Callak

I'm using the latest version released from Steam: 4.9.60.

Hmm, maybe I don't understand how to use the with spacing properly, but I experimented with using "Paint along spline" with strips a little, and I think I can accomplish some of what I need that way for now. I still think this might be a bug though, unless someone can show me what I'm doing wrong.

So, I've been trying to use "Paint along spline" with the "with spacing" option turned on, spacing is set to %100, I've tried %150 and %200. But when I hit enter, nothing happens. If I turn off "With spacing" it works fine. But for what I'm trying to do I need to adjust the spacing between brush dots, rather than create a stroke. Is this a bug, or am I doing something incorrectly?

I have patches I have painted, that have too much metalness compared to the surrounding areas, because I passed over them in my painting more than once, and made them really strong in metalness. I would like to carefully wipe some of that too much metalness away without affecting the height or color of the region. I can experiment with the options you are showing me. I'll let you know what I accomplish.

Is there a way to increase or reduce existing metalness? I don't see the option in Color Operations.

Hmm, if I clean up the overlaps, I'm going to loose much of the flow of the texture over the body, not only that, but this model is made up of several different materials, each with their own set of UV maps and textures assigned to them so they will work on the end platform I'm making this for ( Second Life ). It's obvious that my method here for accomplishing a flowing organic looking texture across the body is not going to work at least in 3D Coat. And I feel like there is no way this could have been overlooked in the development of 3D coat, so I was hoping, or wondering if there was a completely different workflow I can examine to make it look this good. I've seen several videos now on painting in a general area, but none on making a flowing texture without seams. Problem is that if I try to use a stencil in UV mode with properly laid out UV maps, I'm going to have seams all over the place, and there doesn't seem to be a good way to make the stencils flow into finer or larger scale throughout the body, without stopping adjusting the scale by hand, and then painting it again, and then somehow editing it so the different size sections meet up and look natural.

Then, is there a better way to accomplish this continuous texture effect?

Well I did manage to import the distorted map, I just had it too big, and had to force it the first time in the import settings, however, it took too long because of the size, so I shrank down the imported UV map..... now the question is.... Can I use two UV Maps? One just for the stencils and one for the painting of the texture?

One thing I have had a continued issue understanding is how you paint a neat continuously flowing texture onto an organic surface, attached is similar to what I mean. This image was created in blender by creating a flat repeating texture, and then taking a copy the original UV unwrap, stitching it back together, and distorting parts of it to get the texture to shrink or grow in scale where smaller scales or larger ones need to be, this created a nice flow to the texture that looks like natural scales, this obviously created a lot of overlaps and a really bizarre looking UV map, but it works for getting the texture to flow around the body. I thought there might be a way in 3D coat to make the stencil use this UV for it's lay out while paint to the original UV map. However, 3D coat didn't like it at all, and basically re automapped the whole thing. So, if I can't do that, really I wonder what use the UV map mode of the stencils are? Also if I can't do it this way, how do you get this kind of result in 3D coat without using a custom UV map just for the stencils? Every time I try to use the stencils to paint a scale pattern, no matter what kind of other mode I use, I can't get it to flow together nicely, I end up with various sized splotches and muddy mixes.

Uhh, nevermind, I think this is a displacement node that 3D Coat created with the smart texture I'm using.

I'm having a bit of an issue I don't understand after loading an object back into Blender through the applink. The model itself looks fine, but the render is distorted. Images attached. Not sure if this is a problem with the Alpha version of Blender I had to use to get the applink to work, or a problem with the applink. Blender version 2.92.0 Alpha, 3D coat version 4.9.60.

It's hard to keep hope sometimes, but I manage. Thanks for the well wishes though!

Hello! I started a career many years ago, as a computer programmer. I achieved a job working for a home improvement company for nine years, but found that my creative desires in that job were not being fulfilled. Towards the end of that job, I started to stress, and become depressed. When I requested a leave of absence to deal with what I felt was a building mental break down, they decided to let me go. Throughout my education, and later my career as a programmer, I often thought about getting into 3D modelling, and animation. I often experimented with several programs over the years, and I wasn't too bad, but not the greatest either. First 3D Max, because that was what the school I went to after I was fired used for training. Later Maya, and now Blender. Eventually I found the Second Life simulators, which allowed me to practice and improve my skills and make a little money on the side doing it. Now, I'm working on my first full mesh playable creature. Initially I intend to just make Second Life avatars, but once I am efficient at it in Second Life, I intend to apply my skills to other mediums. I bought 3D coat consumer in the hopes of finding an efficient way to generate normal maps for my creatures. I'm not the best at it yet, but I keep practicing and experimenting with it, and finding it very very powerful, I'm just clumsy with it yet. Give me time though, and I'll improve. Maybe some day I will actually make my own game. One can hope right?

