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  • Advanced Member
TOTALLY AGREE, Blender ergonomics is horrible.

Sometimes engineers think that they don't need artists, that they can build a building without an architect, create a software without a designer...The results are softwares like Zbrush, UVLayout, Bender, MAX (I actually dont know how max is right now...)

When the interface/ergonomics is bad - you need to memmorize a technic/workflow instead of understand it. There is no place for intuition, logistics, common sense...

Its amazing but in Zbrush I always need to go to the tutorials to do smenthing I already done before! -- " Humm to retopologyse I need to go to the...humm...Oh.. RIG menu!" :unsure: " to get the object in perspective I need to go to the display menu...no! Its in the DRAW menu!" -- As opposed to Mudbox which the interface is so logical that in the first experince with the software it seems you already know everything...

This also reminds me of a time when Houdini had that awkward interface/workflow. I was trying to learn it and just gave up... But after release 9 (totaly reworked GUI), learning Houdini is just delicious...It seems like I already know 30% of the software!

Maybe what I really want to say for this particular forum is that I totally support the investments in the new interface, its VERY good but there is still room for improvements!!! And the best thing is: Andrew listens to its clients; I remember asking for a feature and a few days later it was done! :blink:

Good luck Andrew -- THE FASTEST CODER ON THE PLANET!

I picked up Zbrush in about 30 minutes of not trying too hard to figure it out

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Sometimes engineers think that they don't need artists, that they can build a building without an architect, create a software without a designer...The results are softwares like Zbrush, UVLayout, Bender, MAX (I actually dont know how max is right now...)

Immediately intuitive and very fast to work with once you know how to use them are different things. UVLayout isn't intuitive initially, but it is an excellent and extremely fast once you've worked with it for 2-3 hours. ZBrush 3.1 is the same, not immediately obvious, but once you've used it for awhile it's crazy how fast things get, and how it feels like there are almost no boundaries on what you could make -- similar to PS that way.

___

Andrew: Excellent work lately. Have you considered some tool consolidation? In the retopo tools it would be nice to be able to hit a tweak key and be able to grab things with the brush based tweak \ be able to delete without having to be in a delete oriented tool, etc. It's cool how some of the minor tweaks can save a lot of time, just have a triangle counter exposed really helps when retopoing :)

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I like it. r,g and s for rotate, translate and scale, pressed twice for screen space, (plus xyz keys for constrain to axis, pressed twice for local axis). Very logical and very very quick once you get used to it. You'll never want to touch touch a manipulator/gnomon again! All the frequently used keys are on the left side and easily accessible to one hand, leaving a hand free for the mouse. numpad is well used for ortho camera switching and constrained camera rotation. I think the people who hate it just aren't used to it. A lot of thought went into the ergonomics of blender.

I'm talking about the interface and in regard of ALL areas -- DYNAMICS, FLUIDS, CLOTH, MODDELING, TEXTURING, REND..............not just manipulating an object

(hotkeys can be customized in any software).

about the interface overhaul, if they need to doit its because it sucks...By the way I heard about it and I'm really exited, I REALLY want to be a Blender user/supporter!!

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Immediately intuitive and very fast to work with once you know how to use them are different things. UVLayout isn't intuitive initially, but it is an excellent and extremely fast once you've worked with it for 2-3 hours. ZBrush 3.1 is the same, not immediately obvious, but once you've used it for awhile it's crazy how fast things get, and how it feels like there are almost no boundaries on what you could make -- similar to PS that way.

Hey, Hey! don't take me wrong! I never said they were bad software!!!

UVLayout Is AMAZING!!!! Its the Swiss army knife for UV's, Its the best UV software out there! I cant live without it!!

(by the way, specially if you use it with ROADKILL a free UV system -- LSCM and ABF code taken from Blender)

I prefer a lot more ZBrush than mudbox! Can anyone live without ZBrush!?!?

I was talking about the interface/workflow not the power of the software/tool!! These are totally different things! And of course once you memorized/learned the software its exelent....

SORRY ABOUT THE INAPROPRIATE THEME IN THE FORUM.

