gbball

Symmetry is per layer. The is a button at the bottom of the voxtree panel that will let you duplicate the space settings of the current layer. That might work. Or, you could duplicate the original layer and then delete its contents before doing the brush work you want.

I just posted a couple of videos that might be helpful. Not sure if you've seen them before, but I created them a little while back. I also have a couple of timelapse videos that go through the whole process. Here is one where I took something all the way to finished. I didn't do a manual retopology, just an auto topology with some edits. I'd like to make some more detailed tutorials time permitting. Manually retopology is generally better. If you watch these and let me know if you have any questions, I'd be happy to give you some advice.

Even if sparse voxel octree were implemented, you still need to work with a quad based mesh at some point unless you're just focused purely on sculpting and you don't care about rigging and texture painting at some point.

Yeah, it would be an ideal setup. Is this a Max plugin? I think as 3D Coat matures, we'll start to see some interesting plugins being developed. I had a look at the scripting API, but it was all in Russian, so I'm not sure how much of the data scripters have access to.

I created a couple of videos to demonstrate a bit of what I'd like to see here. This is a basic example of manipulating the Voxel or Surface mode sculpt with curves, which would act like pseudo polygons. This was done in Blender by using a subdivided sphere, and a grease pencil stroke drawn on the surface. The grease pencil stroke was then converted to geo, joined to the sphere and then manipulated with volumetric soft selection. This would be a really powerful workflow with curves and voxels/surface sculpts. Even better if in surface mode, the topology could conform to the curves so that we'd get nice sharp edges there. It's not shown here, but I would also like to be able to extrude a curve shape, creating a duplicate curve that would behave like a polygon extrusion. Lastly, it would be great to convert curves to polygons similar to how the strokes tool works in the retopo room.

That'd be really cool. Off the top of my head...you could assign different pose tool selection sets to different parts of your mesh, then you would need functionality in the new curves tool to control the pose tool. I'm actually looking for somewhat similar behaviour using the curves with the move tool. I think what 3D Coat would benefit from is the ability for users/developers to make robust plugins. then I'm sure we could see some of these cool ideas implemented.

If you want to do something even cooler, you can turn your current layer to ghost and change the picking settings at the top to act, but don't pick, then you can build up nice skin around the reference mesh.

I agree, I merely used that as a demonstration of where subD sculpting would be beneficial to the existing alternative.

I definitely agree with you, it's great to have and I'm glad it's there. It doesn't replace working on the mesh directly, but when you need to work with liveclay or voxels booleans, it's there to support that workflow. And I imagine it's feasible with that already in the application, that you could, if there were quad layers in the sculpt room, conform a quad layer sculpt to a surface or voxel mode sculpt. Which would also be insanely powerful. The user could in the end choose which sculpts to bake from and potentially bake right onto a quad mesh that they've been working with in the sculpt room.

This is me using Catumull-Clark subdivision on the the same mesh I was working with in 3D-coat (in the youtube video I posted earlier) in Blender, this time in Blender I'm using a triangulated version of the mesh not a quad version. I get pretty much the same results I got using res+ in 3D Coat. So it seems 3D Coat already has Catmull-Clark subdivision in the sculpt room. It definitely exist elsewhere in the program. Also, @AbnRanger , I watched all the videos you posted and all of them require a destructive workflow where in order to work with a preexisting mesh in the sculpt room, you need to alter it fundamentally. First by triangulating it, and second (in the case of a voxel mesh) by increasing the resolution to a very high degree to retain the details. I'm cool with all of that because of what 3D Coat allows you to do with those kinds of meshes. However, there are many cases where you just want to work with your original mesh directly. And it begs the question, why use 500,000 triangles to represent a mesh that could just be 30,000 triangles (15,000 quads)? Also, why manipulate a high poly mesh at the same time as a low poly version of the same mesh using a limited set of tools and a cumbersome workflow in order to retain the integrity of the original mesh? Yes we have curves, and liveclay and soon sculpt layers, but we have no way to work on our mesh directly in the sculpt room. That is the bridge that will allow users to move back and forth from other apps to 3D Coat without worry. If users could work with their quad based meshes in the sculpt room, nothing would be stopping them from changing the quad mesh to a triangulated surface mode mesh or a voxel mesh, they'd still have that option and also have access to the current set of tools that exist to support that workflow. Also, Photoshop has Vector layers, video layers, raster layers, adjustment layers, smart object layers, 3D layers, etc. Each offering it's own set of tools in addition to a common subset of tools that behave the same way across all of those layer types. Adding a quad based layer mode in the sculpt room is not a bad idea. I can't see why anyone would be against it. I think it's necessary.

