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It seems Absolute brush does not like to cross previous strokes that were drawn using RemoveStretching.

post-1195-0-18080600-1336496119_thumb.jp

Edit:Could you make it that CreaseClay slider is in reality 0to300%while still displaying 0to100%.

Also Invert tool action checkbox is very needed there,Creaseclay in additive mode is very powerful but

holding Ctrl for long time is bad for comfort and precision of strokes.

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Hey Andrew, I've recorded a few strokes to show the brush behaviour. GL is awesome! DX is still bumpy, especially on slow strokes, interpolate doesn't help in this case. Small brush sizes produce more bumps than big sizes (at least it feels like). Drawing with constant depth and radius produces no bumps. Pen pressure in Prefs is set to 1023, brush sensitivity is 1. Wacom Prefs pressure compatibility is checked.

In the 2nd part of the video watch the inflate clay brush in the new version, it's not working like it was before, please fix it.

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Hey Andrew, I've recorded a few strokes to show the brush behaviour. GL is awesome! DX is still bumpy, especially on slow strokes, interpolate doesn't help in this case. Small brush sizes produce more bumps than big sizes (at least it feels like). Drawing with constant depth and radius produces no bumps. Pen pressure in Prefs is set to 1023, brush sensitivity is 1. Wacom Prefs pressure compatibility is checked.

In the 2nd part of the video watch the inflate clay brush in the new version, it's not working like it was before, please fix it.

InflateClay is still there but you have to dial the depth higher that 100% for it to stamp the alpha in one click or pen press. I think there will be some adjustments to the percentage gauge as Andrew polishes the brushes..

I tested and was setting mine at 300% to 1000% for testing purposes and it was stamping them like in the other versions...

300% now is like 100% use to be for the LC InflateClay brush

I also love the stamping part of inflateClay as you can stamp all kinds of detail on your models....

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Ok Andrew, I will test over the next fews days as I get time and a big thank you again!

I will post this one video as it concerns the Draw brush in surface mode and goes with the video post above this one. This brush is not a

refection of the other brushes but the one that seems to have problems still...

I get great looking smooth slow strokes using LC with my own created brushes and alphas with the new update of today...

Testing:

DX mode

Draw Brush in surface mode

First brush in the e-panel (radius and depth)

No spacing

No reduce stretching selected

No falloff

No focal shift

depth 50%

Radius 6.75

Default alpha (Top right, last one)

Sphere 500,000

Non-Cuda 32 bit

In the first part of the video, I make a slower stroke and you get the bumps, In the second part of the video I hold down the "W"

key (wireframe mode) while brushing a slow stroke and the resulting strokes are very smooth and clean.

Why wireframe would make a difference, I do not know...

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PPGWtyZJgvI&feature=youtu.be

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Voxel surface brushing GL is still much better than DX, but DX does seem a little less bumpy/blobbly now.

In DX if you turn on "use spacing" and set spacing to 5% it will yield a nice smooth stroke,

but this reveals some other issues

I've noticed that with a standard brush a stroke's cross section profile doesn't really match the brush's

cross section profile. This is true in both DX and GL, but this mismatch is much more pronounced in DX.

Liveclay results in a better match, but in DX it just isn't as good match.

To me this feels like it might be a surface normal problem.

To do it's thing I assume a brush must gather info about the surface it's going over.

If DX sends, what ends up being (for whatever reason) incorrect normal or averaged normal data,

occasional big errors in that data could easily account for a "bump" in that stroke.

The use of a smaller spacing might provide more samples and eliminate those big errors which makes for a smoother

stroke, but if the normal is still incorrect that might cause a constant virtual tilt to the brush which could possibly

account for the profile mismatch.

Of course this is all just supposition on my part, with no real knowledge of what's actually going on,

so I wouldn't be surprise if it was completely and totally wrong :)

What really interests me though is it seems like Andrew doesn't experience this on his test machines.

And I'm very curious about what could be different between those and the systems that do get problems with DX.

