TimmyZDesign

Yeah it's funny that the functionality actually exists, but it is located in an unexpected place in the software. It's nice to have it work with the Curves Tool/Splines Pallet, but you are right that it should be included in the Instancer as well. Another drawback in having it in the Curves Tool is that each object in the array becomes slightly deformed when the curve makes a sharp turn. Sometimes that deformation is really nice (for a human spinal cord for example), but sometimes you want the objects to stay completely rigid (like in a zipper on a jacket). It would be nice to have the option to turn that slight deformation on or off in the Tool Options panel. ...I smell a couple of Mantis requests brewing...

Also for number 5 (in Voxels menu):

I just tested .ply and it works! Here is the proof: In 3D-Coat, a vertex painted model: In Blender the .ply format is supported. Here is the model with vertex paint showing up as texture in the viewport.

Export model as .ply In some software that format is supported for displaying vertex color data.

Thanks Javis! Most of my questions were answered in your video.

Oh sorry about that, I tried to offset the instances with the Instancer Tool, but couldn't figure out a way to do it either. I guess that won't work. But you can still do it with the Curves Tool. AbnRanger has made a tutorial showing how that is done. Start watching at 6:40 and you can see him setting up an array of objects with a common offset.

Hi Austin: Here is a quick tutorial on how to "make a perfectly cut circle in the center of a cylinder." Step 1: Choose Primitive Tool. Step 2: Choose the Cylinder Primitive. Step 3: Use the gizmos to size the cylinder preview into a ring shape and HIT ENTER on your keyboard to create the cylinder. The actual cylinder will be created, but the preview cylinder will remain superimposed on top. Step 4: The cylinder has been added to a layer in the VoxTree. Rename it to "1st Cylinder". Step 5: Make sure to hit Enter on your keyboard (or click on "ok") to apply the new name. Step 6: Create a new layer and rename it "Inner Cylinder". To create the new layer, click on the new layer icon in the lower left corner. Step 7: Now resize the cylinder preview to be a smaller cylinder inside of the "1st Cylinder". When it is the correct size, hit enter on your keyboard to create the actual cylinder. It will be placed on the layer that you named "Inner Cylinder". The 1st Cylinder will remain on the layer named "1st Cylinder" because that layer is no longer selected. Step 8: Right-click on the layer named "Inner Cylinder" and choose "Subtract From" in the menu that appears. Then choose "1st Cylinder" when it appears. Step 9: The "Inner Cylinder" will be subtracted from the "1st Cylinder" and a therefore a hole will be created in the middle of "1st Cylinder". To see the results you need to remove the cylinder preview by getting out of the Primitive Tool and selecting any other tool. You can choose the Grow Tool for instance. Step 10: This is what it looks like at the end. You can see that the hole is a perfect circle inside of the original cylinder. Hint: If you accidentally moved the cylinder preview at some point and it is no longer centered perfectly, you can always reset it to the World Center (x=0 y=0 z=0) by pressing the "Refresh List" button in the Tool Options panel. (There is also a "Reset positions" button that does the same thing but only for the current primitive.) That way you can always center your "cutting objects" perfectly in the future. There are also other ways of perfectly centering things. One option is to use the 2D grid and snap things to it. Here are tutorials on how to snap things to the 2D grid: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pxINVJVbDns https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AA-j5OyxxLk Also, there are ways of centering things quite well when using the CutOff Tool. You can create a selection, first move it to your desired position, and finally commit to the cut at the end. This is achieved by first creating your selection, but while doing that, hold down your left-click button (do not release to apply the cut), while holding it down, press and hold space bar on your keyboard. Now you can move your selection to the desired position. Finally, release your left-click button, and the cut will be applied. That way you will have greater control of where your cuts are made. Edit: I made some edits to this for clarity.

You can do that with the Curves Tool. Also there is a tool for instancing.

When using the Pose Tool, in the E Panel (a.k.a. the Stroke Mode Panel) there is an option for "border width". Change the value there and you will see that you can make very gradual and smooth selections or very sharp and abrupt selections (or anything in between). Also you can start your selection far away from your target deformation area so as to clip off an abrupt starting point of the selection (if desired). Additionally the selection can be edited by using a brush stroke mode to smooth it, and/or you can delete parts of the selection before applying deformation. Also make sure the "default" shader is applied to your mesh so you can see the color gradations of your selection (other shaders render the selection only as gray, which is less informative). There are also deformation cages available if desired.

Based on what you are saying, I think the following info will help you out. When using the Cutoff Tool: Either one will make cuts, but the "Draw with closed spline" is usually better than the "Paint with drawn contour" because you have a lot more control with it. Once you start making points, a little floating box will appear. Open the little floating box and you will see that it has a lot of options. You can even make the points "hard" to get sharp angles for your cut. To make points "hard", right-click on them. Also take note that there is a quality difference between the two stroke modes: Use the "Depth limit" option to adjust the depth of your cuts. The "Depth limit" starts at 30, but try different values to see how deep your cut will be. Note: These screenshots are from an older version of 3D-Coat. Some of the names of the tools might be different now. I used these images to help other people on this forum before, and I didn't want to bother updating them now...but they should still be relevant for you anyways.

