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alvordr

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Posts posted by alvordr

  2. Improved Smoothing (Non-Destructive)

    in Feature requests

    Posted

    I realize you can smooth in Surface mode and it will try not to destroy your mesh, but if there is a way to improve on the smooth (as I'm sure is already being worked on anyway), such that it is completely non-destructive that would be awesome. The only way I can think this could happen is to be able to adjust a locking plane that cuts perpendicular to a very thin part of a mesh you want to smooth that "blocks" the smooth operation from destroying the mesh.

  7. How Would You Handle This?

    in General 3DCoat

    Posted

    Hmm...well I thought I had it. The bucket is unwrapped, appears in every room, but I can't paint on it at all. I tried using the Merge patch (Per-Pixel) method and have the same issue. I can't even see the light anymore (even with Ambient and light intensity all the way up), so my model is black.

    I then tried to use the last method, MergeForDP_Disp. It appears to let me paint on the voxel mesh in the paint room, and the changes show up in the voxel room, also. However there doesn't appear to be any wireframe with it.

  8. How Would You Handle This?

    in General 3DCoat

    Posted

    I wouldn't retopologize this at all. Since you already modeled it, in the retopo room to to Retopo>Import and browse to the mesh file, select it and import. Now you have your mesh file that you already modeled in as a retopology mesh and you can now use the Retopo>Merge with (your chosen paint method), this will bake all the details you sculted in the vox/surf modes to the retopo mesh and create a new texture map for it in the paint room.

    Now you can export in your desired format for the mesh and textures. Voila. :)

    Hope that helps.

    Javis,

    OK, I imported the original mesh from the Retopo Room's, Retopo > Import. I then clicked Retopo > Merge with NM (Per-Pixel), but nothing happened. I can't see anything in any room, except the Voxel and the Retopo Room, as before. Did I miss something?

    EDIT: Never mind. Apparently, I had to know to hit 'ENTER' to commit the import. Once I did that I was able to unwrap it. Then I did the merge operation mentioned above and WHAM! There it was. Thanks again for that invaluable advice!

  10. How Would You Handle This?

    in General 3DCoat

    Posted

    Hello all. I have a bucket that I made some time back with 3ds Max and brought into Mudbox. I painted it and render it out and put it into the UDK. It was OK for the time I had to do it, but now I want to try my hand at voxelizing it in 3DC and going through the motions. I have sculpted in details in the Voxel Room, but any time I Autoretopo this, it's aweful. Am I stuck with doing this one by hand?

    Voxelized Bucket:

    VoxelizedBucket.jpg

    Autoretopo Problem:

    AutoretopoBucketProblem.jpg

  11. Artworks

    in Finished Projects

    Posted

    Cool sculpt! I like the vein work and some of the wrinkles you've done. That's something I'm working on, myself. His neck is a bit wide, for this angle of render, but it may be just me. I would taper in his neck near the jaw line a bit. Otherwise, super cool!

  12. Tutorials Too Complex?

    in General 3DCoat

    Posted

    Greg,

    Wow! That was quite a watered down approach. Thank you. I think I'm somewhere between the basic approach you first mentioned and the next step of progression. Maybe I need to step back to the basics before attempting to go forward. I'm trying to see how I can leverage 3DC for classes that are coming up, as I'm in my final year, pursuing a BA in Game Art & Design. I love how it works to get my UVs and topology placed quickly and cleanly. I'm just having to work through the rest of the process to get finished.

  13. Tutorials Too Complex?

    in General 3DCoat

    Posted

    In the past 2 weeks since I got 3DC, I've managed to sculpt quite a few models, UV Unwrap them and, in some cases, retopologize them. However, I then go to 3ds Max, to create a base mesh for a briefcase, that I then want to pull into 3DC to UV Unwrap and texture, but find that the mesh looks somewhat messed up coming back out, even though I didn't change any topology. This may be a displacement thing, even though I never intended to use displacement. This is where knowing the workflow better comes in.

