ID Guy

Thanks digman. That helped for sure. For some reason the inflate clay brush would not displace the mesh with the material texture though even with all the setting checked that you mentioned. It simply extruded the hard alpha brush. When I tried with standard live clay brush or general brush it worked as you say though. Thanks again for the help.

Hi, Is there a tool in 3d coat that will let me use an image for displacing geometry? I thought maybe the Bas-relief would work, but it doesnt appear to be made for this scenario. For example I have a coin that I have an image of and would like to use that to create high resolution geometry of the coin details on the model. I suppose I could make a custom brush alpha, but I don't know how well the control and precision will be when I go to click and place those details. Any ideas?

AbnRanger thanks for the tips. I have a gtx 560 so I will give the cuda smoothing boost a try. I have been using the open GL version lately though because of some of the brush issues I have seen reported recently in the cuda version. The strange thing is if I manually type in a value like around 150% smoothing it gets me where I need to be. So I cant figure out why a limiter would be set on the amount you can dial that value up with the right click and drag while holding shift? It doesnt really make sense to me.

Is there a way to get the smoothing higher than 100% when holding shift? Often times 100% is not enough. It seemed like on older builds it could go higher with the right click and drag like all the other brushes do. Was this ability removed on the beta builds, or is there another way to do this now that I am missing?

Does anyone know if its possible to use a wrapped alpha mask to evenly displace geometry in 3d coat. In zbrush this can be done with the noisemaker plugin, but was not sure if there is a way to do this is 3d coat. I need to achieve something like the hex patterns around an organic shape similar to the sphere shown here http://www.pixologic...res/NoiseMaker/ or like this http://www.etsy.com/...-textured-knurl I need it to be clean crisp even geometry and not painted texture. I am using the latest build 3.7.11b with live clay. I have tried many approaches with masking and the logo tool, but cant seem to find a method. For those not familar with the zbrush approach it can be shown here http://www.pixologic...son/noisemaker/ Thanks in advance for any tips.

The paiting on voxels is great! Is there a way to have a texure map that is already on a model import into 3d coat directly to the voxel object. For example I deal with a lot of 3d scan data that has a texture map captured to the model during the scan. If I could open up the obj mesh in 3d coat and have it read the texture to the imported voxel conversion that would be great! This would save time from having to reproject paint the texture back on to the model.

That was the issue. Once I changed the shader to a different one it works. Thanks!

The painting on voxels sounds really cool. I cant seem to get it to work though. I have a voxel sculpt and when I go to the paint room click on the brush tool to paint nothing happens on the voxel mesh. I have the latest build that allows for this. I rarely use the paint room so I may be missing something really simple. If I go back to the voxel mesh the autopo for painting it works. Colors show up as expected on the autopo mesh.

On a related note does anyone else notice when you subdivide your retopo mesh in 3d coat that some of the vertices become disconnected? This happens to me all the time in certain areas of my retopology mesh. The verticies often lay on top of each other so you cant tell they are disconnected until you export. Close holes command doesnt repair it either.

Abnranger I dont see this option in 2.5.2. I see merge coarsed mesh under retopology dropdown, but nothing about exporting a coarsed mesh. Can you point us to where that option is?

I agree it would be very handy to have this feature. On a model with a lot of sculpted detail its hard to keep it without having a large mesh output to capture the detail properly.

Looks like in 3.5.19 build points are coming unwelded when you subdivide in the retopology toolset. Is there a build available that this does not happen in? I seem to remember it happing in the past as well so Im not sure if one didnt do it.

I have the same issue with my wacom cintiq. I can get it to happen every time if I run the atuopo command. After I go through all the steps and the mesh is generated the cintiq pen does not work properly. As soon as I go over and click on my second monitor with my mouse 3d coat works properly again. Its a very annoying bug.

But I want it to keep the autopo density mask not delete it. Like I said as soon as you save the file it forgets the mask and you have to do it all over. It remembers the stroke guides though. They need to do the same for both wizard steps.

Currently if I run the Autopo wizard and paint the dense areas, apply strokes to guide flow direction as soon as I save the file the painted areas go away if I run the wizard again with different settings. I have to repaint all the dense areas over again which can be time consuming if I have a lot of corners where I need detail painted in. It would be great if the painted areas could be saved in the same way the strokes get saved.

Im not sure I follow you. I made sure the path is pointing to the correct location if that is what you mean? Still doesn't import with the texture showing in both reference geometry or regular import. I downloaded a free model off the web, and it opens fine with the texture showing so its something to do with the file. I dont understand though because the obj and mtl file was created right out of 3d coat with the texture applied. I noticed on the model I downloaded there was no network path to the texture, just the name of the texture, but it still worked. I will try it with a new model tonight from the beginning and see what happens.

