Psmith

The Retopo Room is where most of the initial steps toward creating a usable UV map take place. Some commands do not appear in the Toolbar until certain things have been completed, as well. Think of the Retopo Room as a temporary topology creation workspace. Nothing becomes "permanent" until it is "Merged' into the Paint Room - where complete model exporting takes place. Once you have marked the seams you need for your UV map (by means of the "Auto Seams", "Edge Loops" or "Mark Seams" tools), you choose the "Unwrap" tool to see the result. But, at this time, the UV map you see is only temporary, and you need to select one of the "Merge" routines from the "Retopo" menu to make your map permanent - and also for it to appear in the UV Room. If you don't like the result, simply select the "Group" layer that contains your topology and click on the Trash Can icon at the bottom of the palette to delete it. You will, however, still see the UV map in the UV Room - to delete this, you must enter the "Sculpt Room" and click the "X" next to the "Object" that appears there. And, to avoid future texturing confusion, delete all of the new "Paint Room" layers, as well. Greg Smith

Have you tried our Applink for 3DSMax? You can find the plug-in and the documentation for using it in the main "Applinks" part of the forum. Greg Smith

Sorry Jason, I've mislead you - the function is not found in the "File/Import" menu, but, rather in the Settings Panel for the Voxel "Merge" tool - "Without voxelizing". So, from the Voxel Room, "Merge" your mesh "Without voxelizing" and then run AUTOPO on this merged mesh. Greg Smith

When you import directly into the Retopo room, your imported mesh is not "voxelized" (new English word). You are seeing it as it truly is, a polygonal mesh. When you import it into the Voxel room, it IS voxelized and often loses much of its crisp detail. So, if you intend to import your mesh to be run through the AUTOPO routine directly, try "Import without voxelizing" from the "File" menu. Greg Smith

If you could post your system specs and which version of 3D-Coat you are using, it would be helpful. Greg Smith

When using Primitives, the "Enter" key adds the Primitive to the scene. You can also consider this kind of "adding" as a boolean "add" operation. When you hold down the "Ctrl" key and then press "Enter", you are performing a boolean "subtract" operation. So, first you "add" a cylinder Primitive, using the "Enter" key - and then you "subtract" a sphere Primitive from the cylinder Primitive, using "Ctrl-Enter". Since the time this tutorial was made, 3DC has changed. So, if you are using the latest beta version, your voxel sculptures are automatically displayed in the Paint Room by means of "View/ShowVoxelsInPaintRoom". This means that painting is integrated with Voxels - and that painting or texturing includes whatever Shader has been applied in the Voxel Room. Also, colors can be painted over these shaders, directly without giving the Voxel sculpture any polygonal topology. So, in the case of the Rat's gums, you can choose a shiny, gum-like shader - go to the Paint Room, select the "Fill" tool and press "B" to invoke the Color Palette - choose a gum color, and apply the color to the shader, (which retains its original characteristics, but adds the influence of the chosen color). Now, when AUTOPO is used to create the gum topology, the Directly Painted textures will be automatically "baked" to the automatically created topology. Give it a try. Experiment with various shaders to get the effect you desire. Greg Smith

A video would be most helpful. Also your system specs. Greg Smith

Actually, you can apply a shader to any Voxel Layer and go to the Paint Room and apply paint or a material on your sculpture, return to the Voxel Room (or Surface Mode), and run the AUTOPO routine (AUTOPO for Per Pixel) and, after waiting a few minutes, have a fully baked rendition of your Voxel object (now a mesh object, but still retaining shader "paint") - ready for "actual" texturing for export purposes (in the Paint Room). It is simple and it works. Give it a spin. Greg Smith

Very nice and authentic gold look. Greg Smith

If you are designing your own images for material application, you can simply put a lot of empty space around the image, so that when it tiles in 3DC, you can enlarge and position it to fit the area in question. Of course this makes for possibly very large files. Greg Smith