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That's the thing, how is G for Translate logical?

because it stands for "Grab". T lets you modify Texture coordinates for procedurals/projections (sort of like a maya texture placement node)... Normally, it's automatic on the bounds of the object but sometimes you want to set it manually. This can also be made dynamic by the use of an Empty (locator) which specifies the texture coordinates and can be animated.

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I'm talking about the interface and in regard of ALL areas -- DYNAMICS, FLUIDS, CLOTH, MODDELING, TEXTURING, REND..............not just manipulating an object

(hotkeys can be customized in any software).

Totally agree. Because those features were added on gradually, they're not in the most logical place. It's not so bad for experienced blender users who were around for those changes and are used to it, but you're right... where things are right now doesn't make a whole lot of sense (in many cases it's not what you would expect at all). All this will be fixed in 2.5.

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will the texture be projected to the object when Quadrangulating it for painting? That would be totally awesome. :)

awesome it would be indeed :).

It occurred to me that it can actually be done with the Fill Object command afterwards. :)

But to utilize this feature, there would only need to be a way to transfer the textured voxel material's settings to the Fill command, so that the texture is applied with scale and UV positions similar to the vox material. And since the new top/bottom blended material (as demonstrated by the moss / bark Tree material) works so well in vox mode, the Fill Object command would need to be enhanced with a similar option. And also the Materials (that can be box mapped and painted onto the object).

(PicMats obviously won't work with this, because they're based on environment mapping - there's no point in baking shiny, moving chrome reflections onto a diffuse texture - but I guess you could just apply the average color for those)

Top/Bottom blending would also be useful for Freezing, to easily mask areas to paint onto. There are many applications for this, such as:

- Snow on the top surfaces of a stone object

- A wooden statue whose top has faded from sunlight

- Moss on a tree (as demonstrated by the Tree material)

.... and so forth.

Can freeze masks be operated on one another? You could multiply a Top/Bottom mask by a Cavity mask for further detailing.

I can pay more for 3D-Coat. :)

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I've been hit by these couple of voxel bugs lately and I feel like they are really the biggest things that need to be worked on. First and foremost is Redo, Andrew knows about that but it really is a show stopper. Next is using large brushes. Even on low res geometry once the brush passes a certain size it starts making weird patterns and tearing big holes in the mesh.

A smaller bug someone else pointed out I can confirm, if you're working on one voxel model and open another one the shader panel goes blank. One thing that may or may not be called a bug is that every time you start a voxel sculpture it starts with that green shader. Didn't it used to remember the last shader you used?

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because it stands for "Grab".

But sadly, G is in the middle of the keybord, without any clue around, so it is the key, I would always have to find.

These "abbreviation" shortcuts aren't as logical as they seems, because even if you can type with ten fingers, you usually don't know, where the keys are placed, so when you need to press one exact key, you need to look at the keybord.

On the oposite side, 3ds max, for example, use "visual" placement for keybort shortcuts, so they aren't connected with the name of command in any way, but they are sorted on keyobord in same order as they are in GUI, so you have Q,W,E,R for Selection, Move, Rotate, Scale, just because this is the order and position of icons in Main Toolbar.

Once you get used to it, its easier to find the right key, then making discovery voyage around the keybord to find the right button, even if you know, which letter you are heading for.

Of course, keybord shortcuts can be easily changed everywhere, but it illustrates different attitude to making of user interface ("think and search" X "watch and learn")

Sorry for off topic, this should definitely be in Interface discussion.

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Here in the studio I am working we are testing 3dcoat mainly to paint textures over low poly models.

3D coat it's really amazing in this field, and I hope that in the future it will not be anything else more than a super specialized painting / sculpting software.

So, we noticed something strange using per pixel painting:

1) Speed. It's incredible SLOW on some operation, like importing a low poly mesh and then creating, switching and deleting a new layer.

I think this is one of the most important features to be addressed to have a pleasant experinece when texturing

2) Normal map. I know andrew wants to add the capability to paint on cavity based on normal map, but... I think the current workflow of adding a normal map on a layer is really bad and not coherent with the philosophy ot the software.

