Jump to content
3DCoat Forums

3D-Coat 3.3 updates thread


Recommended Posts

  • Reputable Contributor

Maybe Andrew focuses too much on new technologies to implement, to make 3D Coat more attractive, and i can understand these reasons.

However, as i said if he puts some effort on solving 3D Coat bugs and provide an even faster workflows this will give to the app even more value than most innovations.

3D Coat is innovative yet. It has voxels technology which is great, good manual retopo tools and upcoming autoretopo to help doing this job even better, painting layers with fusion methods, ptex and more. if all this will be optimized to give users an even more pleasant experience with what's already there, the app will be welcomed very well among pros and studios. That's what makes the difference in sellings too. Look at Mari. comes from developing fro WETA , everyone wants it even if they dunno if it will be so gret (I hope so btw)

I think expectations are way too high at this stage...people need to realize that we are talking about a MAJOR feature that ANdrew has only had a few weeks to implement. Compare that to the speed of development you are used to elsewhere. Since when does Pixologic or Autodesk take the input from a very small percentage of their userbase and tackle it inside of 3 weeks and do so with perfection.

As smart as Andrew is, he is one person....and in time many of these requests will be addressed. I think it's great that you have a developer that is willing to take on challenges like this. And Ptex is not useless...for the right persons, it's a very valuable feature as it literally does allow you to bypass a major part of the whole model to texture process.

I think multi-threading in the paint room, if not throughout the application will be coming up soon....but in the mean time, I'm going to appreciate the things Andrew has done recently to make life easier for us, in voxel sculpting. He also worked on a ton of bugs in the retopo room (that had cropped up not too long ago..and I was frustrated too), so Tinker...step back and take a deep breath, my friend. :)

Link to comment
Share on other sites

  • Advanced Member

In mho ,remeshing is much more interesting than sculpting,so every step that goes in the right direction to reduce time in retopo work is welcome.

At the end,when you have some experience,you really know how a mesh should look,so if 3dcoat will be the first tool to improve really much how retopo work(making more automatic or better,parametric/procedural) it will be great.

About local density,I hope this will not implemented as a constraint for the flow line,I have seen the last images and it's seems that to have more density diamond topology is used and I'm not sure is the way to go.

Probably should be better to have the density defined as different resolution that match quads alignement,so you compute different remeshing and at the end they are blended,the most important is that the meshing follow carefully the guides(probably is too early to make comments).

Link to comment
Share on other sites

  • Advanced Member

He has a point, many user requested features are being ignored....

I can tell you, for certain, that he does not ignore any point that is brought up and valid.

Now prioritizing when and how he or any company handles these requests/ideas/fixes is subjective, and is determined by a ratio of need/expense/ease/user-outcry/user-weight.

While many of us were happy to just have a competent 3D paint app, and would still be loyal to it without Voxels, retopology, etc. Pilgway is fighting an up hill battle (and winning IMHO) with several other very capable applications. So while yes, bug squashing and refinement are really needed, blazing a tech trail ahead of the competition is also needed to sure up a larger user base and ensure enough of a gain to then have the time to refine.

I mean, 3DC comes out with features that many people drool over, only to have a certain company release a teaser video with table scraps and nice dance music which some how steals the spot light away at times. It's style vs. substance IMHO, and right now 3DC is putting a lot of pressure on the substance part of equation. While the average freelance user may think the style wins the day...a lot of 3DC seats are being bought up by companies who KNOW the difference. To your benefit, as an added bonus, these same companies WANT a stable app and request it in targeted ways.

Besides- 3DC IMHO has always been about filling in the gaps left by other programs- and now it's even filling them in where some of didn't even know there were gaps!

Link to comment
Share on other sites

  • Member

Looking good. The new auto-retopo is throwing in some ngons though. Take a look at knee in this pic from Andrew: http://www.3d-coat.com/files/screen/128041604548.jpg

That's just going to introduce an extra triangle, which is the last thing you need pre-SDS. For a semi-automated job, it's still amazing.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

  • Member

15MB is huge for a PDF!

I think Andrew is attempting to get rid of the ngon and make it all quads.

Hmm, I played with autoretopo today, I had much more control over edge loops than I expected, I also experimented by drawing a circle around the elbow of my model and it really helped 'fix' what was previously coming out as a mess of tris and ngons.

I hope 'Fix Ngons' comes out as a checkbox/option in autoretopo, like how the 'detect edgeloops' is setup. There is no way there will be a perfect medium between control and automation, so I personally feel the less I can leave to chance and quickly fix myself the better. If there is a 'density brush' being worked on, I would guessit would likely create a mess of poles and tris/ngons trying to transition high res areas flowing into low res areas.

I would like more information on just what exactly I'm influencing with the splines as it's a little slow trial/error wise. Sometimes I get great loops, other times none, and it's not that transparent to the user as to why this is. Basically, why is it ignoring some splines, does overlapping help? Does the target retopo mesh density change the responsiveness of the splines as it goes higher/lower res?

Very cool tool though, even if it only (sarcasm) ends up eliminating 80% of the grunt work that I have to do in Maya or Zbrush, I'm super happy :)

Link to comment
Share on other sites

I hope we will have more control over the mesh resolution in the future. The local mesh resolution, that was shown by Andrew in his twitter blog was the right direction. But it would be good to reduce the quads to a minimum if needed. At the moment thousands of polys per object are sometimes still too much for game engines. A manual reduction is always needed.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

If you guys missed this, at Siggraph a new Wave-based Quandrangulation method was presented and it looks pretty sweet! :)

http://www.cad.zju.edu.cn/home/zhangmuyang/

/ Magnus

Interesting how good the object shape will be found. The edgefloy is better than the one from Bammes and very impressive.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

  • Member

15MB is huge for a PDF!

