jamie

That would be fantastic. We have to convert our texture files to 3delight's TDL format, but the conversion utility is limited in format support. The main problem is the alpha channel, which our shading pipeline does not support. If the TGA output allowed for 3 channel export (RGB only, stripping off the alpha channel) that would be fine. Thanks for your help with this. Jamie Macdougall jamiem@image-engine.com 3d Generalistjamiem@image-engine.com Image Engine VFX

Hi, It appears that support for TIF files is not included. Our texturing pipeline relies on this format. Any chance this can be addressed? Thanks, Jamie Macdougall jamiem@image-engine.com 3d Generalist Image Engine VFX

Here is screengrabs showing the problem

I'm seeing a baking problem too, but it may be different than the one reported here. Parts of the sculpt that are near others, like the base of fingers or deep creases bake with weird artifacts. It seems to be UV related, since the cleaner the UVs are, the less it happens. Having said that, I haven't been able to get rid of it completely.

Sorry took so long to reply... holidays Don't get me wrong, I'm a huge fan of 3dcoat and am not trying to be negative at all. My perspective is that specialized programs are better for high-end productions, and the one area that 3dcoat dominates is voxel sculpting, so personally I would prefer that area was focused on at the expense of the painting toolset. Things like improving the autoretop and adding layer support. And if both painting and voxel sculpting can be developed simultaneously then my original request stands... support for 32bit maps for custom shaders.

I didn't want to hijack the request already made, but I would like to go a bit further with the request for 32bit depth painting. Specifically, the ability to paint/modify arbitary maps in 8, 16 or 32bit depth and control the connection of these maps to viewport and exported shaders. The reasoning is as follows: Production shaders have arbitary map (channel) inputs, very rarely restricted to only color, spec, normal. In fact it's an ever expanding list... subsurface strength, translucency, specular/reflective sharpness and diffuse roughness to name a few. It seems both counter-intuitive and limiting to have separate tools and switches for these maps. For example, surely it is better if the airbrush paints the same way on a specular map as it does on the color map - or a diffuse, gloss, bump or sss map? Layering would also be more intuitive if it was per map. In effect, reverse of the current situation where layers may (or may not - there is no way to see) contain color/spec/displacment. This approach is already used by the two heavyweights for 3d painting - Mari and Bodypaint. I believe these changes would make it easier and more powerful to work inside 3dcoat and also easier to transfer shaded models into the production pipeline without losing anything in translation. Having said this, I believe the importance and development direction of 3dcoat should remain in voxel sculpting and autopo, where it stands alone far ahead of the competition. I can always go to Mari or Bodypaint (or even mudbox if things get desperate) for painting shader maps. Just to show I'm not (only) a rambling madman, I've attached a render of some reindeers I created (sculpted/textured) in 3dcoat for the Eureka series. I also used 3dcoat to paint/adjust the fur maps.

yep you can paint your spec map using cavity as a mask for the brush, but it seems more like the request is for an option to convert the cavity or bump directly into a spec map. this could be done by exporting the bump/displacement and reimporting the file as the spec.

Sorry I'm not trying to be offensive, I just don't understand the purpose of using normal information for specular maps. Perhaps you could explain it?

My topology is created from scratch, the autopo is not quite good enough for rigged creatures yet. The details of the voxel sculpt are visible in the normal map in PPP mode, or in the displaced mesh in MV mode. I guess the best solution is to use a subdivided mesh with the displacement already applied for painting in PPP mode, then export the lowest level mesh for the final geo in Maya.

Thanks to both of you for the help. I don't really need to paint any large displacement details at this stage, my voxel sculpt already has all the large to medium sized details that will require displacement. What I am wondering is how to see this detail when I am painting in PPP mode.

While I totally agree that having things channel-based would be awesome, I believe the copy to red and so on are just for symmetry and refer to the marked faces set in the symmetry tool. I guess what you are talking about ties in with the feature request already made to have other channels than just RGBA, normal and spec. Customizable shader with user defined paintable input channels... that's the dream! For a reference of channels in 3d painting software, Mari is the strongest implementation. Painting affects selected channels, whether R, G, B, A, spec, or user defined, and these are plugged into the shaders channels as required.

Hi, I'm finding my sculpts are creating a lot of files: incrementally saved 3dc files, maps, exported + imported objs etc. Would it be possible to have a saveable project feature added? This is really just settings for the default directories where files will be saved, exported, imported and referenced.

Thanks for the links, I've been using this technique for per-pixel painting. However it only uses low-res meshes in the paint room, and I need to work on something with a higher number of subdivisions. Any suggestions?

I'm a little confused. Does this mean that the PerPixel painting is only useful for non-displaced geo? As in, it can't be used for creatures or any other detailed objects?

Hello... From what I read in the docs, PerPixel is the best painting mode. But it doesnt appear to be compatible with painting on a displaced mesh? Waaaaaa? Is this correct?

Hi, I've noticed that the autotop will create spiral edgeloops, even if straight curves are marked. These spirals are bad for UVing and bad for rigging and must be destroyed at all costs. Or fixed if it's not too much hassle...

Try setting the pressure levels to a different value in the preferences... that sometimes works

Hi, Is it possible to add a glossiness map in addition to the current specular? Usually our production shaders use a specular or reflectivity map, and also a glossiness map. One which controls the intensity of the reflection (or specular brightness) and one which controls the reflection spread (or specular tightness/glossiness). This is common to most shaders such as Blinn or mental ray's Mia_material. Thanks!

A specular map is for controlling the amount of reflectivity (either raytraced or as a shader component mimicking the effect). In what scenario is the bump/normal related to this? For example a character like the one you posted has rapidly varying normals through the hair, however hair does not have rapidly varying reflectivity, it has more or less the one level of reflectivity, perhaps more (oily) at the roots. It is certainly not the case that it's reflectivity is tied to the angle of the surface. Any connection between the surface normal and reflectivity (such as frenel effects where the facing ratio controls reflectivity) is calculated in the shader, and not the maps that feed the shader. Knowing which areas of your sculpt should be shiny is not something software can do for you, since it's an arbitary decision, like how long a characters legs should be.

Just downloaded 3.5.06b... thanks for fixing that popup menus issue, much nicer to work with now. move tool seems a lot smoother too, doesn't jump like it used to. all these little fixes really make 3dcoat a pleasure to work with.

Ah sweet... thanks!

actually very different from maya's hotbox. maya's only pops up while spacebar is held down, tapping space has a different function. also, items in maya's hotbox are accessible with flick gestures, which is far faster than clicking on buttons. and yes, moving the pointer outside of the 3dcoat hotbox closes it, but this also moves the pointer away from where you are working. since I use the hotbox very frequently, extra clicks or unnecessary mouse/wacom movements are very noticeable. don't get me wrong, i'm a huge fan of 3dcoat and love the work Andrew and his team does - but since I bought the program I feel entitled to make feature requests

The pop-up menu (it's called hotbox in Maya) doesn't disappear after making a selection. This means an extra click or moving the pointer off the menu to get rid of it... not a very smooth workflow! Thanks!

The Cap tool in retopology creates edges from all vertices to the click point. In the case of a many-sided hole is it possible to continue and connect/intersect edgeloops instead? And in the case of a quad (four-sided) hole, just cap the hole with a quad - without creating any new points or edges? Thanks!

Would it be possible to weigh the smoothing based on distance to the surrounding vertices? Currently the smoothing tries to move to the average of surrounding verts, but sometimes this results in non-intuitive behaviour. i.e. if the edge loop is very close on one side and very far on the other, you cannot smooth out the vertices since they will move rapidly towards the far edge loop. Hope this makes sense! Thanks