The Candy-floss Kid
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Posts posted by The Candy-floss Kid
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2 GHz Intel Core Duo
2 GB 667 MHz DDR2 SDRAM
Running 10.5.8
Message: You can't open application "3D-Coat" because it is not supposrted on this architecture.
There's also a international don't sign through the application. (Circle with line going from upper left to lower right)
Bob
Bob, 10.5.8 working fine for me with the latest update
2 GHz Intel Core 2 Duo
4GB 1067 MHz DDR3
Running 10.5.8
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Phil,
Any way to save the render light settings?
cntrl+ up arrow saves view - cntrl+forward/right arrow scrolls through saved views and the lighting is saved with the scene in the render room - so you had to save variations of the file.
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The Candy-floss Kid, on 12 June 2012 - 10:26 AM, said:Q1: How is it that I add my favorite tools to the spacebar menu?
Q2: Is there an option to now save a variant of a Tool other than the LiveClay Tools
Q1:Two ways:
-you can add your preset panel entry by right clicking on it, add to quick panel, and selecting the desired slot.
-you can drag and drop the tools in the corresponding slots on that same panel.
Q2:
I'm not sure I understand the question, you can add every known tool to the preset panel.
Many thanks BeatKitano , much appreciated.
In question 2 I was wondering whether variations of a specific tool could be saved e.g variants of say the Airbrush tool but with differing focal shifts, falloffs ,spacing settings etc ?
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Absolutely fantastic update Andrew and team!!
This Mac user thanks you most sincerely for working so hard to introduce so many great changes
I love the fact that I can keep the original text based toolsets as an option and therefore I am not forced to an icon based system.
You've done a brilliant job in easily allowing options to be hidden etc and making these interface options so easy to access.
Tools remembering their options too - fantastic. Also a far better default e-panel setting chosen as standard.
One small hiccup - the proxy mode switch on the interface doesn't work ( I'm sure that is already known? ) , but does still will via the voxel menu so I've assigned shortcuts for now.
The spacebar solution to bring up toolsets is fantastic too if you wish to clear away the tool panel and answers the question about how the user can quickly access their favorite chosen tools.
Q1: How is it that I add my favorite tools to the spacebar menu?
Q2: Is there an option to now save a variant of a Tool other than the LiveClay Tools
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I use Zbrush for sculpting and I would like to retopologise in 3d coat. I have a lot of hidden areas in my model so I divided the model into polygroups. When I import the mesh into 3d coat for manual retopology, I see that it's not divided. I've looked through a lot of topics in the forum and saw that it is possible to to dived them. I'll quote what someone said in another topic.
5. If I am correct, you can not hide polygons by "polygon islands" (XSI naming) or polygroups (zbrush naming)? It would be great to be able to.
This is what Andrew said.
You can. Open UV-preview in hide tool and doubleclick on island.
Can some one explain to me step by step on how to do this? I don't understand the 3d coat interface.
As far as I'm aware the ability to subdivide relates to the retopology mesh itself once created not the subdivision of the reference mesh.
Polygroups are imported in a reference mesh as named groups within the Objects palette of 3DC's retopo interface. You can show or hide these groups in the Objects palette to help you with your retopo by showing and hiding as required. Note these are not the same as creating retopo groups within separate layers but rather your reference mesh groups.
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Myself I can't think of a way of wrapping an alpha or mask around a form to create a deformation on the geometry.
The masking in 3DCoat is front projection and there is not a global deformation method that I can think of such as an overall inflate etc as in ZBrush which can utilize the advantages of uv's and polys for such tasks to generate poly deformation and derived normal maps.
Perhaps some one else could give you some advice on doing this with normals on a uved form in 3DC.
That said cylindrical wraps could be created by using a voxel plane, filling the plane with a patterned mask when in the pose tool and then move out the detail by a set distance, then use the warp tool to wrap it / bend it into a cylindrical form.
