AbnRanger

+1...I'm still getting the same thing as well. It doesn't do it all the time...just randomly. It's critical enough that I have to re-install 3.5.07, as it effectively shuts down both caching and multi-res capability (or risk losing your work)

Looks like Newtek did themselves right by getting Rob Powers and putting him in charge of things. I like the direction he has it going.

I'm wondering if you applied UV's to your mesh before merging it to the paint room. Check out Greg's little Ghost character tutorial series...he does a good job of explaining the workflow all the way from sculpting to Retopo to UV's and Painting.

You can delete a layer or you can use a regular tool like the Clay brush, hit the E key to bring up the E Panel and select something like the the freeform tool, drag around the part you want to delete, while holding down the CTRL key (that inverts the operation...subtracting volume instead of adding) and it will be deleted.

I'd rather pose outside of 3DC, with bones (that are skinned) or in my case CAT or Biped (3ds Max), then if you need to modify the mesh a bit when you have the right pose, you have a skin morph modifier that will allow you to make those kinds of changes at specific poses. On the other hand, if I want to pose a character within 3DC then I plan that out before I start. I build the model in the pose I want. You can still split the model up without there being any seams, and you can retopo just one mesh with many different voxel layers. What ever is visible in the Retopo Room, it will snap the geometry to...no matter if they happen to be a 100 different voxel layers. If you insist on posing in Voxels without planning ahead, you can still merge all the layers together, pose and then split them up again...if necessary.

http://www.youtube.com/user/Fugazi3D#p/u/11/asp3Vt08XAk

I think that was from NVidia assuring him that they had done a good deal of work on OpenGL in their drivers. I don't know anymore, either...a flip of the coin will settle it, I suppose.

It started doing it again with me as well. Doesn't always do it, but when it does...it's aggravating. Just glad I save often.http://www.screencast.com/users/dnashj33/folders/Default/media/97d58b33-188b-413c-934c-95ed336ea25e

I think it's always a good idea to split your model into discreet sections, at least until you are finished and ready to retopologize, and even then, you may want to leave them separate, should you want to use the Auto Retopo feature separately on those parts, or on one part and manually retopo another. It also allows you to cache the parts you aren't actively working on, and save RAM in the process. You can also HIDE those parts by clicking the visibility icon on that layer (in the Vox Tree/Layer panel).http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Q7ZJX9Nfy8w

This guy's youtube channel will have a bunch of tutorials for this task:http://www.youtube.com/user/Fugazi3D

CUDA will work with either. Right now, Andrew recently overhauled the brush engine throughout the application. When he finished to engine for the Voxel "Volume" mode, he said that CUDA worked, but it wasn't yet optimized. He said he was going to try and get to it after squashing some critical bugs. Hope that is sooner rather than later. Anytime he has to escape to his cabin for a week or two, to work on a difficult feature...it usually means something big is in the works. So, you may not see a huge difference in CUDA utilization right now, but once Andrew updates it, I think you will.

Hey Javis, I think one thing that can help prevent this question from popping up so often is to have that pallet loaded from default settings...perhaps in the same tray as the layers panel. That way new or trial users can find it intuitively. Same thing with Auto Retopo...it should have a button (within the main toolbar) in the Retopo Room and the Vox tree panel should load in the Retopo room by default (settings). With a lot of people trying the application out for that feature alone, it should be placed in the most logical position possible. This way it removes any confusion as to whether AutoRetop resides in the Retopo Room or Voxel room. All Retopology tasks should operate out of the Retopo Room.

Yes...I got the very same thing. I deleted the options.xml file and re-installed. That seemed to stop it. Funny how that fixes a lot of would-be bugs. Not sure why that continues to occur.

I'm a Max-Head myself, but 3DC has become my favorite app by far. I can do the vast majority of modeling here and anything character-related...I prefer to use 3DC all the way through the process now, til I'm ready to rig, animate and render in Max. The sheer clay-like nature of Voxels allow you hash out the look of your character as you go, instead of trying to piddle with a base model in Max. It's a totally new paradigm...a reverse modeling technique, that I think will catch on more and more as people discover how fluid and efficient the workflow is.What's more is...if you are constructing heavy scene environments, the Auto Retopo feature will come in extremely handy, as will the Ptex feature set (it's a full implementation in 3DC...not just exporting maps to Ptex format). It's essentially a very elegant Auto-UV (without seams) feature, and only in 3DC can you export the resulting maps and UV to render in any application. Automated topology and UV's...there isn't another application that offers both.

