cakeller

ABSOFREAKINLUTELY!!! in Photoshop - and many other programs, it is assumed, if you can't SEE a layer, or object, you cannot effect it. Essentially it's frozen. In the latest build, you cannot "select" hidden faces, but GEEZE the hidden layers, and etc are still affectable by quadrangulate, and relax, while in the retopo room. This is WRONG behaviour. If it's hidden it's NOT TOUCHABLE. IT is absolutely WRONG behaviour. I think this has been discussed before, but it's still a problem even in 3.1.08 - so I'll pipe in on any topic that seems to bring it up - if I see it. IT NEEDS to be fixed. If you cannot see it, it must be considered frozen, period. no ifs ands or buts... if it's a problem with partially hidden, being affected or something, then give a warning and option to not do the function, or proceed with screwing up hidden geometry.

hey andrew, perhaps this is a stupid question, but... why not have voxel storage in binary format... bits per voxel. Why store so much data if it's simply on or off? or are you storing a grayscale value, but draw surface only at 50%. Just wondering.

It is great to be able to quickly block in stuff with the marquee rectangle tool, and others. However, it doesn't make ANY sense to me that a brush doesn't do what the tool you're working on does. Basically a marquee of any sort while using Build / Extrude / or ESPECIALLY Smooth, should do just that within the rectangle... Why would a box drawn while in the smooth tool create a block of material... Planar and 2D Paint also have unusual behaviour with the marquee tool: Marquee in planar or 2D paint, is fine, but ctrl + marquee cuts through the entire model from the camera view, instead of what it logically should, which is, exactly the opposite of the marquee tool without ctrl. another feature that is IMO illogical is the negative (ctrl+ ) of the 2D-Paint, and Planar. Why do they reverse the normal... at least one of them should stay on the same side... e.g. planar, makes some sense if it cuts on one side of the working plane, and fills behind when using ctrl, but then 2D-Paint SHOULD paint, and erase on the SAME side of the tool. And again, using the marquee tools should not behave different than the tool, it should just be the tool within the confines of the marquee. Hopefully others agree with me, I'd love to see this more logical approach to the brushes. PS> I think Andrew is a total Genius, and I AM IN AWE OF HIS TREMENDOUS WORK!!! I wouldn't make any comments if I thought he was not able or willing to listen. PPS> If there is a logical reason why my ideas are not as good as the way it is, BY ALL MEANS point out why (please be nice, I'm not trying to be rude, it's just these suggestions would make MY life easier and using the software more fun for me... ) THANKS ANDREW FOR MAKING ONE OF THE COOLEST PROGRAMS EVER!

OHH, ok... I'll give that a try... What is 200% related to? (grid size? length of longest edge? length of shortest edge?) thanks for the tip BTW.

Basically, I think Vox Follow should have the option to move along the surface, or along the screen plane, or even a plane set in a similar way to the 2D-Paint and Planar tools. Then Surface Shift should have an identical UI. And if there are limitations due to Surface vs Voxel, then just gray them out. I would just like to see more consistency amongst the tools, what they do and how they do it.

Each tool needs to have it's own settings. It becomes extremely annoying to have to change the fall-off and focal-shift, depth, etc for each tool, and then switch it back again. it is ESPECIALLY annoying with the pinch tool. I use pinch like this: Pinch, Smooth, Pinch, Smooth In order to make pinch work REALLY sharp you have to turn off / down the smooth, then when smoothing, say the ends of a stroke, you have to crank the smooth back up. NOT a fast work flow. What's worse is when you set the smoothing power to 0 for pinch, then swith to the smooth tool, the smoothing power is still at ZERO? On a similar topic, WHY does increase use two new sliders?! Growth and Thaw, which are glorified Depth and Smooth, or not? Whatever the case, it's obnoxious that they are not easily controled in the same way as other tools. more consistency in the UI would be a very good thing.

If symetry in Retopo is going to continue to function as it does, I really think you need to add a variable for how far it should snap. The real problem is when you're working with a small model. in order to import a model into voxels, and again into re-topo at the same scale (so they snap to each other) you can't scale the retopo model the same way as the voxel model. In many cases you may not want to resize the model in face, because your final output needs to be at the original scale. So if you're working on a small model, the symetry snap will grab all the points near the center and snap them to the center plane. In reality I'd much rather have the symmetry plane work more like zBrush where the functions you're working on will mirror the function. That way if I want control over the center, I can have it. I personally don't like the way the symetry works right now and would rather have it be as I said, more like zBrush. In fact, I OFTEN times like to work on both sides of the model. It was wierd when I couldn't figure out why I couldnt' manipulate one side of the model. I thought it was just me. Of course that was before I understood the implementation of symmetry. That's not to say I don't like the symetry tool for some cases. In fact, I love the way apply symetry works when I need to blow away half the model, and mirror-copy. But I consider that not symetry, but a symmetric copy. Also, because symmetry as it is implemented basically cuts the model in half, brush+smooth doesn't help along the centerline. And that's too bad.

