popwfx

Actually - this is a pain - if I have like 10 Paint Objects and just need to tweak 1 point ot poly on one Paint Object, this method is cumbersome unless I am doing it wrong. Is there a way to TAKE MESH FROM PAINT ROOM and retain Paint Objects as Retopo Object Layers? Because otherwise I have to split the meshes into retopo layers and that takes a long time on a complex object with many Paint Objects. Is there a "SELECT CONNECTED FACES" in the Retopo Room? or SELECT BY SURFACE NAME? Manually selecting individual polys in order to recreate the Paint Object layers before bringing back into Paint Room is too difficult. My whole thing here is trying to retain the Layers in the Paint Room, and Retain Paint Objects (for ease of visibility switching and mesh organization) while just welding a couple of points and polys to get painting across those polys to work. Trying not to lose days of work. Thanks again very much for your help and sorry if I'm being obtuse here.

Ahh another quirk I just noticed for people like me who don't get it fully... When you "Update Paint Mesh with Retopo Mesh" you loose all Paint Objects. They get collapsed into one mesh. So after tweaking and welding in Retopo, I'm going to try separating the Paint Objects into Retopo Groups and see if that works... I'm confused by the separation between rooms and meshes....

Thanks very much AbnRanger! I've been using 3DC off and on since v3 (mostly off) so some fundamental things like how it deals with meshes seem odd to me at times. I appreciate your help. Another couple of quick related followup questions please - 1. Once the Paint Mesh is in the Retopo room - I wanted to clean up a few polys and weld some points together - I was using the Move tool, but couldn't figure out how to get the vertices to snap to each other (when editing a Paint Mesh in Retopo room - They do snap when Retopoing a sculpt). How do you get the points to snap to each other? And then I assume if they snap they automatically weld so painting across the polys will now work as expected? 2. If I Import Object in the Paint Room and add another Paint Object (say to replace one Paint object I already have in here - what will happen to the UVs of the imported? Will they retain their shape and position and take the place in the packed UV map of the object I have in the scene that matches? So I want to use Import Object for 2 reasons - a) if I need an additional mesh like sunglasses or b) if I can't get the Retopo room tools to clean up my errored Paint Object welding and looking like I like - so I edit it external and want to replace it. What do you suggest in these cases? thanks!

Hi, I've just spent a long time painting many layers of a low poly mesh in the paint room and when i got to one particular Paint Object (i.e. mesh) in my object I noticed that the painting was having weird errors - i checked the original mesh inside my other modeler app and it seems I had a couple of unwelded points that led to some discontinous polygons in the part that wasn't working. Since it doesn't look like there's any way in 3DC to weld a couple of vertices together (and merge them) for a paint mesh - that means I have to change the mesh in the original modelling app (Lightwave in my case). But if I fix that so i can paint that one Paint Object correctly in my 3DC file, how do I replace either the entire model back into 3DC with layers intact or just the Paint Object in question? I really don't want to bake anything and flatten layers - I have a lot of detail in many layers I need to keep. Also a similar followup question - how do I ADD another new separate Paint Object to a mesh in the Paint Room? i.e. let's say I want to pull in a prop as part of the mesh (like sunglasses on a character) and keep layers and all other Paint Objects? Ideally I'd just like to load the sunglasses and then have it appear as another Paint Object in my list in 3DC. Please help - It seems a shame to lose days worth of work and flexibility just because I missed a couple of polys before I started UV mapping and Painting in 3D Coat.

I was just in the Paint room using the poly line brush to fill (with Symmetry on) an area with depth and metalness when 3DC crashed hard. I haven't had any major crashes with this version except this. Anyone else having similar woes?

Not sure if this is user error (I searched to no avail and watched videos) or if this is a problem with the latest build - but why does Spacing not work with the Spline tool in the Paint room? Pressing Apply does nothing unless the spacing checkbox is off - and I want spaced dabs.. Can anyone help or confirm if this is a bug please? thanks!

44 seems great - but something new is happening in Paint room. (Unless this is a known issue and I'm not aware). Occasionally I get random hidden polys when there seems to be no reason for it. To get them to show up sometimes I undo, and sometimes I have to quit 3DC and rerun. Is this a bug or a video driver issue? I'm using the 445.87 Nvidia Geforce drivers (pretty close to latest if not the latest). Anyone know what's going on here? thanks!

Ahh this is depressing... I know LW 2020 is not exactly the most popular software anymore, but it would be great if 3DC could still do the least support possible to keep that program alive. With 3DC, LW 2020 is a very powerful workflow still. Especially for lowpoly games.

Any news about the FBX export bug that was reported and also detailed here: thanks!

Hi I hope it's ok to ask - is there any update on this? I did email support with no response. is the bug you reported being worked on or fixed in any latest updates? The FBX issue here is a showstopper for my workflow. Where (what link) can I see the bug ticket of this issue and track it's progress and ETA? thanks!

Thanks so much for testing, confirming, and reporting this bug in the bug tracker (I don't know how to do that here)! Any ideas when/how fast a possible fix to this could take? Does this go to a big backlog, or is this bug serious enough (it is to me ) to get some love in an update soon?

