AbnRanger

That is something Andrew could do now that Multi-Res is implemented, but I'm not sure where that falls in his list of priorities, as....yet again....if you have a newer card, you have NO issues smoothly navigating around your model. A GTS 250 (essentially a re-worked 9800 GTX) worked fine, and you can find one of those for less than a $100. It's no different than Mudbox, in that regard. The models I export to 3ds Max, even with it decimated quite low, nearly choke on the poly's. 3DC handles them fairly well, as does the other sculpting applications.

Are you trying to be sarcastic here? Why the attitude lately? If you have a pressing issue, contact Andrew directly and see if you can get a resolution more effectively than trying to poison the whole pot here on the forums?I just don't understand what is going on here with a few members. It seems the more Andrew does, the more people come forward to complain. I mean he has tackled a lot of major bottlenecks in the past few months and is trying to let us in early on a major new feature, and already people like yourself are dumping on it. EDIT: I was very frustrated too, a while back with certain bottlenecks and some bugs, and felt like they weren't being heard or addressed. After a quick discussion with Andrew, I realized voicing those frustrations here on the forum, was not the most productive way to get a resolution. Not trying to preach...just pointing out lessons learned the hard way, I guess.

You don't need to try Sculptris, and have to learn yet another program. Voxel Sculpting is the primary method for sculpting at this point, and it has plenty of tools to help you generate a base model to start sculpting from. Why learn another software when you have yet to learn the one you already own? The Sculpt Room as it is currently named, is a bit confusing as you would think that would be the main module for sculpting...period. But it is not. It is a legacy sculpt room/mode that is meant to work in conjunction with (not instead of) the image-based sculpting in the Paint Room. Essentially, what was available before Voxels came around.You would make any large scale changes in the Sculpt Room, and take care of the smaller details in the Paint Room, painting live normal or displacement maps. It's very similar to how sculpting is done in Modo. Until the Mac version goes 64bit, you may still want to sculpt the high details in the Paint room, as Voxels do take up more RAM than geometry sculpting. You can use the new Cache to Disk feature to Cache layers you aren't actively working on, to keep the RAM consumption level much lower as you work....but having 64bit and more RAM will definitely let you push your models much further, if you want. Try going through the tutorials in the Video Manual first, and yes, you'll get a lot of valuable info/tips from Leigh's tutorials.

I just have not seen this limitation you're referring to, and I've used it on 20-40+ mill poly models...I've not experienced it even on a measly laptop (which has video cards that are lame compared to their desktop counterparts). I think perhaps you may be confusing memory limitations with a lack of Video Card performance. When you approach 80-90% of your RAM limit, you will start to see some lag in everything, not just navigation. ZBrush is the only application that I'm aware of that doesn't need a relatively new system to get a lot out of it (it's still 32 bit, so it is not going to take advantage of more memory anyway). Please don't slam the application because you're using a card that is now 3 generations old (3yrs+). Just to keep things in perspective here, Voxel sculpting only came out in v3 in June of last year. The 8800 was already 2 generations old then. The ATI 4850 I mentioned earlier; purchased months prior to that release, was only $150, and it was on the same level as the GTX 260. So, it's not like you HAVE to spend an arm and a leg on a card that works well with 3DC.

I was just pointing out that I went through those models (now using the 275), and had no problems with them. So perhaps just one more upgrade will be the cat's meow.

Since v3 came out I've had an ATI 4850, an Nvidia GTS 250, and a GTX 275. I've had no trouble with getting smooth rotation any of those models. The only hardware limitations I've seen is RAM, and that is the case on any system. It takes a good bit of RAM to get the most out of 3DC.The extra 240+ cores on a GTX 480 should provide a pretty noticeable difference from a GTX 200 series with CUDA usage (voxel sculpting speed)

Try temporarily turning snapping off (toggle in the upper left hand corner of the screen). You could also try some of the different snapping modes (maybe snapping to surface will work best). Snapping is where things go haywire in certain spots, sometimes.What I would try is to turn off snapping, then subdivide > turn snapping back on > click "snap" in the (leftside) tools. If that doesn't quite do the trick then try it again, but use the Brush tool (hold down the SHIFT key to smooth) to relax the trouble spots. Then see if you come out with a bald porcupine.

That was one of the things they were doing during the show...talking to different studios, vendors and educational institutions.I agree, that would be a great promotional combination (LW 10+ 3D Coat), but I personally feel Rob thinks more highly of Andrew's accomplishments than to just seek a cross-promotion deal. That's not any inside info or anything. Just a gut feeling. Kind of like reading the wind before taking a shot.

Good point, but I guess I'd have to see it in practice. When building a retopo mesh, it doesn't really matter if the mouth is closed and solid, you build what you want, where you want...the substance underneath (voxel or geometry) is not so important. Game artists are going to have pretty tight models, and 3ds Max has built-in mesh diagnosis tools. So, you won't have an experienced Max artist having those issues. I'm sure that is the case with other major 3D applications as well.

I have a hard time understanding the logic behind trying to RETOPO an OBJ without merging into Voxels first. Even if you could, why is it such a hindrance to merge the model to voxels, when you are building a completely new mesh? Why does it matter if you're building it from an OBJ or a Voxel model? One or two clicks for a one time procedure? Are we really going to make an issue of a click or two?

