Allabulle

I consider the editing of the previous three posts final. If you find any typos, mistakes or you have any questions, please post a reply in this thread and I'll do my best to address it. Happy 3DCoatting!

Using 3DCoat with Blender with the Applink in Linux In Blender, enable the add-on 3D-Coat Applink included with it. In the Properties Editor>Scene Properties>3D-Coat Applink Settings>Folders: Set the Exchange folder to /home/USERNAME/Documents/3DCoat/Exchange Put your system user name instead of USERNAME in the line above. Do the same if you wish for the Object/Texture folder option. Select an object of your scene. in the Sidebar (Menu View>Sidebar or shortcut N) click the 3D-Coat vertical tab. Pick an option from the drop-down menu and click send. An error message with lots of scary words will appear and we will get sad. For safety, let's quit now Blender and 3DCoat. Open a File Browser on your Linux system, now. A folder named 3DC2Blender has been created in your home folder. Right-click the folder and then left-click on Properties from the menu that should appear before you. In the Permissions tab, click on Change Permissions for Enclosed Files... Set Group Files Permissions to Read and Write Set Group Folders Permissions to Create and delete files Click the button labelled Change Close the Properties window Run Blender again, select an object of a scene, hit send button from the 3D-Coat panel in the Sidebar. Open 3DCoat and wait a bit until the message of incoming data from Blender pops up. It should now be working and we will feel happy. This issue and fix was last tested using 3DCoat-2022.47 and Blender 3.4.0 Alpha build hash 4e7983e07320 Happy 3DCoating!