You can render a voxel model with shaders applied to each different layer. Just go to the Render Room and press "Render". If you want to automatically produce a model which will both render inside 3DC and export to other apps for rendering, try this: 1) Right click each voxel layer (one at a time) and choose "AUTOPO/AUTOPO for Per Pixel" Leave everything at their default settings (following dialogs). 2) Wait some minutes and observe model in Paint Room. 3) Turn off all voxel layers, (to see what scene will look like in other apps, rendered). 4) Go to Render Room, adjust lighting effects and press "Render". 5) From "File" menu choose "Export/Scene" or "Export/Obj" and follow prompts for exporting textures. These steps outline the basis for how 3DC processes things. When you want to do things manually, you simply proceed from a voxel object in the Voxel Room, to the Retopo Room for making your topology, to the UV Room for arranging your UV maps, to the Paint Room for adding textures and, finally, to the Render Room to render. Export your finished model from the Paint Room. Greg Smith

Try hiding the voxel layer for the head. This usually works. Greg Smith

Try using the latest beta version. This is the custom when something is broken in an earlier version - since many bugs are squashed in subsequent versions. Greg Smith

Is your version the latest beta version. There are more than one version 3.7's. Greg Smith

We need to know more. What version, what platform, what machine specs. What were the steps you took? Greg Smith

The fastest experiment you can do to get familiar with how 3DC likes to do things is this: 1) Click the Voxel Room tab and add a Sphere (Tool Panel) or just add a Voxel sphere from the starting panel. 2) Right click the active Voxel Layer and choose "AUTOPO/AUTOPO with Ptex" and just leave the defaults ("OK, Next, Next" - click these in the forthcoming dialogs). 3) Wait a couple of minutes and click "OK" in the next dialog. 4) Now you are in the Paint Room - at the top of the interface are 3 differently colored spheres, uncheck each one. 5) On the top left of the Tool Panel are the Color Swatches, click the top one and choose a color. To add a material, which will effect the Specular and Displacement that you paint on your sphere, just click one of the Materials and start painting. Greg Smith

Can you please outline the steps you took, and at what point the error occurred? Video is always helpful for us to see what is going on. Also, we need your system specs. Greg Smith

On the far upper right of both the "Brushes" and "Materials" panels is a small downward pointing arrow. Click this and see if the new assets show up under the "Folder" category. Greg Smith

It depends on what you mean, exactly, by the word "detail". If you want to maintain all of the characteristics of the original, imported box - then decorate the box with surface detail - you should import your object for "Per-pixel painting", and use the Paint Room tools to add Color, Specularity and Bump (mild displacement). If you need much larger kinds of "detail" - try importing your mesh into "Voxel Surface Mode" where more extreme detail (more displacement) can be added - then merge the result into the Paint Room for further, finer detailing. To import your mesh into "Surface Mode" - first open an empty Voxel scene, click the small cube icon to the left of the primary Layer in the "Layers panel", and select "Merge" from the "Objects" category of the "Tool Panel" on the left of the interface. Greg Smith

You might try setting the spacing down to about 10. I've gotten better performance with these settings. Greg Smith

Are you using the latest beta? Greg Smith

Make sure you are using the latest beta version. Lots of problems have been solved in the latest version. Greg Smith

No, not across all layers, only the active one. You must flatten the layers to use this tool so that it reacts with all "objects". Greg Smith

Yes, use the "Merge" tool in the "Voxel Room" and select the model of your choice. Adding it positively, you can use "On pen" to adjust it's scale, position and depth "on the fly" - and you can apply it as a cutting shape (boolean) by holding down the "Ctrl" key while left clicking. Greg Smith

It could be a problem with thin layers - also with the merging scale. Sometimes very thin layers do not import well. Also, edges will import with jaggies if you have not scaled up the proposed import to an appropriate scale - experiment one layer at a time, keeping track of scale factors. Greg Smith