Silas Merlin

Tested latest build just now. my guess is that the trouble I am having is because my 3d mouse is the original SpaceNavigator, the first model. Despite the fact that when downloading drivers, the 3dconnexion website tells me to download the current driver. It just doesn't work with 3d !Coat 2021 beta. This time I can't even tell if the navigation works, because 3d-Coat does not take into account any of the settings I have in the device's control panel. none. So, since now the settings are to be edited there and not in 3d-Coat preferences... I can't change anything Sad to say, but I am perfectly happy with 4.9 Yes, there are bugs but none of them are critical as far as I am concerned. what worries me is that the beta tools will eventually be disabled, and I rely on some of them heavily. I realize all the hard work to make 2021 happen and I do wish I could use some of the new cool things... but, I was wondering, would it be possible to make it so that when you eventually buy a 2021 license, that license enables you to keep using beta tools in 4.9 ? This is probably too much to ask ?

the measure tool could be used for that, but sadly you can't snap to measurements, which makes it unuseable for this kind of stuff. (I tried, worked around, nothing...) of course measure tool only produces straight lines, which could be another issue depending on what you are trying to do, but, the huge plus is that : -the measure tool exists in every room (except tweak?) -in tool options there is a checkbox to make the measurement "visible with other tools"

updated to latest 3dconnexion driver just now but I saw that my Spacenavigator is not listed in the supported devices, so I guess I should revert. (and there is no change to the behaviour in 2021 beta).

Untitled.mp4 In the video first I try "rotate around current pick point" as suggested. Result is desastrous as you can hopefully see. Then I press F on the forehead to use "from custom point". then, I hold the Alt key while navigating with the 3d mouse so as to show the point around which the camera is supposed to rotate (and doesn't, in my opinion). The reason "rotate around camera position" was requested as a feature was to enable navigating freely in a (large) scene without having to take care of where the brush was on the screen (going with the brush over a distant object in the scene would obviously cause huge disorientating jumps when rotating, because the camera would rotate around a point far away). In 4.9 this is the option I use all of the time, without issues (I do not have any wireless device plugged in).

I basically gave up on 2021 because I can't navigate in it with 3d mouse. I do read the release notes in hope there is something about it, but no. Still, today I decided to download latest to see if there were any undocumentated changes in that respect. Still the same for me (impossible to find settings that works. Random changes of directions, it feels like trying to remote control a large tanker, except there is someone else controlling it at the same time with a mind of their own). I see nobody else complain, so I guess it is a problem on my side. Would it please be possible for someone who has no issue with 3d mouse navigation in the beta to : - Create a scene and share it. - Post a video of them navigating in the scene, with the various camera settings (rotate around last pick point, rotate around camera, for instance) - Screen capture their 3d mouse settings in preferences and post the capture. Thank you.

do you mean in the models panel for the sculpt room ? if yes, and if it is like in 4.9, the panel needs to be showing the folder the primitive is on for the hotkey to work. For example, if you have a hotkey for sphere in the default folder, but the greebles folder happens to be open, then the hotkey for sphere won't work until you reopen the default folder.

That is correct

I like that too but the trouble with hiding the ui with TAB which is what I suppose you are doing, is that the options panel refuses to vanish under some circumstances, and it even appears when it was initially not present, in the render room for instance. I don't suppose this has changed in 2021 ?

It becomes even more useful for performing a series of actions but there are pitfalls specific to 3d-Coat such as the inability to lock the ui. It is too easy to resize a panel by mistake, which makes using mouse clicks in your voice commands somewhat unreliable. A solution is to periodically restore workspace (with a voice command). There is a discord server for the software with very reactive people helping you, (it is expected that you read the manual first). I highly recommand having a separate profile loading at startup and performing a "stop listening" action. Otherwise any voice or sound in your workspace will trigger your commands. Once VA is "not listening", you need to go into the options of your 3d-Coat profile and do something like this : In this example, if I want to perform an action, let's say "toggle symmetry", then I need to say "Computer, toggle symmetry" for the command to be recognized. This might sound cumbersome but it becomes rather natural with time, and removes the possibility of disasters occuring due to commands being performed by mistake due to ambient sounds.

Yes, but you have to set everything up yourself and there is a learning curve.

Does that work for you ? it never worked on my machine and the guy never responded on his forum thread. Besides, it is single commands, you can't batch actions with it, or can you ? I use VoiceAttack which costs 10 dollars or so.

For me too reaching out for keyboard is painful because it means letting go of wacom and 3d mouse. But, voice commands are also a way to solve some of the shortcomings of 3d-Coat. what I mean is for example in 4.9 3dc never remembers the latest alpha/stroke mode combination for the grow tool. It remembers an old combination and decides randomly every few weeks to remember a new one. A voice command to call the grow tool can solve that by performing a series of actions to set up the tool correctly. Keyboard shortcuts are nice for users with mouse/keyboard, sure, but they each do only one thing at a time.

When opening a large project in 3d-Coat by double clicking on the .3b file from windows file explorer, there is a painful, frustrating period during which the splash screen appears "always on top" and obscures a large part of the screen making it difficult/impossible to use those seconds to continue what you wanted to do in the file explorer, like opening reference files and whatnot. This seems to be a little better now in 2021 than it was in 4.9 because the loading time seems faster. However, there is a new annoyance : after the initial splash screen closes, a second one opens with all the options, which you need to close before 3d-Coat resumes loading (which may account for the seemingly faster loading time initially). These seconds could be productive, and the extra click removed...