I know it's long, but please watch the whole video before picking out one or two things to comment on. At least that way we'll be on the same page. There are other things that I've addressed that the current workflow isn't capable of.

Long video, but hopefully it clearly describes why SubDs would be a welcome addition in 3D Coat. The video is currently unlisted, because I made it primarily for the this discussion and for @Andrew Shpagin and the 3D Coat developers to look at. Please watch if you are wondering why SubD modeling is necessary in 3D Coat and how it could help a production pipeline.

This is incredible man! Awesome work!

I hear what you're saying, and I suppose it makes sense in a way, but I think we're kind of saying the same thing. Some of these things are possible, but I think a lot of other tools would need to be built first. A quad based workflow is fundamentally different from what you can do in voxels or with dynamic tesselation sculpting. But you could hide the separation and expose all the tools alongside the mesh and have the mesh change modes in a way that's hidden from the user. All that being said, I think what I'm looking for is part 1 and what you're looking for would be part 2.

Here is an example of what I mean. I would save production time if I could bring in a UVd asset and instantiate it into my scene using the import tool. Here I've done the following Create a simple box sculpt Retopoed it UV Unwrapped it Sent it from the Retopo Room to the Paint Room 6 times In the Tweak Room moved each box to a different position In the UV Room, combined all the UVs to be the same and deleted the unused ones In the paint room did some painting on one of the objects which was then applied to all the others In the sculpt room, turned on view paint mesh in sculpt room Then I used the retopo object as a model in the models tab. In the video, I'm initially showing what I would like to the be the result of instantiating quad layers in the sculpt room from paint objects What I did towards the end is use the existing functionality to create box shapes in my scene. Wouldn't it save a production time and money if it was possible to just export a version that has all the objects in the right spot without going through all the steps listed above? All it would require would be the ability to work with Quad meshes non-destructively in the sculpt room. Again, I'm proposing a 3rd layer category that would allow us to work with Quad based meshes non-destructively with context-sensitive tools...a lot of which already exist in the program (i.e. Move, Transform, Import, Primitives, Grow, Clay, Pinch, Flatten, Bulge, Freeze, Subdivide Higher/Lower, etc. - no liveclay tools, no boolean tools, just the basics).

My opinion is that of someone who started with 3D Coat as my first real 3d application. I started with it, then I learned Blender, then I learned Zbrush, then Unity/Unreal. So I'm not coming from another application, I started with 3D Coat, and learned the 3D asset pipeline using it. I literally do everything in 3D Coat where ever possible, but there are certain tasks which I avoid because it would be better to do elsewhere, and they're things that I think would cause a lot of studios to choose an alternative. I don't think 3D Coat has to be a complimentary piece to Zbrush at all. It can be the go to sculpting/retopo/UV/texturing tool for any studio with that one bottleneck fixed. I strongly believe that. Of course there are a few other things that need to be done, but there is so much that is already amazing and unmatched by competitors that 3D coat could easily start seeing people choosing to use for more and more of their work. I'm not speaking as a person who just uses 3D Coat for sculpting or just for retopo or just for conceptart or just for texturing, or just for printing - I literally use it for all those things. I'm looking at the program as a whole and how it fits into a pipeline for previs, film and games production, and even toys. I'm committed to 3D Coat and I believe in the team. As long as @Andrew Shpagin and the team keep developing it I'll be here. There are pipelines that don't exist yet in other applications that 3D Coat is capable of with some changes. These are the kinds of paradigm shifts that need to happen in order to really be a disruptive force. For example. 3D Coat has a MODEL PALETTE and you can use the IMPORT tool in the sculpt room and set a chosen model to be imported at the brush position. Imagine if in a production environment, a library of UV Unwrapped 3D assets was given to a concept artist or set designer using 3D Coat (already happening) and they could paint out and compose the scene just by brushing objects around. This is currently possible, but it's a destructive step and all assets brushed into the scene will be triangulated as voxels or sculpt objects. It can be exported back to the 3D team for final layout, but they will have to use the 3d scene as a guide and manually place all the UV'd assets where the concept artist has put them in the original 3D app. This is a maddening idea for me. How much TIME AND MONEY would it save a production if they could just use the export from 3D Coat as is. This is where CONFORM RETOPO isn't even an option. Applinks could potentially solve this, but still, a way more elegant solution is the most direct one. Being able to work with quads in the sculpt room. I think I probably differ from @Rygaard in terms of wanting this functionality on a regular surface mode mesh, I'm proposing a 3rd mesh type in the sculpt room, so you could have an S (surface), V (Voxel), and Q (Quad) layer type in the sculpt room. We can already show the quad based paint objects in the sculpt room, but we can't manipulate it directly, or better yet, an instance of it, that we could apply to the Paint mesh (optionally). I know Zbrush and Maya passably, but in Blender and 3D Coat I'm proficient, so I'm basing what I say on what others can do, I'm basing it on what seems to make the most sense from my experience as an indie developer, as a teacher, as a freelancer and as an in-studio production artist.

