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BodyPaint 3D now using GPU for texture Painting


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Not that it is a threat to 3D Coat, in the Texture Painting market, but I've been trying to get Andrew to switch to the GPU for texture painting for a long time. I even showed him a direct comparison between 3D Coat and Mudbox. 3D Coat is actually pretty good, except it hits a wall with very large brush radius' and especially when working on 8k maps or higher. Nevertheless, Mudbox had no problem at all with very large brushes. To be fair, though, the initial stroke, when switching to a large brush (in MB), did seem to force a split second delay, while I assume the Graphic card VRAM was being loaded...it may also have something to do with MB's Giga-Texel engine. So, it's not 100% perfect, either. But once you start brushing, it's wicked fast.

With Volodya already doing a lot of GPU work in the app, perhaps he can switch the brush engine in 3D Coat to GPU....including the brush engine in the Sculpt room...for V5? That would be a HUGE feature addition.

http://www.cgchannel.com/2016/06/see-bodypaint-3ds-new-gpu-based-painting-engine/

 

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...important quote from the article:

The new engine makes use of the user’s GPU to improve interactive performance when painting. According to Maxon, “it was clear that BodyPaint’s reliance on CPU-based software shading was limiting a lot of its potential”.

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It’s based on OpenGL, so it works with any manufacturer’s hardware; and will use the open-source Mesa library to provide a fallback to the CPU on machines that don’t have a suitable graphics card or drivers installed.

interesting

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38 minutes ago, Carlosan said:

It’s based on OpenGL, so it works with any manufacturer’s hardware; and will use the open-source Mesa library to provide a fallback to the CPU on machines that don’t have a suitable graphics card or drivers installed.

interesting

Yeah, Mudbox used DirectX acceleration. Would be nice if we could not only get OpenGL accelerated brushes, but update 3D Coat to a new OpenGL standard, like 4 or newer. We are still on DirectX9...which is well over a decade old.

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1 hour ago, Carlosan said:

To improve OpenGL viewport Display and OpenGL paint engine. Both upgrades could rocket sky the current overall performance, i agree.

Maybe you could raise this issue with Andrew and show him the article/video....because BodyPaint is a direct Texture Painting competitor. I think 3D Coat could really start to eat Mari's lunch if Andrew changed the Brush engine to OpenGL and brought OpenGL implementation up to a new version, to take advantage of all the recent technologies. Would be a game-changer.

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7 hours ago, L'Ancien Regime said:

Not impressed at all. 3D Coat rules.

They should have used a better model, nor did they demonstrate a speed difference...but that is a bit hard to do. Almost have to do a side by side comparison on the same model. But believe me, GPU acceleration is where it's at. CPU technology has stagnated so bad the past 6yrs or so, fierce GPU competition has put the GPU miles and miles ahead of CPU driven tasks. That's why I tried hard to get Andrew to switch to GPU acceleration, rather than sticking with a CPU based engine.

3D Coat does pretty well overall, but you can notice it's limitations pretty easily, when working on 4k - 8k maps. Performance really starts And even worse, still is, the sliders in the Paint Room are practically useless....and Andrew knows it. I have harped on that over and over and over, and he is aware that they really, really, really, really suck. No way to sugar coat it. There is no interactivity whatsoever with sliders.

The good thing is, Andrew already has someone on staff who can handle the GPU engine conversion...Volodya (Carrots). This and Sculpt layers for V5 would be a game-changer, just like the PBR tech was/is.

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8 hours ago, geo_n said:

Does it support different OS's, Viewport modes and different gpu harware?

The RnD and support for all these standards take a lot of time and money.

 

It's OpenGL, so it should work on any OS, and it's not like OpenGL is a new standard. It's one of the two options for 3D Coat users since V2.

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1 hour ago, geo_n said:

Isn't apple abandoning opengl soon for metal?

Windows 10 also has some issues with opengl. MS might totally abandon it for dx.

 

I don't know about Apple, and I don't know how MS or Apple can "abandon" OpenGL when it isn't even their call to do so. It's the individual software vendor's decision

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They're API's so they can be deprecated and discontinue support. Khronos develops opengl but moving to vulkan. But Apple doesn't seem to be interested in vulkan anymore and moving towards metal.

For Apple, games support was always a problem because MS owns dx. And dx just performs better because appz develop dx first then converted to opengl.

There would be four api's soon , opengl, dx, vulcan, metal.

Along with os platforms, these standards are not cheap for a small developer to support all this stuff. And then theres cuda and opencl.

I'm curious if Andrew would reveal how much market there is for linux for 3dcoat. Is it worth the effort? Is it atleast 30%  of the whole 3dcoat sales?
I'm surprised he hasn't dropped linux for 3dcoat.

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53 minutes ago, geo_n said:

They're API's so they can be deprecated and discontinue support. Khronos develops opengl but moving to vulkan. But Apple doesn't seem to be interested in vulkan anymore and moving towards metal.

For Apple, games support was always a problem because MS owns dx. And dx just performs better because appz develop dx first then converted to opengl.

There would be four api's soon , opengl, dx, vulcan, metal.

Along with os platforms, these standards are not cheap for a small developer to support all this stuff. And then theres cuda and opencl.

I'm curious if Andrew would reveal how much market there is for linux for 3dcoat. Is it worth the effort? Is it atleast 30%  of the whole 3dcoat sales?
I'm surprised he hasn't dropped linux for 3dcoat.

