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gbball

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Everything posted by gbball

  1. Nice, Are you a developer too? Have you tried Babylon and if so, why Threejs over Babylonjs? We're currently in the process of reevaluating our webGL library choice.
  2. Being able to export to glb would make a major difference. I use a webGL library called Babylon.js and it has a site for uploading glb files. sandbox.babylonjs.com Currently I have to export from 3D Coat to Marmoset or Blender to generate a glb. It was a request I made a while back, but I will echo @oiver55 that it would be very helpful. Also, to answer the OP, you can change to gltf in the model export options, so instead of obj or fbx, you can choose gltf. That being said, being able to export straight to glb would really help. Glb is the primary format for 3d on the web and it's also the primary format for Godot, which is a game engine with a growing user base. Incidentally, Babylonjs could be used instead of sketchfab for displaying 3d meshes online. There is a free editor here https://editor.babylonjs.com/ and there are several examples such as this one of https://playground.babylonjs.com/#Y3C0HQ#146 which could be easily prepared to allow 3D Coat users to have an alternate render pipeline that is more similar to what you'd get in Sketchfab or Marmoset Toolbag for free.
  3. Agreed, you need both. And I will echo the idea of having a button or option to convert the active frozen area to a layer mask.
  4. I think there needs to be an outliner that has filters for sculpts, retopo models, paint models and curves. This should replace all the separate little menu lists that need to be managed. This would open the door for useful drag drop operations and helpful mesh status visualizations such as having paint data on a sculpt mesh or being able to see sculpt layer relationships at a glance.
  5. This looks promising. But we need a way to manipulate the Nurbs. Some kind of fusion between Nurbs and curves to get Pseudo polygons, where you can inset, extrude, and move with soft selection falloff. To be able to go back and forth from Nurbs -> Retopo mesh or Nurbs to a voxel/surface mesh stamp or even better, a way to use Nurb patches as an advanced move tool for sculpts. This would be good if you could take advantage of the nurbs patches like my curves experiments from a while back. Nice to see the progress though! This looks promising. But we need a way to manipulate the Nurbs. Some kind of fusion between Nurbs and curves to get Pseudo polygons, where you can inset, extrude, and move with soft selection falloff. To be able to go back and forth from Nurbs -> Retopo mesh or Nurbs to a voxel/surface mesh stamp or even better, a way to use Nurb patches as an advanced move tool for sculpts. This would be good if you could take advantage of the nurbs patches like my curves experiments from a while back. Nice to see the progress though!
  6. Make the base forms a little thinner than you want, then increase the resolution. Apply procedural noise and then extrude a bit.
  7. I think 3D Coat could theoretically do some of this and I've been pushing for a similar approach. I'm still hoping for something like this, but it's hard to see where things are headed. Workflow is important and this looks like a really useful tool. I'm going to try it out. It looks like it has 3D Coats boolean simplicity without the brute force Voxels only approach. Seeing this makes me a bit sad that 3D Coat hasn't quite capitalized on it's potential in this area.
  8. Thanks Carlosan, but to be honest, this doesn't help much more than the tooltips that exist within the nodes. I know how to do basic things like use noise as a mask between two colours and the material IO nodes are similar to Substance Designer...but I don't know how to use the Cavity node and I don't know how to use the AVObject nodes. I was able to look up the functionality of some of the math nodes in an glsl reference, but I can't get the time node working and same thing for the AVObject nodes. What do I need to do to get something to display? Does it depend on the context I'm in? Like Environment Nodes/Shader Nodes/Post Process Nodes? Also, what is the reason for some inputs/outputs being green and others red? Is it just a partial implementation and some nodes don't work properly yet? I think there needs to be more communication around this feature and the current state of it's implementation.
  9. Also, is the Nodes developer able to join the chat? Better talk directly to the person in charge than try and figure things out on our own. @Carlosan @Andrew Shpagin Any insights there?