You already have the depth channel to paint depth informations. What I think is that you should consider the possibility to load the normal map in the depth channel, enabling so all the drawing capabilites of 3dCoat

Thank you for listening !

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But sadly, G is in the middle of the keybord, without any clue around, so it is the key, I would always have to find.

Well. Considering i touch type and have a functional left hand, I've never had much of a problem finding the key right next to the one with the great big bump on it... :P but anyhow. You're right. This is *way* off topic.

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Another thing I noticed, which I think is a bug, is that often, if I edit the projection in external editor, when I come back to 3dcoat, the texture sometime is projected also on back faces, even if I have Ignore back faces checked out

Can someone else confirm this ?

Furthermore, I noticed that the clone tool is always sharp, even if I select a smoothed alpha, could you fix also this please ?

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Hello,

Using alpha 83 here. Working better than ever! Nothing major to complain about. Couple things though:

Barely worth mentioning:

* When the color window is in the tool bar, and you are picking colors with a tablet, sliding the pen from the color region to a region outside the tool bar causes the tool bar to undock. It should disable dock activities while the pickers are in use. This actually applies to many tool bars but it's most noticeable in the color picker.

* Moving mouse from a menu to a menu to it's left shows the current menu under the previously hovered menu. It should always immediately hide the last menu, feels laggy this way. I appears to always render menus from left to right (ie. file, then edit, then view) regardless of what is hovered over which probably causes this.

Minor requests:

* The PickColor window is modal. Not sure why, but if clicking outside of it doesn't do anything useful perhaps that should close it.

* Lock toolbar mode - it's too easy for me to drag toolbars from docking where I want them.

* Add "Clear Recent Files" menu option to the Recent Files menu. I renamed a folder and the recent files are all invalid now, but there's no way to clean it up.

* I have successfully used "LW/Max" normal map export with Softimage 7.5. It would be good to add XSI to that normal map mode control so people don't have to guess which mode they need.

* Export LWO could probably use an "Export world space normal map" checkbox option. I'm new to the normal mapping pipeline but the only way I could get what XSI 7.5 apparently needs was to manually export a world space normal map. If there's a better or more accurate way to do that I'd like to learn about it.

* The file dialog combo box that shows the extension should also show the name of the application the file type is for.

* Can't drag toolbars outside of workspace. I have a second, but smaller, monitor that most apps let me drag tool bars onto.

* Add tool tip popup delay. I prefer zero delay so I can scan all of the interface tooltips more quickly.

* Might be good to add an export mode that is targeted for XSI. It was a bit of a struggle to get what I needed into XSI, a more obvious way to do that would be helpful.

Thanks again,

Eric

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Hi Andrew.

I have troubles loading very large .obj files (4GB+) into the voxel tools. Objects are at 1mm resolution from claytools. It says it loads but then there is nothing on screen.

I tried with a 6mm resolution version of the same object and it does load. The 6mm file being about 10 times smaler, my question is, is there any limitation to the file size 3dcoat can load?

Are you planning to support native .cly voxel format? This would be much lighter to work with than .obj, and would improve interoperability among the small world of voxel applications.

For this test, I used:

V83 CUDA DX64

Win XP64, 3 GHz Xeon5160, 32 GB RAM, GeForce 8800 GTX 768 MB VRAM. Virtual Mem: 160 GB.

Thanks,

Franck.

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Hello,

Using alpha 83 here. Working better than ever! Nothing major to complain about. Couple things though:

Barely worth mentioning:

* When the color window is in the tool bar, and you are picking colors with a tablet, sliding the pen from the color region to a region outside the tool bar causes the tool bar to undock. It should disable dock activities while the pickers are in use. This actually applies to many tool bars but it's most noticeable in the color picker.

* Moving mouse from a menu to a menu to it's left shows the current menu under the previously hovered menu. It should always immediately hide the last menu, feels laggy this way. I appears to always render menus from left to right (ie. file, then edit, then view) regardless of what is hovered over which probably causes this.

