The.Great.ESCape

In any case, I have to take off for now... thank you for taking the time to respond to my inquiry. I definitely prefer low poly texturing in 3dcoat over Zbrush. The programs have some overlapping functionality, but also have different strengths and weaknesses depending on one's workflow/preferences. I do wish the applink would be resurrected, but that seems long deceased at this point. forgive the somewhat off topic rambling... will check back later.

That's the problem with tiling "intentionally obvious" patterns and cube-mapping on organic models. So far it appears I can get a clean asymmetrical result or a smudged mirrored result. I lean towards the clean result, but I'd rather have both if possible. The mirroring also seems to only work when brushing on, and is ignored if filling using surface materials... at least that's how it has been working for me.

After further experimentation, I have realized that it will mirror... just not with UV-Mapping. I was trying to use UV-Mapping for continuity's sake, but it doesn't look too shabby with cube mapping except for looking smudged where the projection angles overlap. Here's a very simple lace material I was playing with. Not much to it, but it looks good for what I was using it on. Lace 001.3dcpack

Is there a way to apply a smart Material Symmetrically? I've tried searching and haven't found anything particularly helpful. The reason I am asking is because I have made my own patterned smart materials to texture some clothing and I would like it to mirror across X in some cases, but while I can brush symmetrically it's not mirroring the pattern just the brush strokes. So, the projection remains the same. If it's not currently possible; I'm sure there are many other applications in which such functionality would be useful.

I may stand corrected as I have read that Blacksmith 3d has smear/smudge tools that can blend across UV seams. I have not tried it personally....I would be curious if anyone has it and can comment on it's implementation in that program and whether they have found it useful or not. Perhaps it would make a good example.

Yes, polygroups basically do for sections of a single mesh what the Voxtree does for multi-mesh objects.

I suppose someone might as well remove this thread given the seeming lack of interest.

Given the advances in 3D-Coat's surface mode, it might deserve it's own dedicated tab at this point. This would be a great time to consider adding some sort of polygroup feature as well. Boolean results could then form a polygroup which could be used for special polygroup based editing (i.e. perform smoothing, extrusion, inset, hide/show, freeze (useful for both painting and sculpting), or convert to UV). Splines would be another great way to create polygroups. The ability to merge auto generated polygroups would be good as well. Polygroups could also aid in auto-retopo's ability to create more precise edge loops in desirable areas with the right algorythms I would imagine. Layers are great are great for organizing different objects grouped together. Polygroups are great logically separating and organizing different sections of each object's surface. I know they haven't really been implemented yet due to the voxel centric concept of 3D-Coat, but with the surface features coming into their own lately, I thought it might be worth revisiting the idea. I'm loving how smooth the surface mode boolean results are with lower memory usage than voxel mode. I just think we can leverage those for even more advantages. Off topic, but would be awesome if we had a room for operations similar to what Groboto/Mesh Fusion do. It looks to me like you are using similar methods at the seams at any rate. The ability to be able to change the position of any object used for boolean operations after the fact is pretty awesome for creating different variations. Even with Mesh Fusion retopo is often needed, so the triangle mesh in 3D coat wouldn't really even make it that much worse.. I imagine something like that would probably mean a major upgrade though. Still, it would be pretty cool.

+1 Definitely agree. Would be great for painting too, not just geometry.

Pressing shift when painting with the paint brush applies a blur effect which has a similar result sometimes... The smear/smudge type tools used for blending usually do blur, but they also usually have the ability to drag color along the brush's path while blurring. The amount of color being dragged is usually also adjustable by a strength setting.. There is a smudge tool in 3DC, but it's more like a nudge/liquefy tool as it does not actually blend.... basically localized brush radius image warping tools (think Power Goo). I would love to see something similar to PS Mixer brushes and the infamous finger blender added to 3DC's texturing arsenal. I've yet to see any 3D paint package with a similar tool... though maybe Mari or something has it. I have not tried all that are currently available.

I'll happily add my support for a smear/smudge tool. I use those types of brushes a lot when painting in 2D

I can send from ZB 4r6 to 3DC 4. Getting anything back into ZB is problematic though... normals/visible faces get inverted and it's not smart enough to automatically choose compatible image formats for textures or get them get them back into ZB properly. Ideally the applinks would automatically filter out incompatible options when sending assets back to "original application" even if that means having the user selecting what application before sending it back. I've had limited success getting models back in, but I've yet to successfully send results from using PTex back to ZB which would be very nice to be able to do since ZB is yet to adopt PTex. These apps would be very complimentary if they communicated easily. As is have to export and flip some things around to get something back into ZB. Then again I am not an expert and maybe I am missing a setting. If someone else has things working it would be awesome to get a point in the right direction.

More or less... except that converting back would only be necessary if sculpting the ghosted portion were desired... else the original portion could just be re-joined after sculpting the non-ghosted portion.

