Tom K

Messiah also has a very nice renderer. It's kind of an industry secret. Maybe this move will allow Messiah to achieve the critical mass necessary to be more recognized and supported . Tom

Except without screwing his supporters the way Joe Alter did. Joe seemed like such a good guy before that. He once Emailed me personally to send me a software update in response to a problem I had. Tom

I don't know what to make of that. I'm waiting for an answer there. My first reaction was shock, since I just purchased Messiah. Supposedly I'll get a refund if the goal is reached, but I just don't know what to think right now. Tom

looks nice. how about some renderings in a metal material. Tom

You need to either bring it into the retopology room to build a polygon model over it. Or, you need to use the auto retopology tool to try and let the program do it for you. you can also tweak the results it gives you if you need to. It all depends on what the model is and what you are going to do with it. If you just want to get to the paint room quick. right click on the object layer in the voxtree and use one of the autopo features. Tom

This is how. Official Tutors Official tutor list Tom

Especially in recent years as the price of flat panel monitors has dropped and the screen sizes have gone up.It really can be overwhelming looking at a giant bright monitor for too long. Tom

Those features are sold as seperate packages. Just use any of the other programs out there that do rigging. I think you're better off rigging in the final package anyway, rather than trying to rig in one program and hoping everything gets exported correctly to something else. Tom

No, I don't know. Tom

Isn't That was DAZ is for? They don't exactly advertise it for porn, but it's close. Tom

other than the color green and the name 3d-coat. Tom

maybe there is some better way, but how about this. create a layer in 3d coat and paint your reflection map on that layer using greyscale. metal parts white. plastic parts black. now turn off the other layers and export your object with just the color map. rename the output image -reflection map. now turn that layer off and the rest back on. and export the rest as usual. then you can use that extra image as your reflection map in lightwave Tom

Gigavoxels "We propose a new approach to efficiently render large volumetric data sets. The system achieves interactive to real-time rendering performance for several billion voxels." Tom

you might also want to check out the spaceship making video on this page if you've never seen it . (3rd video down.) spaceship video All those items are mesh items that are being combined. also mesh items can be used to make brushes. Tom

yes. you can bring in a mesh. you can also merge additional mesh objects to that first one. ( they are converted to voxels ) try the rat tutorial. it starts from a sphere. rat tutorial Tom

I was wondering about this! This seems to suggest to me that only the voxels exposed to the surface of the object would need to be subdivided and the ones inside the volume could be big. A bunch of giant voxel cubes surrounded by increasingly smaller cubes. So if we started sculpting on a voxel cube it could actually be just a single voxel until we started adding detail? Tom

your link goes right back to this page. Tom

Yes. polygon reduction. Similar to the reduce brush in sculptris only have it do it automatically. Tom

Another possibility is that in addition to the dynamic tessellation would be dynamic DE-tessellation. this way, if you change a voxel to poly mode it could remove the polygons in the areas they weren't needed and hopefully give you a poly model similar to one you would have gotten by using the dynamic tessellation. Or else, like AbnRanger said, you would just end up already having millions of extra unneeded polygons. I'm not sure, but it seems like this is something he is working on with his smoothing relaxation algorithms for unlimited clay? Or maybe that's something different entirely. Tom

Makes sense. But it also means that the two rooms will actually be quite different, since only the surface room would have the new dynamic tessellation in it. Unless they come up with dynamic quad subdivision. I guess the tools would be the same. just the results you get could be different. Tom

Don't you have to sculpt on tri meshes in the surface room? Tom

I remember reading a review somewhere of 3d coat and one of the complaints they had with the program was the fact that the whole surface room was hidden behind that little button. I can also say that when I first started using 3d coat it was a while before I realized it was even there. I just happened to see it in a tutorial somewhere. I'm sure I'm not the only one. Judging from what I've see written on the forum many people don't know about that right away. Plus, after they add the ability to load a mesh model in , you will have to have a way to start off in the surface room. Depending on what you are doing, you might not even go into the voxel room. Tom

So will you make the voxel surface mode into an actual poly-sculpting room where you can either send a voxel or load a mesh? For what reason would there be any need for two different poly rooms if they have the same functionality? why not just send the voxel over to the sculpt room , then have a button to send it back over to voxel room if that's where it needs to go? As it is now the voxel surface room is kind of a secret hidden room that isn't obvious when you first start using the program. Wouldn't it be better to have that be a proper room like the others? Tom

It just occurred to me that the "topology last" method of doing things is not really new. It's actually the oldest way of doing things. Since before all the nice modeling tools we have now. It was often easier to model a clay sculpture and use a digitizing arm to create the polygon model. That's really the exact same thing we do in 3d coat. Only we use a digital sculpture instead of a real one. Doesn't get any more old school than this: worlds first 3d animation. Tom

Just the opposite of yourself. I agree with most of what you're saying. I think there should be only one polygon sculpting room with one set of tools. It shouldn't matter where the polygon model came from. whether it comes from a voxel skin or an imported mesh or a retopo mesh it shouldn't matter. should all use the poly sculpt room. then from there you could send it back to voxels if thats where it came from, or wherever else it needs to go. I don't really agree with the assessment of how the "professional" does things. I think that just depends on that particular professional. I think the workflow you describe where you make an almost complete model then add details to it was the way of doing things when ZBrush first came out. But I think that the idea of needing to do things that way has been pretty much obliterated in recent years. I was kinda out of the loop for a few years as far as 3d graphics was concerned. But I had remembered Zbrush from when it first came out. When I started looking at 3d graphics magazines again I noticed that almost every image had Zbrush listed as being used. So, I decided to get a book with a demo version. Let me tell you. That was a jaw dropping experience when I first realized what this new method of model creation was all about. But I can't see anyone objecting to having better polygon tools, since ultimately it doesn't matter how you started out, you're going to end up with polygons. Also a lot of people like to use their existing models to make new ones. if someone spends a bunch of time creating a character then getting a nice topology they certainly wouldn't want to lose all that just to be able to modify that character into a new one. Tom