Tser

O.K. I have run into a bit of a problem, when defining the Zones for the Baking, the numbering is there in the list of the column "N", but when I go to Merge into scene the numbers disappear, making it VERY difficult to tweak the zones later for other attempts at Merging to scene. The numbering gets removed, is this an easy fix Andrew? edit: This problem seems to be intermittent because after lots of merges into the scene it is now not deleting the numbers in the column, so I don't know what causes the numbers to disappear, but they were disappearing after I merged to scene (MV).

I have 24 threads on my Linux box and all are being used here.

The tweaked autopo routine is better on finer details but not so good on larger areas, seems like the opposite of what it was before, but I don't mind, the larger areas are easy to fix up, My only issue now is the UV map routine, it gives less map space in areas where I need more map space so I have to do a lot of uv manipulation, if there was a way to influence the density of the uv map like the way you infuence the density of the Autopo routine with density painting this would be much better.

Loving this new stable 3DCoat, it just doesn't crash anymore, more testing needed...

It seems that the culprit is my UV map, The area where I am getting problems on the mesh is rather reduced on the UV map, so I think I will have to take better care of my UV real-estate, it appears that if you don't have a large enough UV area, when the displacement map is created, you will get a transparent area with floating checkered pattern there instead of a map and no matter what you do you cannot fix this unless you give that area more UV space.

O.K. after a few hours of trial and error I got some fairly good results using a low poly retopo mesh (5k triangles). Using the Baking settings of "Scan inside/outside the object" set to 1.2, using the "Snap to outer surface" method and adding a few zones with their depth set to 2.0 over areas which were not captured, (BTW a mirror support would help a lot with adding zones to a symmetrical mesh). I then used "Merge into scene (microverts)" and selected the lowest Carcass resolution with 20 million for the hi rez map. I had to do quite a bit of smoothing though and the exported displacement map didn't hold all the details as what was in the view port.

Why would you export the lowpoly mesh from 3DC and then subdivide it in Max? wouldn't it be better just to export the subdivided mesh from 3DC? or are you talking about increasing the subdivision level in Max, Maya or SI for a smoother render, I generally increase the render level to 1 for all my meshes for rendering, that produces nice smooth meshes without being too heavy.

The problem is that you have to use a high resolution retopo mesh, if you use a low resolution retopo mesh then it doesn't work too well, your example uses a high resolution retopo mesh, try a mesh of around 5k or so, this is what I said earlier, if I subdivided my retopo mesh then it worked fine, but the purpose of the whole exercise is to use a low resolution retopo mesh and have a displacement map to define the high resolution details of you original sculpt in an application like Maya, Softimage etc.

Well that could explain it, I will have to retry when I get some time, thanks Javis.

Yep Javis, I love the 3DCoat approach to sculpting, retopo and UVing and with the new retopo method I am very happy with, but I don't like the methods of getting the displacements on the retopo mesh out, it seems contra to the ease of use of the rest of the program, I see where you are coming from with the paint room, it could do with a little love.

I can paint with colour and depth with the resultant scene, that is not the problem, its the baked down depth (displacement) from the hi quality sculpt in the voxel room which I cannot get to displace my low poly, retopo, uved mesh with high enough resolution using merge to scene MV. I will have to try again with another scene, but I wasted a full day on that scene trying to get this to work and cannot spare any more for a few days.

Andrew I have been using "Snap to closest along normal" because when I used the other method I kept getting areas which were devoid of uv coverage (invisible with moving checker pattern), I tried the spheres of influence with the "Snap to outer surface" but they didn't help, the only way which captured a clean map was with the "Snap to closest along normal" method. Digman, I set the "millions of polygons" to 16, then 20 then tried 32 but the result was the same, I used a 4k map size also, I exported from the File>Export model, I tried to export just the displacement map from the Textures>Export but this resulted in just a plain grey map with no details on it, I tried Tiff format. Why should this be so hard to do? it never used to be. T.

