Scott

Vue should support .Obj and .LWO, thus it should work ok with objects made in 3DC.

So far Alpha 30 is excellent for myself, the performance is substantially better... Also increasing resolution on VS is almost instant now.... Much Better! Kudos Andrew!

I do hope that customization will suit all users. For example the Left Toolbar with Icons, is the single ugliest feature of 3DC at the moment, and it's the one feature that still makes me think I'm using a toy program rather than a consistently clean and professional application, for which I'm used to. Anyway i look forward to some screenshots and some upcoming discussions on the implementation. Keep up the good work Arkanis

1) Drag and Drop GUI elements. 2) Text Icon Only Text and Icon 3) Customizable Presets that can be saved in example XML formats to share with community. Silo, Modo and C4D are the leaders in GUI configuration. With all of them giving me an acceptable level of control, with possibly Modo as not quite as evolved yet. GUI Color and Keyboard configuration is already really good and i already work with a nice dark blue GUI, i just wish to customize the position and placing of toolbars and tools. 4) As above Expert Mode, which would allow uncluttered viewport and hide all toolbars unless i explicitly tell it not too. 5) MultiMonitor support, on occasions i like to have a certain tool like color palette on a 2nd monitor. I guess the idea is the power needs to be given to the user for controlling their interface, as everyone wants a different thing. But this would also allow an exchange of UI's between users to find a nice setup for all.

If so it sounds like it was an ISP, Proxy Cache problem as suggested previously... you should check to see if your ISP is using Proxies for HTTP: It's annoying when ISP's use this system. PS. Andrew latest builds seem to be "hanging" a lot for me... DX version seems to become unresponsive all of a sudden.. I will investigate further... Multithreading does help with the large brushes however!!

Woohoo, Wow, I only mentioned it a few days back, Thankyou very much for your efforts on the MT. Looking forward to trying the next release.

The fluidity at 30+million polygons on my machine is excellent, which is quite a surprise and easily tops everyone else. But it's really the workflow in MB sculpting cannot be beat however...The simplicity of it's tools means i only generally need 1 to 3 brushes to sculpt generally, and maybe adjust the curve every now and then on them. I also for example use an Intuos3, So i have my "B" and "Shift-B" for Brush Size/Strength set to a single Wacom Express key, So i can change them really easily with my left thumb pressing either B or shift and B while dragging my pen, it's so intuitive this way and such a pleasure to use. 3DC and ZB are much more fully featured, MB is just such a pleasure to use for it's performance and the speed at which i use it. I agree that 3DC has better painting already, I'm not really keen on Mudbox painting tools at all.. 3DC and Bodypaint still give a much better experience in this area. 3DC still needs a few little things for me to love it workflow wise, but it's almost there feature wise already. The price of MB however is too steep considering the competition, and I don't like the fact that MBs an Autodesk program now....

Mudbox 2009 Trial Version is out now.. http://usa.autodesk.com/adsk/servlet/mform...amp;id=10707843

Thanks Andrew it's good to know you are aware of it... I have noticed the later DX builds are slower than the OGL builds like others. So it's nice to know that possibly in late betas that MT code may help with speed. As it is it's still quite fast with only 1 CPU, But i know MT all code can be quite nightmarish to code, but i would say it's important for final release of 3.0. Thanks..

Indeed, but all sculpting applications currently use the CPU for calcs and videocard for rendering, CPU is still a large reason why the speed of painting/sculpting with a large brush will slow it down... Modo for example has Multithreaded painting/sculpting as does Mudbox, as did Andrew.... Obviously if my CPU is hitting 25% it could be faster using more CPU's.. Anyway Andrew did MT other parts of 3DC, just wondering if Volumetric will be done anytime soon... Cheers,

Yeah i just mean Multithreading not anything CUDA enabled. Multithreading gives me about 5x better performance in ZBrush, their is obviously options in 3DC for Multithreading, but it's not working in current builds. I'm wondering if this is known by Andrew.... I.e perhaps he hasn't gotten around to multithreading volumetric, as it's always time consuming working on MT. But it would be nice to know that speed can still be massively improved on via using 3 more of my CPU's like other sculpting software. Technically MT should come well before CUDA enhancements. But being Alpha i just thought I'd check if it was known.

