Psmith

L'Ancien: Very nice bones you've got there. I'll bet you'll love Andrew's implementation of Ptex. It generates a regular UV map from whatever is hyper-textured - and can be read by many apps. Greg Smith

Beeavision: I'm not sure I'm following the total, step-by-step process you undertook to get the results you got. But, to just make a stab at it, I think you could bypass the "Lightwave cleanup" step and save yourself a lot of trouble. Keeping everything within one app means, by definition, keeping it simple - especially as regards the process. So, I'd start and finish everything within 3D-Coat - 1) Model terrain in voxels, including fairly high res details. 2) Run the AUTOPO algorithm, shading areas of highest density - setting "Approximate polycount" to something lowish. Apply guide strokes as follows: a) "Slice" the model horizontally and vertically, (as viewed from the top), as well as "slicing" it all the way through the cross section of the base shape, (rectilinear solid). This allows you to assign all the polygons on the bottom to one (very small) island before unwrapping. 3) Manually assign UV regions to completely encompass "mountain" areas and recesses, thus avoiding unsightly normal map problems. 4) For very nice, high resolution maps which work well in Lightwave, choose "Merge with Ptex" from the Retopo menu. This allows you to assign very dense detail areas to the largest areas on your UV map, and still generate a UV map in a format that most apps can read. Greg Smith

Tazz: Truly realistic skin is a tough one and it is a problem than has been solved primarily on the render side of things. Real skin is translucent and allows light to pass through the uppermost layers and reflect off those beneath. This effect is really difficult to simulate properly and requires a renderer that is capable of sub surface scattering. I'm not sure that Poser's renderer, Firefly, is up to the job of scattering light in exactly the way it would need to create the illusion of translucent skin. Of course, 2 dimensional traditional media painters have been able to produce this illusion through the use of translucent layers of paint, layered one over the other, (glazing), thus allowing the light to scatter when hitting the canvas. This effect is difficult to produce digitally, but can be done in a similar fashion to that which is used in traditional media. Not something so easy to do. Within 3D-Coat, you could try building up translucent layers of digital paint - and maybe there is someone on the forum that has tried this with success. I know Michalis has made a very nice model and produced a very nice photo realistic rendering of an older man which was rendered in Blender 3D. Maybe, at this point, he could share his own experience. Greg Smith

Matt: There's nothing quite like this in 3D-Coat. There are ways of achieving the same result, but they involve more steps. You can separate areas of volume from an object using a combination of the "Split" tool, (which translates the split part to another layer), but it splits whole volumes of the object and you cannot control depth. If you want to simply create surface detail that exists on a separate voxel layer, you could create a series of .obj "Brushes" which, when applied upon the surface of an object on an underlying layer as a "stamp", actually conform to that underlying surface while still staying separate. The depth of any .obj "stamp" or "Brush" can be controlled with the "Depth" slider or by holding down the right mouse button and dragging up or down, thus adjusting the depth curve. There is a limit to how sharp the edges can be with this type of "stamp", however. I'm afraid you'll have to experiment with this to see if this method satisfies your needs. Greg Smith

Bisse: Try "Windows/Restore all pages to default". I'm not sure if this will solve it or not. Which version are you using? If it is not the most recent beta version, (many bug fixes), then install this and try again. Greg Smith

Bisse: To get the "adjustment" rectangle to return select "Camera/Background/Edit image placement". At least this works for me, on my system. It works again, even if you select "Close" from that open window. Try this again, and if it still doesn't work, let me know. Greg Smith

Ken: Thanks for the bug report. We'll look into this right away. Greg Smith

Rich: Make sure, if you are starting with some base shape, in the Voxel Room, to either create it at a high resolution, (large size), or to use "Res+" BEFORE you start merging things. Then you can scale the merged parts to match the size, (resolution), of the base shape. Greg

Marching Cubes is actually the process Andrew uses to create an organized polygonal mesh FROM a voxel object. I believe what he is indicating is that he has arrived at a better solution for automatically creating this mesh from a voxel object - one that contains only nicely spaced quads, (no n-gons or triangles). But, at this point, it is all in his "noodle". Greg Smith

Redcore: The only way to export a high poly mesh directly from Voxel space without creating an ordered polygonal mesh, (through AUTOPO or manually), that retains high frequency voxel detail is to use "Export object" while you are in the Voxel Room. This is only practical for creating a mesh that will be detailed outside of 3D-Coat, however, since importing extremely high poly meshes for painting is not really practical right now. For practical purposes, working totally within 3D-Coat, you will need to create an organized polygonal skin, either manually or automatically - you can specify the density of an automatically created skin, or just manually subdivide your mesh within the Retopo Room, unwrap the mesh for UV's and bake the displacement texture for export or merging into the Paint Room from the Retopo Room, directly. But, by far, the simplest technique is to create a detailed voxel object and select "AUTOPO with Ptex" from the Voxel layer menu - and let the algorithm do all the work of creating an organized mesh, unwrapping this mesh for UV's and dropping it the Paint Room for texturing to very high levels of detail. This last option produces the best result, especially if you will be rendering with 3D-Coat's built in renderer. But, you can, from the Paint Room, choose to "Export model" or "Export Hi-poly Mesh", automatically giving you the option for exporting the model with Diffuse, Normal and Specular channels included in the export. Greg Smith

I'm sure supporting this format would be useful, but, at this time I think Andrew is very busy optimizing 3D-Coat and smashing bugs like crazy. So, if he did decide to make time for this, it will be in the future sometime. Greg Smith

Rich: Really nice. Thanks for posting this. I hope you will be able to do work of this quality, even quicker than you are used to with other methods, all within 3D-Coat. You oughtta try the built in renderer - very good for many things. Then, I demand you post the results on this forum. Haha! Greg

