wilson66

I'm evaluating the workflows in 3DCoat and how to use them for my purposes (texturing mainly of 3d animated characters). I like it a lot to work in 3DCoat, created a highres character using the surface tools, retopologized it, and painted textures for the new lowres mesh after baking the normal and occlusion maps. Everything is working great, but I have a question concerning workflow. I already tried to create a retopology mesh, then go back to the Sculpt tab and add additional details to the character, adjust the retopology and bake out the maps again. So far it works. But what happens when I want to add additional details in Sculpt mode AFTER I have already painted textures for the retopology lowres mesh? The UV layout changes, can I transfer/ bake the textures I already created to that new UV layout so I only need to paint the details I added afterwards? How? EDIT: I see that it works using the Retopo Room -> Bake -> Bake Texture tool, it seems to be an obsolete tool though. Is there a better way? Preserving the paint layers from the Paint Room won't be possible either way, right?

I got it sorted out, thanks for your help guys. Followed Vladimirs instructions, and it works great now. Sorry for my late reply, there was a tragedy going on in my family, which was more important to me than Ptex or anything related.

I'm working on a model that I have built to test the 3DCoat -> Modo VRay workflow. Apart from the fact that 3DCoat destroyed one of the iterations of the model so I had to go back to an earlier version... (suddenly missing polygons, they are not hidden but there is actually a very large, irregularly shaped hole in the model after saving and re-opening the file) ... I have a question concerning retopology and symmetry. I don't really know how to work with it correctly, or there are some quirks with it. I retopologized one half of my model with activated symmetry. Works great, except for the vertices that lie on the symmetry plane. First question: to create the final, symmetrical geometry, I need to click the Commands -> Symmetry button. Right? Second question: When I move the vertices at the symmetry plane apart again using the brush tool, it looks like additional, unwanted polygons have been created. Take a look at the screenshots:

I really like the retopology tools in 3DCoat, it would be nice if you could use the Split Rings tool in the following fashion though: Right now, the tool can't split the edges (triangles created with the Cap tool) in the fashion illustrated above. You would need to do this manually using the Add/Split tool.

Yes, I use the lastest version (4.1.13). It saves out a PTEX file, yes. The problem is that VRAY does not render the PTEX texture although it is assigned to the object in Modo. This does not have to be an issue with 3DCoat, it might well be an issue with VRAY in Modo not loading the file correctly. That's what I'm trying to find out. Do you have access to a rendering application that is capable of rendering PTEX files? Can you test if PTEX files exported from 3DCoat render correctly?

Thats right, but it saves the texture as an image file. I would like to export a PTEX file and use that directly. It would probably not make any difference visually, but I'm beta-testing VRAY for Modo, and would like to know if importing a PTEX file directly actually works.

I'm beta testing the new VRay for Modo at the moment, and am trying to create a simple pTex texture in 3DCoat and render it using VRay in Modo. Its not really working though, since I am not sure about the workflow, haven't used the pTex features in 3DCoat yet. I created a simple sphere in Modo and exported in using OBJ format. Imported it into 3DCoat using the 'Paint w/ PTEX' button in the startup window. Painted a couple of strokes onto the sphere. Then I exported a PTEX file using Textures -> Export -> Color to PTEX. I then imported the new OBJ into Modo, assigned a new material and a V-Ray PTEX material, assigned the new PTEX file I exported. Unfortunately, VRAY does not render the texture. The sphere just looks white. Can anyone give me a hint how to properly work with 3DCoat and PTEX?

Ah, Ok, thanks guys for the hint. I was only trying to do it in surface mode, in voxel mode it works without problems,

When I want to create an object using the Curves tool with symmetry active, and the curves intersect at the symmetry plane, I get the following error message when trying to apply the tool: How are you supposed to create a perfectly symmetrical object using the curves tool when the curve is created more or less exactly on the symmetry plane? To extend an object where the extension needs to be created exactly on the symmetry plane? This kind of intersection should not trigger an error message like this in my opinion, makes no sense to me.

Paint Clone tool copies mumbo-jumbo: EDIT: when OBJ and maps are exported and then re-imported into the paint room cloning works correctly. Might be user error then...

Multi level sculpting should definitely implemented one way or another. I get the 3D Coat workflow, but have to say that IMO the ZBrush workflow makes more sense and - above all - produces clean surface results far easier. It sometimes is very hard in 3D Coat - or at least much harder than it is in ZBrush - to produce clean, even surfaces without bumps all over the place that cannot be smoothed away (or it takes too much time to do so).

Noise tool is very nice, I like it. But yeah, I noticed this too. The lathe tool is not oriented vertically, but still horizontally.

Its cheaper for some reason (274€ through Steam vs. 345€ through this site).