I think you're missing the point I'm trying to make. I know you are well-intentioned and want what's best for the the app and the developers like the rest of us, but I can't see the downside here. What you're suggesting are workarounds and I've used conform retopo mesh before. It can be useful in certain situations, but it's fairly limited. Snapping periodically, in theory, could work, but what about on tight spots like ears, lips? Again, I've used it and I ended up reworking things over and over because the mesh snapped to the wrong things. So I've tried what you're suggesting and it's problematic, not to mention the performance hit due to rendering a high poly sculpt and a retopo mesh simultaneously. It's not a direct solution to the problem, it's a workaround plain and simple and it's not workable in a lot of situations. I know that I can bring a retopo mesh to the sculpt room and even subdivide it if I want to, but once it's a sculpt mesh, it gets triangulated, then I'm back to using conform retopo mesh to sculpt mesh to make sure my target retopo mesh keeps up with the sculpt mesh. All of these things would be handled automatically if It was possible to work directly on an original quad mesh and subdivide it non-destructively. You're also talking about time savings in other areas of the application, such as using the 3D Connexion mouse, but why not save time by allowing direct sculpting on quad mesh with subdivision. I've heard @AndrewShpagin say it would be a bit of an undertaking, but I haven't heard him say it's impossible. I would love to hear from him whether it is, in fact, possible and what it might look like. I really don't see why you're so against it. You can see the value of being able to conform retopo mesh to sculpt and moving the retopo meshes to the sculpt room for sculpting, wouldn't quad based subD sculpting be better? Again, it's not at the expense of everything else, it would in addition to and a great compliment. Imagine doing work on your final UV mapped mesh directly using sculpt layers with pbr texturing, at a high subdivision level, then baking that down to your target mesh. Also, I hate to bring it up, but I remember way back when Andrew was just starting to make Surface mode in addition to voxel mode, you were against the idea of vertex painting on a surface sculpt object at the time, but look where that has led. So, I really don't think subd sculpting is a small scale benefit because it would obliterate the bottleneck that currently exists in the program, and I think it's worth whatever amount of work would be required. If I have some time I will definitely make a few videos discussing the issue.

SubDs doesn't improve sculpting in 3DCoat, it just makes it more pipeline friendly. Right now, 3D Coat isn't a viable option for a lot of sculpting pipelines. The example you've shown is fine, but what if you want to sculpt on a mesh that has already been created. has a mouth bag, nose, nostrils, eyes, teeth etc...all UV unwrapped. Would 3D Coat be your first choice to change the sculpt into another character? If you had a choice, you'd probably use Zbrush or Mudbox because they support that workflow better. If I'm making something from scratch, 3DCoat is very comparable and presents its own unique workflow which I like, but when you want to avoid duplication of tasks and streamline work process it becomes a problem. It's even a problem if I make something from scratch in 3DCoat, retopo it and then realize that I need to make changes to the sculpt, that's when you start to see the problem. There are some workarounds like conform retopo mesh to sculpt, but it's not a good solution beyond fairly general adjustments. Edit: Also, I try to make as many 3D coat videos as I can, and I will continue to make more. It might sound like I'm down on the program, but I'm not. I think it's awesome. I use it for all my sculpts, I teach it to my students and I think it has an opportunity to become a go-to option for indie developers if not larger studios. I advocate for it a lot. Just now, I asked the people at Artella to include it as one of the software options that can be listed as it's not there. I'm currently learning to code in C++ primarily for my game, but I'd love to be able to work on tools for 3DCoat one day.

