mocaw

Could we maybe have something like shift-v select depth? I'd also like to see a preference for a user defined area of color/depth selection with averaging! So say you select a sample- and it also samples 10 pixels in each direction from that sample and then averages it. Very helpful IMHO for quickly painting on subtle effects. OR maybe you hold down your eyedropper for a second- and then you can drag over an area in any direction, let go, and it will average the color/depth of the pixels you dragged over!? That would be extra tasty dandy. As always - THANK YOU ANDREW - for an already amazing piece of software!

Maybe Andrew could cook up something like a shift-v for picking depth? I smell a feature request- but wouldn't be surprised to learn that the ability to use an eye-dropper to select depth wasn't already requested...might as well add selectable sample size averaging in there too!

I would like a combo of what goes on in XSI and LW. All the LW slider features you mentioned there PLUS if you go past 100- that becomes the new endpoint of the slider. So if a slider normally goes 0-1 and I type in/scroll to 3, now 3 will be the sliders new maximum for that session/object/file. Unlike XSI, it would be cool if you could then type in a smaller number and have that as the new "max" too.

Sorry everyone, but I fear that once again this thread is veering off topic- or far enough that it's starting to take focus away from what is currently 3DC 3.x alpha. Yes, OpenCL, CUDA, new technologies from Intel and others look to shift some of the burden of 3D around and speed up our working lives and open new doors- but right now we have what we have and Andrew is making the most of it AFAIK. I'm sure he's aware of up and coming changes, and even if he isn't he has proven to be a more than capable developer in integrating them into 3DC. I'm not saying these discussions aren't useful- but once they reach a certain mass of their own they start to turn the attention away from getting 3DC out the door with fewer bugs, solid UI, and stabilized features. Just my two rapidly devaluating cents!

Yeah I received it too! How come the email came through Andrew's gmail account though? I guess it's the one he's setup to deal with forum mailings? Besides- nobody needs Viagra when we've got 3D coat to stimulate us! (OK so maybe that sounded a bit odd in retrospect...)

Maybe it could work on some level like how houdini stores its simulations now? That might be a HUGE file though...but then again maybe not. I'm trying to wrap my brain around how this could work and my brain makes it only 2 degrees around the corner! Would it just keep averaging the spaces between voxel points to arrive at greater or lesser than current level details? If that were true I'd think that the first level (the lower resolution) would be altered by the higher levels if the changes were great enough- which could be a good and bad thing. I think local refinement (greater resolution/density) is obtainable though...at least in my make believe like I know what I'm talking about world. As far as look/feel of zbrush...besides brush handling "feel" and brush curves I'd rather Andrew avoided anything else ZB IMHO.

It's great that we can set the padding for other maps, but it would also be nice to do this for vector and displacement maps. Maybe I'm just missing this feature somewhere? If so then it should be moved/included with these tools too.

Please consolidate these tools. I think it makes it odd for people not to have vector and displacement options in the texture baking tool. Any plans to consolidate them?

Not a huge issue (for me) but I'm having trouble downloading the latest build ( alpha 80 ) via firefox. I can get it to download in IE though. Anyone else have this problem or know the solution? Also if you type eighty it turns into this on the forums!----> 80 <----which is an emoticon sin!

SWEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEETY Crips! That's something that's bugged me but I learned to live with it- now it's fixed!!! Please Andrew- get some much needed rest!

As far as I can tell Nvidia is not "anti-OpenCL" as much as they developed CUDA because nobody else was moving ahead as quickly with such a GPU language at the time. They even state repeatedly on their site that they have very intention of supporting OpenCL, and enabling tools to easily convert CUDA to OpenCL and so on. It's just a tool for pushing their cards esp. in the MRI/science fields. Those people are probably going to be more concerned about a 5% performance drop or gain that anyone else... Right now they "own" the graphics market due to several previous ATI follies and so it seems they're dictating things. Either way- even if CUDA gives way to OpenCL, I don't see it happening over night, much like OpenGL never fully gave way to DX, and what did give was, at least in "computer time" a relatively slow process to get to the point we are at now. Besides- just because Apple is at the helm in terms of ultimate control vs. Nvidia doesn't make me feel any better...