Yes...once you have a license, you get all updates free. Only major releases (v3/4, etc.) will there be any upgrade charge, and even then it's pretty inexpensive. It's been almost 2yrs since v3 was released, and it's developed much faster than any other CG app I can think of, in that time frame.

I think a good understanding of Anatomy is highly important if one plans to sculpt the human or animal form. The chief reason is that Anatomy is the framework by which all detail is built upon...the eye has been trained by a lifetime of observance and can quickly spot when something is off. Just like bad CG.The African art you refer to is highly exaggerated, with no attempt made to accurately capture the human form. It's essentially a caricature.

What is tedious and unintuitive about using the freeze tool to do exactly what he's asking? It IS a masking tool.

And you can also do this type of "Mask" operation using the FREEZE tool in Surface mode (not present in Volume mode). You can use the appropriate Brush mode (in the upper left-hand corner or hit the E key to bring up the E-Panel)...in this case, the Rectangle selection tool. Switch to orthographic mode (NUMBER Pad 5 key) and make your selection. Just like you would in Photoshop you can invert the selection (CTRL+SHIFT+I) and your ready to extrude.Another option would be to just create a primitive shape (with Freeform Deformation Primitives) and merge it with the object (either hit APPLY or the enter key on the same layer that you want to join it to or make it on a separate and when you're ready to merge you can SHIFT+drag the layer to the object layer you want to merge to). I think you have a great deal more control that way.

Yeah...what they said!

You can import the high-res mesh into the Retopo Room, and then build your lower poly retopo'ed mesh over that (it snaps to the hight-res). I would do all the UV and painting in 3DC, as the toolset is far more robust for the task. If that is what you choose to do, you would then want to export (via the Retopo menu from the menu bar) the result to either PPP (Per Pixel Painting mode...normal map based relief) or MicroVertex (Displacement map relief...although you have the option upon export to bake a normal map as well as displacement).

+1. I've been meaning to ask for this for some time now. It would come in handy quite often. Been having to make such "Insets" Manually one cut at a time when extrude/inset has been a standard use tool in 3D applications for over a decade.

http://googlesystem.blogspot.com/2010/12/google-body-browser.html Now, you have a pretty nice anatomy reference that you can orbit around and such...pretty nice. But you have to have certain browsers to use it. I went with the Firefox 4 Beta...it's pretty sweet, and the big improvement is the speed, not to mention really clean appearance.

Try one last thing....on your voxel object/model layer, right-click and choose "Fill Voids." See if that doesn't help. I had major issues with some hidden holes months back, and couldn't get AutoRetopo to work on a particular model. Andrew took a look-see and found holes in the volume. He made this tool for this reason and he also said those holes can cause problems when baking maps.

Actually, I think all that can be avoided. If Andrew could merge a variant of the FFD lattices from the Primitives Tool with the Pose Tool. The would give Andrew the Lattice control many of us have asked for. The Pose tool would have a lot more juice, and avoid complicated bone structures. Instead of bones, you'd have FFD lattice options to turn to in the Pose tool, for more control. The way it would work is to have the FFD primitives tools load when you check FFD, and instead of a green primitive you see a semi-transparent transparent one. Where this primitive intersects with the object/layer(you have selected), that is the volume your lattice will control...and you can use the selection tools in the pose tool to affect the falloff/weighting. I think adding the ability to save the deformer, perhaps as a child layer would make it even better. Much like Andrew was able to utilize existing tools (strokes and freeze) in 3DC to use in Auto Retopo, he could possibly do the same here.

I agree with this, when you are talking about non-animated objects in the scene. Auto Retopo makes a lot more sense when you have a bunch of objects to have retopo, in order to populate a scene or environment, for example. And I think it even makes sense for clothing, as I know 3ds Max's Cloth (garment maker) applies a kind of random triangular mesh anyway. But when we're talking about animating a character, I just don't think it makes sense to even attempt to use an automated process, no matter how close it gets you. It's better to just get an efficient routine down, doing it manually than to make multiple attempts with Auto Retopo and then end up having to do quite a bit of clean up. For one thing it tends to often spiral edgeloops (instead of making each one a closed loop)...and that makes it a nightmare trying to clean up. In all my attempts, it's been hit or miss. Sometimes it's so good, I have to giggle a bit (feeling like I cheated on a test or something), other times it just doesn't seem worth it. Going back to Characters....sure, for ones that will not be in the foreground, near the camera, you might could do fine with Autopo....but it's almost like going out to a fine restaurant and ordering a Hungry Man TV Dinner. Sure it's food, but....