Is there a trick to getting a low rez mesh with baked displacement using merge to scene MV? I have spent all day today but the only way I have found to get a good quality displacement (fine details from the sculpt), into the paint room is to subdivide the low rez mesh in the retopo room a few times before merging. This used to work but I cannot get it to work now. Sub dividing the low rez retopo mesh defeats the whole point. I just want to get my low rez, retopo mesh with baked high detailed displacement map out of 3DCoat. Am I doing something wrong, or has something changed, I think I've been using ZB for way too long. I did get around this by exporting out my low rez, retopo, uved mesh before sub dividing it and later, using that as my low rez mesh and generating maps from the sub divided mesh, surely this is not the way to go, Any help would be greatly appreciated. T.

Just get any symmetrical object, autopo it to get your mesh, do a symmetrical copy of its group, then create some seams and unwrap the uv's with mirror turned on, I assumed that you would get a symmetrical uv map, but it's not. T.

Having a few problems getting my UV map to be created symmetrical, I have a symmetrical head and I have symmetry turned on but I cannot get a symmetric map. Any ideas?

If I reduce the mesh from 20K to 5K then the density masking works much better, but still needed a bit of manual attention, but all in all the result was very good.

I just discovered that painting a density map with Autopo is not a good idea, the resulting mesh under the area which i painted the density came out pretty crappy.

Very impressed Andrew, good work with the Retopo (Autopo), using strokes with symmetry works very well to produce a mesh with great edge flow, the problem I had before was due to not setting the Mirror snapping to more than zero (25%), I think that this setting should be default at something above 0%. T.

A screen shot won't show the extra edge at the centre of the mesh as it it located in the same space as the centre edge that you can see, maybe I'm doing something wrong or I haven't got the settings right, I will do more testing, but one thing for sure is that with symmetry turned off the mesh which is created is very nice. There was a couple of overlaps, but they were easily fixed, looks like I will have to put ZB aside for now. T..

Nice job Andrew with V 4.0.08 Linux build, love the improvements with the Autopo, but I am getting some issues with Symmetry causing a double up of the edges at the centre of the mesh, its as if there was an extra edge loop added to the centre of the mesh. T.

Any chance of a Linux version???????

My sentiments exactly...

Wow ABN, you are a bit sensitive aren't you, as I said, I use Dynamesh which also creates some triangulates in the geometry, this was my reference to not liking triangles and the reason that "I bother" is to point out the flaws which I come across using this program, sure I could "not bother" and just use ZBrush, but I like this application and like to see it improve, isn't this what this thread is for, or just to suck up to Andrew. T.

ZRemesher is fantastic, I use it every day, start off with Dynamesh, then use ZRemesher to get the correct topo, subdivide it a few times, then project the hi rez details of the Dynameshed model onto the ZRemeshed model, then export the low rez zremeshed model with its displacement map, very easy and always works. This work flow is not available with 3DCoat because once you have retopoed, you basically have left the building (Voxel room), it would be nice if Andrew could incorporate this new retopo routine in the Voxel room rather than while baking, if that was possible then we would have something which ZBrush has and you wouldn't need to do much retopo work when baking down to a lower rez model when it comes time to painting and exporting. I think the baking down to low rez mesh with a displacement map should be one of the last things you do before painting and exporting. But retopoing in the Voxel room to give good edge flow would make life much easier while sculpting. And one more note, triangles suck, working with quads is much better. T.

Its really good that Andrew is working on Auto re topology (autopo) as spiralling geometry made this unworkable for me and the lack of edge flow meant many hours of trial and error with placing curves or just simply doing the whole retopoing manually. zremesher in ZBrush is very good, I can create a sculpt with dynamesh (as triangles), then, when finished with all the finer details, I duplicate it, run zremesher on it, then increase its subdivisions high enough so that it can use the finer details and re-project the original sculpts details over the new retopoed mesh. Then I generate the UV map with UV Master and export the required disp etc maps and low poly mesh with MultiMapExporter. This work flow is VERY good and easy and works every time and the resulting lo poly mesh with its maps animate very well in Softimage/Maya and Modo. Also, this work flow is stress free so I can be an artist and not keep putting on my technicians hat every step of the way.