Now for a system install. Instead of the per-user installation in the prior post. Download the latest Linux build (obviously). As of today, we can do this by going to https://pilgway.com/~sergyi/links-Linux.html Alternatively, we can download the last stable build in our ACCOUNT profile page at https://pilgway.com Create the folders in the system where we will unpack the 3DCoat file just downloaded in the prior step. sudo mkdir /opt/3DCoat && sudo mkdir /opt/3DCoat/3DCoat-2022 This command will create a folder in /opt for 3DCoat and another called 3DCoat-2022 inside the first one. We will use the former to store the script that runs 3DCoat and the latter to store the program and its files and folders that comes with the file we downloaded before. Unpack the file downloaded in the folder created for it in the system. In a terminal, we move where we downloaded the file. In my case, that would be /home/USERNAME/Downloads cd Downloads This command will put us in the folder Downloads where we assume we downloaded the file from pilgway.com sudo tar -xvf 3DCoat-2022.47.tar.bz2 -C /opt/3DCoat/3DCoat-2022 --strip-components=1 This command will unpack (decompress) the file downloaded (3DCoat-2022.47.tar.bz2 in this instance) in the directory (folder) we made for that purpose. Now, inside the file 3DCoat-2022.47.tar.bz2 there's a directory (folder) aptly named 3DCoat-2022.47 with everything inside. We could, yes, extract that directory into /opt/3DCoat and we would get /opt/3DCoat/3DCoat-2022.47 The problem I see is that with every new version, we'd get a new folder added with the corresponding name version. In time, we'll have quite a lot of directories from all the versions installed. I suggest to have just the one 3DCoat version we are working with, the latest installed. For that purpose we made the 3DCoat-2022 folder inside /opt/3DCoat Now, we want to extract the contents of the 3DCoat-2022.47 directory that's inside 3DCoat-2022.47.tar.bz2 file WITHOUT creating the directory named with the version. We just want to extract all that's inside the file without the folder name. This is why I added --strip-components=1 in the terminal command above: it does just that. It skips the first folder of the compressed file and extracts from there where we told it to do so. As a result, we get all the file contents in /opt/3DCoat/3DCoat-2022 Create 3DCoat.sh and 3DCoat.desktop text files (like we did for the single user workstation). This time, though, there will be some differences. 3DCoat.sh contents: cd /opt/3DCoat/3DCoat-2022 ./3dcoat it now points to a different folder since our 3DCoat program is in a different place, obviously. This file script is the one that actually finds and starts 3DCoat. Since this text file is meant to run as a script, a command, we must tell the system we authorize the text file to run as a program instead of treating it as an ordinary text file.We do it by right clicking the text file with our file browser and in Properties tick "Allow executing file as program" in Permissions tab.Alternatively, with a terminal open in the directory (folder) where the file is, we type: sudo chmod +x 3DCoat.sh 3DCoat.desktop [Desktop Entry] Encoding=UTF-8 Version=1.0 Type=Application Terminal=true Exec=/opt/3DCoat/3DCoat.sh Name=3DCoat Icon=/opt/3DCoat/3DCoat-2022/data/Icon/3DCoat.png Categories=Graphics;3DGraphics; StartupWMClass=3dcoat Here we also changed the paths to match the 3DCoat's installation path in our system. This file is for the Gnome Desktop Environment, it creates a system launcher for 3DCoat, with an icon. Move or copy the two files where they belong: 3DCoat.sh file must be in /opt/3DCoat 3DCoat.desktop must be in /usr/share/applications Assuming we created the two files in our home folder, we should type, in a terminal: cd ~ sudo cp 3DCoat.sh /opt/3DCoat && sudo cp 3DCoat.desktop /usr/share/applications The first command makes sure we are in our home directory where we created the two text files. [We can cd (Change Directroy) to wherever we created them, if not in the home directroy]. The second command has two parts: it first copies 3DCoat.sh where it belongs and then puts 3DCoat.desktop where the system stores all system-wide launchers. [We can change cp for mv in the command if we want to move the text files instead of copying them]. In this way, we won't have to create either file again for every other user in the system. Correct benign error messages appearing in the Terminal: As of today (version 2022.47 of 3DCoat for Linux) there are some png files' icc profiles in the 3DCoat folders that prompt a warning in an otherwise useful terminal output. They look like a lot, or many, "libpng warning: iCCP: known incorrect sRGB profile" messages. We can fix it by doing this: cd /opt/3DCoat/3DCoat-2022 sudo find . -type f -name '*.png' -exec mogrify \{\} \; The first command puts us where we installed (decompressed) 3DCoat. The second finds and fixes all png's in there. Next time we run 3DCoat it shouldn't complain about those sRGB profiles. Making the Terminal more useful and clean. Restart the Desktop Most times, after creating a desktop application launcher, we must "refresh" the desktop environment to make it available. Not sure we have to do it in this case, since we created a system launcher, but if we can't find 3DCoat launcher (icon), do this: Reboot the system (a tad drastic but it will work for sure). Log out and log back in again. That restarts the Desktop Environment for the user. Press ALT+F2 shortcut and type r (just the letter R) and Return if a prompt appears. This sends the command "restart" to our desktop environment in most Linux distributions using Gnome. Run 3DCoat as we launch any other program in our system. And pin it to a dock if we use one. Licensing our 3DCoat build: I omitted the licensing prompt that appears the first time we run 3DCoat. It will only be asked the fist time we run 3DCoat with our user or until we actually load the license. I just load the license downloaded from my account when prompted and that's it. We will not have to do it again after the first time, nor when a new version is installed like we did here, until it expires and we need to load a new one. Each user of the system will have to install its own licence, of course. 3DCoat creates some folders for us, with our user's preferences and settings in our user's Documents folder. The configuration folders are left untouched when we update 3DCoat in our system, and are, as stated, per user. Each user will have its own distinct 3DCoat configuration. Updating 3DCoat Once the new file is downloaded, we only repeat steps 3 and 6, that is: unpack and correct png's wrong profiles. We can, if we want, remove the contents of the previous installation before updating to the brand new build. This is a potentially dangerous command, so be careful and diligent when typing. Any potential loss from the misuse of this command will be on you. It erases all contents in a folder and everything that's under it. If you do that in a system folder you can seriously damage your installed system rendering it useless. If you point to some of your data directories you could lose your precious data. You have been warned! In a terminal, then, we can type, nervously: sudo rm -r /opt/3DCoat/3DCoat-2022/* Afterwards we can update 3DCoat as stated before: decompress and extract like in step 3 and remove the png's ICC errors like in step 6. Happy 3DCoatting!