I meant, in case it wasn't clear, that if the extrude tool were able to work as I described, THAT would help me with the control I seek. Just because many people are able to get to a level of control using loose tools doesn't mean improving the control isn't necessary. This is my request, and I don't think it's a silly one either In fact, to expand on it.... it would be great if you could PICK OTHER voxel layers and extrude from them, rather than only the current layer. It would make it easy to implement my request then. Just clone your current layer, and use it as your extrude base. but then making things like eyelids, which are essentially offsets of the eyeballs would become incrdibly easy. not to mention clothing, or anything else of that nature. Panels, and etc. Of course then you could also extrude in the opposite direction as well... again, just my thinking. But I hope I'm not alone. EDIT: Ok here's a basic picture of what I'm saying about how I would like 2 strokes of extrude to look (A) and how they currently look ( Seriously, It would be super simple if you could just choose which voxel layers were "pickable" and which were not, and even so you could paint on a non-pickable layer. The point of being able to paint on a non-pickable layer is so you can build using another object as a framework, as I mentioned an eyeball or skull for example. Building a constant thickness from them, instead of having the constant thickness be from the current layer (why would you want to cumulatively add muscle tissue to a skull when you know the appropriate dept from the skull. then you could do some real controlled building. It kinda sucks that everything visible has to affect the pick point. It would be better if you could to set a voxel layer to "referenced" / "not-referenced" or something like that That way you could have visible geometry that you can reference but doesn't affect the paint point (including the currently painting layer - you can still ADD to that layer, but the pixel's position is not contributed to by that layer)

Extrude is a very useful tool, however it would be so much better for fine control (IMHO) if you could set the base state of the voxels - and extrude from that, until you set a new "base state" that way you could do multiple strokes all to the same level. Another of my humble opinions is that all the sculpting programs only become truly useful when there is control and repeatability. This would help me out a lot!.

Actually I felt the same way, before I really fully understood the workflow. It took a bit, but once I got it, it all became clear. I use non-closed meshes all the time, actually... from my Next Engine 3D Scanner. I just thicken (Import as skin) the geometry toward the inside (the number represents a thickness in Voxels). Then I fill the holes with the increase, or fill tool. It's something you just can't easily, IMHExperience, do in other software. But again, it took a while to get. read the manual, and read the hints... they will help. Although the english could probably be improved quite a bit. Also, if the OBJ, or whatever you're importing does not define a volume (non-manifold faces, or vertices, etc) then it's not going to well... define a volume of VOXELS very well. Just my $0.02 for what it's worth.

Dude, me too!!!

Hidden retopo objects should not be affected by a snap command, or ANY retopo command actually. I had 2 voxel objects, and 2 retopo objects I was working on in the same work space. I had hidden the first object and the first voxel object. At some point I clicked snap, and the first HIDDEN mesh snapped to the only visible voxel object. consequence, the visible object started behaving very strangly. poly's wouldn't build etc. So I started looking around only to find out the first object had been snapped to the second voxel object. LUCKILY!!! 3DC has an awesome undo ability, so I was able to undo back to before the snap. However, I think snap and smooth should not affect hidden retopo objects. Am I wrong?

I think in addition to hiding voxels, you need to be able to FREEZE voxels. I LIKE the hide, smooth, invert hidden smooth. It gives REALLY quick neat smooth cut-lines. However, like you I have also had to remember to be careful not to smooth the model while some parts hidden. freeze hidden + some margin, would be better. e.g. all the voxels that are hidden are frozen, + an offset of x voxels. and if you wanna get REALLY cool... maybe there's even a soft margin?! ... just some thoughts. I wouldnt' want to lose the ability to do this. however, I suppose I would rather have a solution for this, and for what I like, you could still separate hidden, then smooth each part and merge back together. this would be a more logical approach to achieving this happy accident feature. ok... so in conclusion - I agree seems like a mistake.