Fabio Dona

In other words "density" is the same thing as scale. Don't get me wrong. I understand the difference, but it's not useful. We can already scale things with the transform tool, right?

The whole interface is inconsistent IMO, especially the popups. That's was a pretty obvious example. Also I don't understand why Andrew uses his own controls. There are lots of free C++ widget toolkits that can be used in commercial applications. Some of them are well know/tested. Making a 3d application alone is hard enough, he could use one of these and spend less time fixing the interface. That's like reinventing the wheel if you ask me.

Andrew, are you reading this? I ask because it seems to me that you don't realize how important this feature request is. Especially for people coming from Zbrush or Mudbox. I'll give you some perspective about what we are asking for here: Open Photoshop and draw a selection mask. Now try to use any brush inside/outside that mask. See, it's that simple. Too see how it works in 3d you can try this on Zbrush or Mudbox. Now, imagine if in Photoshop this selection mask only worked for just ONE tool. Well that's what's happening in 3d-coat. Very unprofessional IMO. Some of you may think that I'm now making a big deal about this. But I'm not. It's a question of understanding what artists need. What is priority to the developer may not be priority for us.

Here's a window that is really bad designed: Not only it lacks consistency but we also have 9 fields to enter rotation. Why? This is much simpler:

No, I want to be able to finish the stroke beyond the object boundary, that's currently not possible. The stroke stops and this limits how far you can move things with this brush. I'm asking for this change because I believe is rather simple, but what I really want is a "Vox move" brush. The problem with the move tool is that it is surface based(like the pose tool) and this causes lots of problems for me. So we need a Vox move brush, or at least, if Andrew could address this request, I could use the Vox follow as a replacement. It smear things a little so it's not a proper move brush.. but it could be good for moving stuff around at earlier stages in the sculpting process. Seems like Andrew thought it was better for the move to be surface based tool. Or perhaps it was easier to implement.

That's why I'm asking for the pose tool masking be used for other tools/brushes. It's not really a new feature request. Just build up on things that are working already. By the way, I have another request like this for the vox follow brush that no one seems to care. That one is the same principle. For example, we don't have a basic move brush that works in voxel mode, but we have a fancy vox follow brush that works. Even though it does just about the same thing (technically speaking). Still we are confined to use the move that is actually a surface mode tool, and that is not really good for lots of reasons. It's interesting that the move tool is a surface tool, like the pose tool. These tools are related, work technically in the same way, but only one has masking. You paint a mask in the pose tool, select another tool and the mask is gone. This is bad. This is a selection mask, shouldn't be tied with any specific tool.

Andrew, the only thing is that this mask needs to be locked to the models's surface. But it can't be just a stencil(like the ones in the mask tab). Having a stencil to rotate with the object isn't enough because the shape changes in other angles. What you paint in one angle will not work in others. So It has to be exactly like the masking we have with the pose tool. Like this: Note that a better name for the mask tab is stencils. And mask would be the thing that we have in the pose tool. That's the one that we need for the other tools.

I'm sure Andrew can find a way to do it. I can be wrong, but as I see, just use the surface masking to modulate the voxel brush depth. The voxel brushes travels over the surface anyway, so you can detect the masked surface areas for modulation of the effect. This is not a true volumetric masking on the voxels(we don't need that) but the effect should be almost the same. Also there's textured pen masks already working in voxels so... it's the same principle.

This is another very simple request, and one of the most important things that are still missing in 3dcoat: Masking. In Zbrush or mudbox, you can paint a mask, and that protects the surface from any changes while sculpting. In 3dcoat you can do that too. But only with the pose tool(select with pen). We need this for all tools. I think this is a easy thing to do. Masking is already working in the pose tool, but make it work for all tools/brushes. In Zbrush this is done with control pressed.

The current pose tool in 3d coat is fine. I know it's not perfect, but it's more than a "pose" tool. It's like a generic transform tool. You can do more than just pose characters. The name is misleading. Could be useful to have skeletons nonetheless, Just keep a separate set of tools for that. Yet, I'd like to have simple things that are still missing in 3dcoat, like masking, than any of that...

Just to illustrate my suggestion: As you can see here the Vox pinch brush is really interesting, because it works in the volume rather than just the surface, so we can use it like a kind of inflate brush, or to scale things up and down. The same thing goes for the Vox follow brush. It's a smudge brush, but I like to use it to move large parts of the model. The problem is that it's limited to a stroke inside the model's outline. So in this case, a vertical stroke is much more effective because we have more room for it. My suggestion it to remove this limitation of the vox follow brush. No major changes in the brush itself. I think it's simple to do and everyone will appreciate this regardless of how they use these tools.

