Bloodsong

Too Long Don't Read:================================================================== i was doodling around in my 4.5.19 DX 64 bit (the one that's been working best with my hardware/software/wetware) this morning, then thought, hey, i should download the latest version and see how much it has improved! i installed 4.5.38 in parallel (as usual), popped in a medium-res sphere, and did what i normally do: turn on x symmetry, use the grow tool to grow out a 'muzzle' and a 'skull,' then grab a huge move tool and yank things around to shape a monster head. and it is NOT what i am used to...! the move tool keeps tearing the voxels and leaving artifacts, crashing into other voxels, leaving some voxels behind... =================================================================================== so, image: TOP: 3D Coat 4.5.38 DX 64; med res voxel sphere, grow tool, and move tool w/ X symmetry. result: tearing and artifacts. BOTTOM: 3D Coat 4.5.19 DX 64; med res voxel sphere, grow tool, move tool w/ X symmetry. result: smoooooooth! now, i checked the settings of the tools in the two versions. the move degree was 53 instead of 73. and then the move tool seemed to have a different brush tip, so i changed it to the default bell curve. is there some setting i'm missing? i looked in the preferences under Brushing. i thought maybe there was a setting in symmetry, because there appeared to be overlapping interference in the brush radius across the symmetry line, but i didn't find anything about adjustments near the symmetry plane. the resolution is the same (i think??); the number of tris is nearly the same in both examples. just... WHA!?!??!?!?!!! help!

hey hey, that is AWESOME! and yeah, after screwing with the object some more, i found some asymmetries and errors. (which is weird, i was pretty sure the new cuts i made while working in the retopo room were applying to both sides -- i SAW them! -- but when i opened the obj file, some were missing...) ANYway! BUT! lol! it's not that i appreciate all your hard work, but how did you do that? i need to learn so i can do that for all my models. did you make a tutorial or um... something? maybe? or just some clues? i marked the seams okay, i think. but after that, the unwrapping options all totally lost me. and then... was there uvmap massaging somehow? :/ i need to be better at this. thanks so much!!

okay, yes it is me, the annoying one again. trying to uvmap always gives me a headache. i have created this frog. i have retopo'd this frog into a nice mesh. (this is new for me in 3d coat, yay!) i have marked where i want the seams. to whit: 1: i want the main head and body and limbs of the frog laid out like a bearskin rug. split up the belly, folded out, and viewed from the spine. 2: i need to see both sides of the hands/feet, so the edge seams of those are marked. 3: i want the inner mouth and tongue to be separate, so those are cut out with seams marked around the edges. the tongue also has a seam up the bottom/back where it can be split. can i achieve this with 3d coat? can you tell me how? because what i get is... 1: a splodge of the frog with one leg attached, viewed and stretched at some diagonal angle. 2: one palm and one foot bottom off on their own. and one leg off on its own. 3: i don't know where the mouth and tongue are, i think they're attached to the splodge. 4: this i can't explain at all... there is one separate rectangular island, it appears to be the right half of the belly. why this is cut out from everything else is anybody's guess. ps: i did all the seam marking (and retopo editing) with symmetry turned on. did that mess something up? pps: beware my mad trackball drawing skillz on image two, how i hope/imagine/want the uvmap to look. (yes, i know, there will be some distortion. in the industry where i work, some distortion is acceptable if the map has fewer seams and is easy for humans to read.) i tried all the tutorials i could find. but they were all really just... mark seams, press button, accept a buncha islands of various shapes. i need... some more control :/ thanks guys!

haha, okay, but... show pop-ups: tool presets is this huge panel with um... all the tools in it. how do i only show the 'quick access' part? ::pokes around some more:: OH! no no no no no! tool PRESETS, not tool PALETTE! duhr. sorry. never mind me! ...wait... this is full of stuff. :/ how do i clear it out? i want the empty one where i put MY stuff in it. argh! aha! CLEAR ALL! boom! i will just shut up now... THANKS!

see, i told you i couldn't remember what the heck to call it. AWESOME! thank you!

i'm a doofus :X i installed 3d coat on a new machine, (4.5.19) and... i can't remember how to put a tool on the quick user custom thingy? AND i can't remember the exact name of the custom palette quick tool thingy, so i can't find it in the 3d coat manual. a clue? a hint? please. you know what i mean? i used to have a little floating palette with my most-used tools/settings. and i would click on those to grab my tools, instead of scrolling through the list on the left for them. oh, while i'm here... BONUS question! how do i get rid of the neutral zone borders on the workspace? the things that are there so if the model is zoomed in and there's no 'empty' space in your view, they are treated as empty space so you can click and move the camera instead of sculpting? i don't use those, and they make me nuts. i got rid of it in my older version somehow... thanks a bunch!

