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3DCoat 4.8 BETA testing thread


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18 minutes ago, Carlosan said:

4.8.08

The buttons to add or delete layers are working -Paint and Sculpt room-.

Please try this.

 

Restore all windows.jpg

Tried that, didn't work, thanks though! I was working in the paint room.

Edited by Ascensi
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I noticed that I cannot paint in the Texture UV Editor. Is this a known bug in 4.8.05?

I cannot switch from Color preview to other channels either (in that very window). Wireframe preview doesn't work too.

Edited by ajz3d
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Once again, I will bring up Autopo, It is buggy... I been along time user of 3DC and know how to prepare error free models for Autopo but 3DC will fail, make a incomplete retopo mesh, whole parts of the retopo mesh will be inside the sculpted object. I could go into more but that is enough. I have help new users to get clean meshes and 3DC's autopo still fails. The users get very frustrated. I had several tell me they stopped using 3DC because of the Autopo not working correctly. Painting density still does not function correctly. Maybe everyone once in a while it works. I tested many times with and without using density and it makes no difference generally.

To make the point clearer. I can take the same model that failed in 3DC into Mudbox and I get a very clean retopo mesh the first time I run the autopo routine but as I said the model fails in 3DC for a clean retopo mesh. In my own work if 3DC fails twice, I will port the model over to Mudbox for the autopo and bring it in as my retopo mesh.

Please consider re-working the autopo routine. 

Added a picture, left side 3DC's autopo. Right side is Mudbox's autopo, same mesh, no difference. Same amount of polygons for the reopo mesh.  No quide strokes... Symmetry on.

badgood.PNG

Edited by digman
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Not sure if it's the new version, but I noticed that the snapping is sometimes the issue.  I also get pretty good results when I turn capture details pretty low...to like 10%.  I also voxelize things first.  I like the topology that I get for the most part, but I usually have to do a bit of cleanup afterwards.

It would be great if it was really stable.

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Now having brought up a issue, I will also state that 3DC is a very powerful piece of software for 3D work. Still the most used 3D software on my computer. Andrew and team have worked very very hard to give us this software tool. The reason for the post is that this one area is weak and hinders an otherwise valuable workflow to some users. Many users just desire a retopo mesh for rendering and they are not worried about edge flow optimizing for games or animation. A well oiled autopo routine would save new users and older users time and frustration. 

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Agreed.  Let me say that I love 3D Coat and it and Blender are at the core of my studios pipeline.  I also teach the programs at college and university.  It's the program that really made 3D accessible to me and I'm going to stick around for as long as it's being developed.  I use it for everything and I learn new things all time.  There is so much in the app that is amazing.  Sadly us users will always be looking for more and more, but hopefully the development team is challenged by this and pushed to do their best.  I personally should do a better job of reporting bugs and suggesting interesting new features.  If I had a better idea of the roadmap, I would probably chime in a bit more because there are a few things that need addressing that have been mentioned before that would really boost productivity.  I'm hoping they're in the works, but not sure.  There are 2 really big things that have been mentioned before.

-Displacement based Quad sculpting with non destructive subdivision levels

This is critical, because in production, 3D Coat sculpting forces you to redo too much from scratch if you want to reuse things like hands/ears as a basis for sculpting.

Also, for delicate areas like the eyelids, nose and lips, it gets hard to sculpt on one small area without breaking another nearby area freezing is not effective on a triangulated mesh because the edge border gets jaggy unless using very high resolution.

Right now after doing a sculpt I feel forced to do a retopo rather than being able to reuse quad based meshes made in 3D Coat or elsewhere if I need to do more detailing or substantial changes.

How do I get a uniform topology sculpt mesh without changing the quality of my mesh?  I get faceting when moving low to high, or I lose crispness if going from high to low.

I've found ways to work around these issues to get the results that I want, but I can see how much easier things could be and how much more production friendly it would be.

 

-The equivalent of a topological move tool

Not having this makes it difficult to work in delicate areas such as lips and it also cause big problems near the mirror when working on inner legs.  Currently, I will have to separate things onto separate layers, so the top lip on one layer and the bottom lip another layer.  Or for things like legs, I will delete one leg, make a mirrored instance, turn off mirror on the original layer and the mirrored layer to get the results that I want.