Minor requests:

* The PickColor window is modal. Not sure why, but if clicking outside of it doesn't do anything useful perhaps that should close it.

* Lock toolbar mode - it's too easy for me to drag toolbars from docking where I want them.

* Add "Clear Recent Files" menu option to the Recent Files menu. I renamed a folder and the recent files are all invalid now, but there's no way to clean it up.

* I have successfully used "LW/Max" normal map export with Softimage 7.5. It would be good to add XSI to that normal map mode control so people don't have to guess which mode they need.

* Export LWO could probably use an "Export world space normal map" checkbox option. I'm new to the normal mapping pipeline but the only way I could get what XSI 7.5 apparently needs was to manually export a world space normal map. If there's a better or more accurate way to do that I'd like to learn about it.

* The file dialog combo box that shows the extension should also show the name of the application the file type is for.

* Can't drag toolbars outside of workspace. I have a second, but smaller, monitor that most apps let me drag tool bars onto.

* Add tool tip popup delay. I prefer zero delay so I can scan all of the interface tooltips more quickly.

* Might be good to add an export mode that is targeted for XSI. It was a bit of a struggle to get what I needed into XSI, a more obvious way to do that would be helpful.

Thanks again,

Eric

Some of these considerations would serve as well for the majority of 3DC users that come from C4D.

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  • Advanced Member

cuda enabled brushing still leaves holes in the voxel mesh, which doesnt happen without cuda.

Also it would be cool, if we could have a mesh cleanup option that removes small isolated voxel islands. Its very difficult to spot them manually sometimes.

Kind Regards

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  • Advanced Member

Another question.

It seems that above around 12 million tri, voxels become unusable in term of speed (both for navigation and sculpting). I'd like to know if it is related to the available VRAM (since CUDA uses texture ram for buffers) or simply that this is a global ceiling in term of performance.

In other words, would a graphic card with alot more vram help to speedup above that limit.

Has anyone been successfully working above that limit? Anyone with a 4GB quadro card for instance?

Franck.

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Has anyone been successfully working above that limit? Anyone with a 4GB quadro card for instance?

My old man sculpture in the VS WIPS thread is about 22.5 million, I have a lower end 8800GTS card, but a Core 2 Quad CPU.

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50million was my test on 64 bit, 8 gig of ram and gxt275 computer - pretty workable with small brushes

Great, thanks for the info guys. I think I will upgrade to a gtx285. Gainward makes a 2GB one for 385 euros, that's pretty decent.

Franck.

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Great, thanks for the info guys. I think I will upgrade to a gtx285. Gainward makes a 2GB one for 385 euros, that's pretty decent.

Franck.

3DC use system ram to store the voxel, so a 2GB GPU probably wont do much for 3DC only in the performance sculpting area. What kind of card are you currently running? If it's decent(G80 class), i would wait for Q4 2009 for the new DX11 nvidia cards GT300 instead of buying a GTX285.

I wonder whats Andrew been up to, haven't seen him post in days hmm :)

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3DC use system ram to store the voxel, so a 2GB GPU probably wont do much for 3DC only in the performance sculpting area. What kind of card are you currently running? If it's decent(G80 class), i would wait for Q4 2009 for the new DX11 nvidia cards GT300 instead of buying a GTX285.

I wonder whats Andrew been up to, haven't seen him post in days hmm :)

I'm on a 8800gtx right now with 768 MB vram. But even if the voxel database is in main ram, the millions of on-screen triangles generated from the voxel data require vram buffers, and so do CUDA. Same applies for mudbox (look at the gpu ram usage even without textures). And I've got the feeling when I get into the 50 million range, everything gets back and forth from main to vram just for navigation because it doesn't fit vram anymore and slow things down to a point it's not usable. The time after a brush stroke is also too long for intuitive work.

Also more vram would be usefull for lots of hi-res textures both in 3dcoat and mudbox.

Anyway didn't know GTX300 where comming end of this year. Thanks for the info.

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Anyway didn't know GTX300 where comming end of this year. Thanks for the info.

Also Intel will release their first Larrabee GPU in Q1 2010..i'm kinda more interested in that card.

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