AbnRanger

VRay 2 it is, then...

How does VRay RT work for you? The equivalent tool in FR is it's Interactive Render, but it seems a much ignored feature...and in practice, I can see why. It's so crash prone, it's unusuable in production. If it weren't for that, I would be fine with the tools I have.The one thing I really liked about it's IPR, is that it's the ONLY renderer for Max that allows you to get full blown interactive previews of volumetric FX plugins like Afterburn, PyroCluster and FumeFX. If only the da%#!@-ed thing worked without crashing! It's been that way for over a year now, and Cebas acts like they could care less. I was a big Cebas fan for such a long time, but every since they worked with Uncharted Territory on the 2012 film, they haven't been the same. It's like they go into hiding until VRay comes out with a new release...then they feel obligated to respond. That's why they announced the release of R3.5 within days of VRay 2. Before that, there wasn't a peep from them on the forums, for months. I don't think Newtek could get away with that kind of support/interaction...so, that's why I'm suddenly leaning toward LW 10 for the task. Mental Ray, as you know, doesn't work with Volumetric FX in Max, and iRay doesn't strike me as being nearly as efficient as FPrime or VRay RT, even if it does utilize CUDA enabledc cards.

I really think Newtek is hurting themselves by not stating what outside customers can expect with CORE when it is released. I would be much more inclined to make a purchase (regardless of what type of license...EDU or Commerical), if I knew they were working on CA tools in CORE. I'm thinking it's worth going back to LW just for the renderer. Do you know where that video went, where Graham Toms showing 3DC in use with LW 10....and it showed the enhanced polycount handling capability in Layout? It seems to have disappeared. I wonder why? Ah, snap! I just noticed that FinalRender 3.5 has just been released. It's half the upgrade cost for me (not real happy about that) Again, it's the tight integration LW's VPR has with it's renderer that makes it so tempting for me. I talked to Edwin (the head at Cebas) at their booth during SIGGRAPH and he seemed to blame Autodesk for the problems with their IPR. That's not going to help me get the job done...but outside of the IPR, I love the renderer. Tough choice to make... http://www.cebasstation.com/index.php?pid=hot_news&nid=394

"I made possibility to save separate voxel layers as 3B files (with subtree or no)."Thank you, Andrew...

How does the student to commercial upgrade work? Is it like Adobe products, when you buy EDU software, IT IS the commercial version...just at a significant student discount? LW used to have a killer competitive crossgrade ($395-$495), but I'm not sure where the distinction lies with the EDU license and the commercial. Would you be able to participate in the HardCORE program and all? I hope that Turbulence plugin isn't going to be another one like "Dynamite"...that essentially had the developer go awol on his customers. Turbulence would answer a problem I have had with HyperVoxels. I can spot when they are used on TV...it's substandard (in my estimation) and in big need of an overhaul. Perhaps it just needs better fractal noise algorithms, and finer control of them. That is the difference I have noticed between the two "Voxel/Volume" FX plugins for Max....Afterburn and PyroCluster. I'm really impressed with LW 10's VPR, and am really tempted to get in on that deal and use LW for surfacing and rendering, especially when using Vue XStream. I can do all my modeling and Character Animation in Max. I really like FinalRender (3rd party renderer for Max...on par with VRay), but the Interactive Renderer has been very crash-prone...and therefore nearly useless for me. LW seems to offer the least gotcha's and limitation now. The only last concern I have is instancing. I see that you can do it in CORE, but I would like to be able to do some instancing in LW 10 if I needed.

I don't know that I would characterize LW's CA tools as crippling...just not on par with others on the market. There are "plugins" such as Maestro and even better, Messiah Studio, that fill the gap fairly well. This is one area that Newtek has acknowledged as being in need of improvement, and in my opinion...an area they really should address early with CORE, if they really want to regain some momentum in the industry. Nevertheless, for your purposes, either Blender or LW would fit. I think Blender is actually, overall, the better application right now, compared to LW in it's current state. The one saving grace for LW has will continue to be, it's rendering...especially now with the interactive VPR. That is very nice. Previously, you had to buy a plugin renderer called FPrime, to get that level of interactivity. I think it may be the one thread that has held LW together these past five years or so. It's been ahead of it's time and only recently have other applications gotten on board with Interactive renderers.