Tried asking before, but is 3DC meant to be Multithreaded as it's only using 25% of my CPU.. Is Volumetric Multithreading planned at a later stage? ZBrush for example uses 100%

The current releases are looking excellent on the volumetric side, however I just had a hard reset caused by low memory, I increased resolution 3 or 4 times and basically I watched it climb from 700Mb to 2.5Gb+ before "Fatal Error" dialog box and Windows is low on memory message, after that it required a reset. It would be nice to see a warning or a limit being set to stop this from happening. Something like Max Polycount. Also does 3DC have masking for Voxels? (I'm not in front of that PC to test after crash) And can this be used to lower the memory footprint in the future? I know Mudbox and ZB both use Masking as a way of lowering the memory needed, I.e mask out part of the object and "remove" or "Hide" and only the visible polys/voxels will take up RAM, the rest is written to a temp file on the HDD until it's needed again. I'm wondering if this is something 3DC can still improve on? Also i notice that 3DC only uses 25% of my Quadcore CPU system when doing anything is MP working in the current releases. Is 3DC well threaded? For example Modo is very slow with painting/sculpting unless "Threaded Optimization" is used. Does 3DC have both threaded rendering and painting/volumetric tools that are Multithreaded? It would be nice to think that 3DC could still get faster with Multithreading and some 64bit and CUDA enhancements in final builds too. But it's been amazing progress, I hope some customization and workflow issues are addressed over the 3.0 cycle (but so far it's definitely starting to look like a ZB, MB beater in many areas.) Well done to Andrew and community, I look forward to watching the continual updates on 3.0. Keep up the good work!.. PS. I also occasionally notice some problems with the RedWax shader (I like it a lot) when sculpting with shadows, and a few other minor bugs i will track down. PPS..I would also love to be able to "Center Object" with a selected shortcut Key.

Yeah you won't find anything about CUDA in any Nvidia and Adobe press report, i laughed when reading that story, about as accurate as the Inquirer. The requirements only require OGL2 and Pixel Shader 2 or higher, this is there reason for "GPU Acceleration" not CUDA. There is however some Filters from the SDK that Nvidia developers have sped-up via CUDA, but they have been free for many months.

I don't believe Adobe is using CUDA for their current products. "GPU Acceleration" can mean a number of things and it's unlikely someone as large as Adobe would support a Nvidia 8xxx series or above, OGL acceleration or hardware overlay and features like that are likely to be what Adobe are touting as amazing tech... as it would limit Adobes mainstream customers... (Ati customers) I cannot find CUDA mentioned anywhere, So i think it's way too early for Adobe to implement it. Andrew likely has more to gain on the volumetric side as CUDA can enhance things a lot on this side with CUDA, but only he will know more on that.

Is the download link for the new build still: http://www.3d-coat.com/files/3d-Coat-3-00-ALPHA0.exe Or is there a newer download?

It's cool, and does remind me of ZBrush instantly, especially because of the 2D Draw option, which is cool! And because it's truly 3D, i can zoom, pan and rotate like a real 3D Camera, not like Zbrush which sucks for this reason. I guess "alphas" don't work as yet and I also notice if i do a sculpt, and then click "File->New->Continue" and then hit the 'sculpt tools' button again it will bring the previous object i was working on.. I.e it's not starting a new sculpt. (just thought i'd let you know) It really will be cool to watch your progress on this one, please keep your blog updated. And the demos and website too.. Great work, looking forward to 3.0...