Hi, here's a list of steps to set-up 3DCoat for Linux in a workstation for a single local user. It may be useful to some, and as a reference to me. Download the latest Linux build (obviously) As of today, we can do this by going to https://pilgway.com/~sergyi/links-Linux.html Alternatively, we can download the last stable build in our ACCOUNT profile page at https://pilgway.com Unpack the file and place the resulting folder wherever we find it most appropriate. For the purpose of this list, I'd say I downloaded the file 3DCoat-2022.47.tar.bz2 in my downloads folder (/home/USERNAME/Downloads) In my file browser, I then extracted the contents of the file with right-click>'Extract Here' over the downloaded file. We can do that in a terminal or with a similar command in another file browser (using Gnome in this instance, with Files file browser) if we wish. It's quite a big file, it may take a little while to extract depending on our computer system. I finally get a folder called 3DCoat-2022.47 in my downloads folder (it's the folder extracted from the downloaded file, containing all files 3DCoat needs to start running). Rename the folder to 3DCoat-2022 (or whatever name we find practical, really, but I'll stick to that name in this little how-to). Move the folder 3DCoat-2022 to its final destination place if we wish, now. I've moved it to /home/USERNAME/Programs in my workstation (this is really not necessary, but we'll need to remember the folder location anyway in an upcoming configuration step whether we move it or not, mind you). Create a text file called 3DCoat.sh in our home folder (/home/USERNAME/). (It can be anywhere, in fact, we just must remember where we place it for a future step). The text file should contain just two lines of text: cd /home/USERNAME/Programs/3DCoat-2022 ./3dcoat This is the file that will actually run 3DCoat in our system: It goes to where the program executable is and runs it. Remember to change USERNAME in the lines above to our actual user name. Since this text file is meant to run as a script, a command, we must tell the system we authorize the text file to run as a program instead of treating it as an ordinary text file. We do it by right clicking the text file and in Properties tick "Allow executing file as program" in Permissions tab. Alternatively, with a terminal open in the directory (folder) where the file is, we type: sudo chmod +x 3DCoat.sh Create a .desktop file in /home/USERNAME/.local/share/applications called 3DCoat.desktop We can do it by using any text editor. A .desktop file is a Gnome Desktop Environment launcher for programs. Since 3DCoat will not be doing it on its own, we'll do it ourselves to have a nice way to run the program, with an icon, in our user's Desktop. The text file lines will be: [Desktop Entry] Encoding=UTF-8 Version=1.0 Type=Application Terminal=true Exec=/home/USERNAME/3DCoat.sh Name=3DCoat Icon=/home/USERNAME/Programs/3DCoat-2022/data/Icon/3DCoat.png Categories=Graphics;3DGraphics; StartupWMClass=3dcoat We must change USERNAME the above text lines to match our actual user name. Also, make sure that the icon folder description is correct too (if we placed our 3DCoat unpacked folder somewhere else, now is the time to edit that line to fit our folder structure). If, for some reason, we want 3DCoat to run without any output on a Terminal, we can change the line Terminal=true to Terminal=false in the text file 3DCoat.desktop The added StartupWMClass=3dcoat makes sure that when using a Dock panel in Gnome it won't duplicate visible icons when running 3DCoat (otherwise 3DCoat will appear as an additional icon in the dock when running, alongside the icon to launch it) We can create this text file anywhere and then move it to /home/USERNAME/.local/share/applications afterwards. If we can't find the folder .local we can