This is fine for one-off situations, but becomes problematic when you have multiple meshes to work on or if you want to use a quad mesh as a base for sculpting. If that's the case, 3D-Coat cannot be your option unless you want to deal with workarounds. You would choose Zbrush or even Mudbox. For sculpting specifically, 3D-Coat doesn't fit well into a pipeline because of this. I don't think anyone expects that surface mode meshes should be quad based with subdivision levels. But there should be a third mode (subD) along with surface mode and voxel mode for a regular subdivision sculpting mode with as many of the brushes that can be used....claybuild, move, pose, and sculpt layer functionalities on a UV mapped mesh, etc. (probably not the boolean tools understandably) and users logically would be able to move destructively from one mode to another if and when it made sense to do so. A workflow within 3D Coat would probably look like: Voxels->SurfaceSculpt->Retopo/UV->QuadSculpt/Paint(with Subdivision and sculptlayers)->Bake to Retopo Mesh->Final Adjustments in paint room. A workflow starting outside 3D Coat would look like: Create basemesh, or start with base mesh created previously, ImportToQuadSculpt->QuadSculpt/Paint(with Subdivision and sculptlayers )->Bake to Retopo Mesh->Final Adjustments in paint room. If 3D Coat could do that people would have no choice but to strongly consider it for their pipeline. As it is, people in industry are more likely to use it for Concepting, Retopo or Painting. The sculpt tools are really cut off from the rest of the pipeline unless you are willing to deal with major, major concessions. So as amazing as Voxel sculpting, Surface mode and liveclay sculpting all are people will be unlikely to use 3D coat as part of their pipeline for sculpting because of this one omission. How amazing would it be to take your retopo mesh, bring it into the sculpt room, subdivide it a few times, project your liveclay details onto it and sculpt/paint detail onto the UVmapped mesh using sculpt layers with PBR materials and shaders. I know that 3D Coat has another way of doing things, which is great, but these kinds of pipeline friendly bridges need to be created in order for this tool to become more widely adopted. I don't want more work for @Andrew Shpagin and the Pilgway team, but as backwards as it might seem. This is the way forward if you want people to discover all the other cool stuff that 3D Coat can do.