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If requiring all quads is not as issue but good sharp poly reduction/ decimation is - do a file export and crunch down the polys in the export settings
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Merge without voxelizing will allow you to split your polygroups , it imports meshes with groups/polygroups/parts etc as a nested volume.
you can then use these to help you create logical groups in your uv environment - then merge/ join these groups as and when you need.
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Sweet , great potential.
Something like this on the ipad would be great for putting down ideas on the move.
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Any word on Mac update for brush improvements? Very exciting news!!
I feel a tingle.
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Look forward very much to trying the mac version when ready Andrew - many thanks indeed.
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I would agree that smaller tablet makes the most ergonomic sense. In a seated position one draws from the wrist and hand from the pivot of the elbow. When traditional painting on the vertical or when standing - you describe from the shoulder. A graphic artist using say cross hatching would find it much more efficient to describe from the wrist or the hand to gain the rapidity and accuracy required.
The Cintiq I believe is the best solution simply because we are conditioned to have the best gestural accuracy when witnessing our hand moving over a surface. Wish I had one.
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Always that tangible essence of a real world object where the viewer can imagine tracing their hand over the forms and know how it feels.
My admiration Michalis.
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Great result Stu - spot on and instantly recognizable at the thumbnail size too.
I could see work of this quality being printed by the Radio Times.
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Voxel mode is for large to medium masses and then I switch to surface mode.
Yes standard voxel mode is a largely additive or subtractive environment and many brushes can adhere and build from voxel layers beneath them such as grow , carve , sphere., curves, snake, spikes , muscle and toothpaste
Excluding the primitives there are 4 brushes that do not need voxel information beneath them to draw/ add clay in the empty work space : they are , sphere, curves, plane (with cntrl held down) and 2d-paint. This is quite different to surface mode analogy which is all about the manipulation and effect on an existing created surface.
The standard voxel brushes display the greater variation of behavior being working either to view or to the normals whereas the majority of the surface mode tools build to view and are more planar in their nature as well as assist in developing the planes of your forms. You can use this behavior of standard mode brushes to your advantage.
The LIveClay tools are slightly more erratic still in their behavior but can be used to build brushes more rounded in profile and effect than the majority of the surface mode tools. They also point the way in being able to save personal variations , yet unfortunately still without spacing and e-panel setting. The LiveClay tools offer many new tricks and techniques and using these brushes to hand decimate /poly reduce models by hand being just one of their advantages.
One of the greatest advantages of surface mode is the proxy mode for the increase in speed when working between resolutions as well as making large changes to form whilst keeping details.
NB: 3DCoat's virtual clay behaves to my mind more like real world clay and requires a finishing in more planned stages but with experience this is little more than habit. With 3DCoat I tend to think of it as real world clay and the resolutions representing the stages of the clay as it harden - lower resolutions being the wetter clay and higher resolutions being the harder clay. In one of my tutorials I show how the smudge tool in standard voxel mode for example can be used almost as a wet sponge to smooth your sculpt toward the end.
ZBrush clay response is more "hyper-real" and does not require the same building by resolution stages than was once true of it's performance , also it's brush suspension is more forgiving of your physical rhythm as well as the existing surface over which your brush travels.
3DCoats brushes can offer more rewards than many of ZBrush's tools but need to be adjusted more per resolution stage - be that in depth or focal shift etc. Many of the secrets and tricks buried within 3DCoats sculpting brushes do take longer to pick up than ZBrush's brushes.
NB: Size of brush is everything in 3DCoat and my advice to anyone new in 3DCoat is to observe each tools behavior at various sizes - you may be pleasantly surprised at the range of effects simply by changing your brush size to the form. My very important point is do not view this behavior as erratic - that would be misleading. With practice you will begin to utilize this to your advantage as well as understand and predict how brush size changes the focus of it's effect on the clay.