Ok, no, that was not really what I was trying to do, but the end goal was to make a detailed Normal map anyway, and I've discovered I was going about it all wrong. Thought I needed to create the detail in 3D like I would in blender, and then bake it to a normal map. The good news is, 3DCoat can just paint a normal map! And, stencils do work in UV Map mode in the paint room. But here is a problem I have over and over. Stencil size. Is there any way to save a stencil size and recall it? For one, I keep working on painting my work close up, and then trying to manipulate the project, and accidently changing the stencil size because the stencil dialog is up. It would be nice if there was a way to manipulate the project with the stencil dialog up, instead of having to close it every time I want to move the project around. Second, I'm going to want to use different stencil sizes for different parts of the project, but it's very difficult to get the sizes to match up again if I want to return to paint regions I had already worked on. Would you have any advice for me about this? Edit: Fixed the manipulation problem, just hold Alt. :p

Yes that is the video I looked at. Well dang, I guess that explains why it doesn't work. Is there any video you can think of that shows a good way to sculpt an ongoing contiguous pattern, like scales across a complex character then? Every time I try to use the projection methods, I end up making it very muddy in places where one part of my painting meets another part. I was hoping using UVs for sculpting would reduce a patchy looking result due to me not getting the scale of the stencil to match the patch right next to it very well.

I've been trying to use a repeating tial scale stencil to create scales on a dragon, I can get them to work in the projection modes, but I can never make them look very contiguous across the surface of the model in any of the non UV projection modes. When I use the UV mapped mode, and I change the scale of the stencil, it shows me exactly where I want the stencil to lie mapped nicely across the paint room object. But when I actually go to try to sculpt it in the sculpt room, all I get is a rough sandy output that doesn't seem to match the stencil showing on the paint object. Is there a video that shows how to use stencils in UV mode? I did find videos on how to use the projected ones, but those don't seem to cover UV mode at all.

I got that to work, thank you.

At first I tried this with my complex model I've been trying to work with, and it would show up in every window but the sculpt window. I also tried it with a basic starter block to see if it was a problem with my model, the same thing happened, the model showed up in every window accept the sculpt window. This is unfortunate, because I was trying to do some surface sculpting. I have tried hiding and unhiding layers to no effect. Am I doing something wrong? Or is this a bug? I'm currently using Blender 2.92 with 3D Coat 4.9.60.

Just an update, I deleted Exchange_folder.txt, and now everything is working perfectly, thanks again.

Well it worked once with the directory set correctly, then I decided to just try 2.91 once to see if that would work, and just like you said, it has problems, it through out a script error. However once I went back to 2.92 to try it again, ( I canceled out of the import dialog the first time ) and 3D-coat wouldn't respond to the link anymore. Did I mess something up by trying it with 2.91?

Ahhh, I got it to work. I wasn't supposed to export to the program directory, but the Documents\3D-CoatV4\Exchange directory! It's not made clear where to export to in the setup videos. Thanks anyway for your help!

I just tried 2.92. Blender creates an import.txt file in the D:\Program Files (x86)\Steam\steamapps\common\3d-coat\Exchange\Blender folder I created for it, but 3d-coat doesn't seem to respond to the applink. The 2.91 also created this file.

I don't think I have access to that version, even downloading directly from blenders index, the highest version available there is 2.91. Same with the steam beta opt ins.

Hello! I originally bought 3dcoat on steam. It seemed to work fine for me accept for now, the blender applink functionality doesn't seem to work for me. I already asked about this in the applink testing forum already, however, I thought I should try just downloading 3Dcoat directly from the site to see if the applink works with that version, however, I can't seem to figure out how to install the key to upgrade to the consumer version like I have on steam. I have retrieved the key, I just can't figure out where to put it in 3Dcoat. Can someone give me a hand with that?