jnothing

Ok, not intending to hijack this thread but it seems close to what i need to do. I have a terrain I pulled in from USGS data, textured it and normal mapped it etc., This was done in c4d. I've since exported as fbx, opened in MAX, then exported as OBJ ready to go to 3DC. All I need to do is refine the mesh so to add some caves and stuff that the satellite missed, as well as fix the texture where it's stretched by painting and cloning etc. What is the EASIEST way to do this without having to re-map the terrains material/UV when all is said and done? I do want to add a bit of detail but not much because I don't want C4D to choke when I render. Plus there are some other meshes that will be added and bring up the poly count above the terrain. Anyone can help please? This would be VERY appreciated.

Wow, so first of all, here's something funny. I'd put this project away for a long time for business reasons as well as personal and now I have free time on my hands and am coming back to it. I googled for help again and ended up back on my own question in the thread, and the answer I didn't know you'd given! I guess I need to turn on email alerts for this forum, wow... I'm so grateful as well as apologetic for not having replied sooner. I know everyone takes time to help others and that's how we grow but it does take time and effort and I didn't mean to seem unappreciative. I'm "sort of" getting this. I sort of got it up until last night. I did the thing with retopo and I think I got a nicer and smaller (less polys) mesh, in fact I know I did, but it still seems a bit high for my needs to animate it. I'm still running into some issues though. When I changed the texture mapping using bake, from ptex back to a regular bitmap, it loads up in C4D just fine and is nearly indistinguishable from the other model in form, but somehow, to yet another blunder of my own, I didn't export the displacement and/or normals... I know there's displaced geometry from where I sculpted scratches and other marks on the body of the shark but is it possible to get those exported? Man, I really shouldn't be sharing my file but at this point I'd really love it if you could take a look. I'd even pay you for helping me fix it. It's a personal project but it's something I want to complete really badly for use in my reel etc. Right now I have a nice ptex sculpt file that I've 'baked' several times and it seems that everything but the color map comes out pure black with no actual data. Between this and me thinking my model is probably still double the poly count I want to use, I'm pretty stuck here. I haven't enough experience in the program for what I'm doing but I have successfully brought in models from another artist I worked with and added nice maps/normals/details to cloth etc. That all worked out fine just using good normal maps and the UV's he created inside maya. Wham bam... Like I said before, I painted myself into a corner but I know there's someone like you that can help dig me out. I'd be eternally grateful and much more educated as an end result. Please let me know if you can help. ... and if I can trust you'll NEVER use my model. (just joking, I know we all respect one anothers' IP) Thanks again for your advice. I'll watch those two tuts and see where I end up. Oh, one more thing, some of the geometry must be overlapping because the rear/anterior fin before the tail has some polys that get all stretched and turned into long spikes when exported. I'm afraid if I just let it slide until I'm back in C4D and try to manually fix it with some poly surgery, I'll mess up the UVs (which btw even though I baked, are all jaggy and all over the model just like the ptex looked/I found that interesting that the unwrapped texture looked normal, but the UVs on the model looked like confetti). Please hellllllp meeeeeeee

Does anyone experience an issue where in ortho view, the symmetry isn't perfect? Maybe it's just the way the shading in the viewport is making the model appear? I just redid part of my model three times from scratch to make sure my eyes aren't deceiving me. Can someone help me understand what I'm looking at here?

I have the same problem but when i try and change navigation nothing happens or changes at all. Please advise if anyone can help. Cheers.

I'm having a similar issue yet very different. Sometimes I accidentaly hit a button combo/key combo on my cintiq 21UX tablet and/or my keyboard and the pen axis seems to invert, similar to inversion in a flight sim game. Up is down/down is up, even the pressure arc for the pen tool, the arc drops below the horizontal line instead of staying above it. It's not fatal as I can obviously tell the diff and compensate, but the most annoying thing is when I'm using the pen tool or mouse to move around my model. Can someone tell me what I pressed/how to reset the viewport /orbit axis in my viewport?