As I also said earlier one of the absolute delights in 3DCoat are the smooth modes of the brushes that offer such a fantastic and sophisticated range of polishing options .By habit a more regular smoothing through needs to be adopted after some stroke modes than may be the case in ZBrush.
NB: 3DCoat also requires a different physical rhythm than ZBrush - which allows for faster jerkier moves as well as cross hatch builds where as 3DCoat prefers a direction of travel stroke to the angle of the form.
My greatest irritation with 3DCoat is therefore not brush response once set but - having to reset them each time I start - be that e-panel or spacing.
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AbnRanger - you have been truly altruistic in the best spirit here at the forum, myself being one of the new users you have helped on numerous occasions here. Thank you. You have been shouldering a great responsibility of care in all your endeavors here. Finding more time for yourself is a great idea and I too hope you return back afresh .
The care factor has been taking a high toll on all those reporting issues with each update release.
It's care and empathy, belief in Andrew's work and dare I say it love for that work that's at the root of this toll of care.
History has become histrionics in the wearing thin and it should not spoil the pleasures we find in creating. Gentlemen be friends, your mutual altruism has been a testament to your kindness.
Andrew is a man who it appears will deliver in his own good time and I suspect if we all speak a little softer he might hear us a little louder. Imagine if you will our collectively shiny faces on hearing some good news over this matter?!! There are some of us that may even faint, fan ourselves - maybe be even tear up a little.
John I'm guessing you've realized by now that you've inadvertently stumbled in to a meeting of traumatized care-o-holics who are in no mood to speak right now coz Daddy won't pick up the phone these past two years?
I can but apologize if you've been frightened at any point since starting this thread :-)
The good news however is...... that we agree, we all agree,
and hope Daddy calls this Easter
Great to hear Silo will be carried forward. We all recognize when something shines.
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Whilst I agree with all here about improving many of the brushes behavior, mongering over a speculative and non invested audience's future dollar is beyond me. Were it so I'd be playing the stock market and not trifling with art.
I can only speak for myself at present - using 3DCoat has speeded my current creative output to finished result by about 35% when used in tandem with ZBrush. Production wise anything I can create faster in ZBrush I take to ZBrush - if I need it back in voxels - no problem. If starting a form is quicker to resolve initially in voxels then it's 3DCoat , back to retopo > 3DCoat , exporting vertex maps >3DCoat. Using photoshop Brushes > 3DCoat , creating spline assets >3DCoat , intuitive and fast uv adjustments > 3DCoat.
At the very least I would hope that this would be acknowledged even at the current state of development - as a little more than potential? Thus do forgive me if I suspect cloaked incentivisation via the vehicle of reverse psychologically and carefully chosen words. A worthy attempt nonetheless and anything with regard this matter of debate is worth a shot. Any attempt to scale this wall has my full support.
Just an observation about this thread - this improving the brushes stuff has been literally talked about since 2 years ago.The present issues with the sculpting brushes - identified. We all hope such issues will be resolvable within the version 3 Beta cycle.
My suggestions for vastly improving default sculpting settings as the current brush engine stands with fully recordable parameters? Apparently falling on deaf ears , which ends my input here .
Andrew has a habit of delighting on a regular basis - we can but wait for him to offer some feedback or acknowledgment of these concerns and proceed with our lives until then in good faith.
To a degree the silence is deafening - now there's cloaked incentivisation if ever there was?!!
Which reminds me I must call my Mother - she's an expert at it.
btw with regard Silo - same deal as Hexagon - beware attempting something ZBrush does better else Ofer will kick your ass :-) Yep - pick a fight with an extra terrestrial and you'd better come tooled up.
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Thank you Stu and Tony :-)
More experiments along the same lines , keeping things loose - this time something warmer.
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Is your emphasis John on setting better defaults at their best possible optimum settings with the current brush engine as it stands? Or are you driving for further development on a stabilizing method?