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1 hour ago, Hdharris said:

Also, I don't know if this would be the appropriate place to ask, but are polygroups possible at all?

You can use the SPLIT tool, in Voxel or Surface mode, to separate "polygroups" or segments of a model, into it's own layer or child layer of a parent. If you want to separate parts based on UV shells, first import your low poly, UV mapped mesh into the Retopo Room > create Retopo group layers, such as Head and Body > Click the MARK SEAMS button in the UV section of the Tool Panel (to enable UV tools) > Select UV shells or with a Rectangular lasso in the E-Panel (E key), drag select the entire UV map for the Head, as an example.

That automatically selects all the faces of the shell/UV map. Now make sure you are on the "Head" layer and click the "MOVE FACES TO CURRENT LAYER" icon at the bottom of the Retopo Layer panel (2nd from the right). Now you have 2 separate Retopo mesh layers....or PolyGroups, in the Retopo Room. To get those into the Sculpt room, go to the Sculpt room and in the GEOMETRY tab click RETOPO MESH TO SCULPT MESH. If you have separate Retopo Mesh layers, that is exactly how 3D Coat will copy it into the Sculpt environment.

 

Screen grab 1.jpg

Screen grab 2.jpg

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Think I've found a bug with the strips in latest version. If I use the vertex lines paint tool in the paint room to paint some strip normals on my object that normal detail becomes destroyed once I start painting with any other normal detail. For example I paint a strip then I go to the stamp tool to place a normal map detail the strips (even if painted on a different layer) becomes destroyed. Only way I've found to prevent it is having to save my file after every strip I make. If I use any other tool to paint normal detail it messes up the strips for some reason.

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On 5.1.2018 at 3:37 PM, wilson66 said:

+1

This is, of course, an absolute basic necessity, and one of the reasons I mostly stick to ZBrush for sculpting.

Why don't you use freeze and then move ? Topological move is surely not a reason to use ZBrush, because you can easily freeze correctly and use the normal move tool. It is a little bit slower okay, but ZBrush lacks for example curve splines which can be defined and modified correctly, now this is really a point not to use ZBrush :D

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On 1/5/2018 at 11:48 AM, AbnRanger said:

You can use the SPLIT tool, in Voxel or Surface mode, to separate "polygroups" or segments of a model, into it's own layer or child layer of a parent. If you want to separate parts based on UV shells, first import your low poly, UV mapped mesh into the Retopo Room > create Retopo group layers, such as Head and Body > Click the MARK SEAMS button in the UV section of the Tool Panel (to enable UV tools) > Select UV shells or with a Rectangular lasso in the E-Panel (E key), drag select the entire UV map for the Head, as an example.

That automatically selects all the faces of the shell/UV map. Now make sure you are on the "Head" layer and click the "MOVE FACES TO CURRENT LAYER" icon at the bottom of the Retopo Layer panel (2nd from the right). Now you have 2 separate Retopo mesh layers....or PolyGroups, in the Retopo Room. To get those into the Sculpt room, go to the Sculpt room and in the GEOMETRY tab click RETOPO MESH TO SCULPT MESH. If you have separate Retopo Mesh layers, that is exactly how 3D Coat will copy it into the Sculpt environment.

 

Screen grab 1.jpg

Screen grab 2.jpg

thank you so much for answering!

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On 1/8/2018 at 7:51 AM, Mystical said:

Think I've found a bug with the strips in latest version. If I use the vertex lines paint tool in the paint room to paint some strip normals on my object that normal detail becomes destroyed once I start painting with any other normal detail. For example I paint a strip then I go to the stamp tool to place a normal map detail the strips (even if painted on a different layer) becomes destroyed. Only way I've found to prevent it is having to save my file after every strip I make. If I use any other tool to paint normal detail it messes up the strips for some reason.

Can't reproduce, or I din't understand how. Please make short video.

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4.8.09

- Updated transform gizmo - non uniform scaling in plane introduced.

- Fixed UNDO issue when RMB->Save volume as 3B

- Correct SHIFT constraint outside the object in lines lasso mode, correct deleting hotkey (no auto - restore keys of undefined actions), correct lines mode work in several voxel tools.

- Baking problems fixed. Better direction of scanning (angle -weighted), support of N-gons (N up to 128).

 

Curves changes (enable new cues in Edit->Prefs->ShowNewCurves):

- Snapping to curves, snapping system completely rebuilt.