I get the problem with both these configurations

XP sp3 32-bit, intel chipset & cpu, GeForce 7900 GS driver 191.07, with an Intuos 2

DirectX 9.0c (4.09.0000.0904)

and

Win7 64-bit, intel chipset & cpu, GeForce 280M driver 258.96 notebook, with an Intuos 4 wireless

Direct 11 built in (it's what comes up if you run dxdiag), but like everyone with

win7 or vista has to do, I added DirectX 9 per the 3DC install instructions.

I used directx_mar2009_redist.exe (downloaded from Microsoft)

Those are two very different systems, but for me the problem is identical on both machines,

and 100 percent repeatable, so I really wonder what the common difference is. :)

Hmm, wait a minute, just a crazy thought; maybe Andrew has AMD based computers?

-Jeff

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OK, this is very weird

I get blobs in the DX paintroom, see attached image.

But only after brushing in voxel surface mode.

If I go directly to the paintroom the paint lines are perfectly smooth,

like the GL example.

EDIT

In preferences:

Brush pressure levels 1023

Brush sensitivity 1

In Brush options:

zero pressure radius 0.15

Depth Modulator 1

All other options are 0 or off

Pressure sensitive options are

set to mouse not pen

MORE EDIT (again)

OK for moment there I thought had a fix, but sadly it doesn't seem to last

It's weird but it worked great for me for awhile (on 32-bit)

In the brush options panel switch all the pressure sensitivity icons

to "pen", (I did this in the paintroom, but I don't if that's important)

And WHAM, that was it!

Everything's was fixed and brushing worked perfectly in 3DC DX!!!

but when I tried the fix on the win7 machine it didn't work

Then I went back the 32-bit machine and tried brushing on a new layer

and no more perfect, and I haven't been able to get it back.

Bummer.

-Jeff

post-1222-0-57788000-1336560331_thumb.jp

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Seems I found the reason. Funny, it happes if FPS is too high. GL a bit slower, so works well there :)

It is still theoretical (can't reproduce exactly), but I am 99% sure that's the reason.

You may check it if you turn off incremental render - fps will fall and strokes will be good.

I will update build today.

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That's awesome Andrew - that actually sounds right to me because using 3DCoat at home as always felt better to me (inferior PC compared to the one I use at work). If it is the solution then I'd like to thank you for taking the time to address this issue. As I'm sure you're aware, it's been problematic for a lot of users for a while so this is a huge boost to 3D Coat.

Is the next step to tune each brush and ensure that there are good default values/settings?

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Interesting that you mention the crease brush because that's always felt a little weak to me too - especially when compared to the competition. I'm not sure if it's just a case of tuning the settings but in my experience, it hasn't given me the results that I'd expect. Perhaps this is better now that Andrew has reworked the code - I'll have to test.

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The only brush that really needs work for me at the moment is creaseclay which needs an inbed like in zbrush.

It pinch a lot but don't really carve into the surface, making very light creases (i need to push the depth to around 800 to get sensible results).

In fact I would go as far as say Andrew got most of the brush right but the performance was so bad (compared to what it is now) that we couldn't see it.

I agree. CreaseClay is a little too weak at the moment.

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Seems I found the reason. Funny, it happes if FPS is too high. GL a bit slower, so works well there :)

It is stii theoretical (can't reproduce exactly), but I am 99% sure it is reason.

You may check it if you will turn off incremental render - fps will fall and strokes will be good.

I will update build today.

I do think you found the reason...

I checked my FPS just now when I brushed a stroke and my FPS went from 95 to 370 (DX mode)

Your FPS goes up (140) but not as high 370 when brushing in wireframe mode so it produces even brush strokes (as shown in the video) in DX mode.

Jitter is unchecked on all my test. I double check my testing parameters and should be as stated in my postings

Tablet setting 1023 on all test, intuos3

I will wait for new build before further testing on the draw brush...

First impression of Voxel grow brush

Voxel grow brush improved, more control at lower extrude settings. Creates more even strokes at lower extrude settings plus smoother in strokes even on lower voxel resolution. I been using surface mode so long now that my opinion on the voxel grow brush might not be as good as someone who uses it all the time...

Smooth brush seems to work better too.

I will have to use the voxel grow brush more to offer a polishing suggestion...

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You may check it if you will turn off incremental render - fps will fall and strokes will be good.

Ah, that works great!

You just have to make sure the object is dense enough so the fps drop far enough.