That was because there were a host of bugs in the Retopo room and as you know, some real bottlenecks in the Voxel Sculpting process. After speaking with Andrew, I realized it was more productive to send him video captures and copies of work files along with bug reports. It wasn't long before those bugs got squashed.Cache to Disk and Multi-threaded merge made got rid of those frustrating bottlenecks. I hope that others here will take a similar approach to dealing with their frustrations. If you demonstrate the problem with a screen capture, and then contact Andrew directly with copy of the file, he has more to go on and can quickly target the problem. It's more productive than broadcasting your frustrations here, that can negatively poison other users thinking in the process.

You could create leaves in a snap, and even scatter them by merging on pen and perhaps the curves tool (make a leaf and export an obj of it...from there place it in your 3DC directory), but the problem is that Vue uses 2D cards for it's leafy foilage

Well there is always going to be some concern, anytime a major 3D Application's exec's talk to a smaller vendor...as many times "business" takes on an exclusive nature, if you know what I mean...cough "Autodesk"....cough, cough "Mudbox". Pardon me, need some water.

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.

Yes, it was a very busy day. Their idea to put a poster up highlighting the new Auto retopo tools was pretty big. I'd say that alone drove about 1/3 to 1/2 of the traffic to the booth. At times there were as many people checking out the poster as there was talking to demonstrators. I think Andrew stumbled upon the Leprechan's pot of gold with that feature.

that's fine....just some people were asking for the video on youtube or vimeo, over at cgtalk...in haste I just posted it. Seemed like it's easy to see it's just someone showing a feature, not showing their model or tutorial or anything

No, I just put the videos Andrew listed on his Twitter up on Vimeo, so more people could see it

They will be setting up all the video equipment and such today. But the booth itself is what he is referring toBTW, Thanks for the tip, Greg.

I didn't mean that in a suspicious way....just wondering if maybe Andrew had arranged for him to pick up a pass, or was it free Sunday. I was thinking about heading over a little early myself to take a look-see.

How did you get to check it out ahead of the team getting there? Was it free admission today? For what it's worth, here is the poster I cooked up for display within the booth (on a tripod). I hope there is a lot of traffic going through there.

Who said anything about what the Blender Foundation thinks of itself? It's totally irrelevant to the discussion. The proof is in the pudding. It's kicks some tail in many facets of the program, and whether you like the UI or not has no bearing on it's worth. Plenty of folks HATE ZBrush's UI, but that doesn't stop it from holding the lion's share of the market. It's a matter of personal preference. If it can save time and money, what difference does a UI really make. That never stopped Maya users from producing tons of great content. The Blender 2.5 UI is certainly more modern than Lightwaves ancient 90's throwback, and it is a full-fledged application at that, unlike LW CORE.I use Max still, but I do think Blender is proving it's merit lately, and that many studios are going to have to start taking notice...and when they do, it will make 3D applications all the more affordable. They have been nudging in that direction lately, with Maya and Softimage dropping their prices in the past few years.

That is a nice feature, but you have a similar workflow capability in Voxels, where you can simply use the "Copy" tool to paint areas where you want to add more resolution...and while you are working on that copied layer, you can go one step further and cache the layers you aren't currently working on. All it amounts to having tools to help manage system resources. Sculptris deals with it one way, and 3DC deals with it in a slightly different way.http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Q7ZJX9Nfy8w

Max is celebrating 20yrs at Siggraph and Maya/Power Animator has been around even longer....so LW may have some early origins of it's own, it's clear they never tried to adopt, at any point in time, common industry standard conventions. The wanted to paint themselves into a corner by insisting that it remain "different." Now they are realizing that approach has been part of the problem, and why they are adopting some of the structural aspects of other applications....such as a Modifier/History stack and unified Modeling/Animation environment. They ignored users on those fronts for years.So, don't bash an application for it's UI when no.1 IT'S FREE....and no.2, IT'S FREE...and no.3 they already made major changes in that effort, that you conveniently ommit. That little free application, with it's quirky UI (your words, not mine) can run circles around Lightwave in many if not most regards. Heck, it's fluid system is a great alternative to expensive plugins for a Max user...and did I mention it's FREE?

Phil, Blender 2.5 underwent a major UI redo just to address all the complaints about it. It may not be what YOU want, but it is a major improvement. What's more is, coming from Lightwave, you should know they DELIBERATELY chose to make their tool naming convention, UI layout, and shortcut keys non-standardized...and thus it's much harder for someone to grasp LW, coming from other applications. I learned on 3ds Max and still prefer it today, but I've taken some courses in Maya, and it's a fairly logical transition for the most part. So, it's fine for companies to aspire to be unique, but they risk turning users off because they make the learning or transition curve too steep. In Lightwave's case, unlike ZBrush, they are fighting to gain marketshare and a larger userbase. There are some things about 3DC that doesn't seem logical, like having to choose another tool in order to drop the current one...and transform gizmos that aren't centered on the object, by default, etc....but on the whole, the fact that it emulates Photoshop's layer system and UI structure, makes it much more user-friendly, in my opinion. It's also one of the things that attracts many users to Mudbox over ZBrush.

You do realize you can add additional loops in seconds, in the Retopo room, with the Split Rings tool. I'd rather have less and add as I need them, than the reverse. You do know you can quickly slide edges where you want them, right? So you don't get a made-to-order model? This is the closest thing to it, and I am pretty happy about that...even if I need to tweak a bit to get the final result.