The Candy-floss Kid

Thanks AbnRanger , splines would be my best bet. It was to save hand painted freeze masks on the fly during voxel sculpting that I was thinking about.

Oh , I guess I was dreaming again. Using 3DCoat in my dreams is getting to be a habit with me. That might be the dream where a pretty girl was stroking my hair whilst I upload voxel sculpts by telepathic transfer.

Did I imagine that there was? Is there an option for recalling freeze selections folks? Many thanks

Thanks AbnRanger , yes for the time being that seems the best bet - export per layer.

AbnRanger yes I had attempted to export from the Voxel room after using liveclay to poly reduce on a per layer basis.

Imported/ merged objects as separate surface object instances is already available 3DCoat imports meshes with groups/polygroups/parts etc as a nested volume but will not export the modified components out as one unified mesh with separate components, each must in turn be separated out from the nested group and exported individually which is a great shame production wise. At least for me that is the case I have had no luck exporting the nested volume. Ah I see AbRanger has already replied before I'd even posted To be able to export a nested surface object +1

you don't have to own it to enjoy their user group meeting reviews. As poly modelling applications are truly much of a muchness in comparative functionality and therefor free of any tribal instincts, may I recommend to you a great series of videos put together by a fantastic, enthusiastic group of people who appear to insult each other with great affection and regularity. Warning: As is the way with recorded webinars there may be moments where it seems that Darth Vadar is eating pizza on an open mic. Here's a video taster , but not pizza

Ah , tried downloading the Beta , seems to be running through WineSkin and only on 10.6 upward. I run 10.5.8 so that's me down and out What is Wineskin? Wineskin is a tool used to make ports of Windows software to Mac OS X. The ports are in the form of normal Mac application bundle wrappers. It works like a wrapper around the Windows software, and you can share just the wrappers if you choose.

Looks fascinating I must say Mr Pilou. I enjoyed this article by the Software's creator Michael Gibson very much http://blog.novedge....terview-wi.htm There's even a video to accompany the software

Sadly I can't offer help but can confirm that your findings are the case - smooth, fill, clay and carve all have this voxel creation facility but the depth settings on them all has no effect on the depth of the voxels created in the workspace. It would be intuitive and useful if there was a param setting for this I must agree.

I knew I'd find more here on QRemesher than I would at ZBC :-)

@Phil, many thanks Phil, I did a test where I fused some sharp edged forms with more organic shapes. Seems like the export decimation method does a better job on sharp edged geometric forms than I could achieve painting up to the margins by hand. I imagine using this option + a merge without voxelizing, then using the smart decimate to further reduce the organic areas would make a great combination. @BeatKitano,"Smart decimate" , very nice and many thanks for pointing this new feature out. Testing it now. Wish there was a way to create auto-freezing/ masking on sharper edge transitions to protect them but great feature nonetheless.

The thought occurred sometime later that you may have meant that you can't find the reduce tool to hand paint modified resolutions? If that's the case ,Edit> Preferences > check "Show Beta Tools" > Surface Mode > LC (liveclay) > Reduce Hope it was of help. Cheers.

Hi Thao I am not familiar with this issue , I wonder whether you may have resized the second merge object differently from the first?Have you tried merging both objects as a grouped .obj, merge >select merge to separate volumes , size >then press apply? From there you can separate the nested voxel components into their own layers to do what you wish, and from there export.

If one was in the flow, stopping to reply to questions might be irksome although doing a webinar with the purpose of teaching is another matter entirely and relies on a greater amount of free time and or having no partner/ romantic pastimes. What might be better is a greater vimeo /youtube presence of available tutorials by topic and production scenario from more of the advanced users here . 3DCoat needs a far greater generosity of online sharing than at present to enrich all our experience and this I would hope would include yourself should you feel you have tips to share.

voxel window> switch to surface mode> in the lower toolbar to the left you will see "Merge" , select merge without voxelizing and size the object to your preference - press apply. on export set the reduced polycount percentage to zero to keep your hand painted reduction modifications or allow export to further crunch your polys by setting percentage reductions BTW it imports meshes with groups/polygroups/parts etc as a nested volume but will not export the reduced components out as one unified mesh with separate components, each must in turn be separated out from the nested group and exported individually which is a great shame production wise. At least for me that is the case I have had no luck exporting the nested volume - perhaps there is a way? An ideal production scenario would be to send the reduced nested mesh to the uv room to allow uv creation per mesh component and from there on to painting. Unfortunately that does not seem to work - neither can you uv it seems per mesh group/ part. Maybe somebody could also verify that?