I thought I had it figured out just now and found a "No Center Snap" checkbox on the import, but that didn't seem to make a difference...? any ideas anyone? thanks for any help - I'm a bit confused now that I'm back working with 3DC again.... glad to be back!

Thank you for your help - but unfortunately (unless I'm doing something wrong), setting the Source Positions checkbox to ON in the 3DC Export Objects & Textures dialog does nothing apparent (it may change vertex order or something I don't know). I drew a 1m box, at -2m Z for scale reference - it looks like exporting from 3DC changes the pivot and also exports much bigger at maybe 100x? Changing the scale setting in the export settings window in 3DC doesn't appear to affect this. Please look at these pictures in LW & Unity and tell me what I'm doing wrong or if this is a 3DC bug? Thanks! wall_01 is the export from 3DC the 80s_walls_01 is the original:

Hi - I'm using an FBX in Lightwave and when imported into 3DC for per pixel painting (just to double check UVs, assign normals, color, & spec textures) and then export using the Unity Preset in File > Export - the resulting FBX in Unity is weirdly scaled and/or has an odd pivot point. How can I retain the scale of the imported FBX and the pivot point so when I export from 3DC Unity and LW will match the same input I put into it. I checked the Scale settings in 3DC export and it is 1.0. please help, it's been a few versions ago that I was heavily using 3DC and now it seems much has changed and I don't know my way around it. All the previous searches I did for this seemed like old info. I am using 3DC 4.9.3x and Unity 2019.3.9 and LW 2020 thanks!

meaning it doesn't work for you either? do you go lw->3dc->unity ?

LW is meters and Unity doesn't specify a unit as far as I'm aware. I don't know what 3dc default unit is. The reason I asked is that I did this workflow with 3dc several versions ago (4.x) and this scale difference didnt happen. Any ideas?

I dont understand why I'd have to go to the Retopo room to adjust scene scale. I'm only uv mapping and painting then exporting. Sometimes not even painting - just uv map and export. i tried this and my model disappeared in 3dcoat in the paint and UV rooms. so my problem is if I make an object in LW as 200mm wide, then save LWO, then import for uv map from main menu splash in 3dc, uv map, then export as fbx, then import asset in Unity it is 2mm wide what is going on? Maybe I don't understand 3dc's rooms fundamentally, but I don't remember having a scale problem with the export before with this workflow in 3dc? but before there was not unity export preset in 3dc. There is no scene scale in the export. Thanks for explaining what I'm doing wrong I think this has to do witn 4.8.03

Does this work if I'm not using Sculpt? I'm just importing during the UV map menu option on the load screen

Not sure if this is a new feature in 4.8.03 as I've not been up to date for a year or so, so forgive me if this is not the place to ask - I'm pulling in LWO objects and UV mapping and painting them then exporting as fbx with the Unity preset. Am I doing something wrong or is the scale all off ? First time I've used the preset (nice feature btw!) but on import into unity the objects no longer match the real world measurements as when they were in Lightwave - theyre like 50 time smaller in Unity but their axis is correct. Is this a bug or have I done something wrong? Only happens when I uv map in 3DC? thx! Otherwise 4.8.03 looks way nicer than the old version I had been using!

Just tried to download an install 4.8 on Win 7 3d-Coat-V4_8-03-64.exe and when I run the exe it gives an error: "Installer integrity check"? Any trick needed? I tried downloading a few times in case it was a corrupt download to no avail. I'm getting the size as 326,240 KB - is that right? (also forums are acting a little weird where clicks don't work - I've always used firefox and this is new - is there a problem currently?)

Vuforia has been around awhile - I did some AR stuff with it in Unity back in 2011 - I found it really easy to get up and running - but i was doing ipad and iphone apps. I assume Android issue were mostly hardware/driver? Glad to hear it's still a good bet (as I've been out of AR awhile) Thanks for sharing and the links to the asset!

Digman is highly recommended from me too! I've got a few chops myself, but he's certainly taught me a lot too - and it worked well over skype screen sharing. Besides he's a really nice guy and professional too! Plus he's been using 3DC since the beginning of time ;-) so he knows a lot of the app's quirks and workarounds for advanced stuff.

it would be helpful if there were icons by each layer that showed whether anything at all was painted in each channel for that layer, - because now even if I solo a layer I cant tell if ANY pixels are due to a layer - i.e. it's all grey, but seems to be contributing in some way - I';d like to be able to highlight the pixels that were changed for this layer. Any way to do that?

If I have a many layered (20+) object, switching between layers is nightmarishly slow (and their visibility) and it's often hard to distinguish what exactly has been painted in what on what channel and in what layer. Is there a way to quickly display at least the 3D texture views of color, spec & normal (independently) on a per layer basis? I'm having a hard time re-editing an old file (from 4.1.16) as I need to reduce some of the normal depth across multiple surfaces and layers. I can't use the latest 4.5 because it wont load my 3b file without crashing. Is there any way to export all layers into folders where each folder is a layer and each folder contains the 2D map for color, spec & normals? So that I could reassemble the look by hand in 4.5 and load each layer one by one and figure out what needs to be edited? thanks for your help

I used the Migration tools but only with the license checked - which changed it from a trial to my official licensed version. I decided not to migrate any other bits and pieces so I would have a clean install.