Vivi: The circle and rectangular selection tools only work in the plane of the camera, for now. You cannot constrain them to draw equidistant from the center, either, at this point in time. You might be able to accomplish what you want using the "Merge" tool with "On pen" selected in the "Tool Options" panel. 1) Select "Merge". 2) Check "On Pen" 3) Choose "Select Mesh" 4) Navigate to your 3D-Coat root folder and open "Samples" 5) Select the "Cube" or the "Sphere" or any .obj file you wish to add to the folder. Holding down the right mouse button while dragging left or right scales the object, while holding down the right mouse button and dragging up or down elevates or indents the object into the surface. Using "On pen" continually orients the object to the normals of the object already present in voxel space. Pressing "Enter" adds the object at that location, while "Ctrl-Enter" subtracts the object from the "parent" mesh. Greg Smith

Rich: I find the fur interesting. How did you do it? Also, how much did you make use of AUTOPO? How much manual editing did you have to do to the mesh? Greg

Nope. And, it looks like you gotta pay $20 first just to find out. No demos to view, even if only for seeing if you like the guy's teaching style. Greg

Rich: Yes, micro-vertex painting provides the most actual mesh displacement while painting. It also works best if you use a higher "Approximate Polycount" from the AUTOPO wizard. But, this depends on whether you need to produce a low poly asset or not. However, I think if larger displacements are what you are after, try to do these, (not super high frequency), details in voxel space. And, if you are making a model just for rendering or for animation in an app like Blender, I recommend you try the option "AUTOPO with Ptex" from the menu. You have so much flexibility with Ptex, incredible quality, and since Andrew has an automatic conversion going on which gives you a standard UV map upon export to other apps, you don't even need to worry about Ptex compatibility in these other apps. Give 'er a whirl! Greg

James: When you rough out a voxel mesh, how do you export it for use in Zbrush? Do you use "Export object" from within the Voxel Room, or do you do your topology with 3DC tools? Greg Smith

Michalis and Rich: I generally don't even do photorealistic characters, so my "humans" tend to be exaggerated quite a bit. Personally, I always do mouths, (if I am going to animate them), with them in the open and "stretched" position - (in an extreme position), because trying to reposition a closed mouth makes it impossible to ever morph it to those extreme open and stretched shapes. I would rig the jaw with bones, but the other lip and mouth muscle movements I would make by means of morphs. Did you see the result of the AUTOPO algorithm in my example above? I think the resulting mesh is totally able to be animated and morphed in any extreme way. Within 3D-Coat, to create the morphs I would probably mostly use the "Move" and "Drag Points" tools in the Sculpt room to achieve them. But, as Andrew knows, my vote is for a complete set of Zbrushesque polygon manipulation tools in a Room called "Poly". We'll see. Greg Smith

Vivi: If you can give me a numbered list of steps you took to initiate this crash, I can troubleshoot and maybe pinpoint the problem so Andrew can fix it. Greg Smith

What is extraordinary about this short film is that it was produced with "free" software by a relatively small group of partially experienced artists and technicians. It almost fulfills the dream of a single artist, working alone, who is able to make animated stories which entertain and enrich. I think the other Greg is right, though. Story should be "king". And the story of Sintel is basically, "Vagabond Anime girl kills the one she loves and then makes up for it by taking care of her loved one's child." There are lots of technical things that one could find to criticize, but I think the motion of the animated story keeps you from noticing most of these. The one thing that did bother me, and bothers me with other 3D films, is the attempt to merge photorealism with the stylistic. The productions that attempt this can't seem to make up their minds which one to favor - so the rendering is disconcerting to the brain. And the old "sage" has much too young a voice to portray a seasoned wise man. I also think the "poor little orphan girl who survives" is becoming a worn out theme. Too many middle class teen aged people are already signing on for this role. Greg Smith

Ricky: I think you'll find 3D-Coat to be an apt companion for Lightwave - and I'm sure you'll love the voxel sculpting experience - especially, now that 3D-Coat has gotten the speed boost of the century. Happy to have you here. Greg Smith

Scott & Ron: Great to have you here with us. Lots of artists are beginning to realize that this is the future of 3D modeling and sculpting and texturing - all working together in one spot - giving you the fastest workflow available anywhere, at the moment. I'm sure you'll enjoy the process a lot more than many of us have, using other more frustrating, overly complex and much slower means of doing these things. Have fun. Greg Smith

Rich: I'd start with a low resolution voxel sphere and use the "Sphere" tool while holding down the "Ctrl" key to make a void for the mouth cavity. Then, I'd use the "Move" tool to shape the mouth around the cavity, looking at it from all sides. The lips can be made last by using the "Muscle" tool with rather shallow depth and "Conform" checked to make the muscle flow along the surface of the mouth opening. Experimentation is the key to success, here. Increase resolution, (Res+), to get the detail and smoothness you need. Liberally use the "Fill" and "Smooth" tools. Follow the density shading and guide examples for a reasonable topographic result. See attached picture. Beautiful, eh. Greg

Michalis: The AUTOPO algorithm has difficulty with spheres and any nearly spherical shape, (or a rounded rectangular shape, like a stone). The technique that works is to convince the algorithm that what it is dealing with is a spherized cube, (like you get in blender when you use "Subdivide Smooth" from the "W" menu). You accomplish this by performing slices all the way through the sphere, both horizontally and vertically, as seen in the attached picture. Greg Smith

It's just gotta be in that "E" panel, somewhere. Try the "Polygon" selection tool - or maybe it's the disconnected curve tool. Maybe you can clarify the steps you are taking. Greg Smith