Yeah, if you read Rodney's post carefully, he also eludes to the same idea.. We do know that Zb uses Pixols and always has, which are just Pixologics form of Voxels. (An enhanced and improved version) However Mudox does not use this technique at all. (even in MB2 IMO) 3DC will, but will differ in that it won't be a 2D/3D hybrid approach tied to a canvas like ZB, but in actual 3D space. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ZBrush: "Like a pixel, each pixol contains information on X and Y position and color values. Unlike pixels, it also contains information on depth (or Z position), orientation and material. Only ZBrush related files can store pixol information,and exported files (to JPEG or PNG, for example) will not have pixol data, as those have been rendered into 2D. This technique is similar in concept to a voxel, another kind of 3D pixel."

I agree, Although i prefer the simplicity and workflow Mudbox allows me, Zbrush's main benefit is it's 2.5D voxel/pixol CPU renderer which allows for much more polys, than Mudbox, 3DC, or Modo etc can do, with a true 3D Camera on the videocards GPU. It's ZB's 2D/3D hybrid approach which obviously allows ZB to go much further than the true 3D OGL/DX based applications like 3DC in terms of it's polycount. It would be nice in a perfect world to have unlimited polygon amounts in a true 3D program like MB or 3DC.. (There's a challenge Andrew... Perhaps Andrew and some CUDA innovation it could be improved a little from what it is now. 100 million polys sounds like a nice number to strive for.... So only Claytools and ZB uses Voxels currently. But most of Claytools innovations are patented, unlike Pixologics.. Looking forward to more 3DC 3.0 CUDA demos Andrew! I Believe that this paper is the basis for ZB. http://209.85.141.104/search?q=cache:faMkp...t=clnk&cd=2 It's the original 1991 Paper that is very good at explaining to beginners, thought some readers of this thread may be interested: PS. Nice video RB, the approach is good... I had done similar but not using strips in the same fashion, but with the smooth brush i, guess it doesn't really matter much...

You will notice that Moi does not support .Blend files, it uses a .LWO importer/exporter... Hi Joat, obviously i do read and do develop my own code, How about you? Which is why i seem to know much more than you on this subject... While your request is good, your understanding of what it would take is seriously lacking. You really need to read up on the GPL license before trying to lecture me on something you are plainly incorrect about. ROFL, Perhaps you should contact Ton, or perhaps anyone who develops for Blender. Again, you seem to lack any real knowledge on the subject, so i will not argue with you.... But perhaps before you try and correct me, you should learn more about the facts in the future. Good luck with you feature request... Like i said can you name ONE single application that has .Blend support? You would need a lot more knowledge about Blender, .Blend and GPL before a worthy conversation could be made between yourself and I about it. Just trying to tell you it's not feasible, sorry.... Stick to .FBX, .LWO or .OBJ all of these are legitimate file formats which work fine.... Good luck...

Lightwave and XSI are not GPL based, nor is 3DC, But Blender is... Name one other application than can import .blend files and use the geometry? Lightwave?, XSI?, Max? Houdini? Sorry, it's more likely you can export a .lwo or .obj and .fbx, or a .3DC importer/exporter was coded under GPL inside of Blender. Like i said a .blend file is a hex dump, and is too hard for anything except Blender to use any information from. Similar to how 3DSMax's format is a closed format, or Maya's Binary file format. Here is a quote from the Wiki: "However, a ".blend" file is less a structured specification of objects and relationships and closer to a direct binary dump of the program's memory space. This makes it very hard to convert a ".blend" file to another format using external tools, although dozens of import/export scripts that run inside Blender itself, accessing the object data via API, make it possible to inter-operate with other 3D tools."

Sorry to ask again, but is the following option possible in 3DC currently? Is there no way to enable to paint with just Pressure = Opacity? I seem to have Depth, Depth+Radius, Depth+Radius+Opacity, But not just Opacity option?

Blender already has importers for .Obj, .Fbx and .LWO.. The Blender format, is not a good format and is actually a hex dump, which is only useful to Blender itself, other applications could not use the format, outside of Blender. Also Blender is protected by the GPL, Andrew would be forced to make his code open source via the GPL. So I'm afraid it's not likely the best of ideas currently.