If akira hadn't of pointed that out I was going to say it looked like some kind of pre-multiply issue. Out of curiosity does anyone know why 16-bit per channel images cause this problem in 3DC? For color brushes it's fine to use 8bit images, but I can see at times maybe needing a 16bit alpha for sculpting.

No offense, but I feel some of the comments in this thread, while all valid in their own right, are taking it off topic a bit. Let's try to post such things in other threads on the forum maybe? I just don't want this thread to stray to far away from bug fixing and feature refinement.

What are you talking about? I use expired trial and beta software all the time for projects with close deadlines. If they don't have a save option I just leave them all open. If I can't save a render frame for animation I just do a screen capture for each frame and then save it from photoshop. I also own 12 computers just for this reason- so I can register 30day trials for 12 months out of the year! Oops...gotta go my XSI trial is about to expire and I'm in the middle of a render... Just because I pay 10k a year in power and medical bills from the stress this causes and to settle out of court with clients is totally beside the point!

If it's anything like the version I tried out a couple of years ago- yes it's similar...like Brice is to Houdini... 3D-coat wins hands down/up/sideways/inverted/twisted....

Oh man- how odd...now I can't reproduce it either! It was there for several sessions...turned off Aero....turned Aero back on...now it's gone.... I'll let you know if it comes up again and I'll post screen shots so people know I'm not going mad! **UDPATE- OK...so now some of my problems are gone after turning off and back on Aero! WEIRD. Vista is, sans the 64bit memory address etc., junk IMHO. Now when I paint over in the DX beta in DP mode transparency works as it should...**

I was having issues using XSI 7.x under Vista64 esp. when using ICE. The ICE layout windows would get all of these graphical errors etc. that made it un-usable. SI support said this was because I didn't have Aero turned on...I turned Aero on and the problem went away. I even updated my video card to see if it was related to it...but nope- same issue regardless of if you're using an Nvidia or ATi Card...

Don't ask why, but XSI 7.x requires you to use Aero for somethings...oh why oh why SI did you have to do that! Grrrrrr... Aero is a resource hog AND it can cause problems in all sorts of programs esp. when it comes to the UI... I'm just wondering if this will be "worked around" in 3DC by Andrew for the unfortunate souls like myself that have to use Aero at times...

To be clear- I can go and surf the web and come back to 3DC (I was writing my post while working with it) and use photoshop etc. I'm sure our problems are related, but mine ALWAYS gets frozen when I go to the task manager- it's nearly instantaneous. I'll see if the tricks work though to get out of it- like I said I'm sure they're related in some way. UPDATE- OK, just tested it again in the DX version- and yes the two alt-enters brings 3DC out of suspended animation! Also I can confirm, at least with firefox and photoshop open that those do not cause 3DC to freeze. Also- it's not task manager. If I press ctrl-alt-delete (to get to the screen with login and task manager etc.) and then hit cancel it freezes 3DC. Is this an Aero thing in vista or something? Unfortunately I have to have Aero on to do things in XSI...

