Innovine

Any chance we could get a dedicated tool for this kind of work? Something that would carve or add, while clamping to a fixed height or depth? I imagine something camera relative, with a tool option for max depth, or max height, and then when you use the tool, each stroke raises or lowers the surface based on the pen pressure, until the max height/depth is reached, and clamps it at that value... This might be a valuable additien to many tools, now that I think about it. I often get stuff which carves out way too deep holes, or rapidly builds really big, ugly bumps

Thanks Carlosan. "Rotate around current pick point" is the one I wanted. If the mouse is over a particular point on the model, and you press a numpad button, that point will become the new view center.

Thanks, I am making some progress, but about making a BW image... that's kind of the point of doing the sculpt.. I want to sculpt the height data so I can export a normal and heightmap. Looks to me like @micro26 is sculpting directly on top of the texture, which is exactly what I want to achieve.

Thanks, but I might need a few more details on what to do here. I imported a cube mesh into the paint room and made a smart material with the texture, applied it with UV mapping, and it looks totally ok. But then I go to sculpt room and choose Paint Mesh -> Sculpt Mesh. I get the cube into the sculpt room, but it has no texture.

There's no way to convert the texture to vertex colors, like a reverse of baking?

I already have an albedo map, like this: How can I put this onto a sculpt object, so I can use the sculpt tools to create a normal map (carving out the grout between bricks, etc) so I can then bake and export just the normal map? I need to be able to see the texture while I sculpt. Is it possible to apply a texture to a flat sculpt object?

What determines the camera position when pressing Numpad to snap the view to an axis? Didn't it center on the mouse position in 4.8, I vaguely remember you could kind of pan by hitting the same key repeatedly and moving the mouse? My 4.9 just seems to jump to some fixed position. Is there an option that controls this behavior somehow?

Thanks Carlosan, but I don't think that's what I'm looking for. Here is a screenshot from Blender: On the left you can see the feature I'm looking for. The stone texture is created in another program and imported. All I am doing here is moving the UV islands around on top of that texture, to get the look I want on my model (right).

Is it possible to import a texture created in a different program, and then unwrap my object and position its UV islands on that texture?

I would like to model something a bit like this: Is there any way to restrict the heigh or depth of the sculpt, so going over the same areas doesn't alter the model further? Any of the tools I've worked with so far continue to make taller blobs or deeper holes, and when I run the tool over the same area again it cuts/builds ever higher or deeper. Can I just lock the depth/height of a tool so once I go over an area it won't have any effect if I go over it again? Like painting in greyscale, with 100% opacity, only for sculpt height? Would it be easier to create a greyscale in photoshop and use it as a stencil in 3d coat, or similar?

Sometimes when I bake my sculpt to my retopo mesh, when I go to the paint room there's a little grey spot where the baking cage was inside or outside my mesh. How can I touch this up manually in the paint room?

Even when they should be there, the seams should not be hidden by them.

Any chance of an update? Still liking it? I see the Orange 10 is on sale right now and am about ready to pull the trigger. Have you gotten further with third-party resins yet?

Ahh, got you, I thought you only needed to tile on the horizontal plane. Sounds like 3d coat isn't the right tool for this job then.

Push the middle points around a bit, leave the 8 points of the flattened cube on the corners, of course. That's the point? Let me try and clarify... create the retopo first, from a primitive. Then when you go to sculpt room and import, it exactly fills the retopo mesh (to the limits of the layer resolution, which you can crank up a bit). You now have a flattened, perfect cube in retopo room, and the same shape in sculpt (with slightly rounded edges). Now if you route out some areas in sculpt, when you go back to retopo you can subdivide the cube and move the inner points to match the routed areas. Just using the Split Rings tool will snap to the surface and you get nice alignments very easily. The edges of the cube will still be perfectly in place, and will still tile seamlessly. You don't move those. If you need to, you can subdivide the edges and use the transform tool to move them up and down. It's probably not 3dcoats strong point, but I don't see offhand why this wouldn't work. Might even be an advantage to model the tiles in blender, and extrude the faces, then import those as both retopo and sculpt objects, and add small normal map details to the sculpt, and bake, I've been experimenting with this direction.

I'm fairly new to 3d coat so forgive if I'm off here.. but have you tried creating a flattened cube in the retopo room from its cube primitive FIRST, then going to the sculpt room and importing the retopo object to the sculpt room? This'll give you the exact right dimensions, and your retopo object now matches the sculpt object exactly. You can then do some cuts with limited depth, and go back to the retopo room and either bake the high poly detail into the normals, or you can use split ring tool to subdivide the retopo object, select individual faces and transform them, and generally push the points around a bit?

You can select all edges and choose Clear Sharp, if that's your goal. I can't say why they are pink now, and not before. Models I import from blender frequently have this.

Not what i mean... Even without rotation, the movement is much faster in Orthographic. I think it is not using the distance to the model. For the same panning input, it does not matter where the model is, if it is near or far, it will move from one side of the screen to another with the same amount of input pressure. This is experienced as more rapid panning motion the further away the object is. In Perspective, it takes more and more panning input to move the model the further from the camera it gets. This feels natural. I am not talking about rotation at all. There's also no FROM CURSOR option..? Did you mean "rotation around current pick point" ?

Do you notice in general that the camera movement in Perspective mode is slower than in Orthographic?

What I'm trying to do is get the low poly into retopo, then a copy into sculpt room to add some surface detailing, and bake that back to a normal mesh on the retopo object. It'd be nice if the sculpt looked like the retopo object when I start, then I'll add minor detail and add scratches and dents and rivets, etc

I am modelling in blender, and importing into the retopo room. I see that the edges show up pink, indicating that they are sharp. If I take the retopo mesh to the sculpt room, the results are definitely not sharp. If I put an edge split modifier on in blender, the edges come out sharp in the sculpt room, but I get weird ripple artifacts in many places. Can someone please let me know the correct way to model say a cylinder in blender, and import into retopo room and then to sculpt room, so that the circular edges are shown as sharp as possible, while the straight ones are smoothed.

Might be, but I haven't noticed any issues with it in Unity or Blender. And besides, I don't think the device knows whether I'm in perspective or orthographic mode :/ Without restarting, I tested 3d coat 4.8 and it worked OK. I then restarted my computer and it works in 4.9 OK...

My SpaceMouse Pro has not felt right since i switched to 4.9. Right now, the camera seems to move very slowly on the 3d coat world Z axis. when in Perspective mode. It moves ok on the other axis. The movement speeds in the SpaceMouse settings, and the modulation rates in the 3d coat preferences are all set the same. Any suggestion why it seems about 10 times too slow to move on the world Z axis, and only when in Perspective? It is fine in Orthographic.

It docks and works as expected for a while. I haven't noticed the exact trigger yet, but after a while I'll go to the side panel to use some symmetry option, and its gone. There's just the orange Symmetry tab, and all the options under it are no longer displayed. Definitely feels like a bug

One question which was missed... if you were sculpting something like this, would you be paying extreme care to the use of layers as you went along, or would you leave most of that for later?