Where did you get this information about upgrading from EDU to Commercial (free before 10 is released)? I'm taking some Maya and life drawing classes locally, so I may look into it and pass the news along to some of the students and faculty. Can the student with an EDU license get access to CORE and Beta version of LW10?Regardless, though...the point I made about the Autodesk pricing is that the price gap is not totally out of reach for someone coming out of school. That is generally the segment that can't afford the $3k+ pricetag. Again, if one is making a living with the software, it generally should pay for itself, and then you can deduct it from your federal income taxes...so that Uncle Sam essentially buys it for you instead of wasting your hard-earned money funding bogus and offensive art, or building a bridge to nowhere.

There isn't one that stands heads and shoulders above the others. They all can get the job done, but you may have to buy plugins to get the features you're really after. C4D has Mograph for Motion Graphic artists. Max requires FumeFX or Afterburn to get great smoke/fire/explosions (but they are exceptional). Lightwave has the stigma of having comparatively poor Character Animation tools, so many LW artists instead rely on Messiah studio for that.Softimage and Maya are probably the most complete (without need for plugins). I am a Max head...I love it (I think the modeling toolset is arguably the best in the industry and the choice of 3rd party renderers is what sets it apart), but I could be comfortable with any of them. The question, however, shouldn't be framed as "What application is best"...there is no objective answer there. The real question to ask is, "Based on my situation, what application makes the most sense?" If you plan to work for a studio, it matters more than if you are a hobbiest or freelancer. And even if you do freelance, there will be some short term openings to freelance on site, and application experience weighs heavily in those situations, too. If you are a Graphic Artist, you simply HAVE to be aware of what the most common applications are in that industry...lest you find yourself on the outside, looking in when browsing job openings. It's not much different in 3D. What industry do you plan to work in? Browse the job openings to see which one is the most prevalent. When people say "Maya is for film, Max is for games and Arch Viz, etc.," they are saying those are where the jobs are, respectively. There are jobs in any one of them, but some are more scarce than others. That is one of the reasons I sold my seat of LW and just stuck with Max. As for pricing, there isn't a large a gap as many LW artists claim. If you have an EDU license of Max, Maya or Softimage, you can upgrade that to a full commercial version for about $1200 at any authorized Autodesk reseller. If you are not or have not been a student, with an EDU license, then why not Blender? If price is so terribly important that it steers you toward LW, then Blender makes even more sense. For freelancers, without prior experience in the commercial 3D apps, it is a perfect fit, in my opinion. Lightwave may seem to make sense to legacy users, but I personally don't feel like there is anything there to lure users from other applications...especially when you consider that it's development is in somewhat of a state of flux, currently. It will likely be 3-5yrs before CORE is ready to replace the legacy LW. And let's be honest...there is a reason they scrapped plans to replace sections of LW at a time and just start from scratch. There is only so much they can do with the current legacy architecture. I wasn't willing to wait years for Newtek to catch up with the rest. If you have been using Blender and aren't looking for studio work now or in the near future, I'd recommend staying right where you are and just continue to build on your experience with it instead of trying to take on another steep, steep learning curve and financial expense.

You can use the DEPTH slider or right-click (hold) and drag the stylus up and down to change the intensity accordingly.

I just tested and you can now drag a layer to the models pallet and you get a decimation dialogue (as it creates an obj for you). It creates a thumbnail, but I can't figure out why the camera angle isn't based on the viewport. Nevertheless, this is really cool. I was hoping for the ability to right click and export/save an individual layer (with any children) to a .3b file, but this is fairly close.

Thanks for sharing...again, it not only helps new users get up to speed, but it's nice to watch other artist's techniques. If I may make one quick suggestion, that is to use/show the UV texture editor (from the Texture menu). It is like having Photoshop in the viewport. Greg's little Ghost tutorials really turned me on to using it more often. I knew it was there, but almost never tried it. You can view the wireframe overlay, inspect the normal maps, paint your spec maps in 2d and such, just as you would in PS. And the real magic of it all, is that when you paint in the texture editor, you can see the changes happen on the model in the viewport. It's also really helpful if you want to select just a portion of the model and bucket fill that part only. One can use a program for years and still discover new techniques from other artists, of all levels of experience. BTW, how are your students faring with their modeling/texturing projects (one was a Star Wars vehicle/scooter, I think)?

Yes...that's a NO...on the need to re-install expansion packs and such.

