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tiburbage

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    UE5 game developer, 3D asset creator. Writing, programming, history.

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  1. Better Zoom/Auto-Focus Method Being able to quickly frame the viewport camera in the most common usage ways is a big workflow plus for a 3D app. I'd like to suggest an improvement to how this is done in 3DCoat based on the ZBrush implementation. Auto-Framing: In ZBrush, the F key is mapped to functionality similar to 3DCoat's A key, but with a great twist. In ZBrush, the F key will simply toggle between "frame visible" and "frame active Subtool" (Sculpt Object in 3DCoat Sculpt room terms). Only one hotkey is needed. Being able to quickly jump between framing your whole (visible) model and then focusing in on the active object is a very useful workflow. This should work in a logically analogous way in all Rooms.
  2. Expand/Collapse Hierarchies I'll use the main left side vertical tool panels as an example, where the fully expanded list of tools can far exceed the vertical screen space available to show them all. I think a good idea is to implement Collapse All/Expand All. Collapse All would close all of the groups/sections, and then the user would selectively open just the ones they are focusing on using. A popup menu displayed when one Right Clicks on a Group/section header could contain these commands, but ideally they would also be mapped to a modifier hotkey so for example if you <modifier key>+LCLICK on the disclosure triangle on the group header, it would execute the expand all/collapse all action. Some apps implement "collapse all but this group", and/or "invert collapsed/expanded", but just having the base Collapse All/Expand All. Collapse All would go a long way. Sculpt Tree: being able to fully expand all children, or fully collapse all children in the Sculpt Object hierarchy from any specific point would also be useful. The -/+ object button functions get part way there, but not quite.
  3. I've been looking at the Curves menu, Curves Stroke/Q popup, and the Modeling room tools panel tools, and the method for converting an edge selection to a curve is not jumping out at me.
  4. @GorbatovskyDo you support creating a Curve from a mesh edge selection?
  5. I think they would be well served to have at least one full-time evangelist in the way that Pixologic has always had Paul Gaboury, and for a while had the great production artist/ZBrush expert on staff. They acted as the "front end" of the product team, producing learning materials, Paul owned the documentation and has always kept it fully-up-to-date, acting as presenters at their highly attended Summit meetings. Both understand both the artist perspective and that of the developers enough to be able to "translate" between them. I suspect both were empowered to fix minor bugs themselves, like adding a missing tooltip, fixing typo's, whatever. The challenge for 3DCoat is probably needing an English/Ukrainian speaker to make sure the communications are clear and well understood. It is probably hard to find people with strong 3D artist creds but whom also understands developers and the technical side of things. I agree with AbnRanger on the 3DCoat YouTube tutorials side -- the majority of 3DCoat's feature set has been pretty well covered at the demo/"how-to" level, and some lean into workflow territory as well. I would encourage users really committed to learning the app to check out the Playlists like "Quick Start", or search under Videos/All for "Quick Start" and notice there are a number of topics which have up to 4 or 5 parts, and so with extended coverage of a particular feature area. I've watched all of them and they were all useful and still mostly relevant. The "hole in the boat", especially for new users is that many of those videos are now 7-11 years old, showing a now quite old early/mid v4 UI, and it should not be surprising that a new user would be hesitant to watch such old tutorials. Some of these are still valid, some are pretty clearly in need of a refresher, or perhaps retirement. In terms of the long form "soup to nuts" learning courses, aka project-based learning, what you will notice is that while CONCEPTING tools and workflow coverage has really proliferated, and a lot of credit for that goes to Anton @AntonTenitskyas really leading the way there. However, those for the most part only cover the Sculpt room, and mostly Voxel. But go out there and try to find in-depth, project-based "soup to nuts" courses for full cycle of PRODUCTION asset creation: characters/clothing/accessories, more complex hard surface projects like vehicles, props. If you find any good ones, please post a link! In my mind, the YouTube and Udemy courses by@AlienMinefieldare still by far the best example of that kind of project-based, extended learning material in a 3DCoat-centric context. They are still mostly valid today, but were created way back in v4, so they obviously don't express the significantly improved UI and functionality of 3DCoat 2023. So that's kind of sad Yeah, it should never be assumed that users, even power users, will fully understand the intended benefits of key functional additions or changes. Those insights have to be brought to light, or really good, hard work by developers may not have the positive impact it could...