hey guys, i am an idiot. i know, you knew that. i have this 'safe zone' rectangle boundary around the edge of my workspace. um, i thought it was some sort of render room thing, showing the area of the screen that was going to be rendered. (i was messing with trying to render a turntable one day.) but i'm in the voxel room and that rectangular bounding box is still there. worse, i have finally noticed... sometimes, when i try to grab a tool control (the gizmo, or the pose handles, or the handles on the background image placement thing), despite the fact that the tool control lights up as if i have grabbed it, when i move the mouse, it acts as if i've clicked on a blank area of the viewport and it TURNS the view instead of moving the control. i just figured out this ALWAYS happens when the control is outside this 'safe zone' bounding box! (yes, idiot here, see first statement.) can i get rid of this 'safe zone' thing? it is really irritating! i want to ALWAYS be able to grab the tool controls when i can see them on the screen. if i need to turn the view or whatever, i can hold the alt key!

heyas guys; 3DC V4.0.07B(gl) when i'm working in the voxel room, and use the expand brush, i set the depth strength to determine how high/fast i want the voxels to expand. then i brush across the model and i get a nice rising of the model's surface. when i'm in the tweak room, and i use the draw tool... i brush across the model, and the surface just shoots out to extremes at the slightest touch. and i have to set the strength down to nearly flat in order to control it. now... does it work like this for anyone else? if so, can i request that the strength of this thing be tempered a bit? um, or a lot, actually. :X (im using a poser mode, and poser is notorious for having its universe be microscopic compared to other 3d programs. if this is just a result of working on such a small scale, then you can ignore me.)

Numeric Input for FOV/Focal Length cf: http://3d-coat.com/forum/index.php?showtopic=11629 http://3d-coat.com/forum/index.php?showtopic=11013 as postulated by digman: "38 FOV seems to closer to human vision in 3DCoat. The higher you go from there the FOV depth lens distortion becomes greater. The lower you go the Depth FOV gets closer to an othro view." dopey me, i just figured out where they are seeing these FOV numbers. but there doesn't seem to be a way to be able to type on in, for example. i have just been working with doing (trying to do) morphs for poser, and all my noses are coming out honking huge. i've just figured out (duh) it must be the focal length of the camera in 3d coat. because you know, it looks FINE in 3dc. so i was thinking, being able to set the fov or focal length of the camera would be helpful.

What is the quickest, easiest, and most effective way to retopo this piece? it's basically a rectangle, bent, flared, and has some regular and irregular holes through it. RetopoThis.png preferably without having to draw every single vertex. (how do you get rid of those, btw?) or every single quad. i did hand-retopo one hole then duplicated it up the other holes, but then didn't know how to work it in with the flare at the bottom. i tried autopo with various settings (love the new crease settings and tangent smooth for the sharp-edged stuff), but no joy, there. and i tried drawing all the cross sections i wanted (strokes tool) and all the connecting lines, and the circles around the circular parts. but no joy on that, either. is there a fast/easy way to take all the crossing strokes and tell 3dc that i want to turn the grid i drew into polygons? :X

(sorry, i hate doing this, but i'm trying to save/follow this topic, and the button isn't working.) Thanks for the clear, concise instructions, Abn!

YES! oh oh ho! NOW i get it! thanks so much!!!

3DC v4.0.7B(gl) Windows XP3 okay... disregarding tiny details, such as i haven't shown the eyebrows/lashes in the retopo, and i haven't actually finished massaging the retopo into place... why does this retopo export as this obj? symmetry is on (X). i selected the retopo layer i was working on, and did file: export retopo mesh. i basically followed the tutorial vid, the one with the ant and the head, where imoprted meshes are used to glom onto the voxel retopo base. you transform the mesh to get it approximately the right dimensions, use the brush to move bits into place, then turn on autosnap to closest-along-normal and bump it into place with the smooth and brush tools. that actually went fairly well. and then it exports this asymmetrical monstrosity. also, it seems to have lost 6 vertices and 13 faces, which i kinda need. while i'm here.... this head mesh i'm using has several materials (skin, inner mouth, eyebrows, etc.). they come in under different retopo groups. is there a way i can work on several of these groups all at once, without having to merge them together? i can't seem to shift-select or ctrl-select several 'layers.' not even to export them all without merging them. i would really like to do that. :/ if i have to merge them, okay, but is there a way i can have them keep their materials? they blend all into one material when i merge them and export. why me? am i asking the impossible?

okay, i'll try that. here i thought voxels were 'sculpt anything without limitations! out of thin air! express freedom of a true 3d artist without worrying bout topology!' ;X okay, problem number two. now i get THIS: the smooth tool is now making little mush-marks in my 'clay' here. that, and it is MELTING the whole mesh. like if i keep smoothing, so those 'fingerprints' go away, my cheekbone will be sunken in by the time i'm done. all i want is to average the surface location of all the waves and bumps, not smush *everything* down. okay, let me try B7 again. that kept crashing when i tried to decimate, so i went back to B4. no, even with preserve surface on, it's still shrinking in the mesh. TANGENT SMOOTHING!!!!!!! okay, THAT'S what i want! i am edified, now. thanks guys!

