farsthary

And don't worry, I'm on polishing,quality control phase now

@ BeatKitano Yes, my bad, I was at the end my my coding nigth so can't think clearly and I realize we where arguing about different stuffs: Of course entering a freeze mode where only bugs are solved is a necessity (everyone's do) and I'm starting it too. Is just that things need its time, LC needed to complete most of its feature base before entering in bug and polishing phase, because that part is uncertain how long can take, it can be fast, it can be slow, so the feature level needed to be finished first. At least this is my development model, it has the advantage that you can directly benefit from gradual increment of stability and require less slow down in development because coding a tool, switching to full quality/testing control,then coding a new tool, while less painful for artist, delays the whole process and is also painful for programers. Some artist finish a painting in many steps, draft, drawing, mattes, color layers, shading others finish each part at once (very risky because you can easily loose the sight of the whole idea and goal, but valid anyway) my approach is the first. My father is a painter, and he told me that the consequence of letting others to see the picture without finishing is that they can't see the beauty yet, so critics will rain and incredibly, advices on how you should make your artwork....well coding is the same, that's why big guys in the industry have a closed development cycle and artist just see the polished product at the end of the year or some nice prepared demos. But I don't like that model either.

Last minute addition, selective decompose, you can manually specify which parts will be decomposed too

Yes, all comments below my before-to-sleep rant are rigth and in fact I will take few days just to use the program as an artist to spot workflow issues, just don't expect a cool character, I'm a horrible clay carver :P

Thanks Digman, I understand is not artist fault too, is very frustrating having a bug destroying your hard-work or wasting time, and the first things that comes to your mind in that moment is the entire genealogy of the makers. In that sense I need to be more prudent with feedback and reply. Is just that is very frustrating to see how I sacrifice my entire nights extending my work time for 14+ hours a day / 7 days a week, in front of my computer with no social life, and zero leisure time, to get something useful and interesting and if possible a breakthrough contribution just to find out a negative atmosphere of comments that really makes me think is not worth the effort. So yes, I think I should start thinking more on myself, work will no go anywhere and there will be work even after our death, I can't please everybody: some users want more features, some want stable ones, and some want even less tools. When I finished Decompose tool yesterday in the afternoon I was so happy saying to myself: -Artist will love this! that I reward myself taking a walk in the city. That's when I allow to myself to take a short rest or recognize myself or make me a present for what I have achieved because when some tool is not finished or is not working I literally put myself in jail till I finish it, and I know is not healthy, but the pleasure to get public credit for an achievement is something I got addicted since Blender times. How fool I was! What really makes me keep going is that I enjoy, just for myself, my job and I see that is the only motivation I have left, the day I loose that, don't know what would be of my life, but definitely will be a real life. Have a nice day everyone.

And those random holes very difficult to replicate are related probably to memory leaks, which we are working to solve , they are particularly difficult to spot but will squeezed them down. I really don't understand all the rant about new features and it saddens me a lot, perhaps because of that I don't feel comfortable visiting this forum. Remember that a drop of honey attract more flies than a gallon of gal. I think an application is dead the moment it stops innovating, we are not aiming at a clone. Stability and predictability? we will get there...

Hmm I'm now confused to no end ... buggy new features? please be more specific, because latest features introduced are not buggy, are stable, other thing is some tools in LC that still have bugs like ANY development process, I don't think there's a perfect software out there without bugs and that's why we get release cycles (along with new features) Max, Maya, Mudbox, Zbrush,... name any, ALL have bugs, pay a visit to their artist forum and you'll see a similar situation. I think many things related to bugs can be attributed also to lack of knowledge on way to use the tool. Well, the documentation is being updated and rewritten for V4 and this is important too. So I think is good to spot and reports bugs (preferably in Mantis) but a bug free application is something non existent, what we will have is an asymptotically stable application and we have made certainly progress toward that. Just compare 3DCoat one year ago ad now. Development is not a closed circle, is an spiral process.

@ AbnRanger Thanks, I think detail level 3 is too high subdiv level, and in a 3 mill poly it is much more evident,(tried with sub 1 detail level in teh brush? at such poly-count I don't think is even needed sub-div unless you are dealing with a really small brush and in that case performance should not be a problem,also try to disable the Quality box in LC tool, it dramatically improve performence in small strokes on heavily sobdivided areas, at the risk of getting some poles if the base detail level is not dense enough) of course, we're planning deep performance tuning of all LC foundation and tools after we get out of beta, so this are just temporal workaround and there are plenty of room for performance boost in the future .