  10. I have some questions and some suggestions about Nodes. I'm not sure who can answer or if someone can point me in the right direction, but I figured here is a good place to start. Here are some preliminary thoughts and questions. I'm going to try to manage the ideas and questions using Clickup. The link is below. Nodes What can I do with AVobjects? What do they do? Better color coding or tooltips for various input/output types - I can't tell what is float/int/vector/color/b&w/ect. It is currently unclear what each i/o node is referencing - for example, how does the time node work? The Geometry nodes can be grouped into one node with selectable options The Blend nodes can be grouped into one node with selectable options The Math nodes can be grouped into one node with selectable options Add a blur node to modulate the transition between black and white Undo/Redo support Ability to save and reuse node groups as modular elements selectable from RMB menu Ability to dive in & out of grouped nodes Ability to group nodes into one node. Tweakable parameters for Patterns2D and Patterns3D nodes Drag/Drop auto attachment https://sharing.clickup.com/42618498/t/h/860q3qdqf/D6M24825PPN47G9
  11. There are certain tools in 3D Coat where you need to hold the 'alt' key to enable tumbling because those tools takeover left mouse click off the model. The sphere tool in Voxel sculpting mode is another example. Pressing the alt key will force navigation mode. so that you can tumble while your cursor is on top of the model as well. You could also tumble the view by dragging in the margin border around the 3d viewport, which also forces navigation mode. Hopefully you had already figured that out.
  12. That would be cool...so like being able to continue sculpting on a mesh that's been posed in Blender then brought back in?
  13. I think you might find this thread interesting. https://3dcoat.com/forum/index.php?/topic/22207-new-curves-development-feedback/page/3/ There is a unique pathway opening up here that I've been excited about since 3D Coat introduced Curves. This step further cements the foundation for an advanced pseudo polygon workflow using voxel objects and splines.
  14. Neither do I. It looks cool and I was hoping to test it out. How does it tie in with curves in 3D Coat?
  15. I've started testing out the latest build 2022.49 with multires sculpting and it is very promising! Not exactly what I expected as it seems we're still forced to work with a triangulated mesh. But beyond that, the sculpt feel and sense of control was great. Being able to step up and down through subdivision levels is fantastic and the results always felt predictable. Being able to sculpt on a predictable mesh and get more detail or less detail when necessary works great. Things I noticed Good: Cavity effects on shaders looks way better...is there some kind of smoothing algorithm going on? Or does it just look better on a subdiv mesh? Mind you, I still have to dial down the cavity settings as I think the default cavity and bulge values are too high on some of the default shaders. Sculpting feels really nice and stepping through levels is smooth Performance is great on high poly sculpts Smoothing worked effectively Detail work is a lot better now. Way more predictable and easy to control. But this might just be me working at higher polycounts that I typically do while testing. Bugs/Needs Work: I noticed some weird graphical glitches in the UI, corresponding with slight pauses in the application. Not sure what caused it, but I haven't experienced this in prior versions of the program. I experienced frequent times when tweaking shader settings or when using the render room that the program would pause for a long time to do simple adjustments. The base level sculpt layer's topology is important...If I switch from a voxel mesh to a surface mesh, the topology isn't that clean and it leads to artifacts in the sculpt at high subdivision levels when I smooth things out. I noticed that all the different smoothing options aren't available, which is understandable since the topology is not dynamic...but I miss anti-bump smoothing for the reason above My mesh got destroyed at one point stepping down below the base level. The destroyed mesh was carried through to the higher subd levels. Missing: The ability to bring in a quad or ngon mesh to the sculpt space while retaining vertex order and UVs The ability to work seamlessly between a model or retopo mesh and a sculpt room multires sculpt. Being able to add/delete faces, edgeloops, extrusions, etc. and have that reflected in the sculpt. Subdivision style options Straight subdivision Whatever you currently have (it's great!) Catmull-Clark Microvertex Of note, but not necessarily good or bad: It seems that each subdivision level stores it's own shader settings...I wasn't expecting this, I don't know how to feel about it to be honest. It could be good or bad depending on the circumstance. I haven't tested all the brushes yet, but I was able to get some really great results that feel very similar to what I would want to achieve in a program like Zbrush for detail work and generating skin textures and wrinkles with brush alphas or just building up forms.
  16. Yes, What you've said is currently an issue and more so for those coming to 3D Coat from other applications and hoping to use the same workflows that they've used previously. 3D Coat can probably do what you want, perhaps aside from the displacement baking accuracy, but you might have to approach it in different ways to do most of what you want and possibly enlist the use of other complimentary apps for displacement baking. 3D Coat could do a better job of integrating a more familiar workflow as inevitably more and more people will discover it coming from other applications and be puzzled about the workflow. Blender had a very similar issue pre 2.8 where it had it's own way of doing things and people coming from other applications just could make it jibe with their expectations. If 3D Coat added a more unified, non-destructive mesh/sculpt system, and dropped rooms and instead had contextual tools depending on modes and/or what kind of mesh you're working on, it would make a massive difference in terms of adoption. There is still a lot that is unique to the program and that is what it needs to be appreciated for, but this might not be what the typical 3d artists are looking for.