oh, cool; thanks timmy! i seem to remember a 3dc video once where they showed changing the LOD by brushing over it or something (they were texturing a landscape), but lord knows which video that was. glad now i don't have to go find it. i don't have zbrush. actually, i've tried numerous times to use/learn zbrush, it just doesn't click for me. sculptris worked like a dream, but.... only up to a point. (like, the point where i wanted it to be actually useful for something.) so i guess i don't have to worry about that.

heyas! i've been using 4.0.0.4B(GL), though i just tried 4.0.0.7B(DX) same results. i've been pretty much having the same results... since the latter version 3's, really. the smooth tool and smoothing (shift key) rarely do what i expect/want. and my os is windows XP sp3. hahahah! funnily enough, every time i open this file, i forget that its the eyes, not the head, that is the default layer. but, YES, i AM trying to smooth on the active layer. how many polygons? not a clue. i thought i was using voxels. this layer is 2x. i don't want to reduce the voxels/mesh/whatever, because i have little details on the eyelids and lips and stuff i don't want to lose. okay, i went into wireframe mode, and it still looks like a solid mesh. that's bad, right? :X voxel>decimate is greyed out. :/ okay, i used the layer clone and reduce LOD twice, two times. (0.6x) now the smooth will smooth the cheeks. um, but my nostrils, eyelids, and lips are all jaggy. is there a way to interactively reduce the LOD just where i want to? or masking or something...? what do i do about that?

okay, this is making me nuts. i'm sculpting along, doing fine. now look at the cheeks on this head. do you see all those little lumps, bumps, waves in the surface? i want all those GONE and for the cheeks to be SMOOTH. i have tried every flipping thing i can think of. i use the smooth (shift) on my move tool, which is usually subtle. it doesn't do crap. i use the smooth on my build tool, which usually does the trick to melt the voxels away. doesn't do crap. i use the actual smooth tool, which can be turned up to 700+ "depth" or strength or whatever... doesn't do ANYTHING. i use BIG brush, i use tiny brush, i sit there and brushbrushbrush for two minutes straight, in straight lines over the lumps, in circles around the lumps, long strokes, short strokes.... nothing gets rid of these lumps. now, i figure... okay, you retopo this thing, the mesh won't follow all the little dips and waves THAT closely. it'll come out smooth. (won't it??? haven't tried yet.) but looking at it is driving me nuts! i want to SEE smooth, not imagine that it is. what is the secret voodoo trick???

The Return of Retopo FUBAR i'm back, and as frustrated as ever. this is me, painstakingly drawing the strokes that i want the mesh to follow. and the result. ABN: can you clarify please? autoRetopo = one green line only or else it messes up? manual strokes = many green lines okay? or the other way around?? in either case, i have painstakingly REMOVED all the green lines from my strokes and used only closed loops on the whole blasted thing. not helping. okay, bottom line: What is the quickest, easiest, and most effective way to retopo this piece? it's basically a rectangle, bent, flared, and has some regular and irregular holes through it. preferably without having to draw every single vertex. (how do you get rid of those, btw?) or every single quad. i did hand-retopo one hole then duplicated it up the other holes, but then didn't know how to work it in with the flare at the bottom.

oh, cool! that's not too bad; when they're on top of each other, a left click, right click will do it. out of curiosity, is there any way to do a batch of points at once? :X

heyas guys; i didn't like the results i was getting from AUTOPO, so i started retpologizing by hand. a good learning experience. :X i have a model that is made up of repeating elements (holes through a bar). so i thought i would build one segment, and then copy that segment where the other holes are. even smarter, i thought i would build 1/4 of the segment, then mirror the top to bottom, the front to back, and then the side to side, to get the whole piece. i have discovered clone. and i scaled the clone of the first 1/4 to -100% to get a vertically mirrored copy. the edges aren't perfectly straight, and the bottom edge of the top piece is overlapping the top edge of the bottom piece. even if i merge the two retopo groups together. so: how do i weld vertices? or how do i weld chunks of retopo to each other... without drawing more polygons between them? i got the vertices all into alignment with the transform tool. but the two pieces still think they are separate. they're all one retopo group, just... two different colours. :/