Hi Andrew, thanks for the reply. The presets really are not as good as Bodypaints method for workflow speed. This way i have to save a preset every few seconds, and re-apply it every few seconds, with Bodypaint all i have to do is "Swap Brush" in the same method as i would "swap colors" It basically records all my options automatically, and this really speeds things up. However yes i think the simplest solution for 3DC could be allow a shortcut key for maybe "Next Preset Brush" and perhaps "Previous Preset Brush, and "Save Preset" That way i can assign it to my Wacom expresskeys, in much the same way i do for "Swap Colors" in Bodypaint. Do presets take into account options like Pen Pressure settings, and am i silly or is there no way to enable to paint with just Pressure = Opacity? I seem to have Depth, Depth+Radius, Depth+Radius+Opacity, But not just Opacity option? Yes, thankyou that would be a nice option, again the current method is quite good, but when you spend many hours with a Tablet, doing many models these types of workflow changes really help the speed at which i can achieve the same results. Yes, I usually spend a lot of time making keys and menus suit my own workflow, so customization of KB shortcuts would be useful. Basically just the viewport should be active, (I think Photoshop does this with Tab key) Mudbox also allows just a full screen viewport with just floating tools available. When working on close detail i tend to just view the model, and one palette no extra clutter. (I also do not wish to have the left toolbar active, only floating panels.) Hehehe, Thanks for taking the time to read them.... I will remind you on the weeks you seem less busy, mainly options 1 & 2 are important.... Thanks again, keep up the great work!

Hi.. I have recently again spent some time with 3DC, and continue to like the advancements Andrew is making. I do have some minor workflow improvement suggestions, please correct me if the options i request are already doable. 1)Multiple Brushes, One advantage Bodypaint has over 3DC and Modo for example is the ability to have two brushes complete with settings such as opacity, jitter, alpha's, textures, colors, bump/spec etc. What this means is is usually paint with 2 different brushes, with various settings, and with a single click on the Wacom Intuos3 i can go back to other brush, and repeat. Possibly making a small adjustment to one brush and clicking back to another.... It's something that just makes Bodypaint the most refined in terms of workflow for myself. (It's similar to "swap colors" except it swaps all previous brush options set) 2)One option i prefer in Mudbox compared to say ZB or 3DC is the ability to define a single key to change brush size (radius) and Focal Shift. 3DC for example uses the [ and ] keys to change radius, Mudbox allows me to hold a key eg. "Alt" or Wacom Express Key, and drag my Wacom pen either left or right, this allows me constantly adjust my radius much more quickly, and is one of the many reasons i prefer MB1 over ZB3. This method is faster and more intuitive. Modo also allows me to just right click and drag, to change radius. 3)Complete Customization of KB Shortcuts: I generally spend a lot of time refining my workflow, and prefer to have customized shortcut keys and custom wacom setup. (It usually can take many days to refine my workflow in each application.. ) 4)Full screen ability, I would like the ability to maximize screen real-estate when needed, similar to say Mudbox or Photoshop allows tools to be used, but without any other options being shown. (perhaps the option of floating palettes remains) 3)More GUI Customization: A) I guess a drag and drop interface, with more customization, perhaps Skin engine or XML, personal Icons or Text could be used, I don't tend to use anything except paint/sculpt so the Text/Spline etc icons on the left bar, are usually just a distraction and not very useful space wise. Also i would like the main floating palette to be movable, this window seems to be the only window that is not floating or movable. Show Falloff and Show Focal Shift can be turned on and off, but Smoothing, and Depth, Specularity for example cannot... I would like more control and consistancy, perhaps all options being able to be flagged on/off including the Icons. I find 3DC is feature rich, but workflow wise is not quite as good as some of the others applications mentioned, but could be with a little refinement in the right areas, meanwhile the features continue to impress. GUI customization would be nice, but the multiple brush option is something i really find really useful for workflow. Thanks and keep up the good work. Cheers, Scott.