DP really is as exciting and nice to use- thank you Andrew for creating this so quickly- I'm still amazed at all your creations inside of 3DC! A few buggy things when using the 67 64bit build using DP. First- the layers pallet disappears if I delete a layer even if it's pinned down. It can be brought back up again, but this doesn't seem to be right. This is only in the DX version as far as I can tell. Second- bucket fill doesn't work on both sides in symmetry mode. You have to manually fill each side if you've made a separate area to be filled. Third- when using the spline tools to draw a curv, brush radius resize via the right and left drag method is disabled, but still works via the top slider input. The radius can also still be resized while right clicking on a node and dragging. Fourth- Switching out to another program and back sometimes renders the color picking menus black. Minimizing and maximizing doesn't help. For some reason the program defaults at that point to making both colors black. This can be temporarily fixed by simply selecting a new color, however it re-appears each time I reload 3DC. If I restart my computer then 3DC will show the last used colors. Filth- If I leave the program and go into the task manager 3DC no longer responds and seems to be frozen- even if I leave the task manager. 3DC must be closed by the task manager after that point. This also seems to be a DX version issue. Sixth- A brush of any opacity under 100% (1.0) will only lay down that "color" instead of the selected colors transparency layering. So if you have a brush at .5 (50%) and it's solid blue- if you brush over it twice it will not form the solid color selected- only half the hue selected. This doesn't seem to happen in the GL version. Seventh- the sculpt tools will not work on a dp mesh. Not the biggest deal- but might prove useful to have if one is doing morphs with different normal maps etc. Eighth- the place image along spline tools preview color is not nearly as saturated and contrasted as the final output after pushing enter. It also has a tendency to repeat the texture in places that it was not placed. Ninth- in the texture editor smooth does not work. 10th- Brush size seems to effect the depth size. Shouldn't these be independent of each other to some greater degree? 11th- If you draw a closed shape on your mesh's texture in the texture editor and then try and fill it with the bucket tool you'll get the fill OUTSIDE the are you intended to fill. AKA if you draw a square, try and do a fill inside of it, it will fill the area outside of the square instead. 12th- The paint brush now shows the alpha in use at 100% before pressing down and painting. It used to show it at something like 33%. This can make it hard to paint on certain areas as you can see where you're first putting you brush down. It appears correctly in the OpenGL version of the Alpha. 13th - Using fill with depth seems to produce no results. These are while testing using the man2.obj file. Intel 820 Dell Vista Premium 64 4GB RAM GeForce 8400 GS 512

Actually almost any application I use will give you smoothing/non planner errors if you use a polygon like that straight up as it's hard for the app to figure out just what you intended come render time. Where is the normal- and how would you divide that polygon in to triangles? However, if you're subdividing the area, then it will be more than likely smoothed correctly esp. in a good catmul-clark situation. Maybe this has also changed though with LW's new render engine? This has been my experience so far- unless subdividing you're likely to get smoothing errors on a polygon like that- even on a flat surface, come render time.

I'm fine with the current method, but if this kind of COG is put in it would also be nice to have a null that represents the current user defined COG or something that you can make visible and move when needed and/or have it so that like in XSI you can frame any currently selected/visible items and that sets the COG to the current items COG. This is handy for quickly re-centering when moving between layers etc. How all this is implemented though is the most important factor. While I've grown use to and in some ways like the current 3DC model, I think it's important that 3DC addresses these issues so it doesn't become an odd ball to use like a certain application starting with zed.

Just wondering if anyone knows of a sane work flow to go from a voxel sculpt back to a low res mesh and then generate a vector displacement file?! I'm not even sure what order would be best as with voxel sclupting its a reversed process from the normal way of working. Will there ever be a way to have a low res mesh and then import a high res one using the Texture Baker tool to generate a vector map or is this just not possible do to how they work with UVs?! Sorry if this isn't the right place to post- not sure what this falls under. Thank You, Gideon

Hey guys, UI's are a personal thing- so lets not get too edgy over all of this- OK? Besides- I think it's safe to say that the UI in 3DC, while not perfect, is more than usable esp. compared to a lot of applications. Maybe I'm a fool, but I've liked almost all of the manipulator ideas (including Andrew's) shown thus far and am excited to have a universal manipulator to use for a lot of actions. Regardless of what's used in the end, I'm sure it will take most users a slight period of time to adjust to- however I'm sure it will be logical enough to not make any user that steps away from the UI for a day or week have to re-learn it all over again (not naming names but hint: three rings). Just so you know I own every single application on the planet and am a cyborg created by Andrew to help beta test and find the best features in all applications.

Well in MAX it's that way...but as most of us know that's the odd ball app- not the norm, and most of the other applications with interested users agree that it's XYZ, just like we learned in trig and calc etc.... So for the love of all that is holy and voxel PLEASE stick to some form of XYZ!