Ok guys, I'm material painting from a nice asymmetrical texture I made in pshop. I cannot for the life of me figure out how to turn off the symmetry. Andrew told me to turn off the mirror texturing in UV room but I can't figure out where or how. The regular symmetry on/off functions are being overridden somewhere else and that is suspect. Can someone please give me some help here? Thanks, J

I'm having a similar/related problem and I need some help. I have a model i brought in from C4D exchange and it's a pair of pants for my character; I can NOT turn off symmetry in my paint. I have a really nice texture I'd like to add from photoshop but it's asymmetrical because the "fly" on the pair of jeans is offset to one side. I have no idea why but symmetry seems to have no effect. When I try and turn it off, nothing happens. Nothing at all. It's really strange. One of the pilgway techs, Andrew, was nice enough to tell me to do something like turn off texture mirroring in the UVs. I can't find that function anywhere. Can someone give me a hand? I'm really new but quite enthused about learning this. Thanks!

So there's no way to trick it/ re-import a model.. ? this is very , very bad. Very bad. I'm trying the baking method but I have a feeling that won't work either. Can't it be reset to just white? Nothing? Why on earth isn't there a way to "reset layer 0"? it doesn't seem like under the hood, it would be hard to make that a feature. Is there any way you could help me with this or help in trying to make it work? I don't know if it's possible to get the model looking like I have it now. One crucial thing is also; there is no way to make color swatches. So I'd have to screen shot everything and use photoshop to determine the colors, yet another headache on top of re-painting. Layer 0 shouldn't be paint-able if all it does is screw up your project. I'm very confused. Thank you for replying.

I have a problem. A big problem apparently. I was not aware of this layer 0 issue, and painted it up with my skin base layer. Now it's got paint on it, not just the base info. Is there a way to fix this without re-painting my whole model? model is in separate pieces, nicely painted, but has many layers. I'm scared. Can someone help?

I have a somewhat complex space ship I made using tinker objects in voxel mode. I'm desperate to figure out how to best get it retopo/uv/normal mapped/painted. I don't want to take the next step until I know exactly what to do. I can't seem to invoke the auto-retopo for the whole thing, just each layer. That makes good sense, but is the workflow really to pick it apart and retopo each little piece? I'm quite confused and could really use some help.

I need help. I built a space ship using voxels / tinker objects, and I really need to get UV/details/normals and paint it up for export. Can someone please help me? I don't want to waste tons of work doing it wrong. I could use PTex, but I don't feel it has enough layers/features yet in 3DC for my use. I will gladly pay someone to help me.

I'm having a very similar problem. I have made a model from voxels of a hard surface/ space ship using the tinker objects and now I want to A) get a good UV so I can do a proper normal map and save geometry weight B)paint it up nicely C) get it out to C4D for animation and render. This is my first time using 3DC and I could really use some help. I'd even pay someone $50 if they can take my file, make heads or tails of it, and send it back ready to be painted and exported. I'm liking the tools, but I'm feeling really stuck. Please let me know if anyone can help me out. J

Ok, I've gone and painted myself into a corner. I just started trying out 3D coat, I had done a quick sculpt of a model in C4D, and didn't want to fuss with UV's so brought it into 3DC for my first crack at ptex painting. It looks BEAUTIFUL. If I do say so myself... So, I brought out the file as an OBJ and PTEX, using the PTEX shader plugin for C4D I'm able to do some beautiful renders. My problem is, I am not an animator and would also like to animate this model. Since I didn't prepare it properly to be low poly, my plan is to use autopo in 3DC. I did a quick test run and it's working great. I need a bit of advice on my settings though. I want max detail with minimum poly count. So, issue 1: what should my settings be for retopo when it askes me upon importing for autopo? 2: and perhaps more equally if not more important... once I retopo my mesh, my PTEX will no longer work right? What is the solution, if any, to have already sculpted and painted, and then wanting to retopo my mesh? I think unfortunately I may have to repaint my entire model? I'm really confused and really need a mentor to walk me through some of this. I'm very excited about the prospects of 3DC and plan on using it in my workflow if I can get through this seemingly minor but difficult issue. My fault due to poor planning, I realize that. Cheers, J