I think Andrew is attempting to get rid of the ngon and make it all quads.

Hmm, I played with autoretopo today, I had much more control over edge loops than I expected, I also experimented by drawing a circle around the elbow of my model and it really helped 'fix' what was previously coming out as a mess of tris and ngons.

I hope 'Fix Ngons' comes out as a checkbox/option in autoretopo, like how the 'detect edgeloops' is setup. There is no way there will be a perfect medium between control and automation, so I personally feel the less I can leave to chance and quickly fix myself the better. If there is a 'density brush' being worked on, I would guessit would likely create a mess of poles and tris/ngons trying to transition high res areas flowing into low res areas.

I would like more information on just what exactly I'm influencing with the splines as it's a little slow trial/error wise. Sometimes I get great loops, other times none, and it's not that transparent to the user as to why this is. Basically, why is it ignoring some splines, does overlapping help? Does the target retopo mesh density change the responsiveness of the splines as it goes higher/lower res?

Very cool tool though, even if it only (sarcasm) ends up eliminating 80% of the grunt work that I have to do in Maya or Zbrush, I'm super happy :)

Link to comment
Share on other sites

If there is a 'density brush' being worked on, I would guessit would likely create a mess of poles and tris/ngons trying to transition high res areas flowing into low res areas.

it doesn't have to, you can doa good job with that transition using 4 point triangles and still end up with all quads. I do that with my characters all the time for areas like the back of the head or from the hands to the arm. etc.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

  • Advanced Member

it doesn't have to, you can doa good job with that transition using 4 point triangles and still end up with all quads. I do that with my characters all the time for areas like the back of the head or from the hands to the arm. etc.

Well the goal is always quads, but we all know come "production" if it looks good...and it works...run with it! Still...quads are the goal...

That said...some programs "get" how to deal with N-gons better than others...and some also let you spin the internal edges etc. For all the rest...again...quads are the goal!

Link to comment
Share on other sites

  • Advanced Member

All this inspired me to do some topo experiments. Very fast just a few quads, some fast loops I mean, then subdivision. If snapping was working as it should be, then no need for this new function. I could have better results in a few min. I'm not expecting this new function to work fine on a mac though. Andrew should fix snapping problems first. I can re-topo almost as fast as this function does and with better quality, its just these 3DC snapping bugs on a mac there... These all look like fireworks to me.

Show me an ear, retopo this please. ;)

Link to comment
Share on other sites

I hope we will have more control over the mesh resolution in the future. The local mesh resolution, that was shown by Andrew in his twitter blog was the right direction. But it would be good to reduce the quads to a minimum if needed. At the moment thousands of polys per object are sometimes still too much for game engines. A manual reduction is always needed.

True enough.

You are right of course, Chris. Sometimes the poly count needs to be a bit high, but the local resolution painting tool is a great and definitely solves the problem , just wait until you guys get to play with it!! :D Also yes, sometimes manual retopo is a must, especially for low poly.

BTW thanks Chris for giving some of your sculpts to Don. They really drew a crowd when Don was doing his demo, so thanks!

(PS - Thanks also to Leigh for models and Noel Hennemen for doing the videos for us, stellar work guys)

Link to comment
Share on other sites

An ear please...

Thanks for your straight answers. :)

The ear from my Bruce Willis sculpture:

2010-07-30_1540.png

With no guides, just clicking the Quadrangulation button, settings 180 : 1000

2010-07-30_1541.png2010-07-30_1543.png

Here I tried the same thing with 250 polys instead of 1000

2010-07-30_1547.png

Link to comment
Share on other sites

  • Advanced Member

An ear please...

Thanks for your straight answers. :)

The new quadrangulation function loves ears. It follows the flow really well. I was going to upload a screenshot but it doesn't really do it justice. You need to see both the original model and the quadrangulated model in 3D to really appreciate it.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

  • Advanced Member

On a real sculpted portrait, I want to see the back face of the ear, after a first subdivision. Never worked on the mac version.

Even so retopo here phil is not the best. It has some gones too. Even 250 quads are too much actually.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

On a real sculpted portrait, I want to see the back face of the ear, after a first subdivision. Never worked on the mac version.

Even so retopo here phil is not the best. It has some gones too. Even 250 quads are too much actually.

You are incorrigible, Michalis. ;)

Link to comment
Share on other sites

  • Advanced Member

No LJB its OK, my question is simple and precise. THE BACK FACE OF THE EAR please. After first subdivision. I suggest to use the slower snapping method. :)

update: sorry taros we were posting the same time. "incorrigible" is not the right world, sorry man. You should see how this app performs on my mac. Now we have fireworks. I insist that Andrew should solve the mac build problem. Maybe its not a mac only problem. Maybe it exists on the pc versions too, who knows? I don't expect much from this new quad method you see. I also find it rather useless if you want my opinion.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

True enough.

You are right of course, Chris. Sometimes the poly count needs to be a bit high, but the local resolution painting tool is a great and definitely solves the problem , just wait until you guys get to play with it!! :D Also yes, sometimes manual retopo is a must, especially for low poly.

BTW thanks Chris for giving some of your sculpts to Don. They really drew a crowd when Don was doing his demo, so thanks!

...

You are always welcome. :)

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Join the conversation

You can post now and register later. If you have an account, sign in now to post with your account.
Note: Your post will require moderator approval before it will be visible.

Guest
Reply to this topic...

×   Pasted as rich text.   Paste as plain text instead

  Only 75 emoji are allowed.

×   Your link has been automatically embedded.   Display as a link instead

×   Your previous content has been restored.   Clear editor

×   You cannot paste images directly. Upload or insert images from URL.

 Share

×
×
  • Create New...