alvordr

We need 3D Coat to stop trying to autosave while we're in the middle of a stroke. I've had it do a long pause and delay while in the middle of sculpting and have it mess up the stroke. It needs to be smart enough to not auto-save mid-stroke or mid-action (like picking a menu item). Once this got done, my model was all screwed up. I can see 2022 isn't really ready for production work still. Going back to Version 4.

I see no emissive shader listed. This partly what I'm talking about. It's way too clumsy to simply add a light where you want it and it be anywhere near intuitive. I think if we had a visual guide on the screen for rendering, this would help. Meanwhile, there's an issue with having the lighting settings be universally applied throughout rooms. What works in the render room, doesn't work elsewhere for the intent. I can light a scene for rendering appropriately, only to have it be too dark for modeling or painting.

Oh, OK. I'll test that.

Wouldn't that create a lot more work to create an object, get it retopo'd for emissive painting and then when it's retopo'd even with autotopo for a quicker fix, that then gets added to your texture map for your scene? That's not the right solution, but I do appreciate the thought behind it.

Most 3D programs have some indicator in the viewport showing where light is coming from and to be able to transform rotation, position, etc. I think 3D Coat would benefit from this in the render room, since all we get is the light on an object and no great way to visualize where that light source is in the scene. For instance, I would like to be able to place a light near a particular part of an object, but all I get is the scene lighting, and being able to add a light with angle and height adjustment, but no real way to push it near what I'm actually interested in seeing.

I have the same issue. It pops up as if it's going to do the render preview and then shows all black. It took 10 seconds to get to 92%, but then that's it. Black scene, nothing to render at all. I'm guessing this may have to do with no light being in the scene, but what is the point of having extra lights in the viewport only to not be able to render the scene with Renderman? Is it possible that my rig is way too slow to render this with any real result in a nominal amount of time?

I ended up giving up on 2021 and just using Version 4. Version 4 was just much faster, less bug-prone for retopo, copying symmetry, painting and sculpting and a better all-around experience. The project isn't done, but I've been able to take it much further because of this. This is why I was saying we need access to the older versions. Even the render looks better in Version 4 (notice the reddish tinge on the underbelly): Version 2021 below:

Hey, Carlosan. All I was doing at the time was working on one small portion of my retopo and saved the file. I wasn't sculpting or painting. When I opened it up, all the paint information was suddenly gone. In fact, after yesterday, when I was also working on retopo, the whole model ended up doing this, so I had to quit using 2021 and ended up using Version 4 to finish what I was doing: Luckily, it occurred to me to use an autosave just now and that worked to get me most of the way back to where I was.

Great, now my whole model has lost all the paint work I did. 2021 is just not ready for stable work at all, even when using the "stable release." I guess I'm back to either going to an older save, foregoing hours worth of work doing retopo and sculpting, or foregoing hours worth of work on repainting this thing, unless there is a way to copy paint layers from one file to another. Considering I hadn't retopo'd everything yet, I doubt it. You can imagine how time consuming it can be to sculpt, retopo and paint this as a low-poly, realistic model. I still have work to do on the claws, legs, and then repaint it. That's before I can even consider rigging and animating this thing. Before the loss: After:

Hey, Carlosan. I may, but it's not always efficient or appropriate to test new versions while you're actually working on something. I did try 92 recently and found it also somewhat buggy. That's why I was using the "stable" release of 70. My point before was that having access to an older version fixed my issue, but I had to use it as a Trial version, which is limiting for licensed users. If nothing else, perhaps the answer is for us to be able to license different versions, not just upgrade our license to the point that it no longer works with the older ones. I'm not trying to sound or be insulting, as we really appreciate all the hard work on this wonderful program, but 2021's retopo and paint room seem to be a little bit of a step backwards. I say paint room, because I'm also noticing that seeing the colors of what I'm painting on a dark model (dark shades of various colors) are also more easily seen on Version 4. I don't know if it's the lighting or what. Room independent lighting would be useful. Lighting needs to be separate for separate rooms, so if you get it just right for the render room, it may not be quite right for the paint room, etc. Also, I noticed that getting between rooms went from 1 click to two. Version 4 example of how it treats split rings on a mesh (conforming correctly): Version 2021 example of the same thing where adding a split ring doesn't conform correctly: Version 4 example of paint room to see what you're painting more easily: Version 2021 doesn't appear to be as useful for seeing what you're painting: Back on licensing, I may be misunderstanding how the licensing works. EDIT: Wait. I just tried my Version 4 license I bought some time ago on Version 4 and that worked, while my Version 2021 license works for the new one, so maybe that's already allowed? If not, I'll uninstall one of them. If it's only for a year or some time limit, that's not the solution I'm after.

The ability to use older versions needs to be available. I've already encountered several bugs in 2021 that aren't there in Version 4. For instance, I was doing a retopo of one part of a sculpture. I found that after I finished and unhid the rest of my model so I could see the retopo while seeing the rest as a sculpture revealed that my entire sculpture was all screwed up. That was using Version 2021.70 I tried this 3 different times, thinking that maybe it was something I did differently each time, but it kept happening. I loaded up a trial version of 4.8.25 and was able to do what I needed to without issue. Another thing that worked better in version 4 was that I could delete a point I placed using Points & Faces Tool without delay, but in 2021, it would take forever just to delete a point every single time I had to do it. Simply put, retopology works better in version 4 than it does in 2021, despite 2021 having some really nice new features. It's faster and less buggy even when using features that were already in both versions. I'm not sure about the older versions, but 2021 doesn't appear to retain my desire to use CUDA when sculpting, so I have to select that option whenever I load even the same file. Those of us with licenses really need to be able to move back and forth between versions as bugs get identified and as the program develops new features. Things break, but we should be able to continue working.

+1 I agree it needs work. I may be wrong, but maybe try pulling the vert on that box from the other side of the symmetry. I've noticed on occasion that 3D Coat wants to use only one side of symmetry to adjust both.

I've asked for this years ago and unless I'm missing something, it's still not implemented. Is giving us the choice of color for the wireframe so difficult?

Thank you. I reached out today.

You just repeated what I said wasn't working. I said Autotopo for per pixel.