JamesE

cuda version seems to work pretty good! The shift/smoothing is quite nice as well! Thanks for keeping that! I am having difficulty pulling models in around the 15k polygon range (our typical character meshes with equipment) Not sure what is causing crashes so I'll keep submitting the bug reports as they pop up. Painting is smooth and snappy so far though! Much better than the old method. And painting depth works great! Any chance to get this working on tangent space normals? =D

Oh I just tweaked the color settings individually to my own tastes. Didn't know there was a preset. Thanks! =] Thanks for the info Andrew. Good to know.

When using 'clone' in the voxel tree with symmetry enabled it would be nice if the transforms you apply to the clone did not apply to the whole voxel mesh. I tried cloning some fingers from an original, using symmetry and got the following results when I used the transform tool to place them on the right side of the image. The results of the transform on the left side are not desirable. I thought after seeing the symmetry plane reoriented like that I could just reset it but that didn't work. What I'd like to do is have the symmetry plane stay in its original place while I make a transform after cloning. Is there a way to do this other than cloning one side first and then using Symm Copy?

AWESOME!!!! Cannot wait to play with this!

Too bad we didn't have something like this for 3dcoat: http://www.russellbrown.com/Transfer/Configurator.mov I almost wonder if the effort to make this would be more worthwhile than leaving the entire UI issue up to andrew. =]

Haven't used it since I got my money back from Eovia after they sold out, and I beta tested the original version too. Sounds to me like you don't have any experience with Silo or you'd realize the comparisons I'm making are simply NOT POSSIBLE in hexagon. Anyway, I'm all for GUI elements but some kind of happy medium needs to be achieved so that a user's first impression isn't like it would be if they open up maya for the first time, and hopefully, they also won't want or need to reconfigure the entire UI to fit their needs, but would be able to if so.

Pretty sure I placed the orders myself and did the installs myself. Not that that is ANY OF YOUR BUSINESS nor does it have any relevance to this discussion. Thanks for bringing it up though

Heh, that pic is a great seller for using the auto mesh generation =]

Yeah both methods worked great. I'll probably use the layer rez approach more often than not, but it's good to know I have more control over this now.

AAhhh! that worked. I wasn't aware of the dependency on size... though it makes sense after watching my objects in crease in size when I upped the resolution in previous builds. Will keep this in mind in the future. Thanks for the tip 3dioot! Also, thanks erklaerbar for the advice as well.

Is there a way to avoid corruption of finer mesh elements like fingers on import? I cannot seem to get an obj into 3dc as voxels without the fingers being destroyed. Subdividing before importing doesn't work, nor does subdividing during import. Every attempt to bring in a base mesh with fingers ends up like this: It would seem the only option is to create the base mesh in voxels so that you don't lose any important shapes.

Quadrangulate with symmetry gives some pretty good results if I just want to send it off to zbrush, or finish texturing in 3dcoat without need for animation. Though I found I had to delete the rows of polygons on the mirror seam as there were overlaps occurring down the middle. Easy enough to rebuild though. Just thought I'd mention it.

Hey PoopaScoop, My understanding is that people doing renders or stills or other non-animation dependent stuff were pushing for this. Not having a need to do proper topology they could do their voxel sculpt and then either continue painting on a lower rez polygon version quickly after or send it off to zbrush or mudbox for further detailing or rendering in another app. I didn't really think I'd have much use for it since most of my stuff goes on to be rigged and animated, but I might try using quadrangulation as a way to further detail in zbrush too. I think I was expecting to have more control over the resolution of the quad mesh that gets generated. None of the initial settings seemed to provide that. Subdividing from the topology menu kinda works though - assuming you'd need higher rez. Will see what later builds can do though I guess.

Andrew: did you change the pinch tool at all within the last couple of builds? It seems to work much better now compared to earlier builds. It feels much closer to what I get with the zbrush pinch tool now in that I can actually get proper pinching with it. I didn't have much use for it in previous builds as it wasn't giving me the sharp creasing that I expected. Edit: scratch that... I was using the pinch tool and not the voxel pinch Haha. Voxel pinch still doesn't give the results I want. =\

Agreed. I think a universal manipulator is a much better option for transforming whole objects. Now that we can have multiple voxel objects I think the need for this is greater too.

I would imagine it is to support importing scan data directly.

Would be nice if you could disable that on import, since the mesh is already matched up to the high rez - no need to have surface snapping/shrinkwrapping when you bring it back in.

Nice work wailingmonkey! GED: you can derive your normal map from your voxel mesh right to your retopo mesh in 3dc so long as it has UVs. You can do those right in 3dc as well or in my case I would export the retopo out to UVLayout and back to do the transfer.