+20,000 uv room> Edit>" project through" solves the issue of selecting uv islands on top of each other but does not solve a convenient method to select uv components quickly via their mesh counterpart.

That'll be a no then.

Finally found the time to investigate uving with 3DC but being able to select uv's in anything other than the uv window eludes me. A search brought up this old post 2010 http://3d-coat.com/f...?showtopic=5993 and I wondered whether this function had been added since this feature request? One would expect that functionality and duality of selecting in either window particularly as in many circumstances clicking the uv's can prove very tricky.

Yes I agree doing and learning is the most fun and available content as you say has it's place. Any points of creative interest in 3DCoat that you discover on your journey please do share on vimeo. Your position of semi-retired liberation should make for liberating perspectives and creative inspirations and such views are invaluable. That little tip on adding a little hair on the brow of the cowboy's hat to give that little kick and visual suggestion of cloth is a case in point. Genius. Spiritually 2012 is a good time to retire, may I congratulate you. If your on Vimeo I shall look you up Sir.

As a by-the-by, Poser works well in tandem with 3DCoat and now with dynamesh in ZBrush to quickly add anatomical posed elements that can be quickly fused with your mesh and from there - the elements perfected. The ease of sculpting with voxels allows you to quickly iron out those anatomical niggles in Poser figures. The rigging is already there as it were for these fast posed starting points particularly if you are creating a still. I mention Poser because it is not expensive. Not expensive is good. The digital equivalent of the basic clay posed on the armature then sculpted to readiness is taking over from the necessity to crunch edge-loops for those that do not require it.

I wonder if you might find a happy balance with a sculptris created symmetrical pose and poly count cleverly reduced with hand painted reductions. Pose this then add the upper resolutions details by applying normal map detailing in 3dcoat from the texture map exported from sculptris. I conjecture? But I like your idea of a lower poly proxy with a higher resolution achieved with normal maps. I might be wrong but I'm sure I've seen people achieve passable rigging with tris in Carrara. I'm sure however with other's input a cracking solution can be found. Does Carrara handle normal maps well? Any tips on rigging in Carrara would be most welcome if you ever feel inclined. It's an exciting avenue you're investigating for as you say you're using each for their strengths and ease of use. I've been playing from the opposite direction i.e using zbrush but still looking for a low rez ouput from a higher rez sculpt.Carrara and other apps can choke on mesh resolutions too high i.e by the time you've added lights and other elements. ZBrush thrills at the creation but lets you down in a broader render environment with regards it's perspective and lighting interactions. S'been said before but it would be nice to see both ZB and 3DCoat race forward with this. ZBrush's subtool master rigging solves the posing issue and decimation master solves the lower rez export and uv map quality when used with standard uv's created per layer of the subtool prior to decimation. Sculptris fairs very well it must be said in being able to reduce polycounts selectively by hand, applying a fairly decent painted uv map resolution considering whilst keeping a nice distribution. Strangely Sculptris 6 alpha can play badly with ZBrushr2 subtool layer exports and often give issues that need resolved per subtool layer by investigating per layer to sculptris via a GoZ test. This is an aside to ZBrush users as I know your journey is all about the non requirement of ZBrush to achieve similar ends which I find very refreshing and shows temerity with canny guile - a trait of money welfare favored by a gentleman of later years.

Sweet effect and I see what you mean, it creates successive frozen voxel iterations of the falling cloth. Thanks for sharing and great blog btw, the zombie post is inspiring for many reasons. I love how you use Carrara's rigging to create the posed block sculpt then finish it off in Sculptris. It's sneaky genius that avoids the outlay of ZBrush. Bravo Sir.

Wasn't aware of this, thanks for posting.

Yep what AbRanger says I tend to think of surface mode as a speedier sculpting addition to standard voxel mode i.e giving you kinds of brush responses not available in standard voxel mode but after using I always press the enter key. Surface mode in my experience tends to smooth better at low resolutions and I have found that smoothing a lower resolution mesh and eliminating potential problem areas such as poles/spikes/ bunching polys with the "w" key depressed before upping the resolution can help. But yes +1