And here's a demo of the new tool http://farsthary.wordpress.com/2012/11/06/decompose-tool/

Btw , here's a demo of the new Decompose tool http://farsthary.wordpress.com/2012/11/06/decompose-tool/

@Taros I think is very possible to implement that in the future, It will not be significantly harder and can be added on top of current code, because, and this is what an artist cannot see, this tool required a significant research work and some powerful algorithm that makes the "curved guide" bridge, just a variant, a particular case, of the general code achieved here Meanwhile posing tools can be used to change the curvature of the bridge, not to mention Move and other sculpting tools thanks for the suggestion and cheers

Hi Don't worry and don't mix different unrelated things, one thing is bug fixing and other is adding new features: both are equally important and cannot made at the expense of each other. the first will give us a stable product and the second will give us a competitive product. We all want a stable product AND a cutting edge product that does not constrain artist possibilities. Of course we're working on both fronts, is just "bugs fixed" does not make cover news so they happens mostly ignored, and many people just don't take the patience to read development and release log that is where they are announced. but it does not mean we don't solve bugs. In fact Andrew is like a killing bug machine, he does know all the quirks and dirt of 3d Coat architecture so he can spot and solve them really quick. I'm currently more focused on LC areas AND research which is my passion and what I seems to do best. We're humans, some bugs get's like buried into Mantis over a long period because of dynamic priorities, but if you consider a spotted bug is important enough it could be good just to update its status in mantis with new information like reproducibility and details, that way it can comeback under our spotlight.

Hi Thanks to all yes, this tool will be the foundation of a another major tool and very powerful too, things can just get better from now on. I will first take a breath and focus on some mantis bug reports and few user requests Cheers

Hi guys! thanks for starting using mantis to repport bugs and surely I will tackle them all, forgive me my absence from the forum, I'm just struggling with an algorithm implementation that is a bit tricky so cannot be done is few days like most of the tools you are used to as soon as I move forward from this, I will review all requests! Also Andrew is coming back soon Cheers

Hi Digman thanks for your feedback, yes, i think I can solve that issue in remove stretching

LOL , Is just my experimental build, still not approved yet the face lift but in case goes mainstream yes, it will need some changes

Oh, thanks Digman, I was just about to post the link http://farsthary.wordpress.com/2012/10/08/new-relaxation-method/ Is very powerful indeed Cheers

Thanks everyone! New improvement down the road http://farsthary.wordpress.com/2012/10/04/improved-surface-reconstruction-algorithm/

Thanks Javis! in fact I was going to sleep after a long working nigth but this bug will not allow me to rest so better to squish it fast

Solved! sent code to Andrew

Hi BeatKitano Oh yes, I can confirm big poles, will try to fix them asap,it should not happen Also default detail in remove strtching is too high

Hi guys thanks for your feedback, I will try to review them asap here are few more improvements http://farsthary.wordpress.com/2012/09/27/a-bit-of-ui-cleaning/ http://farsthary.wordpress.com/2012/09/26/one-click-closing-holes/ those are part of streamlining the workflow so I hope you will like them

Yes, Andrew changed the routine, I will check it, but do you have any particular example that shows the difference? my code is still there so when I have time I will compare it

Hi Forgive my absence in the forum, yes, I think all of those complains regarding the default behaviour of those tools would be addressed before leaving the beta stage Regarding RemoveClay is a tool or is based on a technology I'm reseraching/developing rigth now that will be the foundation for several powerful tool and will bring more topology freedom to LC (more than what already have :P) for example this important step will allow a much better RemoveClay realtime brush, CloseHoles tool, etc. http://farsthary.wor...reconstruction/ @Artman: WOW, I really enjoyed those sculpts! nice and thanks for sharing, it really encourages me to see real work with LC tools. @Renderdaemon, Michalis, BeatKitano,digman, DavidF: I take all of your opinions into account! one step at a time, some tools seems very easy from the artist point of view and from the programmer are a time sink to develop and other tools seems magic to the artist and are actually a matter of hours to code that's why is almost impossible to predict timeframes here, developing is a art too :P Cheers

Hi Nice improvements to RemoveClay and an explanation of what it does and what is good for http://farsthary.wordpress.com/2012/09/14/removeclay-improvements/