  17. Yes, I agree, I know you've suggesting rolling the tweak options into the modeling/retopo space. From my understanding it is on the TODO list and it is definitely needed. I think in some ways the thing we're looking for is tantalizingly close, but being danced around in some ways. I also think that 3D Coat is uniquely positioned to be able to do something better than regular subdivision sculpting. Some of the work being done with curves is moving in this direction...Like we could conceivably see a polygon style context for curves manipulation where they can be extruded in realtime to make more curves and to create a real-time voxel sculpt representation. Polygon Basemesh <-> Curves <-> Ngon or Quadbased Microvertex paint/sculpt (would need true 3 dimensional vector displacement and solid sculpting tools) In some ways Microvertex painting has a lot of unrealized sculpting potential and could serve as the bridge that many are looking for. It seems like 3D Coat is reaching a point where texture and sculpt details can be meshtype independent. Truthfully, even Zbrush isn't using true catmull-clarke subdivision sculpting, they have their own unique algorithm. I wonder if there is a way now to step up and down through subdivision levels on a Microvertex sculpt since it basically turns the polygons into patches that can be subdivided. Is there a way to store/cache texture data volumetrically in a non-destructive process and bake to UV mesh when necessary...or if some kind of Microvertex/Subdiv mesh fusion could be implemented that uses vector displacement for sculpting/painting? @AndrewShpagin Does what I'm proposing make sense? How big of an undertaking would it be?
  18. @Andrew Shpagin I think the biggest difference is that in Zbrush or Blender, is that once you have a finished sculpt, whether you used Dynamesh or Scuptris or something, you can still keep sculpting afterwards. So the Dynamesh/Scuptris is for the blockout...then once you have your finalized quad mesh, you can step up or down on the quad mesh to add more details and at that point, the linkage between the low poly mesh and the high poly mesh works both ways, where changes to the high poly mesh affect the low poly one, and vice versa. I know 3D Coat has it's own way of handling this with cached geometry and decimation, which is fine...but that doesn't change the fact that voxel and surface sculpts are still more geared towards blockouts/preliminary sculpts as opposed to finalized sculpts and meshes as I'll outline below. In 3D Coat the blocking out stage in voxels and surface sculpts is very good. But once you retopo or autotopo, it becomes cumbersome to make sculpt-like wholesale changes to the mesh because you're using the modeling or retopo room tools...further, there is only a one way linkage between the high poly sculpt and the optimized retopo mesh and it works from Sculpt -> Retopo mesh. In my opinion, being able to control high poly sculpts with low poly geometry is more valuable...and if you think about it, the main selling point of a sculpting application...being able to move millions of polygons with a brush stroke or using a move tool. Wouldn't it be incredibly useful to manipulate a sculpt mesh by moving a single low poly face, edge or vertex? Or even better dictating an edge loop and extrusion to create a ridge where you want it? This workflow doesn't currently exist because changes I make to a retopo mesh have zero bearing on what happens to the sculpt. One solution would be 3 types of sculpt meshes in the sculpt room. 1. Voxels - 2. Surface - 3. Quad/Ngon with non-destructive subdivision stepping for detail sculpting after retopology. Moving from a Voxel or Sculpt mesh to a Quad/Ngon mesh would trigger an autotopo command and moving from a Quad/Ngon mesh to voxel/surface mode would either be a destructive step or it would cache the Quad/Ngon mesh and run the conform to retopo For early blockouts Voxels, Surface sculpts, Dynamesh, Sculptris are all great options...but when you want to finalize something and eventually bake, having a clean retopoed mesh where you can dictate the edgeflow is more ideal. 3 shortcomings with Surface sculpting when finalizing a sculpt. 1. Not always able to work on a uniform mesh since it works best when dynamic remeshing is enabled. As a result some areas of the mesh are low poly and trianagulated, while others are highly detailed. Getting the whole mesh to be the same density is a destructive step that requires going back to Voxels and returning to surface mode... Doing this will inevitably erode any small details you might have had, or worse merge together overlapping geometry. It's the equivalent of Dynameshing in Zbrush...good for a block out, but not optimal for the final stages of a sculpt as compared to a subdiv sculpt where topology conformity is moreso forced and automatic when you add subdivisions. 2. Baking becomes problematic when you have self intersecting geometry - Baking from a high poly subdivision level to it's base level would solve this...it would also provide perfect displacement maps, which has also been cited as an issue by some before. 3. Bringing an existing mesh into this space is a destructive step, where vertex order, UV information, and topology are lost. So while I can bring my mesh into both the retopo space and the sculpt space, I will be limited in terms of having things like topology adjustments on the retopo mesh being reflected on the sculpt mesh. @AbnRanger I don't mean any disrespect, but I've noticed over the years, you've consistently touted the alternate methods 3D Coat has for sculpting and dealing with high poly/low polygon stepping during sculpting whenever this particular request is made. However, I've outlined this issues as I see them and I think it does a disservice to the development of the application to stand in opposition to requests for workflow improvements that would be so beneficial to so many. We all love 3D Coat here and we all respect the hard work and innovation from the dev team. So I am sensitive in terms of feature and workflow requests. However, for the furthering of the app, I think it would be helpful if you got behind these kinds of requests for progress, especially when it's been made consistently by so many for so long. Hopefully I've outlined why it would be beneficial.