So here's a very small change that can have a big impact in the way I work in 3d coat I realized that I started to use the Vox pinch and Vox follow brushes a lot. But not in the intended way I suppose. For example, I'm using the vox pinch with a very large brush radius, pretty much like a scale, or inflate brush. Same thing for the Vox pinch, but I want it to move things outside the edge of the model, so I can use it like a move tool.. If we could drag past the model outline with the Vox Follow I would use it a lot instead of the move tool, because I have more control that way. So i just want the Vox follow to have a larger effect, being able to drag things much further. A very small change that would help a lot.

I'm not really impressed by this feature. I'm having so much fun with voxels right now... I don't know. I'm not really interested in that kind of workflow. I'm curious if Zbrush 4 will have voxels.

Yeah, I don't understand why make a change like this.

As I told you, I like everything so far. The gorilla is amazing already, even without any "detail" Thank you for telling me about this program, I'm having fun sculpting again

Thank you Leigh, I'm a little late in this reply but I think we have discussed the voxel sculpting issues in other threads by now... I think 3Dioots ideas are very good, but I'm still not sure what causes performance problems in 3d coat, maybe isn't volume editing at all, maybe it's the surface reconstruction and rendering after the editing that slows everything in higher resolutions. Maybe Andrew could say something about it... and adopt a proper solution... Faster brushes, or a faster render solution can lead to faster editing... or both. Here's another project that I started a few days ago, it was a very quick sketch, but I'm planning to finish it mostly in 3dcoat now. It's a version of Frank Frazetta's Death Dealer:

Thanks, Andrew

The problem is that if you change the properties of a shader for one object, the others will stay the same. It would be useful if the program assigns instances of shaders, that can be shared between objects, instead of a local copy for each object.

This is weird, really. I'm using Windows 7. I don't have any problems running any applications as standard user. I noticed though, if I try to install 3d-coat to the default location inside "Program Files", then I need to run as administrator. Otherwise undo does not work. When I install to other place, say, C:\3dcoat, then any user has access to that folder ("Program Files" is a system folder) and 3d coat works. Because of this, I think the problem is because 3d-coat is trying to access something that requires administrative rights, that's why I think it's not a problem with windows. I can be wrong.. I haven't tested it on Vista...

Andrew posted this on twitter: "I made other approach to solve UAC problem - if 3DC is not run as admin by some reason, 3D-Coat will work but show warning at the start." I don't know if I'm missing something, but a program only needs admin privileges to make changes in the system. A normal application doesn't need to be run as administrator. The right thing to do is to make a program run for all users. Unless it's a application that really needs to make changes in system folders. Just make 3d-coat run correctly with a non-administrative user account and the "problem" is solved... In fact I'm using it as non admin just fine. I just had it installed outside any system folders(outside "program files") Also it's a good idea to install shortcuts for all users.

Yes, I'm using this a lot actually. But the results are rarely what I need. It's a fast way to get a quad mesh outside 3d-coat, but the flow is too irregular. It could be a lot better using more sophisticated algorithms, like the ones in those publications. They take the actual shape of the object into account, so the polygon flow is a LOT better. I'm aware that the implementation of this feature is complex, but if Andrew can do something like that it would be amazing.

Please see this pdf: http://www.graphics.rwth-aachen.de/uploads...siggraph_01.pdf There are lots of publications about remeshing here: http://www.graphics.rwth-aachen.de/index.php?id=12 I really like the current retopology tools in 3d-coat, but it's still very time consuming. So I wonder if something like that is possible for 3d-coat in the future.

I think we could have at least some big improvements in surface mode. Assuming that in surface mode we are only dealing with polygons, not voxels at all, I was expecting a much higher performance. When big changes are needed we could switch to surface mode. Currently surface mode IMO isn't really much faster than voxel mode.

Yes, exactly. I guess there's a lot of people out there thinking they are sculpting on those tris, when it's actually the result of the "marching cubes" over a voxel volume. You can't pinch voxels, you can pinch things inside them. Like Photoshop, resolution is needed. Because we need so much resolution to get the same level of ZBrush or Mudbox, and we can't go back levels of resolution. Some things are just impractical. You know, part of the problem are the digital artists. A real sculptor working with clay or stone would feel comfortable in 3d-coat because they have this way of working where they know how to block a model so they don't need to change the structure that much after the thing is done. But that's the nature of the medium, we need to get stuff done insanely fast in our jobs. So we need this flexibility. I hope Andrew is aware of this issue. I don't know if he is an artist also. But that's the kind of thing that sometimes a developer isn't thinking about. So, like you said the problem is performance, not so much the brushes themselves.

Leigh, by constant I mean homogeneous in large scale, as a whole. In poly Sculpting you can control distribution. You can have more polygons on the face than the body.