Yeah that will be a deciding factor for upgrading too. MB2009 runs pretty poorly on my work system which isn't nearly as nice as my 64 bit home system - stability issues are another thing. We don't all get to run the latest, greatest hardware in the different areas of production - can't see that move being good for sales outside of studios as far as home users go either. It's got to be hard to compete against a product like zbrush that is much friendlier to most system configurations, and most of the user base hasn't even paid for an upgrade yet! I haven't given pixologic a dime for zbrush since I started using it at version 1.55b. That's a LONG TIME - more than 5 years now! 3DCoat is rapidly getting more and more of my time too when doing 3d work. It has become a valuable concepting tool not to mention becoming more and more useful in key areas like retopology, and texturing and only getting better with each release.

Ged: yeah UVLayout is pretty much the ultimate UV toolset for me. I find that just having the UI being 100% focused on uvs alone is a big part of it, whereas all the studio apps or other modelers etc either have very basic tools (3dc included) or you still have to share the UI with other, non-UV related functions. My whole 3d construction process is pretty compartmentalized in general because of this. Silo for modeling, UVLayout for UV, Zbrush for sculpting. The only things I haven't really nailed down are painting and baking, as these tend to get spread out amongst several apps. I think 3dc will probably narrow that down though once 3.0 goes live. I may also be moving more of my initial workflow into 3dc and using voxels for initial construction and retopo in general. Depending on the models and how far andrew wants to push those voxel tools. Thanks geo_n, glad you liked!

Yeha once we get past all this voxel stuff and direct to bitmap painting on low rez meshes like what mudbox has I'd like to request a bit more focus on supporting better lighting and shaders when painting as well (sometime during 3.x cycle). I've seen enough from andrew to know that he will be fully capable of doing this, and doing it better and faster and definitely more stable and performance oriented than what I see in mudbox as well. I took a pass on upgrading to MB2009 after seeing how weak the painting support is. I've had awesome sculpting performance already for almost 2 years now in zb3 so that aspect of the upgrade did not appeal to me. I think 3dc will ultimately just replace my mudbox license, and probably my modo license altogether. I'm seriously considering not upgrading to CS4 either. This is for game production use too, not just my personal stuff.

Hey Roger, I'm not really using the paint tools much yet. I definitely see the performance hit you mention though with high rez stuff. I still do polypainting in zbrush if I need to paint anything high rez. The shaders and performance keep it securely in that spot for that type of work right now. I'm much more interested in the upcoming paint additions for working with low rez models and painting directly to a bitmap. This will most likely be when I drop modo and any other 3d painting solutions I was using or considering and start using 3dc more. A lot of my paint work is for game textures on meshes that are in their final state/resolution. I am usually needing to import baked normal maps AO, cavity etc maps in and clean up their seams before beginning a texture so I'm hoping 3dc will be good for this type of work at that point - in addition to full on, multi-layered texturing.

Thanks guys! I think I'm going to swap the hands for something more tentacle like and squiggly than 'drippy'. That part of the sculpt hasn't sat well with me since the start, which is probably why I avoided detailing the hands till the end hehe.

I didn't have any problems bringing a mesh back from UVLayout - though I think it simply has really good obj support. I think that will be my preferred method in future. One thing I'd love to see is the ability to bake an AO map along with the normal map in 3dcoat as well, among others, like cavity maps etc. These can really help kickstart your diffuse and spec maps and save a lot of time. Would be nice if 3dc supported them too, as then it really would be a one stop shop for game assets. =]

I tested it on one of the vs sketches I did in 3dcoat after retopologizing and UV mapping. I brought the low rez version with its normal map from 3dcoat and was able to paint a quick diffuse on it with no problem. Right now, without 3dcoat's ability to paint directly on a low rez object and texture map, CS4 is actually more useful to me as a texturing tool. However, simple things that I take for granted in 3dc like better viewport navigation are a bit annoying in CS4. It definitely feels like baby steps in terms of 3d capability, but it's way more useful for texturing 3d models than CS3 was. And yeah performance is an issue. It works well enough on my 64 bit machine though so I'm ok with that. I've been on the verge of deciding whether to upgrade modo, mudbox2009, or even bite the bullet and buy bodypaint or enzo, just to have something that is decent for 3dpainting. Right now I've at least narrowed it down to not going for any of those options. If 3dCoat can beat photoshop's new texturing ability I might even opt to not upgrade to CS4. But for that to happen I really need to be able to work directly on my game rez models and textures. Otherwise it looks like I'll be upgrading to CS4.