hit CTRL+h in our home folder file navigator window and it will show it, with other folders starting with a dot. Linux uses a dot at the beginning of a folder (or file) name to mark it as "hidden." Those are mostly configuration folders (and files) that a user hardly ever needs to see or touch manually. Hitting the shortcut CTRL+h once more will let all configuration folders hidden again; if we wish to tidy up the home folder appearance, that is. Restart the desktop or log out. Most times, after creating a desktop application launcher, we must "refresh" the desktop environment to make it available. We can do it like this: Reboot the system (a tad drastic but it will work for sure.) Log out. Then log in again. That restarts the desktop for the user. Press ALT+F2 hotkey shortcut and type r (just the letter R) and Return if a prompt appears. This sends the command "restart" to our desktop environment in most Linux distributions using Gnome. Run 3DCoat: Now we press the Super key (in many keyboards that key has a Microsoft Windows logo printed on it) and find the 3DCoat icon. We can just type it and it should show up. (Sometimes, depending on our Linux distribution, we may have to press SuperKey(the windows logo one)+A or SuperKey+S to get to all the icons of the software installed). We can launch 3DCoat from here or pin it to a dock if we want the launching icon in the dock (if we use one) for convenience. Correct benign error messages appearing in the Terminal: As of today (version 2022.47 of 3DCoat for Linux) there are some png files' icc profiles in the 3DCoat folders that prompt a warning in an otherwise useful terminal output. They look like a lot, or many, "libpng warning: iCCP: known incorrect sRGB profile" messages. We can fix it by doing this: Open a terminal and go to where we placed the 3DCoat unpacked folder. (In my case, to /home/USERNAME/Programs/3DCoat-2022) and execute a command that will find any png file in any directory (folder) inside our 3DCoat folder and fix it. cd /home/USERNAME/Programs/3DCoat-2022 find . -type f -name '*.png' -exec mogrify \{\} \ Next time we run 3DCoat it shouldn't complain about those sRGB profiles. Remember to change USERNAME in the lines above to our actual user name. Also, if the path (where the folder containing 3DCoat) is different, adjust it accordingly too. When a new build of 3DCoat is published, we can download the file and extract it over the current 3DCoat folder in /home/USERNAME/Programs/3DCoat-2022 (or wherever we placed it before). I just delete the folder and place the new one, renamed to just 3DCoat-2022 where the old was. In this way, I don't have to change any other file in the system, nor risking any old files that stays there as a leftover causing any trouble. Just to be practical and safe. If we don't want to rename the folder, and leave it as 3DCoat-2022.49 (as an example of a possible decompressed new build folder), or move the folder where the old one unpacked was, just remember to change the path in the 3DCoat.desktop and 3DCoat.sh text files with the new one. We can also repeat Step 9 for the new updated 3DCoat version. Licensing our 3DCoat build: I omitted the licensing prompt that appears the first time we run 3DCoat. It will only be asked the fist time we run 3DCoat with our user or until we actually load the license. I just load the license downloaded from my account when prompted and that's it. We will not have to do it again after the first time, nor when a new version is installed like we did here, until it expires and we need to load a new one. 3DCoat creates some folders for us, with our user's preferences and settings in our user's Documents folder. Here, we've seen how to install the program in our user's Workstation. The configuration folders are left untouched. That's it for now. Happy 3DCoating!