The difference is your e6400 is a dual-core and hers is a quad core. Andrew did a lot of multi-threading work in all areas of the application (although there are still some functions that still seem to be single threaded), and applied new Intel libraries to optimize the multi-threading. Voxels rely more on the CPU than the video card. Andrew said that the Volume mode got the brush engine changes but CUDA hasn't yet been optimized. I'm really hoping that Andrew can get with his NVidia rep and work on getting CUDA far more involved in multi-threaded tasks throughout the application.Not only are there more processing cores that can work simultaneously, but the newer cards nowadays are using MUCH faster RAM (DDR5 compared to DDR2 & 3).

Thanks for the update, Andrew. Just one quick question...when you say one can drag a volume to the model/splines pallet, are you saying that we have the ability to drag a visible object in the viewport/scene into the pallet?

I'll make a quick tutorial/demo on the Voxel sculpting performance. It's VERY fast if you use the right tools in the right situation. EVERY handy-dandy tool always seems to have it's share of benefits and drawbacks. ZBrush and Mudbox have their share as well as 3D Coat.In the Voxel Room you have Volume mode, Surface Mode and then Multi-Res. Volume mode is very fast up to a given resolution and brush radius. I just upgraded my desktop to 16GB of RAM, a 6 core CPU and a newer NVidia card. There is some performance gain, but on the whole...the workflow remains the same. Large brush radius' in Volume mode, with a relatively high poly count (15-30mill) is just not going to be that fast. But it's really not much different than the multi-res workflow in Mudbox or ZBrush. There is no way I would try to make large scale changes in MB with several levels of subdivision. That's why you have the different levels to quickly step up and down in. In Voxel Sculpting, those kinds of changes are lightning quick when you cache your layer and make the adjustments to the proxy. I think it's just going to take some time for people to get used to the workflow, and find out what tools and brushes work in a given situation. If I came in fresh, and tried to sculpt on a higher res object in Voxel mode, I'd be a bit disappointed too...but that's why both Surface mode and then Multi-Res were added to the Voxel Room. To get over those hurdles.

After upgrading, I noticed that the navigation (using a SpacePilot) seems much smoother, but I didn't really see a major difference in brush response. I guess 3DC uses the CPU more, if not exclusively for brush strokes. I'm still not clear where CUDA is involved in Voxel sculpting. The Manual seems to be somewhat vague about CUDA, except to mention that the real benefit is when sculpting using Masks or Materials. I think anyone with a GTX 260-280 series card could stand to wait a while longer before upgrading, but if you have an 8000-9000 series card, the difference will likely be very substantial. Also, I believe anything in the 400 series below a 460, is actually a 9800 repackaged...just as the gts 250 was. By the way, this card overclocks very well, and according to the review in the following article, it has more headroom to do so than it's higher-priced sibling - the GTX 480. So, basically, you can get a 480 for almost half the price. I almost never go with a top model. You'll always pay "TOP" dollar for it. http://www.tweaktown.com/articles/3288/galaxy_geforce_gtx_470_gc_overclocking/index.html

Your example did look like a bug...download the latest build and give it another try. If that doesn't help, you can send a copy of the file to Andrew (support@3d-coat.com), and a video screen capture of what is taking place. Whenever I run into an issue that I am certain is a bug, especially if I'm on a deadline, I contact Andrew directly right away.

Andrew said this last build or two that CUDA is not optimized. He just finished upgrading the brush engine in Volume mode and has more work to do with CUDA. I just upgraded to a GTX 470 as well (from a GTX 275), and didn't really notice a substantial difference. I'm thinking the issue with CUDA is why...as there isn't a huge difference outside of the number of processor cores. To be honest, I'm not really sure to what degree the GPU is actually involved in the brushing performance. The manual description of what CUDA does is rather vague, except that it does mention that it comes into play when using masks and materials. I wish Andrew would offer more clarification (and add that information to the manual).

When the "Mark Seams" button is active, you should see context sensitive additions. "Unwrap" should be one of them.

You do your UV's in the Retopo Room for your new (retopologized) mesh. It won't appear in the UV room until you have merged the mesh into the Paint Room (using either of the modes...PPP/MV/Ptex). Once you have created your seams in the Retopo room, you click the "Unwrap" button. From that point, you can go ahead and merge (from the Retopo menu) into PPP or MV. At that point, you can go to the UV room to make some further tweaks if you need to. Much of the time, you won't need to. Most of the UV editing toolset is present in the Retopo Room.

I always just delete the object in the paint room and run it again. Why not direct export a hi-res copy of your voxel mesh to LW and bake out a good AO map there?