For me it is the opposite (only tried B39 though) : The buttons don't work... I get the 3dConnexion pie menus instead. The navigation works kind of. It has a different feel from 4.9, different in a good way, except that randomly it will go off track so to speak.

can you show the issue in screenshots ?

In 2021 ? Yes and no. It was never possible to import "textured" mesh in sculptroom. However, 3d-Coat bakes the colour from textures to vertex colour, provided the textures are properly assigned. Import Process is a bit different in 2021 it seems. (no need to tick "import w/o voxelization") Go to File menu > Import for Sculpt/vertex painting/reference

there are people who don't have permission to post here, so they are reporting issues on the discord

There are people who can't post on this thread, (permissions), so they are reporting issues on the discord. I meant the other thread

There is a real problem with that toolbar though, not just a matter of being pleased or not : The problem is visibility : it has a fixed whiteish colour which does not change depending on what is behind it. what is the problem ? You can't have a light background at top of screen anymore, unless you have eagle eyes maybe, because yes the icons have a darkish outline that lets you see the vague outline of the buttons on light background. Anyway, buttons do not belong in the 3d viewport imho. The activity bar has problems too : you have to reach for it at the top right of ui... and its panel have a tendency to vanish too early. Also you need the old corresponding panels for some things in order to save clicks. For instance you can't drag and drop an image in the stencils panel of the activity bar. Now what about people who stretch their ui over several monitors ? The activity bar can't be moved... which means if you have a monitor to the right, the activity bar will be there at the far right, unpractical. 3d-Coat has a far more powerful feature than the activity bar : the ability to call panels via shortcuts (and therefore voice commands) right under your cursor. Making the activity bar redundant and very awkward. Also, I suspect an activity bar-related bug : you cannot call the smart materials panel anymore. (windows>popup>smart materials) Focusing on bug fixes is wonderful news, but the UI is more important than most bugs, imho.

To me 4.9 was just perfect with the beta tools, loved it. I guess I'll have to get used to 2021 eventually, to be able to continue using the beta tools, and take advantage of some of the additions. gizmo-less transforms is very appealing to me, as well as faces/edges/vertex selection having been added to the undo stack. The thing is that I can't just switch right now : too many crash reports here, and I can't make the buttons on my 3d-mouse work (they bring up the default 3dconnexion pie menus). Also there is a need for documentation. For instance how do you use the smart retopo ? how do you set up nodes in the render room ? the short feature preview videos are nice, but it's a pain to have to watch videos to try to guess what is being done. For now I'm sticking with 4.9 and opening 2021 occasionally to test a thing. the constructor tool turned into kitbash tool looks fun, but I was not able to make it work : as soon as I select a new piece, everything done with the previous one vanishes :/ I love the "make sculpt mesh" in the modeling room, but it is so frustrating that the sculpt mesh does not update when you move a vertex on the retopo. It seems you have to switch tools for it to update. Also to me it is only useable without subdivisions. even the first subdivision turns the shape into a useless blob : the smoothing when subdividing in sculpt room has always been way too strong, making it unuseable, you lose too much detail.

I am always weary of changing the normal map export format in Preferences, because there is the (very strong) chance that I forget I did it. In my opinion it would make more sense to be able to choose the normal map format at export (y+ or y-). (Also, an option ticked by default to add an indication of the chosen format in the exported file name) Thank you.

I have always had this issue with the grow tool : from time to time it decides somehow to save the current parameters for the tool, and it will subsequently always revert to those parameters after reopening the software.... Until weeks or months later when it will again decide to save the current parameters.... it's very annoying but today it got worse : I used tapering the other day, and now tapering is enabled each time I start 3d-Coat, no matter what. also alpha rotation sets itself to 171 instead of 0 each time I start..

To me this was impossible to achieve in 3d-Coat alone until recently with the addition of a checkbox in the beta tools section of preferences : "Treat retopo groups as objects", which is ticked by default, and needs to be unticked for the following to work. Unchecking "Treat materials as separate textures" simply had no effect, whatever the initial conditions of materials. (If you know what it did and how to make it work, please let me known since the beta tools will eventually be disabled in 4.9). Anyway, here are the steps : 1. Edit > Preferences -Untick "Treat retopo groups as objects" 2. Separate your retopo object into two or more layers (retopo objects), one per desired surface material (Use the select tool with faces selection mode, in combination with the buttons at the bottom of the retopo objects panel) 3. If you have only one object, just start baking and go to 5. If you have several object to bake, do this : -Select tool -select mode : faces -double click on object 4. -In Bake menu, tick "Bake selected only" --then, "Bake with normal map" 5. -In the baking options, untick "Treat materials as separate textures" You will instantly see the list of surface materials at bottom collapse into one. - That's it : In paint room the retopo objects containing the selected geometry will be combined into a single paint object, with one corresponding texture, but several surface materials ! If you have additional objects to bake, go back to the retopo room and select the next object.

@Emi @Lizbot So sorry to find this thead two years later and to revive it... I use 3dCoat for SL all the time. The issue you were having is still here but it is easily fixed. The trouble is as was explained in this thread : 3d-Coat is unable to export Collada correctly when there are multiple "faces" (uv-sets in retopo room, surface materials in paint room). The solution I have always used is this : -Export collada only from 3d-Coat only for simple objects that have only one surface material -In other cases always export as .obj which you then import in Blender and export as collada from there.