walter_sullivan

Thanks much! No apologies needed Very nice caring here in the community, rarely experienced something similar before. Many thanks for the generous pm offering help. Really really appreciated.

Hmm Digman, are you sure about this?: Because I could work with all the other retopo brushes, even the strokes tool to perform retopo, just the "wrap around" strokes as seen in the videos before did not work. the rest of the toolset worked, despite it seems I was retopoing on top of paint objects. I have attached another video. You can see my process I did here from before, ignoring the Welcome Screen and importing manually. This way, I also have my view mode shortcuts back working! You can see that retopo tools still working, even if these are imported seemingly as paint objects? 2021-08-14 01-48-57.mp4

Thank you! I gotta admit I am now super confused about how the rooms relate. As I am used to using other programs, I just don't chose an option from the Welcome dialogue window. I close it and just went to "file -> import mesh -> Reference Mesh". I assumed this is a correct thing to do to perform retopo, as the term "Reference Mesh" is somehting I am used to when wanting to perform retopo onto a high poly mesh, which is then I thought called "Reference Mesh". But this exactly lead to the strokes not working. You are absolutley right. It seems to not work on paint objects, only on sculpt objects. I dont understand the separation, yet, and why this causes some tools to work and others not. However, when choosing "Perform Retopology" from the Welcome menu, and then choosing "import huge reference mesh", the strokes tool works. It seems when wanting to use 3D Coat, one need to get used to certain things how rooms are related and stuff. I find it a bit irritating though that a wrong decision subtly cause some tools to just not work, instead, one could have an instruction displayed that says for example : " Hey dude! You are trying to retopo on paint objects. Please send the mesh to sculpt room first" or something similar. Thanks for the help! I am trying to get into 3D Coat and this was the first major roadblock I coud not somehow solve myself or by googling/watching the YT channel). Coming from around 8 years of Blender and 5 Years of ZBrush usage, I feel lost about how meshes are handled. I am used to import somehting and be able to do whatever I want in other programs. It seems in Coat you need to know exactly whats allowed where from the start. Regarding the "Relief Only", I unfortunately can not get the view modes to work anymore, its really werid. Even after multiple restarting and restartign my machine., the shortucts 1 2 3 5 7 8 dont work anymore. I also can not activate them anymore over the menu. Never happened to me before.

I have tested with Smart Retopo tool. Unfortunately, behaviour is exactly the same. Are we doing something wrong? Attached video again. 2021-08-13 14-47-00.mp4

I experience the same. Why would this have to do with your graphics driver at all? This seems to be one of the standard answers around here as soon as there are problems with this software. Does not make a lot of sense. Anyhow, I updated my driver . Still the same. The strokes also do not work for me with 2021.02 GL . I don't undertand what this screenshot is supposed to say, it is completely unrelated to the problem of drawing strokes around tubular structures as you can see in op's video. Also attached a vid for demonstration. As you can see, the tool does nothing when trying to wrap around structure. 2021-08-12 22-21-50.mp4

Same here.

With 2021 out now, I was trying to get into 3D Coat painting tools again. After learning to further understand it and try to get over the fact that there are no B+W layer masks to control layer opacity whatsoever, I found it hard to believe and was very surprised that there is no pass-through mode for layer groups. Coming from years of experience in Substance Painter and using Affinity Photo and Krita, sadly, I can not use a paint system for PBR texturing without this, no matter how cool it otherwise seems. There is already a lack of Folder icons, which makes organizing layers difficult from a visuals' standpoint. Layer groups should be visually distinguishable and take off the cognitive load and eye strain to detect them during a painting session. For this reason, Substance Painter (and basically any other image editing software) has folder icons , or even the ability to assign colors to layer groups in the latest versions. Basic usability stuff like this is essential before adding all the more detailed features. Organization on the most basic level is what makes professional users appealed to the workflow. The painting system in 3D Coat has great potential, but the workflow to me feels a bit like all over the place. It is often said in the official training videos that it was designed to mimic Photoshop and should work the same way. Yet, it does not on a fundamental level. No masking other than "invisible" clip mask layers. No real distinction for groups other than acting as expandable parents. And then even no possibility to use those as containers for organizational purposes only without influencing their blending behavior. Now, after trying 2021, for me, it takes away all the potential that I see in this app for texturing. For me, it is a showstopper having to deal with this stuff, no matter how great and organic the painting feels otherwise . Those things just pile up too much, and I can not afford to spend any more time learning to work around those things and not use Substance Painter or other texturing apps (Marmoset, Mixer) with a much more straight forward and logical workflow. How can I even tile a texture, for example? Why is there no numerical tiling value in a texturing app for games. Also not a great fan of waving a slow rectangular "Smart Material Preview" into my face that does not even show the material at my true Texel Density. This preview would not be needed if the workflow would work with masks and hence be more non destructive. Let alone the fact that for a painting app, dragging sliders to fine adjust layer opacity is still terribly slow, which I found disappointing to see still in 2021. Almost unusable for quick and fine-tuning of textures. I tried to get into 3D Coat 3 times. The new retopo and modeling tools appeal to me, the modeling tools are a great addition. Overall, a great app. But painting is still stubborn for me to get into with those strange problems and behaviors making it unnecessarily difficult to handle for complex PBR workflows. Sorry for digressing a bit, yeah, not having pass through, was the cherry on top for me that keeps me from further learning to texture in 3D Coat. Simply can't afford to choose a workflow that makes stuff more difficult. You guys have achieved a marvelous app and with Texture now, you have the chance to a real competitor. I hope you take this constructive crit into consideration. There is no point in trying to "be different" just for being different sake, when everyone is used to how basic workflows in image editing programs work. Unifying and freeing up the barriers in the workflow would really help 3D coat tick out also in the field of texturing. Currently, I feel, it is not there when compared to competitors