Basically, It'd be nice to have the ability to add reference images at any angle not just dead on X,Y and z. Like 3/4 or imperfect 3/4 shots. When you have it all lined up in the viewport the way you want then you can lock it so that it rotates with the model and store with the correct camera view with it to sculpt from as well, so you can just jump to the stored view with reference image. I'm thinking it should be possible to just load in an image so that it's always facing the camera semi-transparent until you get the model all rotated and scaled to match, as well as any 2D scaling/translation necessary with the image. when it's the way you want it, then you just store that view and name it. At that point it should also be possible to rotate with the model just like the regular axis reference images. Unless I missed this feature, if it's already there, appologies, and I'd love to be pointed in the right direction.

So, would it be possible to use a ghosted mesh proxy of the surface of hidden voxels? I was thinking of that as a possible sculpting toggle for voxel mode anyhow. A mesh is normally the end result anyhow and voxel mode looks chunkier and less consistent than mesh at lower resolutions. could even use the live clay algorithm for self healing to keep it possible to punch holes and fuse on the fly. Unfortunately, I have a feeling that maintaining a constant mesh proxy would be even more resource intensive, but for a temorarily ghosted portion it might be practical. The program already flits about converting between surface and voxel mode after all, and voxel models can be sliced and diced easily enough so it would simply hide the voxels and treat the hidden voxels as a separate model and then convert just that portion to surface mode ghosted so that you can get the desired visual feedback. Might not be absolutely perfect, but it should be doable, and provide the desired visual feedback.

Yep, It works with the latest driver release.. So make sure you have the latest driver first.

I unfortunately have the combination of wacom intuos 4 and 5 plus windows8 pro x64. It works, I'm old hat at working through various wacom issues, but for now, with this combination, you can have pressure sensitivity and an annoying click and drag issue, or you can have no click and drag issue at the cost of pressure sensitivity. Some apps that have Wacom tightly integrated do not have this issue... i.e. ZB/ Photoshop. In many apps click and drag delay is a major issue. Windows8 Pro native touch/pen input system conflicts with portions of the wacom drivers, so far as I know there is no complete workaround or fix as yet though. I just thought I'd share that tidbit in case there are other Win8 Pro/Wacom users that are frustrated to try and save them slamming their head into a wall. If pressure sensitivity is not that important to you, and the Click and drag delay is driving you insane. Use the wacom configuration utility to change the tip function to emulate a left mouse click. The click and drag delay will vanish, but so too the pressure sensitivity. I had hoped the issue would be solved by now, but Wacom apparently just can't find a way to make all options work as intended in Win8 Pro, and Microsoft doesn't seem to be doing anything to help the situation.

I have groboto, but I'm on windows , so it's missing features, and judging by their lack of any responses on their forum for some time now... I'm afraid I may never get that upgrade I already paid for... It's fun to play with, but without equal features to the Mac version.... it feels like I bought crippleware.... It does make nice meshes, but with the way its' interface works now, I can make similar looking models in 3D-coat or Z-brush more quickly even if it takes more planning. I also have issues trying to use Groboto with my Wacom tablet. Nice vids by the way... I watched most of them some time ago before ever purchasing 3D-coat.

This is a really cheesy work around and requires minimal re-sculpting in ZB, but if you are looking for edge loops for animation with the joints of the fingers and what not... you can snap a few thin tube bracelets around the joints... that will give enough difference for true edge loops to be formed where you need them... as such it's best to do the zremeshing before high detail. As it is now zremesher tends to create spirals without some finessing.

I'm guessing you can open the surface room and import directly as mesh by default rather than worrying about it converting to voxel immediately. Only a guess... have to test the theory, but that would at least make sense to me... definitely trying to figure out 3DC myself... Getting some of the basics... by no means an expert though. Not even an expert in zbrush, but I'm much further down it's learning curve. The new ZB 4R6 release is pretty cool too. thanks for trying to answer a question of mine earlier. I mainly use ZB though and have Zapplink set up for that which means I don't have to do the whole obj export then import thing as it gets automated.... fun fun fun...I want to figure out the cloth simulator myself, but I haven't found a whole lot on that... yet. I'm tempted to get Marvelous Designer 2 for similar reasons.

It will be nice to see some workflow vids with the new Live clay tools... I have ideas, but so far I am not as familiar with the 3DC interface as ZB... I'm one of the oddballs that started 3D in ZB. I'm not a 3D professional and sometimes some of the application specific terms that actually mean more or less the same thing slow me down a bit... I know that ZB is notorious for using non-standard naming, but that's what I am used to now... go figure. although they had a new release today (technically yesterday now I suppose) that I'm still figuring out the new features of as well. I'm liking their new trim tools better than the clip tools so far except for one... what I thought was an odd behavior and the fact that they don't work with symmetry mode... though that may change. I'm not exactly locked into one tool though... I've collected a few 3D odds and ends now... a little disappointed with my investment in groboto as development and forum replies seem to have died... Right now I mainly use my 3d models as reference for my more or less 2D art... that may change as my skill set seems to keep expanding though.

Sounds like a good idea to me... perhaps 3DC could even implement it better than ZB. Since ZB only supports vertex painting... it's mesh density dependent. Unless you have a very high densite mesh, the line of demarcation is very noticeable, and you can forget about blending the two...hard transitions only.