it ?

adding more people to development

my humble opinion

problem is Andrew will end up fixing bugs of others....3DCoat does not seem like a software which is easy to jump in as a develloper.

This is why I think Raul works more on modular aspects of 3DCoat....I dont think he could do much bugfixing outside of LC for example.

But maybe somebody could do some UI work without making 3DCoat explode ...I really dont know.

[ajz3d]

Put yoursel in orthogonal view toggle visibility off of all retopo groups and voxel/reference objects....now you should be able to delete your points.

I agree "clear all points" and slect/delete with lasso is needed in that tool....

Perfect. Thank you, Artman.

Guys, a tiny suggestion regarding "Spin" and "Spin Back" tools:

http://3d-coat.com:8...view.php?id=865

[TimmyZDesign]

v4 comes preloaded with finely tuned preset from the community

I would LOVE to get a small set of really nice presets loaded by default into 3D-Coat.

Then we could just try them out and decide to keep them or delete them.

[Andrew Shpagin]

Mac/Linux builds updated to BETA9C

[Andrew Shpagin]

It's not about a "I found it by error".

Maybe I'm stubborn (surely am after all I'm from Irish descent), it's about a ready tool.

That thread in my sig wasn't there for nothing, it's the result of hours of frustrations tinkering with the settings which are self blocking/obsolete/not explained. I'm thinking about product, I open any other competitor product the default tools all do what they describe. Can you say the same with all 3dc brushes ?

Just do a quick search there's probably a dozen of thread of new user (which most of the time never come back) asking why a tool "behave like this" when in the manual it says <quote about="" an="" obsolete="" behaviour="">.

:/

Then please tropose what exactly should be done. You know, I am always glad to change something to better.

Now point is to polish all and get as stable app as possible,

[popwfx]

Andrew, quick question about v4 Beta9C:

When testing it on my old, but still useful laptop I'm getting some new performance problems I don't recall seeing before - why is this happening? I will try this on my grunty desktop and see if it happens there.

laptop is:

Win 7 64bit

Core Duo T9500 2.6GHz

8 Gb RAM

NVidia Geforce 8800M GTX - latest drivers from NVidia as of today

Object loaded in paint room for per pixel painting has only:

759 points ~ 660 polys (all quads)

2 uv maps

6 painted layers

What happens is if I click the "eye" icon in the layers popup to hide or show layers in this very lightweight file, the CPU goes to 100% and 3DCoat is non-responsive for like 3 minutes! then eventually 3DCoat wakes up and makes the layer either visible or invisible. Rotating and painting on the object is fine at normal speed, but something new makes the toggling of visibility of the layers very very slow (unusably slow - even for lightweight game objects) on my laptop - which admittedly is a few years old (and I normally work on my powerful desktop) but usually this laptop is fast enough for playing games like TF2 at 75fps at 1920x1080 and Lightwave and photoshop are very speedy on it. I used to recall 3DCoat being speedy on it too, and some parts of v4 still are, but Layers painting visibility toggling is almost broken it is so slow now.

I am running the CUDA version and according to NVidia my card is CUDA compatible... any ideas? Can't wait to upgrade to v4! Thanks!

[Andrew Shpagin]

Andrew, quick question about v4 Beta9C:

When testing it on my old, but still useful laptop I'm getting some new performance problems I don't recall seeing before - why is this happening? I will try this on my grunty desktop and see if it happens there.

laptop is:

Win 7 64bit

Core Duo T9500 2.6GHz

8 Gb RAM

NVidia Geforce 8800M GTX - latest drivers from NVidia as of today

Object loaded in paint room for per pixel painting has only:

759 points ~ 660 polys (all quads)

2 uv maps

6 painted layers

What happens is if I click the "eye" icon in the layers popup to hide or show layers in this very lightweight file, the CPU goes to 100% and 3DCoat is non-responsive for like 3 minutes! then eventually 3DCoat wakes up and makes the layer either visible or invisible. Rotating and painting on the object is fine at normal speed, but something new makes the toggling of visibility of the layers very very slow (unusably slow - even for lightweight game objects) on my laptop - which admittedly is a few years old (and I normally work on my powerful desktop) but usually this laptop is fast enough for playing games like TF2 at 75fps at 1920x1080 and Lightwave and photoshop are very speedy on it. I used to recall 3DCoat being speedy on it too, and some parts of v4 still are, but Layers painting visibility toggling is almost broken it is so slow now.

I am running the CUDA version and according to NVidia my card is CUDA compatible... any ideas? Can't wait to upgrade to v4! Thanks!

What size of maps? It is important, maybe they are too big? Also, I am often loosing qustion in this thread, it grows very quickly, so if I will loose your requers, just drop me mail to support or post in mantis. Also you may send me model to support to see what appens.

[popwfx]

What size of maps? It is important, maybe they are too big? Also, I am often loosing qustion in this thread, it grows very quickly, so if I will loose your requers, just drop me mail to support or post in mantis. Also you may send me model to support to see what appens.

Thank you. I will email you the object tomorrow when I'm back at my desk. Maps are 4096x4096 6 total layers. Photoshop can handle many more layers than that at that size on this machine with no problem and visibility toggling there is instantaneous. My laptop also has a hybrid SSD drive which is very fast if there is swapping, but 3DCoat freezes for several minutes just to toggle a layer on or off.