  6. Also tried the "robot guy", the posed robot character they have as one of the choices when you do File > New and choose "Per pixel painting", and I could still repro it as reported. Andrew will be able to sort it out. I'd be interested in knowing how it turns out...
  7. Thanks for the repro confirm, Digman. Now I'm just wondering what's different about Oleg's configuration which would give a different result. And thanks for the tip about the 2024 installer -- I was not aware of those links. Do they keep the user prefs separate by version? I hope so ...
  8. Well, I hope my steps were very clear In further testing, I think the Depth fill is working in the UV Island pick case, but the intensity is so low that I thought it wasn't working at all. Try this: before doing any Depth fill, new layer, set the global Depth to 500%. LCLICK on one island in the Texture Editor, then on a Part in the 3D Viewport and compare the result. What I'm seeing is a radically different Depth value applied. The UV island application is very faint, barely visible where the 3D Viewport Part selection fill is very strong. In the attached snapshot, I filled the blue outer body of the shaderball by UV island picking, the yellow front ring by 3D Viewport pick. I'm not a Smart Material expert. If you suggest a Smart Material to use which comes installed with the app, I can try the one you are trying. Oleg, of course maybe by some luck Andrew found and fixed this problem in the last few builds. I'm debating whether to install the 2024 beta build you are citing, but wish it didn't have to overwrite my 2023 install to do so... In the mean time, it would be great if you have a 2023 install to see if you can reproduce with that, as a sanity check. And if you can think of any settings differences which might account for a difference, I'll try them.
  9. This is a good example of why "setting user expectations" is a good idea! It sounds like this is an attempt to build per layer/folder masking but based on the original transparency-based clip mask model. I really think it has to be true grayscale masking -- just like Photoshop and Substance Painter. I think a Steam/perpetual license Substance Painter user (ahem) hoping maybe to transition to 3DCoat for texturing would find the clip mask model baffling, and limited.
  10. [BUG] Fill of Depth/height/normal from a Smart Material fails when clicking on a UV island 2023.41, Windows 10 Filling of Depth/height/normal data using other methods, including Fill by Part (LCLICK on a discrete mesh Part in the 3D Viewport)) works, and Brush-based Paint works, just not when picking an island in the Texture Editor window. STEPS TO REPRODUCE Open a UV'ed model: I use the built-in ShaderBall model as it has both Parts and is UV unwrapped. Connective Picking ON View > Relief Only Drag out and dock the Texture Editor next to the 3D Viewport. Set its channel view to "Normals" Depth=100%, Depth Channel ON Create a new Layer Select a Smart Material known to have easily visible depth info. I was using rubber_2 Enable the Fill Tool, Fill w/ Color: ON. I had no other Fill options enabled. LCLICK on islands in the Texture Editor. RESULT Observe in the Texture Editor and 3D Viewport that picking the islands is not resulting in Depth fill. I then verified that LCLICK on the model's parts does result in the expected Fill, full Layer fill works, etc. So it appears just to be UV Island picking which is failing.
  11. Didn't the color picker at the top of the toolbar in the Paint room once have a pair of buttons for same options as Photoshop: switch FG<->BG, the other to set colors the their defaults (FG=white/BG=black)? (hotkeys in PS, X, and D). Well, regardless, rather than having two buttons doing the same thing as is there now (switch FG<->BG), it would be nice to have one of them do the "reset to white/black" action? [Not exactly a UI suggestion per se -- feel free to move to Paint Room suggestions...]
  12. I recently logged this to support, but there are two buttons on the right side of layers in the Layers panel and in the Sculpt Tree (other?), one for drag/dropping the layer in the stack, the other with a different function depending on the context. Those buttons are almost on invisible [this could depend on a custom Theme color, but I couldn't pin it down]. My suggestion was that you couldn't go too far wrong just connecting the FG color of those button to that of the layer's text (default is black), at least for the "hover over" color. [the original design intent may be to not have them visible for the active layer, only when the user hovers over them]
  13. I think it would be useful to have some faster access to the "Rotate Around..." options than having to dig down into the "Camera" dropdown menu. Not sure what to suggest, but it could be a popup window, a gizmo, pie menu ( ). Something to allow quick switching.
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