Attached is the .mtl file. Just to make sure I opened the model using the standard import model command then loaded the texture and it shows up on the model in the viewport. I then exported that out with the color as obj. Then I did file import reference mesh and it shows up in the viewport with no texture applied. I even tried to load texture on the reference mesh and nothing shows up. mtl_file.zip

Ok I tried your steps, but when it tries to merge into scene it takes a few minutes on a quad core system then a mesh pops up that looks like my model has exploded with polygons all over the place. If I subdivided the retopo mesh x4 it merged it in fairly clean, but it had lots of polygons which defeats the point of retopo right? I tried to file/export low poly mesh just to see, but there is no option to save displacment from this dialogue. See my attached image. I was able to get the result I was looking for by these steps. 1. Import reference mesh 2. Open topology tools and reload the saved retopo mesh I had started from just using the standard import .obj as my object to build retopo over. You are right the file is much lighter and faster now this way. 3. I marked seams and unwrapped manually in the retopo dropdown. 4. I used the bake texture from the retopo dropdown and kept default settings with only displacement map as output. 5. I then used export raw object from the retopo dropdown and saved as .obj 6. I opened the obj in C4D and applied a hypernurbs to smooth the low poly mesh that had the same polgons as my 3dcoat retopo mesh, and then put the displacement map that 3dcoat output into the material channel and it rendered great for the most part. I think I had some sharp corners on my retopo that were causing the displacement to get funky, but that is my fault. I will post some images and the 3dcoat file tonight to make it more clear what happened with my experiments and see if you can offer suggestions. I did get the end result I was going for, but would still like to hear from you if I went the best route to get there. Also this got me displacement which I was looking for, but what if I want a color texture from the reference mesh baked on also. I could not figure out a way to open up a reference mesh as an obj that has a .mtl file in 3d coat and have the texture show up. I can by just doing a regular import of an .obj then using the load texture command, but then I am back to using a heavy mesh for my displacment. On the dinasour looking thing you made the retopo tutorial from how did you get the texture to show up on your reference mesh?

Awesome that is exactly what I was hoping to hear. I knew I was doing something wrong. I will give that a shot.

Thanks andrew this helps some, but I guess I am stumped on the best workflow for the end result I am aiming for which is take a highpoly mesh from 3dscan data and reconstruct a low poly over it then get a displacemnt map from the high poly back onto the low poly in my 3d app which happens to be Cinema 4d. Here is what I am doing so far. 1. File Import scan mesh model .obj I leave smooth object checked, and under UV I tell it to keep the UV's and no smothing of the UV since the scanning software gave it UV seams when it exported out the .obj Granted they are messy UV seams since it is a high poly triangle mesh. Also should I unwrap the uv mesh for the imported scan data? Does this matter in the end when I try to bake my displacement onto my retopo mesh? 2. Click on the retopology tool and manually build the quad mesh around it. 3. I then marked the seams and edges and unwrapped. This was part of my earlier question is there a way to automate it, but you answered that. 4. Then click Bake texture at the bottom of the Retopo commands tool. I left all settings at default and told it where to save the displacement map. 5. Now is where I get a little more confused. How to get the low res retopo mesh out to C4D with the uv map so I can apply displacement textre there. I end up clicking export raw object as .obj 6. I open the .obj in cinema and put a smoothing modifier on it (hypernurbs as cinema calls it) I then put the displacement map into the displacement channel and render. It looks ok in some areas except around where the UV seams are. There is noticeable distortion at the seams for some reason and they are in the shape of the quads on the low res retopo mesh. I saw the video tutorial that was posted on taking a low poly with uv's applied in C4d painting and texturing in 3d coat then going back to c4d, but it does not really help with what I am trying to do which is take a large mesh with a lot of detail from a 3d scan and bake the texture onto a low res mesh somehow. Any tips would be appreciated. Step by step on the correct import, baking and export options would be helpful if you have time. I really like the retopo tools in 3d coat. Its very simple in straightforward to get a low res mesh built, but getting the displacement texture from the reference model to properly show up on the retopo model in your other 3d app is not as clear. Looking forward to buying 3.0 when it is ready for full release!

Hey everyone I am having a bit of trouble here as I am new to the whole retopolgy thing. Here is my situation. I have an obj mesh that is from a 3d scan so its detailed and has a lot of triangles. I opened in 3d coat as a reference mesh then built a new low res mesh using the re topology tools over it. Now the question is how do I get a displacement map from the larger mesh so that I can open my low poly mesh in cinema 4d and render with displacment. I have tried using the bake texture tools within the retopolgy dropdown, but I think I am doing something wrong with the UV's. Is there a way to avoid manually painting the uv seams on my new low poly mesh and have 3d coat just auto generate them and bake the displacement map onto them from the scan mesh? Sorry if these seem like basic questions, but like I said this is sort of a new area for me, and I have read the manual, but am still stumped.