Psmith

A voxel sculpture automatically appears in the Retopo Room as a "base" for adding topology - whether created automatically or manually. If you have sculpted something, just click the "Retopo" tab and start adding a mesh on top of the Voxel sculpture, using the Retopo Tools. Once you have created a "closed" mesh, use one of the "Merge" commands from the "Retopo Menu" to bring the topologized mesh into the Paint Room (and the UV Room). It's this Merging process that allows you to start texturing or altering the placement of UV structures. Greg Smith

I'm pretty sure the new spline curve tool does not work in conjunction with "On pen". As all brushes tend to adhere to the surface and orient themselves to the normal of that surface, automatically, just use the new tool as you would the old spline curve tool - it should orient the brush profile to the surface. Many of the LiveClay tools will operate in what approximates "polish" mode - tending to flatten the surface out, along the average surface curvature, in a parallel fashion. Just hold down the "Shift" key when using these LiveClay tools to get the "polish mode". Greg Smith

Mill: Before we can deal with this as a bug, we need to know which version you are using and what your system specs are. Can you supply these? Greg Smith

I am absolutely amazed at those who "take offense" at the points raised by Mr Mamurk. He's just stating what he thinks. This, now, is some kind of crime. He has respectfully used the "Off Topic" section of the forum, which makes it even more legitimate. Apparently, if someone feels very strongly about a topic that is absolutely relevant to those things and those tools that we use and how we use them, he will be driven from any forum where he dares express such strong feelings. I doubt that some of you even know the meaning of the word "forum". It is an arena in which many can join together to express their opinions. Popular view seems to feel it necessary to silence and defame anyone who does not express the popular sentiment. Internet fascism is what I call it. Bullying. You can see this in full swing over at the CG Society forums. A few dictators dictate which subjects are discussed and how and in what "tone" they are discussed. There is so much praise of those dark and ugly subjects which MrMamurk has described that there absolutely must be room for criticism of such praise - something contrary to the praise and promotion of what is evil and dark and ugly. I still believe that there are such things as light and darkness, good and evil, justice and injustice - and that each of these can be described with concrete words that enlighten the true situation and status of things. As long as I have anything to say about this, MrMamurk has a right to state his views in as long a fashion as he desires. Right here, on this forum. What will not be tolerated is a barrage of bad feeling and name calling directed as a weapon to be used to silence him. Greg Smith

Beatkitano: I think you are completely out of line calling the original poster a troll - or any other name, for that matter. You do not have that privilege here. He raises issues that he feels are poignant - and just because they are unpopular views - to you, in particular, does not give you the right to label him with a stigmatic label. I happen to agree with him and feel his points are quite valid. We tolerate people with different views than those which are popular on this forum. Greg Smith

The New Manual for Version 4 is poised to be released at the same time as Version 4, itself. Greg Smith

One thing that helps before you run AUTOPO - increase the resolution of your sculpt using "Res+" till you are using 71mb of memory - or larger. Also, using the default "3000" is probably far too small a number for overall polygons, since your sculpture includes the whole body. Try 12,000 and see what you get. Trial and error is the key. Greg Smith

You can use AUTOPO as a starting point for adding topology to this model of yours. I believe you could use the same kinds of guides that I demonstrate when using AUTOPO for the Rat model. That part of the tutorial is worth watching a few times to see how to progress from using no guides to using a lot of them - and what kind of result to expect. The face will be the hardest to get right - and you might refer to the Pirate tutorial for an example of placing guides and density shading to get an acceptable result. Greg Smith

Maya is a good example of something else regarding product success and failure: 1) It had a fantastic run up to its peak of success. 2) Could not sustain its market share 3) Got absorbed by an industry Giant 4) Got completely digested by that Giant We will continue to see the contraction, absorption, and complete digestion of many more computer graphic software products and the companies that spawned them. (We'll see what happens with Modo, next). Greg Smith

What about 3? Greg Smith

It seems that there are several factors which decide the financial success and popularity of any computer graphic software offering. A software product can even succeed if it hits only 1 or 2 of these targets: 1) Ease of use. 2) Stability. 3) Quality of output. 4) Exciting features and functionality. Taking earlier versions of Photoshop as a success model, we can see that it's success in the marketplace was due to it being easy to use, very stable, had excellent data output - and, lastly, continued to add new and exciting features with every release. Adobe hit every target of success with Photoshop. If we take another product - say Maya - as an example of a successful product - we can conclude that it fails at being easy to use, only partially succeeds in the realm of stability, but provides excellent output data and continues to add new and exciting features over time. When we look at the successful offering of ZBrush - we can readily agree that it is not easy to use, on the whole, but it is very very stable, it produces excellent data output and it continues to add new and exciting features to every major release. If 3D-Coat is to succeed on a level that compares to any of the above software products, it needs to hit 2 to 3 of these success targets to become and remain competitive in the computer graphic software marketplace. P.S. However, none of the examples could really have become successful if they had not hit target No. 3 - Quality of output. Gotta have it. Greg Smith

