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Questions about morph target option


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Hello everyone!

Maybe you guys can help me. I am big fan of 3D coat and I am looking for a reason to use 3d coat more as apposed to zbrush for my work flow. Version 3.7 seems to have a lot of promise but I have a few questions first.

1. Can I paint masks as in zbrush?

2. Is there something in 3D coat that is like the morph target option in zbrush (along with morph brush)?

3. Can you create a voxel mesh and save it as an alpha to be used as a brush?

4. In 3.7 is there a way to import a mesh or part of a mesh into separate layers instead of having to go into a 3D package and combine them first?

Also, I noticed there is a way to bake the displacement into the alpha channel of a normal map which can be useful. Is there a way to import a high res mesh and a low res mesh to do a bake? Importing a reference mesh or big mesh seems to either do nothing or over write my low poly mesh.

Thank you in advance,

Matt

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1) In 3d-coat masks are known as "freeze". You can paint them in the paint room, and on voxels in surface mode. Unfortunately you can't paint them on voxels in volume mode, but that's not a huge problem.

2) Layers in 3d-coat paint and sculpt room are effectively morph targets. They can be masked by other layers, so yes.

3) 3d-coat brushes are a lot more complex than just alphas, they can include channels for color, alpha, spec and depth, so yes.

4) 3d-coat can load multiple objects, but the way it's done and managed is not intuitive so I have not used it much in my work. I would like to see a tutorial on this. (Anyone?)

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3. Can you create a voxel mesh and save it as an alpha to be used as a brush?

Save it as an object.

When creating a brush, you can load an image, but you also use an object . You can choose which direction to view the object from, it's size rotation and depth. It will then convert it into an image based brush for you.

If you use the merge tool. you can also use actual 3-dimensional objects. If you use the "on pen" option, you can place these objects on (or in) the surface.

Tom

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2. Is there something in 3D coat that is like the morph target option in zbrush (along with morph brush)?

Here are a couple of tutorials showing morph creation:

http://pilgway.com/~daniel/video/3dCoatMorphTutorial.mov

http://vimeo.com/9394361

Tom

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Thank you very much for the replies guys! It is a shame that you have to jump through some hoops to import multiple objects. I hope that gets fixed in a later version.

Hey can any of you shed some light on making a good displacement map? The normal maps for the model look great but despite rounding off corners, I still get white corners in my disp map. I have tried xnormal, crazy bump, maya, and zbrush with no luck.

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Thank you very much for the replies guys! It is a shame that you have to jump through some hoops to import multiple objects. I hope that gets fixed in a later version.

What exactly do you mean?

What are you trying to do?

Import multiple parts to sculpt with? multiple parts to paint on?

Tom

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Well currently I am just trying to import a high res mesh and a low res mesh to see if I can bake a normal map with a displacement map as the alpha channel instead of having to bake out a displacement map and normal map in Xnormal and combine the two in photoshop.

If you want to import multiple parts into 3D coat as separate entities you have go into your 3D program, select the parts you want to export (dont combine them just select them), then export out your parts with "groups" turned on (depending on your software package) for 3D coat to split your parts. Then you can hide/ show your separate parts in the objects tab. At least thats how it was in 3.5. I havent tested that in 3.7 yet.

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Sorry to revive an old thread, 

 

I'm doing character morphs at the moment and stumbled across these posts.

 

I was just wondering why the morph functionality that Jarvis shows in his video only works if you import the model for microvertex mode? The moment my mesh gets altered in any way (ie, subdivided) it automatically becomes useless. I only do real-time based work so forgive my ignorance, but when would you ever want 3dcoat to alter your imported mesh if you plan on exporting out morph targets?

 

It seems my only solution is to import for per-pixel painting, so I retain my mesh exactly as I need it, but then save out one mesh at a time and lose the layering ability.

 

Any thoughts?

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Sorry to revive an old thread, 

 

I'm doing character morphs at the moment and stumbled across these posts.

 

I was just wondering why the morph functionality that Jarvis shows in his video only works if you import the model for microvertex mode? The moment my mesh gets altered in any way (ie, subdivided) it automatically becomes useless. I only do real-time based work so forgive my ignorance, but when would you ever want 3dcoat to alter your imported mesh if you plan on exporting out morph targets?

 

It seems my only solution is to import for per-pixel painting, so I retain my mesh exactly as I need it, but then save out one mesh at a time and lose the layering ability.

 

Any thoughts?

The technique in that video is for Lightwave, which allows you to export one mesh, but with multiple "Endomorphs" embedded. I don't know if it's using displacement maps for each morph or storing separate mesh states. You could create morph targets per layer in the Paint Room (name each layer with a specific Phoneme or Viseme) > select the layer you want to create a Morph for > hide the rest > in the Tweak room sculpt your first Morph target/shape > FILE > EXPORT (some Applink plugins give you the ability to send your mesh directly to your app via the EXPORT TO option from the FILE menu).

 

Once done, hide that layer > select and unhide the next layer you want to create a Morph Target/Blendshape for and repeat the process. I don't think you have to use MV only. PPP should work. You just sculpt/edit your mesh in the Tweak Room.

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You could create morph targets per layer in the Paint Room (name each layer with a specific Phoneme or Viseme) > select the layer you want to create a Morph for > hide the rest > in the Tweak room sculpt your first Morph target/shape > FILE > EXPORT (some Applink plugins give you the ability to send your mesh directly to your app via the EXPORT TO option from the FILE menu).

 

This method doesn't seem to operate the same way for PPP unfortunately, or I've missed a step. Any layer you make is essentially blank and contains no geometry information. you also can't duplicate the base (Layer 0) layer. I just can't find a way to make it work. So for example, I'd make a new layer, name it "Angry", hide the rest annnnnnnd now there's no mesh to work with in the tweak room.

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This method doesn't seem to operate the same way for PPP unfortunately, or I've missed a step. Any layer you make is essentially blank and contains no geometry information. you also can't duplicate the base (Layer 0) layer. I just can't find a way to make it work. So for example, I'd make a new layer, name it "Angry", hide the rest annnnnnnd now there's no mesh to work with in the tweak room.

 

 

Hey Gary!

 

You are right, using the tweak room doesn't work with morph maps in PPP mode, only in MV mode, unfortunately. It's really a bummer. That said, I've been using another tool for this job anyway, so at least for me, it's alright. Do you by chance have LW or MODO?

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  • Carlosan changed the title to Questions about morph target option

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