Nice! Very crisp and clean!

The rubber material and the leathers look really good Javis! I was wondering, how will we apply these to our models? Is it click and drag? Or select a material, then paint it on the model, then select a new material and paint it on the model, and so on? Or do we create a mask for each material (to separate it from the others)? Or do we need a separate mesh for each material? I hope the workflow isn't too complicated. And each PBR material may have lots of layers, but are they packed up into the material as a separated group (so they don't mess with other materials) or are all the layers for all the different materials interrelated? Also, I think "Composite PBR Materials" may be the best name, but it is also a bit too wordy, so I think "PBR Materials" will work fine. It's a good name. ...I was kind of getting used to "Coat" already though.

I just now logged in and saw these new coats. Really cool Javis! Thanks so much! The old copper/patina statue, and the blue one, look really nice! It's hard to tell, but I hope there is some plastic, rubbery, and/or shiny metallic stuff in your pack too.

I know you are joking Malo, but please Carlosan, please keep posting more coats! I visit the 3D-Coat forums for a few minutes every day (because I love 3D art, and I love this software, and I love this community), and seeing this stuff inspires and motivates me for the rest of my day! These coats are like "eye-candy" for me! ...I hope Javis shares some images of the coats he is working on too..!

"Coating" sounds strange to me. In English I usually say "I added another coat of paint to the wall." It sounds strange to say "I added another coating of paint to the wall." But like you said, I guess we'll get used to whatever Andrew comes up with. I didn't like "autopo" either when it first came out, I always thought it should have been "autoretopo". But, now I really am used to it. Lol!

But if you take away "Smart" from "Smart Material" then you are just left with "Material". Then these new materials don't sound special anymore. They still need an adjective or two in front to make them more than just "Materials". Maybe: Custom Materials Custom PBR Materials Versatile Materials Adaptive Materials Multi-Materials Composite Materials

Or "Super Badass Awesome Materials!"

How about "Super Materials"! Sounds exciting!

I guess the mods moved this to the WIP forum... Anyways, pretty cool alien! I checked out your Art Station stuff too and I liked the white beastie thing (with snakes coming out of its hand). Also the girl portrait was nice too. Are you painting over your renders with Photoshop or something? You are getting some nice painterly effects.

Hi Sheppard, I will cover the whole process here: When you import your Genesis obj, you should get an import dialog box. The dialog box is actually the Tool Options panel for the Merge Tool. In that dialog box make sure that the "Merge without voxelizing" button is NOT checked. Also be sure to click on "Apply" when you are done with the settings! That way the model WILL be converted to voxels. Then you can sculpt your changes into the voxel mesh with the voxel sculpting tools. You can also switch the model to Surface Mode and use the Surface Mode sculpting brushes if you want. To switch to Surface Mode, click on the "V" in the Vox Tree and it will change into an "S". Then it is in Surface Mode, and the brushes in the Tool Panel will change to Surface Mode brushes: When you are done sculpting, go to the Retopo Room, and import your original Genesis obj model. Choose "yes" to snap it to your newly sculpted mesh. If there are snapping issues, you can use the Brush Tool to slide vertices over the surface until they are in better positions. You can also "relax" the vertices with the Brush Tool, to make them be spaced better in relation to their neighbors. Finally, you can send the mesh to the Paint Room by choosing a "merge" option from the Retopo menu. Choosing one of these options will send your new Retopo mesh to the Paint Room for painting, and it will bake a normal map and occlusion map if you so choose. The maps will be placed in your layer stack in the Paint Room: By the way, as you can see in the image above, your model should look visually similar if you already have UVs set up on it. The checkerboard pattern shows possible map distortions, the patches of different colors show different UV islands, and the bright green lines show UV seams. If you don't have any of that showing up on your model, then you need to make UVs for your model. Creating automatic UVs may be good enough for your purposes, but you can also create them manually with the UV Tools. The UV Tools in the Retopo Room are "context sensitive" so they will only appear as needed as you work on your UVs. Otherwise, most of the UV Tools remain hidden from the user interface. Your model will not show up in the UV Room if you did not import it there (for the specific purpose of working on UVs). The UV tools in the Retopo Room are nearly identical to the UV Tools in the UV Room so working on UVs while in the Retopo Room should be fine for nearly all purposes. Also, please take note that your voxel model may actually appear in the Paint Room BEFORE you create a retopo mesh for it in the Retopo Room. This is not a bug. It works that way so as to allow the user to paint the vertices of the model if they desire (also known as "vertex painting" or "voxel painting"). You can turn off viewing voxels in the paint room by unchecking "show voxels in the paint room" in the Paint Room View menu: Therefore, if you are merging your retopo model to the Paint Room for painting, then you should definitely turn off "Show Voxels in Paint Room". As Vidi suggested above, you can merge your model into the Paint Room for Microvertex painting if you would like. In that mode you can paint displacement onto your model and then export that displacement as a displacement map. In Per Pixel mode, you can only paint on the normal map to add detail, and/or paint color maps. Ptex should work for you too, because 3D-Coat can create special UV maps for applications which do not support Ptex natively. I checked online and it looks like Poser currently does not support the display of vertex color information. Therefore exporting a vertex painted mesh ("voxel painting") directly from 3D-Coat with the .ply format will not work in Poser. You will have to bake that vertex color information to UVs by merging it to the Paint Room. When you are done with your painting you can export your painted maps and/or model by using the File menu. Then import them back into Poser to do your posing and rendering. Hopefully in Poser your model will still work with the Genesis rig for further tweaking and posing. I assume that it will work because you did not alter the vertex count while in 3D-Coat. On the other hand, it is possible that 3D-Coat will in fact change the vertex numbers while processing your model for export. If the vertex number has been changed, then the model will not work properly anymore with the Genesis rig. The only way to know for sure is to import the new model into Poser, attach it to the Genesis rig and see if it works. If it doesn't work, then you may only be able to use the Microvertex painting mode in 3D-Coat to paint your displacement in 3D-Coat, and/or import the model into the 3D-Coat Tweak Room, and use the limited tools there to sculpt your adjustments. Also, 3D-Coat might still alter the vertex numbers when exporting from those rooms, so that may not work either. Try it out and see. Maybe it will work with no problems. The vertex count and vertex number are only important if you want to continue using the Genesis rig in Poser or Daz. Otherwise, you can do whatever you want in 3D-Coat and simply rig your new custom mesh with the custom rigging tools in Poser.