I wonder if Andrew could provide any insight on whether or not multi-threading works more effectively on a Quad-Core i7 with Hyper-threading (four additional virtual cores), or a Hexa-Core AMD CPU? I've looked at the benchmarks (at stock speeds), and the closest comparison is the 3D rendering (Max and Blender) benchmarks. There, the hyper-threading of the i7 (a comparably priced model)tends to win by a small margin over the AMD X6, most of the time. I just wonder how they would fare with all the multi-threading work Andrew has recently done throughout the application. Does 3DC prefer PHYSICAL cores, or does it matter? Now for CUDA questions. Any chance 3DC could further utilize a 2nd NVidia card? I mean, if there is a unified driver and you have all these extra CUDA processors just sitting there in 2nd slot, is it not feasible to make use of them as well? These are the kind of questions that can help users make a more informed hardware purchasing decision.

There have been some nice optimizations made to Voxel Sculpting over the past few months, but the one trade-off you have (every sculpting method/paradigm has it's benefits and trade-offs) is that it requires a more substantial amount of RAM than with polygonal sculpting...as you find with ZBrush and Mudbox. Those with a background using either of those two tend to do the ultra-fine detail in those applications, after they have gotten the model to a medium-high level of detail. That really isn't necessary any longer, if you have 8GB of RAM or higher, and a fairly recent video card...especially an Nvidia GTX 200x or 400x series (because of 3DC's CUDA support in Voxels). A Quad-Core CPU or better will come in handy as well, seeing that much of the recent speed improvements have come from Multi-threading enhancements throughout the application. Make use of the Cache to Disk and Multi-Res features...as they will help minimize the amount of resources you need. What you want to do, in general, is block out the proportions and medium level detail in Voxel Volume mode (the little square icon on your layer in the Vox Tree panel...click it and it switches to Surface mode...a little squiggly line), and ANY time you want to make large scale changes or use a very large brush size, cache the layer and work on the low res proxy (that's how Multi-Res works). It will bake the changes to the original mesh state when you uncache the layer. Multi-Res is extremely fast...use it and use it often. But when you want to do high detail work on a layer, cache the other layers (ones you aren't actively working on) to prevent them from soaking up RAM unnecessarily, and use the Surface mode. It is much faster than Volume mode for this type of work. It was designed for this very purpose. It manipulates only the surface of the object, and therefore doesn't have to calculate Volumetric data. Also, some tools with the same name or similar in function, work differently so you'll sometimes want to switch between modes just to use a certain tool for a certain task. For example, the Smooth tool. In Volume mode, it works a bit slower and it can actually smooth so far as to produce holes in the volume. In Surface mode, it will not create holes...but I find that Smooth in Surface isn't quite as....well, smooth, as it's counterpart in Volume mode. The Pinch tool is similar. I find that in volume mode, the result is a little softer than the Surface mode variant. Between fingers and toes, and around the nose, using the pinch tool in Surface mode is probably what you're going to want to use. Hope that helps some.

I realize I sounded like a salesman, but hey...all of us tech geeks do at times. I thought it was well worth passing on. I was considering the new GTX 580...but the cost to benefit ratio just isn't there. I got a Motherboard that has 2 PCI Express x16 slots (running x16 speeds concurrently), so I wonder if there is any way for 3D Coat to utilize the CUDA cores in both cards, when you have two Nvidia cards installed?

Was just browsing Nvidia cards at "Frys" and this is such a good buy that I thought I should mention it here, in case anyone else is looking at upgrading their video card. Normally Newegg has just about the lowest prices, but I stumbled across this little gem and it is not only way below the norm for this model of card, but has really good reviews as well. It sells for about $300 on Newegg and TigerDirect, but I saw this at Fry's for $219. http://www.frys.com/product/6434032 http://www.hardocp.com/image.html?image=MTI3MzQ0MDEwMWh0SGNIbnFhTEdfOF8xMF9sLmpwZw== http://www.guru3d.com/article/kfa2-galaxy-geforce-gtx-470-review/ And you have overclocking software that comes with the card, to make it easy to perform on par with the next model above it...effectively allowing you to put roughly $100-$200 back in your wallet. http://www.tweaktown.com/articles/3288/galaxy_geforce_gtx_470_gc_overclocking/index2.html 3ds Max 2012 is supposed to have iRay, which will use multiple CUDA enabled NVidia cards, so you could stick 2 of these in your case and get a lot of rendering horsepower (finalRender is supposed to have GPU accelerated rendering in it's next release as well)...same with VRay 2. I'm sure iRay will be made available for Maya and Softimage users as well, as it's a new subcomponent of Mental Ray