hey, thanks abn. not working, though. i changed the spline density setting from 100 to 1000 to 5000 to whatever the maximum is, because i just put int 99999999999999 and hit enter. it does not alter the results at all. i raised the number of segments setting, but that only gave me more subdivisions/polygons in the chunks. i also merged the two voxel layers of the grip into one. that didn't do anything, either. i noticed that the spline cuts were already following the sub-layer surfaces. oh, WAIT A MINUTE! okay, i have found the problem. when i drew the strokes, they drew themselves across both the front and the back of the capsule inserts, which caused loops in the slices (looked like the eye of a needle in the middle of the stroke.) i merged the capsules with the rest, re-drew the cross strokes, and now i get a mesh that actually looks like the thing. whew! okay, now... why is it when i draw a bunch of cross sections, then one line to link them, and apply, it works okay; but as soon as i try to add more "vertical" lines to control the shape of the mesh better, it goes FUBAR again? it doesn't work like autopo hints? :/

okay, THIS worked: http://3d-coat.com/forum/index.php?showtopic=14851 except. 3d coat is still ripping my model apart. guy's head looks like a grenade exploded in his mouth. i'm going to guess this has to do with that 'make sure your something or other is a closed volume.' because this is not. it is the head off a poser figure, JUST the head, so there's no closed body on it. so, bottom line: is it currently impossible to sculpt on a poser figure object (head)? in my 'kafkaesque' rambling above, i see that if i skip merging to the voxel layer and jump straight to the surface layer, my guy does not eat a grenade. but choosing a surface tool makes him disappear. why does this happen? how do i make it not happen? how can i send my imported obj straight to surface mode without it vanishing when i select a tool? i'm making progress. really! thanks again!

heyas guys! i'm so happy, i've just completed my first model in 3d coat! now i need to retopologize it. and, of course, i have a problem. first, i tried autopo. and it made ugly, clunky retopo mesh. didn't like that. so then i'm following the spider (legs) tutorial ( ).%C2'> when i hit enter... i don't get a nice retopo mesh, i get some chunks hanging out in space. see attached illustration. i do not understand why i am getting this result. notes: for the detail bit on the side... the main voxel layer has the indent subtracted from it. the convex capsules in the indent are on a different voxel layer. i don't know if the retopo is looking at those, or ignoring those, or becoming completely confused by those. i tried raising the number of segments from 12 to 32, and the spline points density from 100 to 295. that did not alter the results at all. i tried drawing only one vertical line (as in the video), but that didn't have the desired effect. instead, there were fewer chunks and more empty space. any guidance as to what i am doing wrong would be appreciated! and... how to do it right, even more so! thanks

3D Coat 4.0.04B(GL) 32bit trying to follow the steps/methodology outlined in this thread: http://3d-coat.com/forum/index.php?showtopic=14408 ... i was actually having more luck in the previous beta version... TL;DR: Why does selecting a Surface Sculpt tool make my mesh disappear totally? Also, why does converting it from voxel to surface make huge chunks of the model disappear? How can Bloodsong import an OBJ and sculpt on it? 1: new scene retopo room import reference mesh, select obj file. Problem: the obj comes in with a texture, but the texture is upside down. how can i flip the texture, or just not display it? 2: retopo menu: use current low poly mesh. gets rid of the texture view, anyhow! 3: voxel room merge tool pick from retopo; the object appears Problem: hitting 'Enter' to commit at this point causes huge chunks of the mesh to go missing. 4: avoid hitting 'enter,' just click the V in the layers to change to S mode. this seems to work fine. the voxel sculpt tools at the top of the toolbar turn into surface sculpt tools. select the first tool. Problem: this causes the entire object to vanish. 4a: to avoid object disappearance, just close the merge tool, and hit enter to 'commit' the object. a darker grey duplicate object is created, but the bright white starter object is still there. there doesn't seem to be a way to get rid of it. what am i doing wrong? what am i failing to understand, here?

as a soon-to-be-very-happy owner of 3d coat... i have some questions about it's (possible) future developments. 1: Second Life Sculpties is this support being phased out? i saw a tutorial video on how to turn a voxel model into a sculpty, but when i tried the steps... they didn't work in the current/new versions. this isn't a real deal-breaker, but i am curious. in transforming posable meshes to second life, some parts would work better cut off (with that awesome boolean cutter thing) and made into sculpties. 2: Morphs (for Poser) back in the newbie forum, i was testing out methods for doing this. and i see that right now the only way to export morph targets with 100% success is to export from the retopo room. and the only way to get sculpting from the voxel room to the retopo mesh is with the move, transform, and pose tools. or to massage with that brush tool (which isn't working for me). what i REALLY want to do is to be able to use the surface sculpting tools to sculpt the actual mesh surface, without even touching voxels. i know that's sort of the opposite of what everyone else wants to do... but seriously: voxel room, surface mode, import OBJ, surface sculpt the existing vertices, export without the morph exploding... and i will go from a very-happy-owner to an owner-who-has-found-personal-holy-grail. so just curious about future projected developments (or removal) of those things. thanks a bunch!