Ascensi

Not sure what it was, but I resolved my issue. I think after renaming the UVs/surface materials in 3DCoat, when I imported back into zbrush, somehow the UVs got messed up. Zbrush was throwing some weird glitches with UVs that I noticed later but it was a corrupted exported from zbrush and later examined in Character Creator and RizomUV. It might be material name length, zbrush bug or something else maybe created by 3DCoat, but anyway it's resolved.

I have a problem with a UDIM mesh Export from 3DCoat v 23.40 initially created in RisomUV, brought in 3DCoat. I've painted with no problem but the export destroys the UDIM. I created the 3DCoat project with "Import Tiles as UV Sets" and "treat materials as separate textures" but when I export, it merges some UVs within Reallusion's character creator, and when imported into RizomUV it pops up with the warning as seen in the attached image and won't even import back into RizomUV. The UVs already had unique names and I also uniquely renamed the materials but the result is the same. Maybe this is a bug?

I do choose "treat as separate materials". Do you mean that "import tiles as UV sets" is supposed to be checked??? they aren't supposed to be tiling textures so that name would be confusing to use. If it said import as UDIM UV sets, that would make more sense. Is "treat as separate materials what you meant? ok so I just used import tiles as UV sets" that seemed to work. Maybe we can get that name changed as "tiling" commonly is associated with tiling textures. Either import UV tiles as clamped UVs or import as UDIM UV sets would be more intuitive. Thanks for your help Carlosan!

No, all within the UDIM blocks (7 horizontal) In Zbrush it looks like this, not a single cross over to the eye socket. I used to have this kind of problem with native Reallusion Characters, painting would happen in multiple locations but I haven't tried it since. I'll have to use a different painting app if I can't get past this, and I'd rather not. I'll share my model with Andrew to see if he can find the problem.

Anyone know why this happens? If I paint in one area, it paints in another area at the same time? UVs are not overlapped and the brush size is small and not to close to the area. Here is an example. If I paint on the size, the painting is also displayed in the eye socket. I've tried this in PPP mode and vertex mode. I've also tried this in Zbrush, Zbrush has no problem. In 3DCoat, I am also not using "project through"

I don't know what you're trying to share with me as I've been working with subdivision approach for years, just haven't tried tessellation aproach until now. There are two points of interest I am bringing to attention. 1. is the model is physically smoothed when it doesn't need to be, I've done this in Zbrush for example : this is subdivision with no physical smoothing although at this point I only applied a color map and used the sculpt brush... it KEEPS the sharp corners rather than rounding them as I've explained above with the image. 2. my other point or question that I'm asking if it might be a bug is that, Andrew made it sound in the past that painting displacement detail is now possible using tessellation. I've had no problem painting with tessellation in Unity using Voxeland for example, getting high quality because the higher tessellation levels give you the pixels to displace. It is understandable with distanced based tessellation in theory you'd have to paint close range to get the resolution to paint the details but it's likely that the resolution doesn't need to be rendered on screen but instead is pre calculated as if there is high resolution during painting. I know the workflow how to paint with displacement in PPP, it's just that it seems painting with tessellation is still no possible to get the details. Try testing with a Photogrammetry based material with tessellation and you will see what I mean. Anyway, back to the rounded corners, so if it's set to no smoothing, and it physically smoothes the model anyway, would you say this is a bug? Also @Carlosan does ptex mode already use real-time subdivisions using Pixar's Opensubdiv?

In v 2023.33 using PPP mode with subdivisions and no smoothing seems to smooth when subdividing anyway.. I'm trying to use a surface plane to paint but the corners get physically smoothed, is this a bug or does it only apply to UV smoothing? I've also tried creating a project without using subdivision like Andrew suggested to me long ago and that I've requested to use it to paint before that but it doesn't displace any detail, it does displace the low poly verts only. I thought if I could paint with just using high tessellation with show displacement, I'd get amazing performance like a game and I know this is possible in Unity - no subdivisions needed. So are some of these functions now broken? ie 1. no smoothing still causes physical smoothing 2. Painting with Displacement smart materials doesn't displace with any detail when using tessellation but at least it doesn't smooth/round the corners of a plane. Would anyone have any insights to this?

awesome, thanks! I'll give that a shot! update: Everything works again! thanks for your help.

is there a video showing how to "convert older materials (pre 4.5) ? it doesn't allow me to select folders or files and if it only work when using the "install extension" it doesn't work. I've tried with both older mat options check marked and even individually, it doesn't change anything in the installation process. Also choosing the migrate process, I don't have any folders to migrate from at this time, only .3dcpack's that I need to restore!

i would have done that but I'm mobile and all i have are the backup files from my other computer. I'll probably do that next time with just copying the folders. My computer at home also has a new install also using Win 11, so I'll see if it's a problem there when I get back. Also thanks for your suggestion about installing using an older version that works, makes sense, good strategy.

***Smart materials emergency*** - it wont install material backups I have since uninstalled, deleted the folders under users and programs, reinstalled as admin with anti-virus disabled. When I try to install materials backups that are a couple Gb in size, after only a few seconds it immediately asks me to restart and when I do, nothing has been installed. What's going on? I've tried several recent versions ie; 2023.32 29, 26 etc. Using Win 11, RTX 4090, 32 GB host ram -392 GB free. Windows 11 has latest updates. I think the coding should be locked/secured when features work and if you guys create anything new either it works or the other code prevents it from working due to a compatibility issue -if possible, just to guarantee known/common features to work.