Hi, I'm trying to use the Blender to 3D-Coat applink. I have this issue: When exporting from Blender to 3DCoat, the mesh is imported with the wrong Up Axis. This happens when sending "Mesh As Voxel Object", "Mesh For Auto-retopology" since there's no way to de-activate Z-Up Coordinate System in the pop-up window that appears in 3DCoat. Also, if I untick "Z-Up Coordinate System" option in 3DCoat's preferences, the Applink enables it on its own and leaves it in an enabled state. This shouldn't happen. So, how do I send meshes from Blender with the Applink and have some control over the Up axis? It seems that something is hard coded and it isn't working. Anyone successfully sending meshes into 3DCoat with the correc orientation? Thanks in advance for any support.

Thanks for the new Linux build! I truly appreciate that recently the Linux builds are out in a few days, rather than weeks or months. Thank you @SERGYI and the team for all the efforts, and particularly to make the building and releasing of the Linux version of 3DCoat on par, in practice, to the rest. Kudos!

Thank you so much for the updated Linux build! You certainly seem to have managed to improve substantially the output frequency of the Linux builds. Good job!

Hey! Thanks for the new Linux build!

OK then. Very good news! Thanks again for taking the time to explain it to us. It's really appreciated. Take care and happy coding.

Alright. Hopefully with the WSL implemented and working you'll be able to increase the cadence of the Linux builds. I don't think I have to make any mental gymnastics to understand why there might be a lot to consider for any number of reasons as to not buy a computer right now. By the way, if the matter is a question of availability or resources to procure one, would it be feasible to donate or send you one? Just an idea, but possibly doable. If this, or a similar arrangement could be made, please say so. In private if preferred, of course. You can message me and I'll send you my contact details. Thanks again, @SERGYI and the team.

@SERGYI Thanks for the explanation (and the build!!). It's very appreciated. Still, I didn't ask for a native Linux port of the application. You did offer it. And that's why I bought it in the first place. So I don't know what to say, here. Sincerely, is there any way we can help out with the Linux builds? I'll gladly help if that meant we could get parity with Windows builds, for sure. Truly. It's a bit inconvenient to have to wait long periods of time for a build with solved bugs that are already fixed (since there are available in other platforms (mostly Windows)). Those bug fixes are really helpful and not having them fixed in our software build affects our ability to work properly with our license of 3DCoat. If you will not have a machine dedicated to make those builds (I'm assuming you may have a very good reason for such apparently self imposed hindrance that escapes me) I understand that, therefore, it can be more difficult to produce new builds, yes. As stated before, I don't know how to help with that from my end. Please do tell if there's a way. Maybe WSL can finally work its magic and lets you code, compile and also have some time to rest! Maybe, then, a weekly build with the bugs fixed could do? I don't know if that'd be feasible. I imagine that while new tools are being developed, published as Beta, tested and refined, not having a machine to compile new builds daily or every few days can be more complicated for you. But certainly wouldn't hurt us to be able to also test those tools. And yet I would absolutely appreciate the bug squashing releases! They seem to appear mixed, though: new builds appear with bug fixes AND new tools or workflows implemented. Not sure how'd that work. Lately, you have managed to kill bugs at a really fast pace. The community seems engaged, reporting and testing. And that's a very good thing: the software is becoming way more stable, predictable and the users more confident: if something isn't working you fix it rather quickly! That's great! I only wish we wouldn't have to wait for months to get those bugs fixed. All that aside: In this monumentally difficult times in your country, asking for anything to you feels wrong. So I won't. I can, however, suggest or query if there's anything we can do to help improve your ability to produce builds at a cadence closer to the "main" one. That's it. I do, nonetheless, absolutely accept the situation as it is. And I can't imagine how do you manage to stay productive, innovating and fixing this fantastic software while keeping your sanity at the same time. I'm in awe. To reiterate, in synthesis, just in case: I'm NOT complaining. I accept how things are. Just expressing some concern and offering to help if that can be done. Just that. I'm grateful you are developing builds for Linux for us to enjoy. So there, thanks so much, for the software and for communicating openly the state of things around the development of your software. My best wishes to you, your team, family and friends.

Thanks for the 2022.43 Linux build! I was really waiting for that one!

Hi, here's hoping everyone is fine and safe. If at all possible, could we Linux users have a little love from the developers? It's been a while since our last hug.

@Rygaard I hope you are fine and you are just polishing the web, getting the digital stores ready, sorting out technical glitches and that kind of thing. If, on the other hand, it's your health that's at stake, here's hoping for a full and quick recovery. I'll be patiently waiting for all the good stuff along with many others as well, for sure. My best wishes to you!

I feel your... feeling. Latest Linux build available is still .34 so my keyboard has no F5 key anymore. Playing this refresh game has become a habit, part of my daily routine.