  14. Tutorials Too Complex?

    in General 3DCoat

    Posted

    carlosa,

    Thanks. I'll take a look further into this. It's hard going from Cheetah3D, to 3ds Max, Maya, Mudbox, Unreal Engine, Unity, ZBrush, etc. etc. and then onto yet another program with it's own terminology and workflow. 3D Coat is an interesting beast, in that it's super simple for certain things and seemingly over complex for others.

  15. Anyone upgraded to Windows 8?

    in CG & Hardware Discussion

    Posted

    I was an IT manager for a long time and one thing I learned about Microsoft OSs is that you should wait for about 6 months or so before upgrading. I've seen statements from Microsoft for the past few releases, stating it was "built from the ground up." While this may be true, some of the same bugs pop up. This means either their programming teams aren't improving their coding practices, or they've taken code already developed. The latter isn't unlikely, and is often a good practice, as reusing good code saves time and money. However, if the same bugs are popping up, it's not good code or not integrated well.

    I see nothing in Win 8 that makes me want or need to upgrade. I was suprised, however, to find that Win 7 works rather well on my system, more so than XP.

    _____________________

    AbnRanger,

    The process of getting your PC back to normal I suggest would be:

    1) Go to a restore point before the USB problems

    2) Use CCleaner (see below) to do general cleanup, to optimize the registry, and to disable certain startup processes

    3) Use defrag (see below) to optimize your hard drive and check for problems

    4) Consider putting PrevX and Spybot Search & Destroy on your system

    As far as the USB, this can happen after a number of devices have been placed into a USB port and then not properly ejected. Simply pulling out USB devices can leave remnants of USB entries for that port in your Hardware Devices list. This can cause conflicts and result in a fail. The best way to fix this, in my experience is to go to a restore point before all this happened.

    I suggest using CCleaner (Free) and letting it do some house cleaning. You can use it's Tools > Startup function to turn off certain startup programs, but you need to be somewhat careful and aware of what you're doing there.

    Another task to perform is a defrag. This helps to keep your data clusters on your drive organized (however, I can't speak to how well it would do on an SSD drive). I only recommend using the built-in defrag and not a third party product.

    The other thing I recommend is using PrevX AND Spybot Search & Destroy for your anti-virus. PrevX runs well and is low on resources. It works while you do. For Spybot I would suggest turning off it's real-time monitoring and simply running it any time you think you might have a virus or some odd slowdown, which could be caused by spyware or a virus.

    Slow shut downs can be caused by a number of things, but likely it's a startup program running (like Google Updater) and/or an unoptimized registry (which CCleaner will help with) and/or drive (which is where defrag comes in).

    I hope this helps.

  17. Tutorials Too Complex?

    in General 3DCoat

    Posted

    No offense to anyone here who has taken the time to create tutorials for us. They're generally very well done. However, am I the only one that feels like there is too much complexity in them to really get a basic grasp of how 3DC works internally?

    I'm still struggling with how to get from room to room in this thing. I find various issues that are either bugs, or more likely...something I'm not doing correctly.

    I would be more than happy to create tutorials myself, but I'm not the one to do this just yet. What I think would help is not to worry about making a complex mesh in these tutorials, but just to demonstrate the task or method or tool or functionality using something simple, like a box. I find that by the time we've gotten to the core of the tutorial, so much has been covered I'm lost in how we started or somewhere in between. I also find that because so much is covered, some seemingly insignificant detail gets left out that stops the whole process for someone who has never used this program before.

    Another thing I think would help is to have a "Send to Paint Room," or "Send to UV Room" button, etc. I realize there is a workflow for this, but I look at the "Merge with..." options under the Retopo menu and there are 9 options, none of which make much sense to me. All I particularly care about is getting the high poly details projected to a low poly mesh or simply ensuring my mesh is quadified, so that I can paint it and get it into a game, or render engine of my choice.

    I don't want to come across as complaining, as I really like this program a lot and very much appreciate the work that everyone has done here. I just think it shouldn't be taking this long to get to the core functions that I bought it for.

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