Psmith

The sun in pain? Huge eruption on Monday. Greg Smith

Bumper: Well, if you find you like sculpting in high resolution better in Zbrush, just do it there and import the high poly mesh into 3D-Coat as a reference for Retopo. Do all of the topology and UV's in 3D-Coat, as well as painting and texturing - and be done with it. In other words, create the maps you need in either one app or the other - but don't try mixing maps and apps, if you ask me. Greg Smith

Bumper: Since Zbrush is capable of generating all of these things you need, from a high-resolution polypainted model, internally, what else is it that you want 3D-Coat to do that Zbrush cannot already do? Personally, I'd just stay in one application to avoid unnecessary complication. Greg Smith

MacGuy: This pattern is, indeed, part of the shader. By right clicking on the shader icon you gain access to the texture properties of the shader, ("Choose texture" options). You can customize this shader with textures of your own choosing. If I were you, I would just select one of the similar shaders to save time. Greg Smith

Lorenz: Prepare a graphic with all the information you need and load it as a Background - found under the "Camera" drop down menu in the Navigation Panel - "Camera/Background/Add background image". Greg Smith

When you paint with depth in the Paint Room using micro-vertex painting, both a normal map and a displacement map are generated, (as well as real mesh displacement), automatically. So, after texturing your model and choosing "Export model" from the "File" menu, a dialog will appear that asks you which maps you want to export along with your mesh. Select "Displacement" and any other maps you would like exported. If you have already textured your model with some other paint mode, like per-pixel, you can still export a displacement map based on "perceived" depth - represented as a height map with varying levels of gray. The purpose of micro-vertex painting is both to add texture and real mesh displacement. The other painting modes are really best used in conjunction with normal map production, although they also can be exported with associated displacement maps. Greg Smith

Zippit: You can access the more sophisticated drawing tools by pressing "E" on your keyboard and choosing the "Polygon" or the "Spline curve" tool, as well - for connected straight or curved lines. These tools do, however, fill the inside of your "selection". Greg Smith

Greg: Although you can't paint or project your texture in the Voxel Room, you can use a Background image as a guide for sculpting. Here's one technique for sculpting a thin, (2.5D cardboard), 3D model: 1) Under the Camera menu select "Background/Use background image" and select your texture image. 2) In the Voxel Room, select the "2D-Paint" tool and the 3rd brush from the left, top row. 3) Press "2" on the numeric keypad to switch to a front view. 4) Press the icon next to the "Camera" menu to switch to an orthographic view. 5) Use the scroll wheel to set your brush size and set the brush depth to something like 12. 6) Accurately paint up to the edge of your texture, filling the whole image with volume. 7) Alternately, press "E" on your keyboard to select the "Spline curve" tool, (looks like an oval with dots on the perimeter). Use this tool to very accurately follow your background texture. 8)Use one of the AUTOPO routines that brings you to the Paint Room, (right click on the Voxel layer name). 9) In the Material Panel, create a new material with your diffuse texture and add a "cardboard" texture for the "Bump" channel of the material. 10) Make sure you are in the Front view, click on your material and use the Material "scale" and "position" icons to size and position your material to match, exactly, the cardboard model and paint the front surface of your "cardboard" model with both the "Color" and the "Depth" icons selected for use. 11) Export as an .obj for use in Unity. P.S. If you need more precise edges for your model, you can substitute using the "2D-Paint" tool for using the "Carve" tool and the same "Spline curve" tool - when the panel pops up, choose "plain" for the edge type. Greg Smith

Q: Pen or "Brush" tips and "Objects" are similar and both can be derived from .obj or .lwo or .3b files. Brush tips can, however, also be made from grayscale images. Brushes are really only 2.5D shapes that you can use to paint strokes or apply "stamps" to your voxel model. Some voxel tools can mirror the 2.5D shape to the other side of the stamp or stroke. "Objects", on the other hand, are real 3D objects that can be loaded into voxel space via the "Primitives" tool or by means of the "Merge" tool. Both methods allow positioning of the Object in voxel space in 2 different ways, (both commands are accessible in the associated "Tool" panel): 1) Using the "Transform" widget 2) Interactively positioning via the "On pen" command. "On pen" allows you to "skate" the object across the surface of an existing voxel object, aligning it to the normals of that object. You can resize the merged object, interactively, by dragging left or right with the right mouse button depressed. You also can embed or elevate the merged object above the surface of the existing object, interactively, by dragging up or down with the right mouse button depressed. So, use Tinker's Brushes and Objects in precisely the way described above. Greg Smith