I have posted about this already in this thread. What you need to do is to activate the option 'Save Meshes As Groups' in the Modo preferences (File I/O -> Wavefront I/O. No idea about Maya, sorry). The problem is not 3D Coat, but the program you are exporting from.

I had a similar problem the other day. It turned out the problem was the program I exported the OBJ from (Modo). I simply had to activate the option 'Save Meshes as Groups' in the preferences, and the OBJ imported into 3D Coat fine with separate objects and corresponding UV sets. Depending on what App you use you might have to set a similar option before exporting.

I have a question concerning the paint room and imported OBJs. I have a character that was modeled in Modo, and would like to texture it in 3D Coat. Import works fine, but I don't really understand how to import the separate objects into 3D Coat correctly, or how to set this up in Modo prior to export. What I mean is that upon import, 3D Coat displays all the materials assigned in Modo as UV sets (import window, where you can define the texture resolution for each material/ UV set). This makes sense to me. I would like to have each separate object from Modo as a separate object in 3D Coat. This is where things start to not make sense to me anymore. In 3D Coat, I have a long list of objects in the Objects list, names are those of the separate objects in Modo. I would like to be able to hide those objects separately so I can paint on them more conveniently, they partly overlap. When I click on the little eye icons in the Objects list to hide them, this doesn't work correctly. Most of the eye icons next to the object layers don't have any effect at all, and those that have an effect hide parts of the character that don't correspond to the actual separate objects. One of the eye icons, for example, hides the head, neck and body all at once, although they are actually separate objects that I'd like to able to hide separately. Maybe someone can shed some light on this. Thanks! EDIT: I just realised that everything works as expected when I import the character in Collada format.

I have an object in surface mode with symmetry active, and want to extend it using the Curves tool. 3D Coat has problems doing this when the curves are near the symmetry plane and overlap. I don't really get why this is, because extending a symmetrical object on the center line seems like a very regular and obvious operation to me. Is there some setting/ preference that I can adjust? EDIT: I have noticed that I can just temporarily deactivate symmetry, apply the curves tool, then re-activate symmetry again. I don't see why this should be necessary though.

Sure, you can do it using ptex. The thing with ptex is though that the target (rendering) application needs to support it, its no use if you paint using ptex and the app you need to render in afterwards can't read it. Also, you must be aware that ptex is not editable in an image editing program like Photoshop, you are limiting yourself to the painting tools available in the 3D app. You can bake the colors to UV maps in 3DCoat, but then you need to create UVs first of course. Ptex also only works with quads currently. I like your house model btw, really nice.

Hi Andrew, very impressed with your fast response. You can download the scene file here: https://www.dropbox.com/s/dubagk0k2hj9hxf/3dcoat_scene_file.zip Its a simple test scene. As you can see, there are a couple of blue retopo polygons that somehow cause issues. Just load the scene, switch to the retopo room, then click the 'Mark Seams' button.

3D Coat 4.0.15D crashes each time I click the 'Mark Seam' button in the retopo room: https://www.dropbox.com/s/raf1lt9umewmf00/crash.png EDIT: Issue resolved (kind of). Some of the polygons of the retopo object had a different color (vertices might not have merged correctly). I deleted those polygons and created new ones using the quad tool. Marking the seams works without causing a crash now.

Would it be possible to integrate an option to deactivate the new right-click menu? Or is this already possible? If so, how? This feature really interferes with the viewport brush radius/ intensity when using a Wacom (also in 4.0.15B).

That was it. Thanks for your fast reply!

I'm creating a character in 3D Coat from scratch, and its working out very well (thanks to Andrew Shpagin for this great application!). I'm creating the character in surface mode, and have notived a certain behavior using the move tool. I'm not sure if this is supposed to work this way or the behavior can be edited somewhere (in that case I would be thankful for a hint). I have several layers in the VoxTree that partly overlap. When I use the move tool on one of the layers and touch another layer in front or behind it while holding down the mouse / pen button (release the mouse/ pen button while it hovers over that second, unselected layer), the other layer is automatically selected in the VoxTree. I then have to re-select the layer I actually want to edit again. Is this expected behavior, or some small bug? Thanks!

Sorry that I re-activate this old thread, but I have the same problem Erik had. Sub-Objects method to hide parts of an object doesn't work for me. The sub-objects are displayed in the list, but clicking the eye icons next to them doesn't have any effect.There is an object labelled 'Default', when I click the eye icon next to it the entire object is hidden. None of the other eye icons have any effect. Using the hide tool in the paint room is OK, but too cumbersome. 3D Coat IMO needs the option to define selection groups and a separate list to re-select and hide them. I have an object with several geometry groups that overlap, its not fun to texture this the way it is now. EDIT I also can't paint with a material in the texture editor? Is this true?

Yes, it is: http://community.thefoundry.co.uk/store/plugins/meshfusion/