I've noticed that smart materials has not yet been fully realized. 1. Please allow smart materials setup for materials like SSS, emissive etc to write to it's own locked layer 2. Refraction shader options should be assignable within Smart material - yes I understand that its a post process and doesn't create the textures to fully create the same effect to be used outside 3DCoat, but at least it should be remembered and written with smart materials. 3. I hope you will add procedural animation as an overlay that can be baked into a gif, mp4 or APNG etc that can have loop enabled while texturizing etc.

I found the process so you don't have to reimport textures or reapply subdivision or create extra layers that need to be merged. 1.Go in sculpt room and make an instance by choosing "clone instance" in the sculpt tree and it creates a new layer, although it wont be visible yet move it out of the way of the original with the transform. On the Left vertical menu, choose "import" (make sure "import to separate instances" is selected) then choose "select mesh" it will allow you to import the .3B project file. Example: I don't know why this kind of tutorial doesn't exist, I have been looking for a while. In other programs it's simple, just use the transform + control or alt to drag out an instance, there maybe too many menu options/steps to do a simple task. Ptex options for example should not even be displayed in the paint room unless using Ptex or are wanting to convert to it unless the paint room is able to handle many different types of paint projects in a single session. @Andrew Shpagin maybe you can make the transform tool in the rooms have the option to duplicate the model while holding down control? So thankful at least that I was able to make copies in a complete state.

Thanks, I've understood this for a while but I'm looking to do it within 3DCoat because if I did import the model, how would I get it to share the same material/layers rather than try to import more textures or show blank? I was also trying to figure out how to copy and paste the UV from the original to the clone, simple concepts like selecting the surface material of one in paint room, right click and copying then select the other surface material to paste doesn't seem to exist.

After working on a model in paint room and realized I need to have it cloned. Is it possible to Duplicate the mesh while in paint, tweak, or modeling room and bring it back to paint? I need to create duplicates but share one UV

Had this same issue in Ptex painting mode (V 2023.29) I resolved it by toggling between windowsink and wacom, using apply button each time.

In ptex mode, Wacom doesn't work, it shows symmetry or clone like effect when I click to paint. I switched to windowsink in preferences and that works, I just now switched back to wacom and now it's working. Maybe all these tools should internally have a quick toggle off and on/switch and or to another device and back if this keeps happening? Some of these issues may just be related to GPU wakeup because I (and others) have similar uses having to toggle cloth/rigid physics in iClone/CC4 in order to get it working or reset it.

Batch import Textures with user specified naming convention ie; _nm or nm_ _disp or disp_ etc for quick Smart Material database creation.

Revolutionary Holographic Display Plugin - Users would only need to buy a special/cheap refractive lens that Microlux creates to apply to their LED display. 3DCoat plugin would project 48 camera angles to the entire display like a sprite sheet (many little displays tiled but represent different camera angles) The Microlux thin Film applied to the display decodes the individual tiles based on the user's viewing angle so looking around the corner on their Monitor is possible. Two render modes should be possible: 1. full screen render of just the viewport 2. UI & Viewport Render. This would be the viewing result of their own monitor I've created a post about this years ago. Such a plugin could also remedy VR compatibility.

Lets take this a step further. We need basic VR HMD support at least but the future for building will be the use of VR Treadmills so you can walk in and around your creations to observe. There is one tool that gives us basic HMD support and that is Vorpx. I don't know how the plugin will work today but years ago when I first posted about VR support with Vorpx, it didn't allow head tracking, it was basically like looking at your monitor inside a VR display. I also offered a revolutionary display conversion idea to allow 3DCoat to have holographic functionality for any LED monitor with a Microlux thin sheet plastic film applied to it so users/audience can view their creations as if looking around the corner via head movement. People wont need VR to have this viewing realism.

Since when? and which one? I can have parts off screen and the rendering of those parts are still active, there is no performance acceleration. You might be thinking about distance base or "clipping". If the method I described was used we'd get up to 300 FPS or more if the default performance was 60-70 fps for example. You would know the difference because we'd get sudden leaps in performance if big chunks were suddenly hidden if another object was blocking the camera view.

I've suggested a GPU based occlusion and frustum culling system, this is how game engines typically work. So basically if 3DCoat utilized something like this, it would only render/calculate what the camera can actually see and any model hiding behind another that is in front of the camera isn't rendered/displayed.

I'm trying to revive new awareness to VDM, I recently created a color VDM from a photoscan and hope 3DCoat's smart material will be upgraded to work with Vector maps while in microvertex mode. Andrew currently has his hands full with other priorities but I hope he will find the time soon to update it because it could mean we all could paint with photo scan VDM and other experiments soon! I'll keep working on more Color VDM materials in the mean time. Growing Vector D (2).mp4

Importing a VDM in micro displacement project does not seem to work properly as if it doesn't accept data from a particular color channel(s) I'm also reporting this to Andrew but he's got a large workload ahead of him. I was looking on the forum trying to see what i might be doing wrong.