Snoops: I would recommend the following workflow: 1) Use voxel sculpting to achieve only medium resolution detail, (74 to 150 megs). 2) Try running AUTOPO for micro-vertex painting - texture resolution at least 4096 3) Use painting tools to add micro displacement and to automatically generate a normal map. Micro-vertex painting actually adds polygon displacement as you paint. Use high resolution materials to establish all of your high frequency details, (color, displacement, specular and normal maps) - which, then, can be exported for use elsewhere. This is the fastest road from point A to point B. Greg Smith

Parel: The UV's of your model won't affect your rig in Blender. You can let 3D-Coat create your UV's for you. All should work well, going back and forth to Blender, retaining your rig weights and everything. You just need to tell Blender where the new texture map information is in the Texture panel, in Blender. Psmith the "p" is silent, as in psychosis, psoriasis, pterodactyl and psalm.

Parel: If you have made this model in another app, simply import it into 3D-Coat for per-pixel or micro-vertex painting. The UV's will be made automatically. If the model is all one layer or "piece", make sure to designate at least 4096 x 4096 for the texture. If you've tried this and you still can't paint the head - it must be on another layer. Check the Paint Room layers panel. Greg Smith

Yes, Don. I can read the history of the name, too. But, if this guy really had evil intent, it would come out, sooner or later - and we can deal with that, then. Not now, however. It is our custom, here in the U.S., that one is innocent until proven guilty - and that custom should hold true for this forum, as well. Suspicion is not grounds for conviction. Courtesy is the rule of the day. Even to bad guys. Plus, name calling is so . . . . unnecessary. So low. So unoriginal. I know you can do better than that, just with plain, descriptive English. And, to complete my point about a bad metaphor: A Troll, in traditional English mythology, was a character that lived under a bridge and asked questions that you were required to answer before being allowed to cross the bridge. What, in the world, does this have to do with a guy who is trying to stir up trouble on a forum? I believe, the intent of the "coiners" of the term was to imply that such a disturbing person was "trolling" for fish - which is also the wrong term to describe the activity in question. What they really meant to imply was "chumming" - the act of lacing the waters with bait to attract fish to be caught. Trolling is the act of putting out numerous fishing lines, from a moving boat, every one baited, to catch the most fish with the least amount of effort. Let's just keep our metaphors straight, shall we? And, no name calling, at all, will be tolerated on the forum. Regardless of the crime. Greg Smith

Both of you guys: Please refrain from using name calling as a question answering technique. Really, you have no idea where this person is coming from. Simply lacking 3D-Coat experience and doing things out of order can give the impression of program unresponsiveness or slowness. Take the Smooth tool, for instance: It really is only ideally effective, in voxel space, when working at low resolution. Move a sculpture past 74 megs or so and it has very little smoothing effect - and it definitely is less responsive. Similar slow downs can be observed with the other voxel tools at that resolution, as well. And, about the insulting label "Troll": today it means almost nothing. People use it in every forum in place of saying to the person in question, "Hey buddy, you're an idiot". Or, "I really don't like what you're saying." The name, "Troll", was the wrong choice of metaphor, in the first place - so, I never want to see it used in these forums again. Greg Smith

VM: Voxels are definitely slower than the polygon equivalent - even on fast hardware, running the CUDA version. The way of working that is efficient for making characters, for me, is to always work at the lowest resolution possible, only adding more if I can't get the fineness of detail I need. I tend to work with "uni-body" simple characters, so this works well. Now, if you want to produce something more realistic, with detailed apparel or armour or what have you - working with layers and caching the ones you are not working on is the key. Working in Surface mode also makes things faster. (the caching icon is the one inside the voxel layer name, rectangular boundary area). Don't try to add the very high frequency detail using voxels. Especially if you are making game assets. Paint these details, instead. The micro-vertex method of painting actually adds real displacement as you use the Paint Room tools. And these are becoming very fast to work with, (as Andrew improves them). The fine detail you produce, this way, can then be exported as displacement and normal map info - which is what you need if you will be taking your model elsewhere for rendering and animation. Greg Smith

Magian: Normally, the workflow would be: 1) Sculpt in voxels and run just the "AUTOPO" algorithm, (without the automatic mapping features). 2) Correct any bad topology in the Retopo Room. 3) Choose a mapping method from the "Retopo" menu, (Ptex, per pixel, micro-vertex). 4) Start texturing in Paint Room. At least, this is what I would recommend, since AUTOPO is in its mid-formative stages. Most people find it necessary to correct, at least, some of the topology generated with AUTOPO - so mapping really should be done after these corrections are made. So, once mapped, any topographical changes will obliterate any automatically generated map. Do all of your topographic adjustments before mapping. Greg Smith

Watch out!