I have myself been pushing for the addition of all spacings and e-panel settings being recorded with all brushes to set better defaults and thus reduce some of the findings you describe. There are at present irregular behaviors with settings that get saved or not with tools. My extrude settings in my latest version do not for example get saved between application uses , nor keep their spacing settings.
Of note between applications: take a tool like extrude or draw - the two closest to the polygon burying facility of the a dam standard in ZBrush - at different sizes they effect the surface differently . in ZBrush much of the effect is the same/similar at larger or smaller sizes but not so in 3DCoat. In 3DCoat brush size is everything and will dramatically alter your marks. Is this then a flexibility or weakness of the tool? The Airbrush tool depending on size can dramatically pinch/ sharpen edges or not - often a larger brush will pinch more than a small one.
Also of important note here: many of the standard mode tools set to e-panel strokes modes are realtime "additive" on new empty layers based on voxel information beneath them (much like the zbrush canvas response for tools but genuine 3d instead - this too is wholly different to the ZBrush approach and plays some part in what you describe. Thus for a like for like comparison , the discussion would be best simplified to surface mode responses solely.
To repeat, better performance is already an option if e-panel setting and spacing settings could be saved.
If this is added we all would benefit right now.
p.s: the subject of brush control a "repeat last stroke option" in 3DCoat would greatly assist control when building precisely over stroke paths.
p.p.s: Perhaps a community poll on development focus priorities may assist Andrew target his time based on user feedback? Where does brush development stand as a priority compared to other wishes?
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An image with Easter in mind /mood. A follow on to my recent Pod Dweller piece - this piece using splines for additive or subtractive voxel creation rather than sculpting brushes to modify form. Using the advantages of the standard voxel room entirely until the vertex painting stage in surface mode . Rendered in 3DCoat - 3 lights.
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Probably I missed it. Please point me the link.
Here it is Andrew
http://3d-coat.com/forum/index.php?showtopic=8887&st=880&p=73489entry73489
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Win/Mac/Linux builds updated to 3.7.08B
The only change is fixed Autopo that was not accepting density painting correctly.
3.7.08B expected to be stabe - at least better than 3.7.01B that is in regular downloads because many important bugs fixed there.
Next build (3.7.09) will introduce colored specular and emissive for voxels, ppp and mv.
Hi Andrew the Pose tool is still very inaccurate across symmetry in the Mac version 3.7.08B. Exactly the same issue as in my original report persists.
Was the fix added to the Mac version?
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tis true .I suggest that the 3D-Coat developers work on creating a brush which is identical to the Clay Buildup brush in Zbrush. That brush is the best brush I have ever encountered in any sculpting application.
great point Timmy.Personally I think the greatest thing about 3D-Coat is being able to get so much good work done without using the brushes at all.As a useful btw -to get a standard brush feel in Surface Mode > LiveClay>General Brush >check the airbrush mode>choose the small sharp alpha/brush >;set falloff to 30 and focal shift to 3 >cntrl click and make a copy of your settings and name it
......also there's another standard brush type in the surface mode brushes - strangely it's in the chisel tool with the cntrl key pressed. The Chisel tool is a gem - chisels with left click - soft builds with cntrl click and polishes through form with shift click. 3DCoat is full of gems like this.
Also there's another major difference between standard voxel mode and surface mode and something I make a point of repeating in some of my vimeo tutorials and that is that the surface mode sculpting brushes are by general rule planar in their nature like zbrush's claybuild up brushes whereas the standard mode brushes are more rounded in their nature and shape profile. For softer slower control Standard Mode is a great option - for faster roughing in choose Surface Mode.
The surface mode Move tool is like ZBrushes snakehook brush and move tool combined. It can both be used to draw and sculpt as well as smooth wonderfully. 70 -80% of what all the other sculpting tools can create can be created with the move tool alone but in Pilgway's typical modesty - no big deal is made of this but maybe should be.
Can you share LiveClay brushes yet? Being able to share brush tools may be a way to establish easier conversation with regard some useful generic artistic consensus on brush behavior - particularly so if e-panel setting would be saved with them.
