David O'Neil

(On the bright side, regarding the shadows that I agree with, the red matcap material in the default palette is set up awesomely for giving you fine sculpting feedback that you can't get with almost all the other materials. So I hope he keeps that one as-is! But the others - you are absolutely right. Way too harsh.)

Thanks. <sadface>

When you are in the sculpt room, if you 'edit shader settings' on current object, and get it to the way you like, is there a way to get that shader back into your shaders palette? Or is the only way to copy a shader to begin with, and only work on the master copy? I've looked around and couldn't find anything, but hope I missed something. Thanks!

My first thought was, "Oh No! Another Setting To Master! When Is Enough Enough!" But playing with it, it looks useful. Thanks!

Done, thanks. Also have right-click duplicated the tool into the palette, or whatever you want to call it. I've made enough mistakes with the brushes, though, that I finally understand them well enough to recreate it without a preset! Ggghhh!

For anyone who has a similar question, another (big) part of the answer is what brush you use for detailing. With the following settings, I finally feel like I have the control I want. I know that I used this brush long ago, before playing around a bunch and losing the settings. With it on low depth, big or small radius, you can 'push' the surface how you like.

Thanks!

Thanks. I'll continue working it out. In the past, I never got the pinch brush to work the same as ZBrush when in surface mode. (And when I tried live clay, I got a headache because it added density, but then trying to smooth over that density became a complete pain.) Maybe this time will be different. Do you typically bump up the resolution when you take it to surface?

Thanks. That helps a little. I'll figure it out. Right now I'm thinking ZBrush's pinch brush is the thing to use for a final pass, but I'll see if I change my mind. Frustrating!

As indicated in the following picture, do you guys have any tricks for making seams like the pretend fabric on top of fabric line be crisp and non-wavery, like mine currently is? Or is it just a matter of getting in with a fine brush and doing the equivalent of painstakingly touching each voxel? Thanks, David

It would be nice. Just to be sure you know about it, you can 'cut' your model up like the middle man on the bottom row when you create a new voxel project. Step through that model using the transform tool. That is more powerful than ZBrush's approach in some ways, and has allowed me to start posing while creating, which is something you can't really do with ZBrush from what I've seen. You can take it further than that example model, because you can make mirrored 'instances' instead of clones, and you won't have additional objects taking up all the memory that they do. Those 'instances' can be posed in relation to their instance parent. Totally cool! The only drawback to this approach is that after you have the pose you want, and merge everything, you have to manually clean up each joint a bit. But the posing flexibility is awesome, and for my purposes, beats ZBrush hands down.

Thanks.

Is it possible to traverse just the current subtree via scripting? I see 'SelectNextVolume', but I can't figure out how to get it to stop at the end of the current subtree - it goes to the end of the entire model tree. Also, where is a good documentation source for this? I saw reference to a scripting guide, but couldn't find 'SelectNextVolume' in the 'http://3dcoat.com/scripting/' documentation. Thanks, David

Thank You!

All I did was go to the sculpt room, make the sphere, draw on it, increase the resolution, and apply the gold shader. Once I went through the steps with a model to create the maps, and upon opening in Blender I saw the same pattern there in the render. I don't recall playing around with lightmaps.

Does anyone have pointers on dealing with the patterns left when sculpting (in both Voxel and Surface modes) by the triangulation routine used in 3D Coat? I have tried many things, but not the right thing, evidently. I've circled two areas which are more noticeable, but it is everywhere in the attached PNG. This was made in Voxel mode, just dragging out with the Clay brush. I did increase the density to 4x. Any increase seems to aggravate the problem. The only thing I've found to do is export an OBJ to ZBrush, smooth it there, then it looks good when brought back in. But an in-program option would be much better! Thanks, David

As an experiment, you might take that mesh object in the sculpt room, copy it, and turn the copy into a voxel object at about 5 million polys. Then retopo that object using X symmetry. 5 million polys might be too few to give good resolution, but is worth starting with for learning purposes.