There are a lot of apps that still use OpenGL, so I don't know how MS and Apple would pull it off without leaving a lot of Software vendors hanging out to dry. I doubt Vulcan is a lot different, code-wise and I'm sure Khronos would try to ease the transition as much as possible. I asked Andrew about the prospects of updating 3D Coat to DX12 from 9 and he said he was considering dropping support for DX and just going with OpenGL, so it's less hassle for them. That's a bit odd since DX has always worked better for me than GL, as GL has always been a bit glitchy

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Vulcan is based off of amd mantle api donated to khronos. I think a lot of things will break with opengl once they move from opengl to vulcan. Then opengl would just be legacy.

Why would Andrew drop dx? Windows is the biggest os platform. And as you said, appz developed for dx usually perform better than opengl. I'm sure the opposite is true if they code opengl version first. Problem is its dx that gets created first for appz.

Its not an easy task supporting all these standards. Autodesk as gigantic as it is haven't developed a 3dmax linux version. Modo linux I think is also not well supported.

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2 hours ago, geo_n said:

Here's some posts about apis for dcc appz.

http://community.thefoundry.co.uk/discussion/topic.aspx?f=34&t=109784&page=0


Modo seems to be going to the direction of metal slowly.

What I like about going with DX 12 is you don't have to upgrade to a new card, to use it.

http://www.pcworld.com/article/2873545/dont-panic-directx12-wont-require-a-new-graphics-card-after-all.html

But a standard that both Windows and MAC users can work with is necessary.

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Sounds nice.

But would it not be easier to use the technik that Substance Painter uses?

I am not sure how it realy works, but you could paint in any resolution your PC could handle, and then export with the highest possible resolution that is needed.

You paint in 512 and export as 4096 and you have a clean 4k highres map and not an upscaled 512 map.

And maybe for further plans, it would be easier to have 8k, 16k or maybe 32k without hanging on the GPU power.

 

Just my 2 cents.

 

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On 6/28/2016 at 11:40 AM, Malo said:

Sounds nice.

But would it not be easier to use the technik that Substance Painter uses?

I am not sure how it realy works, but you could paint in any resolution your PC could handle, and then export with the highest possible resolution that is needed.

You paint in 512 and export as 4096 and you have a clean 4k highres map and not an upscaled 512 map.

And maybe for further plans, it would be easier to have 8k, 16k or maybe 32k without hanging on the GPU power.

 

Just my 2 cents.

 

 

I've noticed that there is plenty of slow downs associated with this as Substance Painter is recording every stroke, so I'm personally not sold on this function 100%. I think I'd rather have the ability to work freely with 4k maps across multiple UDIMs. Every time I've done the 2k to 4k upres workflow, it was due to the fact that painting in 4k was not a smooth experience. 

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On 6/28/2016 at 2:24 PM, AbnRanger said:

What I like about going with DX 12 is you don't have to upgrade to a new card, to use it.

http://www.pcworld.com/article/2873545/dont-panic-directx12-wont-require-a-new-graphics-card-after-all.html

But a standard that both Windows and MAC users can work with is necessary.

 

That would have been vulcan. Works on all os platforms.

But Apple is not going there anymore. :D

I think Andrew should wait a bit before doing big changes like this that could backfire later.

Maybe its better to work on multires sculpting in the tweak room. :D
 

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1 hour ago, geo_n said:

 

That would have been vulcan. Works on all os platforms.

But Apple is not going there anymore. :D

I think Andrew should wait a bit before doing big changes like this that could backfire later.

Maybe its better to work on multires sculpting in the tweak room. :D
 

He plans to scrap the Tweak Room...or so he says. If he can unify the Paint and Retopo mesh structures + add soft/gradient selection, then the Tweak Room won't be needed at all. Sculpt Layers in the Sculpt room should be the next big feature. It's the lone remaining obstacle, IMHO, to 3D Coat being considered a seriously viable production sculpting application. It already has more than twice the number of brushes and tools for the task, than Mudbox.

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1 hour ago, Michaelgdrs said:

We really gotta go with GPU on Painting , Sculpt , and Auto Retopo (if possible with autoretopo).

Yeah, if Andrew managed to implement a really elegant Sculpt layer system while Volodya (Carrots) were to change the Paint and Brush Engine from CPU to GPU, then that would be a serious game changer in the industry. I could see a LOT of ZBrush to 3D Coat converts at that point. There will still be plenty of ZBrush diehards who don't care what 3D Coat does, but I think there would be a quite a number give 3D Coat an honest look. The lure of being able to do it all (create and texture paint) in one app will be enough to compel them. 

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I am even more positive believing it will take a huge amount of industry pros and i am quite sure about this (talked to many , even studio holders agree , and more AAA studios use it day by day.

Some oldddddd posts from people not happy with certain parts of 3d coat did a lot of "damage" to the software.

And they refer to V 3 not even V 4 where all those issues got solved and many many great features where added.

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3 hours ago, AbnRanger said:

 I could see a LOT of ZBrush to 3D Coat converts at that point.

Not without quad based multi res poly sculpting.
People who use 3dcoat, zbrush still use zbrush for sculpting because its just more powerful than 3dcoats image based sculpting.

Modo offers both sculpting methods. Its trying to catch up. Maybe modo 12 it would be as fast as 3dcoat painting and powerful enough to do multires sculpting like zbrush.

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