I'm really looking forward to the new build!

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Nice comparison BeatKitano - I think such things really help. I guess the idea isn't necessarily just to emulate the other packages, but perhaps to try and improve on them too.

You end up with a really nice clean line in the 3D Coat example but the thing I find most striking is that the initial brush stroke looks better in the ZBrush picture - did you use the same sort of brush for each of those initial strokes? The ZBrush one looks much better for organic style creases/wrinkles as it doesn't look like a 'rut' that has scraped through the mesh - it just has a better shape to it IMHO.

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I have done my fair share of moaning about the brushes on this very forum but today I take my hat off to you Andrew - you've made some truly astounding leaps over the past week.

I feel that the updated brushes will do wonders for 3D Coat. I believe all of my colleagues will view it differently now that it's on a par with the competition in terms of sculpting performance. It feels silky smooth and more importantly, predictable. There are no longer any unexpected lumps and bumps that need to be corrected. I'm honestly blown away by the improvement and think it's the best update to this software for a long time!

After testing for a while, I still feel that some default values need to be tweaked but the important thing now is that there's a really solid foundation on which to build. It's no longer a case of changing values to try and avoid inherent problems, but instead changing them for pure artistry.

Well done Andrew, I think you've just given 3D Coat a massive boost in the right direction.

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Ok, the Crease Clay Brush needs just some manual tweaking to work fine. When used with a bigger radius (5 and up) it mess up the mesh quite a bit, mainly if you make very slow strokes. It may works better on dense meshes, I've tested it on a 1mio polys sphere. Anyway, fast strokes a pretty nice.

Andrew may I ask you to put the Inflate Clay Brush on your to do list. It doesn't have to be on top, maybe somewhere in between :D

In my video I showed you the example (post #3), the Inflate Clay doesn't grow anymore. Digman pointed out that stamping is still possible with higher depth values, but I liked the way it grows in earlier versions. Just press down your pen and let it grow. When you are using the brush without falloff, you don't get a sphere shape anymore, it's more like an egg or elliptic sphere. :o

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Yup, DX brushing is now working great on both my systems too.

It's kind of amazing how well it works my old machine. Big thanks Andrew.

One minor thing I've noticed is that whenever I start 3DC pressure sensitivity

for pen radius is always toggled off.

-Jeff

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I deleted my other post for now, what I was talking about can wait, polishing the new current brush routine is more important...

Confirmed: dotting effect on slow strokes no a problem in DX mode.

Well done Andrew...

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One minor thing I've noticed is that whenever I start 3DC pressure sensitivity

for pen radius is always toggled off.

-Jeff

I set that mode to be default - when only depth depends on pressure.

It is more suitable for sculpting, especially when someone do it first time.

Of course you may set other mode..

3.7.11B: Strokes in DX version still dotty, when painting fast. In GL version perfect!

Please show screenshot.

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LC InflateClay has another problem of not dynamically keeping your detail as your brush size gets smaller as in Version 3.7.10A.

Settings for both versions the same.

First brush in e-panel used in both versions.

Appox 500,000 tri polygon surface mode object.

Brush cursor is stationary. (not moving)

Best way to test is get an alpha that has an image and use the same settings in both versions.

In the Linux version 3.7.10A who can hold down the mouse buttton and your detail grows under the cursor.

In the Windows version 3.7.11B you have to keep clicking the mouse button and the detail is never clear and sharp as the Linux 3.710A version

If you keep clicking the mouse button to raise the detail, you do get some dynamic detail but the image starts to blob out...

See picture for reference.

I will wait on a polishing suggestion for the inflateclay brush till this gets fixed...

I do want to post suggestions for Voxel, Surface, and LiveClay brushes, been busy...

post-518-0-98209700-1336692361_thumb.jpg

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Hey guys,

Has anyone here tried using the blob brush in voxels yet? It isn't responsive at all for me it seems. (I know this forum is for brush improvements but if the brush doesn't work at all that counts right? If not, let me know and ill move this to another post.)

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I'll try to explain this. I find that the smudge tool is very unpredictable and weak. After some time it starts burning your color and it stops smoothing. It starts showing the color underneath too sharp. I've link a video below so you see what I mean.

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