Can you tell us which version of 3D-Coat you are using? Also, your system specs are quite valuable for us to know. Greg Smith

The Brush Alpha Panel will hold only alpha images with depth information. To "stamp" a full color image or logo, etc - add a new Material and only use the 2nd field for your color file. It will appear ghosted in the Viewport. Position it and size it using the controls in the Material dialog - disabling both the "Paint with Depth" and "Paint with Specular" icons (X through the icon) - choose a neutral color or white foreground color and just paint over the ghosted logo image. It's most accurate to put the Viewport into one of the Orthographic Views to avoid distortion when Painting over your image. Greg Smith

Carlosa: If you draw up some of these, I'll include them in the Manual. Greg Smith

Probably the easiest thing is for you to email the images, since they might be larger than practical for the forum. Feel free to email the outline (or any text) as well as post it here for the benefit of others. Text can be in .rtf format. I'll have to reformat whatever you have produced to fit the structure of the Manual. You can send these to greg@simplyanimate.com Thanks so much for your help, Greg Smith

It's perfectly O.K. to list your problems and bugs on these forums. I produce a list of these for Andrew to look at every week. So, if it is more convenient to post them in the forum, by all means do this. We do need your system specs, version number of the software and at least an outline of the steps you used to encounter any particular problem - in order to really troubleshoot efficiently. Greg Smith

There is an entire section called "Workflows" for general descriptions and also a "Workflows" section for each Room - so it would be nice to get examples of what workflow you would use in each Room. Graphic "snapshots" of the menus and panels used would be nice - but not necessary. Also, if you would like to contribute artwork to be featured, here and there, throughout the Manual - I'd be happy to place them with authorship credit below each - granted the fact that the artwork would have to be "approved" first. Greg Smith

David: By all means. We need these workflows explained in detail. Especially WHY a user would take the outlined steps in any workflow situation. A new 3D student, for example, is not going to know, instinctively, why he needs to use Photoshop in addition to the internal 3DC texturing tools. He is not going to know why he would use a "Baking" process to go from Hi-Res to Lo-Res and back again. Should he use Surface Mode or Voxel Mode? Should he accomplish his detailing of a model with Paint Room Tools? When? Can Surface Mode produce the same results as Micro Vertex Painting? Why not? When does he need to "Clear all caches"? When does he need to work in "Proxy Mode"? When does he need to "Resample"? How do you use all the various forms of "Drag & Drop". And on and on. I have to say that I don't even know how some of these things work - after trying and getting what appears to be no result. So I need to be enlightened as well. Greg Smith

Mostly I am trying to include the various workflows that involve external applications. These seem to be the most frequent subjects brought up, continually, on the forums. And, since Applinks are 3rd party plug-ins, I'd like to focus on workflows that don't require their assistance. However, if you have a less than obvious internal workflow that could benefit users - by all means I will try to include it, as well. Even a short outline of steps will do. Greg Smith

Chris: My guess is, that at the earliest, it would be the end of November - but probably later. Greg Smith

Chris: The areas of 3D-Coat that seem to be the most mysterious and the most poorly documented are the following (yes, I need help with these): 1) Baking Workflows (So many kinds of "Baking") 2 Retopology Workflows (Especially Manual Retopo) 3) Importing for UV Mapping Workflows 4) High-res to Low-Res Workflows (Sculpting & Retopology) 5) Photoshop Integration Workflows I absolutely welcome any user contributions that address these mysteries. Even if all someone can contribute is a detailed outline of steps - they can be fleshed out. I'd be happy to act as a manager of all of the contributed content. The version 4 Manual will be aimed, much more than previously, at How Specifically To Use 3D-Coat, rather than what each tool, command, dialog and menu does. This is where user practices and experiences will really make a difference in the overall content and usefulness of the Manual. Start sending your ideas in right away! Greg Smith

In ver 4 beta Mac, it stays in the "Models" palette, whether you've saved the File it was created from, or not. I'm not sure of what happens in other versions. Greg Smith

Can you please tell us which version you are using? Also, system specs are most helpful in tracking down bugs. If you haven't tried this yet - see if the problem persists in v4 beta. Greg Smith

If you want to reuse a model, you can save it in the Models Panel by right clicking on the layer containing the model and choosing "Export/Export pattern for merge". This will allow you to Merge the model back into any given layer - and you can do a boolean "subtraction" by holding down the "Ctrl" key while pressing "Enter" to complete the merge. So, just do the above with your armor layer, only reduce the size of the merged copy before positioning it in the interior of the original object and pressing "Ctrl-Enter". Greg Smith

I was unaware of the "CUBA" version. Greg Smith