Ok, I guess that if Sheppard is trying to keep the original Genesis rig working, then the only changes he/she can make to the original geometry would be to move the vertices around, but he/she shouldn't delete any vertices or add any vertices. Only very minor modifications could be made to the original geometry. Sheppard could sculpt proportional changes, like fatter legs, and add details, like new pockets on pants, but major changes, like adding a new arm, wouldn't be possible. So, first import the original geometry into the Sculpt Room, sculpt minor modifications, then go to the Retopo Room, import the original geometry, snap it to your modified mesh, move any vertices as needed with the brush tool (don't move them too far), and finally merge it to the Paint Room for per pixel painting. If you didn't alter the UVs while you were in the Retopo Room, then you could still import the original model's diffuse map into the Paint Room and just paint on top of it with a new layer. Then you could export the OBJ and texture maps, and it should all still work with the Genesis rig in Poser, since you didn't alter the original model's vertex count. You can probably also add new clothing items as separate geometry, and that probably won't break the Genesis rig either, but I guess those clothing items would have to be parented to the rig in Poser somehow. Edit: You can also try using the Tweak Room to alter a model's shape without adding or removing any geometry in the process.

Also, I am assuming that Sheppard wants to animate the model later on in Poser. If that is NOT the case, then he/she could just sculpt it (end up with a high poly mesh with bad topology), paint the vertices, make sure the vertex color info is exported (and can be viewed in Poser), and then it would be ready for rendering there. But, I assume Sheppard would like to have a final model with nice topology for animation. If that is the case, then some degree of retopo would be needed (more or less depending on how big the changes were).

If Sheppard wants to make big changes, it will modify the geometry so much that retopo of the whole figure will be needed. If the changes are very small, then Sheppard could reuse a lot of the original geometry. The original geometry could be imported into the Retopo Room and then snapped to the modified/sculpted mesh. Then only the parts which were changed could be retopologized. To me it sounds like the changes were pretty major if the model is resembling a Teletubby after sculpting...

If you want to pose or animate your final model in Poser, then you will need to retopologize by hand (not autopo). Mesh topology which is ideal for posing or animation is difficult to create with the autopo tool alone. Also, when you are using the autopo tool, it sounds like you are not using enough polygons to capture the details of your model. The details are being smoothed out by a low polygon count. That is probably why you are getting the Teletubby results. Also your edgeflow is probably not matching the contours of your model. You need to put the edges in the right places. Once you have created a good quality retopo mesh by hand, then you should create good quality UVs by hand. Automatic retopology and automatic UVs help to save time in specific situations, and they are useful tools, but doing things by hand will give you the best results. Of course you need to know how to make good topology and how to make good UVs. There are lots of tutorials online to teach you how. After you are done with retopo and UVs, then send the model to the paint room for per pixel painting. Do all of your painting. Finally export your obj and your maps. In Poser apply all your maps. I don't use Poser, but I am guessing you will also need to bind your rig again, and possibly also paint bind weights again as well.

This was more than just a demonstration of painting skills. The video also had a much deeper meaning. I was a bit horrified to watch someone age so quickly. It made me remember that we all don't have much time on this earth, so we better spend it wisely! Seeing a new baby at the end (to start the cycle again) was somehow not very reassuring to me. Deep thoughts. Anyways, it was a nice piece of animated artwork! Thanks for sharing Tony!