Andrew: I've had the same difficulty with most of the "Surface" Brushes - there seems to be definite and restricted "ceiling", where all alpha shapes are ignored and a flattening or clipping occurs at the completion of a set of strokes. I believe that all brushes, whether they are genuine voxel brushes or "Surface" brushes, should respect the shape of the alpha - at any depth setting. Otherwise, there is no point in using the alpha shapes at all. If user defined brush curves are ever implemented in the brush engine, then, perhaps alphas will become unnecessary for everything except brush "stamping". But, alpha shaped brushes are definitely easier to create and modify than curves for most general purpose sculpting tasks. Greg

Fixed. Here is the "English" file. English.xml

James: This is where "Presets" come into play. In fact, it is a tentative plan to allow users to "turn off" sections of the interface that are not wanted or needed. Combining functions and "Rooms" helps to facilitate and organize things into "modules", which can be turned off and on, at will, (preferences). If a user wants all the Rooms and functions, just leave them on. If they only want some functions in some Rooms - turn them on. Otherwise, there's no way to please everyone. Greg Smith

Jimiclay: To make "antique" clothes that drape, and usually which are made in one piece, (you can separate them by detailing later), you could try the following technique, doing all the "modeling" in the Voxel Room: 1) Either import or create your character model in the Voxel Room, having limbs in a natural, neutral position. (You should use a smoothed, "primitive" character shape, don't use a detailed humanoid shape for this). Don't make legs if you want a "dress" shape - just a conical shape of one piece, simulating the outer surfaces of the legs with no division. 2) Duplicate the voxel layer, (using the icon at the bottom of the voxel tree). 3) Choose "Extrude" by right clicking on the duplicated voxel layer name. Use a value of about 7 or so. 4) Increase the resolution, (res+) to 150 megs or more. 5) Choose "Extract skin" (using the "surface" method), from the right click menu - thickness of 1. 6) Press "E" to choose the polygon selection tool. Hold down "Ctrl" while cutting the ends of the sleeves, the bottom of the "shirt" and the neck hole with the "Carve" tool. Now you have the basic "hull" of cloth, which is larger than the underlying "body" shape. 7 Use the "Airbrush" and "Move" tools to create wrinkles, (use very low intensity for negative "Airbrush") - all the while leaving the "body" mesh visible for reference. Add resolution for more detail. This gives you clothing on a separate layer that can conform where you want it to. Greg Smith

Dreamcube: Since it is impractical to import a large architectural model from Sketchup to 3D-Coat - all at once - and since Sketchup exports non-closed geometry, you can achieve, at least in part, what you want without involving another application: 1) Create your architectural parts in Sketchup, isolating different types of geometries in different layers. 2) Export each layer as a separate .obj file. 3) "Merge" each layer item into 3D-Coat, making sure to check the "Make mesh closed" option in the "Merge" panel. 4) Use the "Transform" option in the "Merge" panel to position and scale each object, adding each item as an additive "boolean" object by pressing enter, negative by holding down "Ctrl" and pressing enter. I'm afraid that is the best you can hope for, without an external Sketchup plug-in that does some kind of auto triangulate or "quadrangulate" routine - skinning your existing Sketchup surfaces with equidistantly spaced triangles or quads, before their export as an .obj file. Greg Smith

I also agree with Michalis - 3D-Coat workflow is more complicated than it needs to be. Surface mode is really just POLY mode. So, what we have are two Polygon Rooms, (the Sculpt Room and Surface mode - which is in disguise as a voxel area). In my opinion, both should be combined into one POLY Room, and augmented with a full arsenal of polygon sculpting tools, (ala Zbrush). This way, there would be a much clearer road describing the most efficient workflow - from voxels to polygons to finished, detailed model - ready for export: 1) Use voxels for laying down everything up to medium resolution detail - and then running AUTOPO to establish a base polygon mesh. 2) All of the following operations can then be done in one POLY Room: * Mesh clean-up activities, (retopo) * Refinement of polygon model, hard surfacing and adding high resolution detail, with the aid of true multi-resolution switching. * UV allocation and unwrapping, adjustment and application. This leaves us needing only one VOXEL Room, one POLY Room and one DETAIL Room, (texturing and rendering should take place in the same room or screen). This way, everything becomes much, much clearer, cleaner and simpler to understand for all kinds of users. Not only so, but all the duplication of commands that appear in both the current Retopo Room and UV Room and Sculpt Rooms disappear. Actually, there is a 3rd inclusion that would speed up the entire process for all users - small and great - possessing low powered and high powered hardware, alike. But that deserves a topic unto itself. Greg Smith

Looks a bit contemplative, today. Greg Smith

Yep, it's a typo but it's fixed now - and here is the .xml file with the fix. Greg English.xml