[AbnRanger]

Thank you. I will email you the object tomorrow when I'm back at my desk. Maps are 4096x4096 6 total layers. Photoshop can handle many more layers than that at that size on this machine with no problem and visibility toggling there is instantaneous. My laptop also has a hybrid SSD drive which is very fast if there is swapping, but 3DCoat freezes for several minutes just to toggle a layer on or off.

Most of it is hardware. I don't have any problem with 4k maps on my 6 core AMD CPU, 16GB and GTX 470 Desktop. Not to say there isn't a little pause when toggling visibility, but no freezing up. You also have to keep in mind that graphic card naming conventions on laptops are very deceptive and inaccurate. They are extremely crippled in comparison to their desktop counterparts. They aren't even close (usually equivalent to desktop models 2-3 generations older). Plus, every layer has 3 image maps....so 6 x 3 = 18 4k maps. The bottleneck will be the lack of video RAM.

http://www.geforce.com/hardware/desktop-gpus/geforce-8800M-GTX/specifications

Do you have Photoshop painting on the same obj. model with 18 4K maps? If not, try it. Painting models in PS, always seemed laggy and slow compared to 3D Coat, so I don't think that is an accurate comparison to make. Try using 1k-2k maps, and you'll probably see a big difference. You can change it by going to EDIT > Texture and Mesh Resolution.

[SurlyBird]

Hello! I just downloaded the 3DC 4 Beta yesterday and so far it has worked really well for me. Just wanted to say thanks for continuing to improve a great program.

[Eric Cosky]

Andrew, can you please let us know if a crash that is submitted via crash handler + automated webform submission is sufficient for tracking, or is it better if we also create a Mantis report to make sure it isn't lost in the process somewhere?

For example, this is the one I just sent in which seems legit; I can make a Mantis entry if necessary but I'd rather not make more bug tracking work for either of us if it isn't helpful. Thanks-

Comments: Crashed after deleting object in paint room, returning to retopo and hitting apply symmetry.

Bug report: Version:3D-COAT 4.00.BETA9C(CUDA)(DX64) Memory status: OK pointers: 62345 Video: NVIDIA GeForce GTX 560 Ti NVIDIA GeForce GTX 560 Ti nproc: 8 (1)object: (C:\\dev\\Shipyard\\main\\Apps\\SquadMiner\\Content\\3D\\SquadMinerXSI\\Scenes\\Actors\\FlareGun\\FlareGun_Assets\\FlareGun-crash.3b) vert: 0 poly: 0 rt:256x256 undo: (277) SMLC LPUS LPUS LPUS LPUS LPUS LPUS LPUS LPUS tool: RetopoTool NumMeshLoads: 1 Time since mesh loading: 4205 s VoxelTool: 41 RetopoTool: 1 UV_Tool: 1 41D20BDA d:\\tempbuild\\3d-coat\\uv_mapper.cpp line 1940 [+44], ClusteredMesh::ApplySymmetry+3738 4015D4F3 d:\\tempbuild\\3d-coat\\retopo.h line 21 [+0], RetopoTool::ApplyTopoSymm+35 400FEE39 d:\\tempbuild\\3d-coat\\simplewidgets.h line 537 [+17], wpcallback::call+537 41E0AF7D d:\\tempbuild\\3d-coat\\simplewidgets.cpp line 926 [+24], BaseWidget::CallCallbacks+621 41E21723 d:\\tempbuild\\3d-coat\\simplewidgets.cpp line 1518 [+21], Widgets::ProcessWindowsMessages+1171 4016F20B d:\\tempbuild\\3d-coat\\simplewidgets.cpp line 6460 [+10], IntfWidget1::OnButtonDown+219 41BC5540 d:\\tempbuild\\comms\\cwidget.cpp line 465 [+44], comms::cWidgets::HandleInputEvents+1424 416DA979 d:\\tempbuild\\main.cpp line 126 [+0], comms::cMain_OnRender+265 41BAEC69 d:\\tempbuild\\comms\\cwinmain.cpp line 607 [+0], cWinMain_OnRender+217 41BAEDEF d:\\tempbuild\\comms\\cwinmain.cpp line 1983 [+0], cWinMain_OneIterationOfMessageLoop+367 41BB120F d:\\tempbuild\\comms\\cwinmain.cpp line 2264 [+0], WinMain+4847 40434E17 f:\\dd\\vctools\\crt_bld\\self_64_amd64\\crt\\src\\crt0.c line 263 [+33], __tmainCRTStartup+391 7745652D line 0 [+0], BaseThreadInitThunk+13 7789C521 line 0 [+0], RtlUserThreadStart+33 7789C521 line 0 [+0], RtlUserThreadStart+33 General information: Exception code:C0000005 3D-COAT 4.00.BETA9C(CUDA)(DX64) Memory status before run: Memory load: 66 TotalPhys: 4293378048 AvailPhys: 55443456 TotalPageFile: 4289892352 AvailPageFile: 1390338048 TotalVirtual: 4294836224 AvailVirtual: 4117700608 Memory status after crash: Memory load: 70 TotalPhys: 4293378048 AvailPhys: 3811983360 TotalPageFile: 4289892352 AvailPageFile: 1726304256 TotalVirtual: 4294836224 AvailVirtual: 3241013248 AvailVirtual: 3241013248

[Andrew Shpagin]

If you have reproducable way to crash 3D-Coat it is much better to submit report to Mantis with steps to reproduce, it gives guarantee that it will be fixed. I am not looking each autoomatic report, only on request or when discovering some problem.