- ENTER to APPLY curves.

- split curve by click in adding points mode.

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I'm trying to figure out how to work with attach smart material to layers.  I think I understand how it works, but when I detach an adjusted smart material for repositioning, it simply deletes it.  Is there a way to save a modified attached smart material back to the library?  Thx.

 

Nevermind - I figured it out.  Looks like I need to use Attach to Layers with Material History to use it effectively.  Thanks.

Edited by Thomas Cheng
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On 1/11/2018 at 5:12 AM, Andrew Shpagin said:

4.8.09

- Updated transform gizmo - non uniform scaling in plane introduced.

- Fixed UNDO issue when RMB->Save volume as 3B

- Correct SHIFT constraint outside the object in lines lasso mode, correct deleting hotkey (no auto - restore keys of undefined actions), correct lines mode work in several voxel tools.

- Baking problems fixed. Better direction of scanning (angle -weighted), support of N-gons (N up to 128).

 

Curves changes (enable new cues in Edit->Prefs->ShowNewCurves):

- Snapping to curves, snapping system completely rebuilt.

- ENTER to APPLY curves.

- split curve by click in adding points mode.

Thanks Andrew, but we need some way to move/translate along 2 axis, as well as scaling. Perhaps a smaller triangle on the inside of the yellow rectangle. It would look something like this...

2 axis gizmo.jpg

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7 hours ago, AbnRanger said:

Thanks Andrew, but we need some way to move/translate along 2 axis, as well as scaling. Perhaps a smaller triangle on the inside of the yellow rectangle. It would look something like this...

2 axis gizmo.jpg

The inner circle lets you transform in screen space (2-axis). So you can shift orbit in position and then transofrm with the inner circle. Or am I missing something ?

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9 hours ago, houGenie said:

The inner circle lets you transform in screen space (2-axis). So you can shift orbit in position and then transofrm with the inner circle. Or am I missing something ?

Screen space isn't the same, obviously, as moving/translating along 2 axis in 3D space. To be semi-precise, one has to switch to an orthographic view and then use it. You have 2axis translate/move handles in most 3D apps (as well as the ability to move in screen space), not just scale.

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14 minutes ago, AbnRanger said:

Screen space isn't the same, obviously, as moving/translating along 2 axis in 3D space. To be semi-precise, one has to switch to an orthographic view and then use it. You have 2axis translate/move handles in most 3D apps (as well as the ability to move in screen space), not just scale.

Yes, it is not so fast but possible when switching to ortho. Personally I think there are more important things to consider. For example adaptive voxels or improving the brushes. That would be nice. I think it is better to improve the sculpting features and not to try to be better than some 3d apps. For this we have Maya and Co. 

Edited by houGenie
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1 hour ago, houGenie said:

Yes, it is not so fast but possible when switching to ortho. Personally I think there are more important things to consider. For example adaptive voxels or improving the brushes. That would be nice. I think it is better to improve the sculpting features and not to try to be better than some 3d apps. For this we have Maya and Co. 

He just added the 2-axis gizmo in the latest build. That has been requested for years by multiple users, and is a standard in 3D applications. It was mentioned in another thread, here, and Andrew dropped in to say he was going to add it. If it has 2 axis constraints for scaling it should have it for Move/Translate, too.

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Hi again...

Still having the same problem - just tested and 4.8.09 still does not zoom extents by using Shift+A for retopo geometry if there is no surface or voxel underlying it.  It only works for surface and voxel objects.  Since I'm trying to layout UVs on my low-poly mesh, I need the zoop extents (shift+a) to work in retopo even when there's no surface or voxel.

If there is only a retopo object but no sculpt object, then Shift+A centers to the origin instead of the center of, or bounds of the selected retopo object.

You can test this by:

1) create a simple object in sculpt room.  
2) move it away from the origin (or don't, as long as it is not at the origin in the end)  
3) Autotopo the sculpt.  
4) Delete the sculpt object
5) Switch to the Retop Room, click "Select" tool, then select anything - a face, an edge, a vertext, the whole shell.
6) Press Shift+A and the result is that 3D Coat zooms to the origin, not to the bounding box of the selection.

Again - this does not happen if you have a sculpt object, it is only when you are trying to zoom to the extents of a retopo only object.

 

 

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