Please disregard this thread. It is true that the mirror line is not accurately reflected in the UV map, as shown. I was treating the normals incorrectly in the other program. As I've deleted the terribly wonky version outlined above, and corrected the issue in the current file, I don't know if the normals in the wonky version would have compensated correctly. It may be an issue, and if so I'll repost to this when I come across it again.

Thought I'd finished Retopology stage of my project. Brought UV and normal map to another program to create animation. Found that there was a line along the symmetry plane where the material/painting was breaking sharply, and one side reflected whereas the other side didn't (and vice versa). Pounding head into wall for all newbies to this program, found that at least part of the issue is when 3D Coat Autopos, it appears that it does not use the points at the symmetry line to create the mesh from, but the two points adjacent to the symmetry line. I can disable symmetry, then go through the entire mesh and delete all the points/faces along the center, then add points at the center, then place faces on each side, but is there a better way??? Am I missing something again??? This is a heck of a 'gotcha' to find out after a considerable amount of work. Thanks, David

In all the videos I see online which discuss the masking stage of the Autopo operation, once an area is brushed, the details in the masked area can be seen because of reflectivity of the black that is being used. On my system I can't, because it is almost pure black. This makes placing strokes in the next step VERY difficult, because cavity edges cannot easily be seen. Does anyone know if there is a setting that can be changed to make my system operate like the videos? The following are screen shots of using the Freeze tool on a surface, but the Autopo operation looks just the same. Thanks, David

Don't shove it off on the newbies! (I know you probably didn't mean it that way.) That is a recipe for never getting 3D Coat widely accepted. If there had simply been a menu item that was enabled with 'Delete Decimated Copy' in the Retopo Room Retopo Menu a BUNCH of time would have been saved! Even more time would have been saved if, upon the second retopo, an additional box had came up stating that the Treat Retopo Objects as Paint Objects was enabled, and the previously decimated copy was going to be used, with the option to delete it at that stage.

For anyone who peruses this thread in the future, I believe the problem stems from the 'Edit -> Preferences -> General -> Treat Retopo Objects as Paint Objects being checked, now that I stumbled upon that in the Preferences. Arrgh!

Sorry for lack of images. Let me state it another way. I sculpted something. Went to Retopo room, which showed my object. In Vox tree selected Autopo. After Autopo-ing, if I hid everything in Vox tree and Retopo tree, there was still a decimated object left that wouldn't go away (evidently it was decimated per the settings in the Autopo operation). When I retopoed one more time using the Vox tree Autopo menu item on my original object, 3D coat used that decimated copy to retopo from, not my original sculpt object. Could not figure out how to get rid of that decimated copy, nor how to get 3D Coat to use my original object for subsequent retopos. Cursed at 3D Coat and wasted more than a day figuring out a workaround. Is that 'decimated copy' a bug or a feature? I suspect 3D Coat is programmed to use it if your sculpt is over so many quads/faces, but ???

Is what I'm seeing normal behavior? [Edit] If it is normal behavior, is there any way to delete the decimated mesh? Your reply indicates there isn't, but I want to be clear on this aspect. Thanks!

Perhaps I'm doing something wrong, or maybe it is a bug in 3D Coat. Either way, I hope someone can shed some light. I sculpt an object. Then I retopo it. Then I retopo it again, adding strokes, or whatever, to improve the mesh based upon the initial retopo. Right now on the second, and following, retopos, the retopo routine seems to be using the mesh created from the initial retopo/the retopo before that. For instance, the third retopo works off the second decimation of the initial decimated copy of the original mesh. How can I delete the decimated mesh in the retopo room, and have it start from the original object again? If I hide all the VoxTree and Retopo object meshes in the retopo room I am left with that decimated mesh, and I can't find a way to get rid of it. It looks ugly as heck, and looks uglier after retopoing. Thanks, David