patternmaker

Thanks! I knew you could print discrete objects inside each others, like a ball in a cage, but didn't know objects could touch or overlap. I check my polysurfaces in Rhino pretty carefully. Took quite a while to clean this one up. The picture shows a place where in 3DCoat surface mode passing over it with a smooth or build tool would cause a really long, spiky eruption to occur. Looking at it in wireframe showed little folded up surfaces bunched together. Could this be a tolerance issue? I try not to build at a tighter tolerance than the printer will work to; in this case, I used .003". Any suggestions for how to fix these things when they do occur? There were about five or six places where this happened on this model. Sorry not to show the full model - that would violate my customer's confidentiality.

Thanks for the advice! I did get a more usable surface by meshing finer in Rhino, but I also found that I could improve my original mesh by scaling up a bit less than I was, then subdividing when merging. Subdividing twice generally crashed the program. Having a lot of trouble now getting objects to merge with this one in surface mode. Looks like I will need to switch everything to voxels after all, merge all the parts, then clean up the whole assembly back in surface mode. Needs to be one unit for 3d printing. In surface mode, I had quite a few places where lots of triangles meet at a point, and they sometimes had messy little bunches of triangles hiding inside at those points. Got rid of them by smoothing, decimating, reducing, reconstructing using "clean clay", but it was not easy. Reconstruct would often cause a crash. Is there a better way to do that? I'm guessing those types of bad triangles were what was making my objects not want to boolean sometimes.

I can get closer by voxelizing, but then must sharpen all the edges again manually (with pinch or crease?). It stays sharp if I merge it as a surface model. Do I need to export a much finer mesh from Rhino in order to be able to work with the edges? I was hoping there was some command in 3DCoat that would let me break up the large polygons in the surface model without damaging the sharp edges. Is there nothing that does that? Many thanks for your replies!

You mean small as in number of polygons, or in actual size? Actual size model fits in your hand. Surface model has about 1.2 million polygons at this point. The detail area shown would be about 1cm square in actual product size.

Sorry, didn't attach the pictures I referred to correctly. They should be there now.

I am trying to make more polygons in surface mode (voxel room) on the sharp - edged object shown so I can blend it in with other sculpted objects that are merged with it. I can't seem to find a way that doesn't collapse the edge polygons as shown. Is there a recommended brush or settings that will let me do this? Right now, if I get too close to the sharp object with any smoothing brush, it "melts" the edges badly. The sharp object was modeled in NURBS, then exported as an obj. I imported it into 3DCoat with "merge without voxelizing" checked. It is a fairly complex object and was over 500,000 polycount, even at the resolution you see. I have been successfully merging other sculpted surface objects to it without damaging the sharp edges. Just need to be able to work on the intersections. Many Thanks! Dave

Many thanks! I will probably go with your advice. I am using 3D coat more and more, but just for sculpting, so painting 3d models is not a big concern. I use CS6 for making "pencil" sketches of products that later get modeled in 3D coat. Haven't been able to slow CS6 down even with my current setup, but 3D Coat will definitely slow down after a while with bigger brushes. So I guess that is my main reason for upgrading.

I'm building a new computer and want to know if anyone has determined whether it is better to use a quadro card, like the 4000, with 256 CUDA cores, or something like the GeForce GTX 680, which has 1536 CUDA cores. I would also be using Rhino/Flamingo and CS6 . I found just a bit in earlier topics that would suggest that 3D Coat was not yet optimized for the latest CUDA, so that the greater number of cores in the GTX 680 might not be that much of an advantage over whatever it is that makes the quadro cards so expensive. Anyone got any advice about this? Many Thanks!

Lots of great info, thanks! Wacom probably won't like this, but I think it makes more sense for my purposes to get the regular 24HD based on your experience and thoughts. I'll most likely order one next week.

Thanks for the quick response! I will probably get the "older" 24HD and take my chances on regretting that decision in a few years if the touch version gets fully supported. I recently got a GeekDesk and have been working standing most of the time. Much better for my back. I'm expecting to use the cintiq in a nearly flat position with the table kind of low. Might need to make some extra platforms for keyboard, mouse, and spaceball. I can't picture working without a spaceball, though like you are doing. I think it at least doubles my efficiency because of how quickly I can orient my model. Hoping the 24HD will have a similar efficiency boosting effect by giving me better hand control. In your experience is touching the pen right on the model instead of on a tablet like an Intuos much more efficient? I'm also hoping it will allow me to sculpt and draw with smoother movements because of the larger surface and being able to see where my hand is and use natural arm motions. Is this true in your experience? I use Sketchbook Pro a lot for presenting concepts and am hoping I can actually use plastic french curves and straight edges right on the 24HD to guide the pen. Maybe even use them sometimes in 3D Coat to sculpt features that follow a curve more smoothly (?) Will that work like I'm hoping?

Great to get some responses to this! Thanks! I'm wondering, BeatKitano, if you use a 3dconnexion device, and if so, where you put it when you use the 24HD. That was probably my main concern and reason for wanting the 24HD touch. I'm used to working with a Wacom Intuos tablet and a spaceball, but both are on the desk at the same level. The 24 HD moves your working surface to a very different position, especially if it is used flat. Seems like the spaceball could be hard to reach, or at least different enough in position to require retraining your hand to use it well. Regarding implementing support for the Touch, it looks like even Autodesk hasn't decided it is a high enough priority for Mudbox or Sketchbook yet. These are so expensive that I would expect relatively very few will get sold, so am I right that it could be a very long time before we could expect 3D Coat to support this?

I'm considering getting one of these, http://www.wacom.com/en/Products/Cintiq/Cintiq24touch.aspx but probably only if 3DCoat is planning to add support for the gesture feature. I would want to be able to use that instead of my usual spaceball. Should I expect support for it to be months away or years away, or what? It looks like only Corel Painter 12 actually supports it right now.

Thank you! I will leave it alone and not worry, then!

Sorry to not understand, but by "Yep", do you mean I SHOULD be able to change the 32 to 336? Are CUDA cores logical CPUs? Thanks!

In the "preferences" menu, there is an entry "Max processors to be used". Is that supposed to match the number of CUDA cores on your video card? It lists 32 as the default number (?), but my card has 336 cores (GTX 560). If I change the number to 336, it changes back to 32 if I close the preferences menu and reopen it.