To echo @Emi, About Subdivision modelling specifically, it really does become a deal breaker when you want to edit your work after retopo or if you are bringing in assets from another 3d app. I don't think that people would expect the same level of flexibility with a quad based subD mesh as they would from voxels or surface mode in terms of dynamic remeshing and booleans, but there is the expectation that you should be able to work on a quad based mesh non-destructively. I think that sculpt layers help with subD sculpting as I imagine they are an important component in terms of storing displacement between subdivision levels. Hopefully, @Andrew Shpagin can chime in, since I don't know how these things actually work. I think a lot of the functionality that currently exists in the program could lead to a really powerful SubD Sculpting workflow, TBH, I think the workflow and UI would be the biggest parts to work out. I, for one, wouldn't mind if when going from a quad based mesh to a surface sculpt or a voxel sculpt (or vice versa) it was a somewhat destructive step. However, once I've put work into UV mapping something and working out good topology, I want to be able to reuse that work where ever possible by reshaping the geo, subdividing it and sculpting more details without worrying that I might be changing the shape drastically as a result because the low-poly base will automatically keep up. And when more general changes are needed, I can pose it at low subdivision levels and have that propagate to higher subdivision levels, or more importantly, smoothing things out at lower levels and having that translate to higher levels. In the past I sculpted a character in 3D coat, then I retopoed it, then I unwrapped it and I planned to leverage that initial character mesh for the next set of characters I was going to create for the same project. With the idea that I could transfer the same rig weights to all 5 characters. But when making the second, third and fourth characters I ran into a huge problem. My first mesh was totally useless. I tried using conform retopo mesh to sculpt, but it was really slow because 3D Coat had to calculate my high poly sculpt mesh and the lowpoly retopo mesh simultaneously, also not all the sculpt tools have that option. If I were using Zbrush, Blender or Mudbox, it wouldn't be a problem. Because of this, I can't see any studio using 3D coat for any kind of production-heavy sculpting workflow unless it's purely for prototyping or early stage sculpts. I want 3D Coat to be at the heart of my studio's workflow, but I have to think of workarounds for this issue in particular. Since I decided to stich with 3D coat, I ended up sculpting 5 characters, retopoing all 5 characters from scratch and UV unwrapping all 5 characters. In the end, each of my meshes ended up being slightly different and we couldn't reuse the rig setup. So instead of saving time, we drastically increased to time it took because I wanted to use 3D Coat. Sadly, I ended up buying a copy of Zbrush so that I don't have to worry about a similar problem in the future. I don't really know if it's feasible to do in the short term, but I really hope quad based sculpting with the ability to step up and down through subdivision levels is somewhere on the roadmap and I hope that @Andrew Shpagin will be able to give his full attention at some point, because I'm sure he'd be able to work some magic if he puts his mind to it. Even if it's really hard, I know you can do it @Andrew Shpagin, if it will take a lot of work, or if it's difficult is definitely not a reason to avoid it. It's super important and critical to the growth of the program. For now, I'm excited to see what Sculpt Layers and Curves have in store as I await the release of version 5. Also, this isn't meant as criticism...just constructive feedback on my experience using the tool. I love 3D Coat, and use it whenever I can, but I also am starting my own studio, so I'm not really answering to client or studio requirements. I feel like Pixelogic and Allegorithmic and Autodesk and Foundry have a good pulse on what industry is doing, Blender not as much, but they make their own films so the tool is production tested and optimized, also they have the benefit of being opensource so the users can also help make the tool, but Pilgway/3D Coat seems to be less geared towards the needs of industry and production friendly workflows. I want to see 3D Coat become the best possible tool that it can be. Recognition/acknowledgement aren't things that you can control, but if the tool is solid, stable, enjoyable to work with and delivers great results in a logical workflow that is production friendly for the hobbyist and the big studio, I'm sure the recognition will come.

Thanks @Rygaard !

New artwork I created for Gladiotron.

Great post @Rygaard and nice points @Emi 3D Coat is such a joy to work with, but it does have some significant flaws, especially with the sculpting workflow. A lot of them seem like fairly easy fixes, which is the frustrating part. 3D Coat is easily more innovative than just about any other sculpting program, but it's still missing things that we expect from working with other tools like topological move, repeat last action, and non-destructive subD sculpting. Better smoothing and better surface picking would be on my wishlist as well. I also find that 3D Coat doesn't handle certain edge cases/situations very well. Things that Zbrush nails. Things like snapping the brush into one along the centre symmetry seam is a massive help. Also, lack of topological move in 3D coat makes it basically impossible to do movements on the inside of a character's legs if they are close together. My workaround is to separate the legs into two separate symmetry instances and sculpt on one or the other with symmetry turned off, it works great, but it's not something a new user would ever think of. Whereas in Zbrush it just works. Also, in terms of picking, it's hard to smooth a part of a mesh without blowing away the forms on an adjacent part of the mesh and for me at least, solving some of these problems requires a good understanding of the tool and coming up with innovative workarounds that don't feel like sculpting anymore. Further, they feel like workarounds that are needed due to the limitations of the sculpting toolset. I'm patient enough to jump through those extra hoops to get the results I want, but I can't see most people sticking with it long enough to figure those things out when they can just use something that just works the way they would expect.

I have to agree with this. It's really cool to have PBR shaders, and cavity/bulge settings are neat and provide a nice base for baking, but for sculpting, they are misleading at times. Not to mention, a lot of the default shaders have their cavity/bulge settings cranked way too high and look bad as a result, the default shaders should be better curated. It gives a poor first impression. Glad you stuck with it and created something that works well for you. Thanks for sharing this, I will try it out.