  19. For what it's worth, 10 years ago I wanted to start learning more 3d and I was looking for a digital sculpting application. I already used Blender a bit and I had tried zbrush and silo and Modo. A friend told me about 3D coat and I tried it and was hooked. I've progressed with the program over the years, but always had a feeling that I would eventually have to switch to zbrush to take the next step. 2 or 3 years ago I purchased zbrush to try an integrate it into my workflow, but it just never happened and I never use it. I haven't really found a situation where I needed it over 3D Coat. Now in the new versions of 3d coat the sculpting and possibilities just keep increasing, I can barely keep up. There are some things I am still missing. In particular, I'd like to see non-destructive subdivision stepping and the ability to sculpt on a UV'd non-forced triangulated mesh. This for me is the only thing really missing. The rest is polish and workflow enhancements. To go into more detail on why I want subdiv quad based sculpting...or at least something equivalent is that in 3D coat, there are ways to have a high poly mesh manipulate a low poly mesh, but not a really great way to work the other way around. It would be nice to have a way to manipulate millions of polygons using a simplified geometry. This seems tantalizingly close, but frustratingly not implemented. Another thing that would benefit from something like a subdiv sculpting approach would be baking. I think curvature, ao, normal maps and displacement maps would all become perfect if you could bake from your UV'd sculpt down to a lower level. But I'm onboard for the ride. There are things that can be done in 3D Coat that can't be done in any other program and it has an almost complete workflow. Sculpting gives me a sense of freedom that I haven't experienced in other tools.
  20. This might be your issue...you have to import the UV'd mesh into the Retopo room separately from the the sculpt room and then bake onto that UV'd mesh. If you bring the mesh into the sculpt room directly, it is used as a stamp or cookie cutter to make a sculptable mesh. You could also import in the first place directly to the Retopo room and then there is an option to copy the retopo room mesh into the sculpt space as a stamp, in which case a copy would remain in the Retopo room. To do it this way, you'll want to first bring the mesh into the Retopo space and then switch to the sculpt space and use the Import tool (pick from Retopo button) on the left to bring in the Retopo mesh as a stamp in the sculpt space. There will be no connection to these two meshes at this point...but there is a way to have the retopo room mesh 'follow' the shape changes you might make on the sculpt mesh if you check the 'Conform Retopo' mesh option at the top.
  21. This is a great idea! I've had very similar thoughts...check out this thread.
  22. Thanks! I still think it's a strange choice for a program like this...especially if it's turned on by default. There are a few edge cases where it becomes counter productive.
  23. @AndrewShpagin One thing I noticed in the new version is that when I am using certain dialogs, the 3d viewport dims...this is problematic because if I'm tweaking a material or doing hue/saturation/value adjustment, I can't see the result of my choices in realtime.
  24. Thanks for the responses. I think one of the cool things about 3D Coat is the innovative solutions to different problems. In some cases the solutions weren't copies of other tools, but instead a new and sometimes better way of achieving a similar goal. So I think rather than us asking for @AndrewShpagin and the team to copy this programs solution or this other program's way of doing things, we could instead make arguments for how and why a particular adjustment or tweak would align with certain principles that guide the development of the software. For example...this request Aligns with this principle. I expect that 3D Coat will keep adding innovative new features. But I also think that the tool is a mature enough point that certain principles can be implemented to make the overall program more cohesive and easier to work with. With the new Core API, I wonder how much of this can be done aside from the main development team. @haikallewas doing some cool work to optimize tools in the retopo room at one point. I wonder if the current scripting functionality exposes that same level of power to the user. If given enough customization capabilities, we could develop advanced tools and optimize workflows ourselves.
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