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Hardsurface technique with Absolute Brush


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post-1195-12856871819338_thumb.jpg

Here is how to go insane doing hardsurface stuff using surface mode's Absolute brush.

Its to try on at least 1 million polys sphere...so if object is bigger..like a spaceship you can say 5-10 million...and so on.

Here is the penpack that you will need.

Hardsurface Penpack.zip

Just really simple pens i made using diamond and sphere gradients.

The pens alone are nothing...what makes them powerful is the settings you need to set to use them.

To install:

Choose "Add Pens from Package" from pen menu(the tiny triangle popup menu in the right top corner of the pen panel)

and browse to package and select it.

Now click "Folder" from pen menu and the pack should now be selectable there.

Here are settings instructions you must do this for each pen(brushes,alphas...whatever you call them)

In pen options

-check "rotate along motion direction"

-check "Use Spacing"

-set spacing to 5%. (most important setting)

Now 3DCoat will remember those settings when restarting.

Now here are voxel brush settings to use.

-Get in Surface mode and select Absolute brush.

-Check "Invert tool action" checkbox.

-In "extrude direction" parameter select "Initial Vertex Normal".(very important)

-Set "Soft Stroke" to 20.

-Set Depth between 25-70.

Now get crazy. 8)

Edit: by setting depth to Zero you can restore the sculpt with your brush

to the state it was when entering Surface mode.

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hmmm...for whatever reason, 3DC became unstable for me once I installed the .penpack. Crashed when clicking on the 'middle'

voxel object just to get started. After that, I just opened a blank vox scene and merged a square primative, but my graphics

drivers became unstable (patches on the vox model and pen affecting the backside of the model even with no symmetry on).

Anyhow, in looking at the crash report, these things stood out:

.PDB file missed of stack failed

ItemsFolder::AddFolder : textures\patterns\Hardsurface : 1

Can't load image file "textures\preview_pen0.tga"

Can't load image file "textures\preview_pen1.tga"

Can't load image file "textures\preview_pen2.tga"

Can't load image file "textures\preview_pen3.tga"

Can't load image file "textures\preview_pen4.tga"

Can't load image file "textures\preview_pen5.tga"

Can't load image file "textures\preview_pen0.tga"

Can't load image file "textures\preview_pen1.tga"

Can't load image file "textures\preview_pen2.tga"

Can't load image file "textures\preview_pen3.tga"

Can't load image file "textures\preview_pen4.tga"

Can't load image file "textures\preview_pen5.tga"

Can't load image file "textures\preview_pen0.tga"

Can't load image file "textures\preview_pen1.tga"

Can't load image file "textures\preview_pen2.tga"

Can't load image file "textures\preview_pen3.tga"

Can't load image file "textures\preview_pen4.tga"

Can't load image file "textures\preview_pen5.tga"

Can't load image file "textures\preview_pen0.tga"

Can't load image file "textures\preview_pen1.tga"

Can't load image file "textures\preview_pen2.tga"

Can't load image file "textures\preview_pen3.tga"

Can't load image file "textures\preview_pen4.tga"

Can't load image file "textures\preview_pen5.tga"

Can't load image file "textures\preview_pen0.tga"

Can't load image file "textures\preview_pen1.tga"

Can't load image file "textures\preview_pen2.tga"

Can't load image file "textures\preview_pen3.tga"

Can't load image file "textures\preview_pen4.tga"

Can't load image file "textures\preview_pen5.tga"

(etc.)

I suspect something's amiss with the package file...once I removed that folder, 3DC went back to working fine. (shrugs)

Maybe just share the alphas as .tga files and we can add them to the folder ourselves?

Anyhow, thanks for sharing your stuff regardless, artman! :)

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  • 1 month later...

Hmm, "Initial Vertex Normal" doesn't seem to be there anymore, I only have Average Normal, View Direction, And the XYZ options. Perhaps it's another one of those name changes?

also the square brushes are not clean, but I'm guessing that's due to problems with the new brush engine.

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Hmm, "Initial Vertex Normal" doesn't seem to be there anymore, I only have Average Normal, View Direction, And the XYZ options.

Its gonna be back in next build.

also the square brushes are not clean, but I'm guessing that's due to problems with the new brush engine.

They are clean,its just hard to not see the spacing,even with low values especially when turning with stroke,even with old engine.

But you can achieve results like image above.

Unfortunatly I dont know any other methods to do this. :pardon:

The best is that Andrew would allow stroke to run automatically along spline maybe it would be cleaner spacing,I know it is somewhere on his to-do list.

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