Myself I really hope that Andrew allows us to have temporary swappable tools where we can be in our main tool of choice but can temporarily hot switch and cycle through a collection of tools of our choice .
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Voxel and Surface mode are different by design. The brush behavior will be different.
The subtleties of which confuse the new user. The penny might drop more if users were dropped into surface mode first.
What happens is that the first time user ( or in reality user of other apps ) has already experienced a raft of tools that do not behave to their expectation derived from other applications tools.
For example the difference between surface modes clay and standards modes clay is staggering. Surface mode clay is evidently superior yet the first time user is exposed the the more peculiar standard mode clay. Surface mode brushes do fulfill first time users expectation to a greater degree. At the moment you have to swap between two rooms to find the best brush for the job. John mentions the airbrush and grow and quite rightly - yet surface mode has no performance equivalent as yet.
The four brushes that John and many others mention should in actuality be the first top four in the toolbar of both rooms - the rest divided. Those four tools should then be easily interface swappable for the new user who prefers other favorite tools as experience allows.
Every user in ZBrush has their preferred top four brushes. What they are depends per person but each fulfill / answer a basic task orientated need and most are consensus or get the nod of respect from users as personal preference but nonetheless worthy and or equal.
In truth the work has already been blazed by zbrush in this respect - find out the four most commonly preferred brushes by task , finesse the brushes closest by task in 3dc and there's your answer for the first four brushes :-)
It's the first point of contact, the initial fulfillment of standard expectation from there the other depths of 3DC could reveal themselves. if a brush evidently behaves better with spacing on why isn't it's defaults setting for that tool set to spacing on?
The default e-panel setting is misleading - it should lead with brush pressure affects depth first - then draw with constant depth and radius regardless of brush pressure then thirdly the present default e-panel setting "brush pressure effects radius and depth" which is a better finishing setting but a lousy generic setting. Changing this would make an immediate and big difference.
Myself one of the things I absolutely adore about 3DC's brushes is the range of polishing modes hidden within all it's tools smoothing modes. They are exquisite and each a brush in their own right . This is hidden from the first time user John as they also perfect the ills of which you speak yet this is not evident at first. With time these smooth modes become such that sculpting in 3DC to my mind is more pleasurable for many tasks than ZBrush but initially more painful. The pleasure of 3DC with further investigation is truly finding all the things it does exceed ZBrush by way of intuitive sculpting and there are many. For this reason I will swap about for the present.
With regard potential , if a tool can shave time off my exposure to sitting at a computer with regard achieving certain tasks then in this sense it is already fulfilling potential . Sometimes a production assessment of potential can be clouded by an existing investment in habit.
New user saying hi
in General 3DCoat
Posted
Agreed that brush descriptions are currently sketchy.
David ,try carve and extrude with different e-panel settings such as the rectangle over existing detail below, or pull the carve tool along the form and pull out from the form. You'll see other differences.
Try using grow in stamp mode to fill a hole , try doing that with the build tool . Try creating a hole/indent then using the smooth facility of the the grow - now try the same thing with the build tool.Try using build on an empty over layer to an existing voxel layer - then try using the grow tool. The grow tool will add voxels based on the layer below in an empty layer. In other words some of the tools are additive also.
You could merge the airbrush and build together then allow user control similar to ZBrush's picker for orientation modes, to normals , or to camera. At the moment build is to camera, airbrush to normals. Both are useful and can have different parameters set. That said It would be good to see a normal orientation or camera orientation cntrl added per tool regardless.
What seem a little like subtle differences at first become subtle gems, but that's merely my opinion and I know there seems to be a push to simplify and I wonder if the baby will be thrown at with the bath water in attempting this? I've looked at this topic long and hard and always come to this conclusion - that the simplification of tools for new user expectation may and probably will be to the detriment/ functionality loss of the experienced user.
Surely assigning your own preferred toolset is the best route ?