stusutcliffe

Oh yeah, there are not any really dumb questions in this biz. I started off with the cg lark so many years ago...I cant even remember. Probably Deluxe Paint on an Amiga... Today I learned about half adozen things I did not know yesterday! Mind you I will have forgotten half of them tomorrow.

How about FBX format. This is how I export from 3dcoat to Blender. Sculpt and paint in 3dcoat then export the scene in fbx ,open in blender . You need to have a Vertex Colour Node attached to the colour imput on the main shader. But dont forget this only supports colour not specular or metal or normals( which you dont need anyway cos your exporting the sculpt) So check if Keyshot supports fbx. ( I think zbrush can go to Keyshot with polypaint,so that is sort of similar...probably some sort of zbrush format.)

Somewhere in your program folder/folders there is a setting/file called Options.xml, deleting this is sometimes recomended by folks to cure a number of ills. I think it just makes itself again a fresh when its deleted but it sort of clears out some rubbish. I dont really understand the under the hood stuff, maybe try this. Or if some techie could explain if this is a good/bad idea or not. See piccy But wait to see if anyone has a thought about this.

Thats all weird isnt it. Clicking the Layer option is the way to go. So you have something going on there, its just finding the problem. Have you tried makeing a complete fresh scene just to see if it does actually work. Maybe a corrupted file. ( am I right to assume your boxes are not your actual scene but just a simple demo of it not working?) It sounds like something beyond my simple detection abilities. Maybe you could post the scene so the techies can get their teeth into it.

If you click the Layer checkbox in the Tool Options box you have open in the video it should do the trick.

Colour Pallette bug, It seems if I add a colour or delete or any action basically ,it will not update the action until I physically resize the Tab. Annoying. Its been in the last few beta I think, Ive not been painting recently.

Try this, go to the paint room and make a new PAINT layer and select it , then go back to sculpt and try. I think i was confusing you maybe.. I was refering to paint layers being invisible whilst you were refering to sculp layers? Even if you have not done any painting yet ,it seems to be connected. It sorted it out fror me.

If the dome/ball is a seperate piece, I think I would duplicate it, scale the duplicate a bit bit larger, then using a side view in orthographic use the cut off tool to chop off the excess. Then I would extract the original dome/ball from the bit thats left, I would use the "copy and subtract" tool ( right click menu) with "soft booleans" selected. That would put a nice bevel on the inner edge whilst retaining the ball. Hope that does not sound too complicated.

I think the question is a bit cryptic KHU, Ive been trying to decipher it, but at a loss.

This is a coincidence, Ive been getting the same sort of thing the last couple of days. I think it may be something to do with sculpt layers. ( not activated with me though) i am currently sculpting a model whilst simultanously drawing on guide lines in the paint room . If I make the paint layer invisible to see the sculpt clearer I get that message also.....so what I did is, in the paint room I just made a fresh layer then everything was ok again. I think it may be a sculpt layer thing ,but like I said the beta tool is not activated on my 3dcoat.

Can you click on those uv islands to select them, the use the blue gizmo to manualy resize and rotate them to fill the uv square. ( just trying to do it from memory I dont do this sort of thing much.)

If you activate the 2d grid, you can snap to it. Its in the 'view' tab at the top of your monitor. You can zoom ,rotate the grid with some icons that appear top right. Or go the the E panel there are assorted brush options for drawing a straight line there .

Wow...I did not know you could just drag an image off the desktop or where ever, straight into the folder! You learn something every day in the world of CG.

Hi, Thanks for the reply Scary M, Yeah I think I am getting it. I think I was looking at your sculpts and thinking what is he doing all that for when he can just render what he has already. So basically with these sculpts you are just thinking ahead,with thoughts about animation and games. I used to retopo everything and then have a load of assorted maps to apply. So everyting used to take days to complete. The novelty of drawing little squares has worn off now . I used to use zremesher which saved a bit of time sometimes . But having just passed another significant birthday, the days are just flyng by so I try to spend only acouple of days per project. I have had an actual 'client' recently and I think part of the reason he asks me is that he knows he will get 3 characters emailed out in about 2 days! I always wanted to do it the 'proper' way with all the maps and everyfink. But it turns out there is no proper way is there . Unless you are sending stuff down a pipeline. Thanks for your speedy reply

Hi Scary M, These are all great! But a question for you, I dont know if i am being dumb or not. A few posts back up the thread there is an image of a retopoed wire frame and you say Its projected. Whats all that about? I an not sure I am understanding it. The way I work these days is ... I sculpt in 3dcoat, vertexpaint then export it to Blender and render it ,as long as I keep under about 20 million polys , everything works out fine for me. Quick and simple But Im always willing to learn something new ( if its not to difficult!) Or... when you say projected do you mean baked ? I can do retopo and bake , but life is generally to short for me to do that when I can get where I want to go as detailed above. And I think i have heard of projecting details but thats about it. ta Stu

Hi. I had a look in Blender, there appeared to be 2 missing polys there also. I was able to move each poly in both the end caps. They did not appear to be connected at the central vertex. Maybe that is why it is weird.

Ok, just had a fresh look at this broken stitches thing. It appears that it breaks if you go from surface to voxels and back to surface again.

The new "custom stitches" are giving me grief at the moment, cant get the alpha to rotate. Maybe something as gone wrong with my model, it does not work anywhere on this model. But if I drop a fresh sphere into the scene it works fine on the new model. Ive tried everyting from cleaning the surface to voxelising and returning to surface mode to hitting the return key to remesh. I wonder if it is because I have painted the mesh.I will delete all the layers and have a look. Edit ..deleting paint layers did not work. I also tried deleting the options xml thingy, but I wary of deleting something vital. I think all it is , is the 'rotate alpha' has given up on me.

Make a washer shape so its liyng down on the "floor" then drag it to your curves collection and make a fresh spline . Take a look at my tutorial Carlosan posted above. I think the trouble you are having is because the washer shape in the curves collection is standing on its edge.

Not quite sure what you are after. But maybe try this, go to the "smart materials" tab then make a new material by clicking on the cross in one of the folders, a box will appear for all your texture optons ,if you want to paint an image click on the little green ball icon ,you will then be able to load your image.

I usually install every other beta. I have about 5 versions at the moment. Every now and again if I find a version is working great for me I will uninstall the earlyest couple of versions so I dont get bogged down. But like you say the folders are still in your programs folder, but just had a look and the folders that have had its version uninstalled do not seem to contain much and are very small memory wise. Maybe it would be ok to just delete them if the actual app has been uninstalled. Just thoughts , maybe hang on until someone smarter chips in.

Hi Chris, I am pretty sure you will not be able to export the 3dcoat shader because "technical stuff" Maybe try "smart materials" ( thoug the bump and glossy channels I think do not have an effect ,then export using FBX format. The FBX will contain the colour info then you could adjust the metalness -glossness in c4d...probably This is how I usually work at the moment, except I take the FBX to Blender.

That sounds mighty annoying. The Pilgway link worked like normal for me, downloaded in less than a minute. So I assume its ok at Pilgway end. Using Chrome, Up to date Win 10 Not sure what chrome version, does that not just update itself. ( disclaimer -I know very little about operating systems etc) And thanks team for putting align to view back

The Align to view option has vanished and the bound box option next to it also ,in the transform tool. Latest few betas.