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V4.1 BETA (experimental 4.1.17D)


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I must admit I don't really understand what you mean. What is the difference between a pack of textures and many different textures? Are you talking about file naming?

Sorry about this, it is probably my terrible English.

At the end it's just about file naming and handling multiple file for an asset.

Unfortunately even if i really like 3DC , i found it not good for that purpose.It doesn't help to save time.

Try once to load multiple maps in differents tiles or set for instance,painfull :(.

If at least we had a scripting language it would be easier to manage.

Anyway we can manage multi-tiles in 3DC ,but it's not that good.

Also, multiple channels per map are supported, RGBA is four channels. You can shuffle the channels in the paint room.

Unfortunately not for our use,textures take a lot of our storage so we made choice to at least reduce the depth or the unwanted channels.

So we reduce the textures depth as much as we can and if we need 1 channels we convert it to grayscale .

Even if i wanted, color, normal maps,vector displace and much more are on 3 channels at least.

If we really wanted we would be able to put everything in multi-channel exr,but for me it's a non sense because

each time you'll want to modify one channel you'll have to publish every textures channel(for versioning), and it would cost too much storages at the end .

When you work with multi-tiles or UDIM,you save a lot of time and you don't bother with texture name.

No more arm, hand, leg, hat etc in your texture name. You just need to assign a texture pack to an asset read it in 1 shader.

Hope it make senses, here a pseudo code of how you can read that in your shader with multi tiled filename.

(s,t mean u,v)

Filename="/Path/my_texture_color_u%d_v%d.extension"

s_integral=floor(s)

s_fractional=s-s_integral

t_integral=floor(t)

t_fractional=t-t_integral

filename=format(Filename,s_integral,t_integral)

mytexturecolor=readthistexture(filename,s_fractional,t_fractional)

Kind,

Rachid

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It would be much better to support it like all the others packages do .

All the other packages do not necessarily support it, the only time I've even seen it is in 3ds max.

From just playing around a little its pretty good. I cant find how to paint in UV space (im sure its in the manual).

In the paint room look under Textures > Texture UV Editor In there you can paint directly on the UV map. Zooming and panning work the same as the 3D view.

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Thanks Abn,

Yes i must admit i am quite surprised by this missing feature. I see a lot of high detailing tools, both in sculpting and the paint engine from the looks of it (haven't spent much time, just mainly in manuals and the youtube channel). I am kinda dumbfounded why it wouldn't support a format (so to speak) that allows for the output of all this detail.

Maybe its really tough to program and its a problem to get it to work, if not, then it really should be there. The only way i can see at the moment to capture all the detail you create in 3d-c is via ptex and thankfully i use Houdini which natively support it, but its such a new technology to work with and UV are simple to work with especially when working with them in Photoshop.

I will send Andrew an email to encourage the development of this feature, because right now its one of the glaring shortfalls i can see in this program.

Did you watch the video I posted? It explains that both methods do roughly the same thing...they just work a bit differently. I don't know why some think this is such an impediment. It is not. You can create and use as many UV maps as you want. It's just that, inside of 3D Coat's UV workspace all the maps occupy the same 0-1 texture space. The UV tiling approach does exactly the same function, except in the workspace, each map is spread out as if on a desk or something. In 3D Coat, it's like a stack of maps. 2 approaches....same result. You can export your maps as tiles (3D Coat will spread them out for you, if that is what you want), and you can import work done with UV tiles. Again, I demonstrated that in the video.

Now if there is such a huge benefit to spreading them out in a tiled fashion, rather than stacking them, simply contact Andrew and explain this to him. Since I don't personally see the major advantage, I have not been able to convince him that it's a high priority.

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I may be missing something but I don't see the benefit to tiles over using multiple UV maps.

There isn't much benefit. One of the lead artists at Magnetic Dreams told me he didn't want to try 3D Coat (was using Mari, but they were having issues with having to upgrade/maintenance) because it didn't have UV tiling. I asked him to articulate just why that was fundamentally better than UV Sets. He couldn't answer it. This is what I think the problem really is. People see this approach used in some other packages (Mari, Mudbox...Maya and Max can arrange in tiles, but it is set up to work in UV sets by default) and they suddenly think 3D Coat is flawed because it doesn't arrange them in a spread out (tiled) fashion, instead of a layered or stacked arrangement (UV Sets).
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Correction. LW, messiah, Modo, 3DC and Zbrush don't.

Modo and LW have scripting language i would be suprise to don't be able to do that since it require just to append a texture field and move a UV range or assign to face that are in the correct tiles.

We are agree that Zbrush is not a painter , but it export multi-tiles, i did it so many times.

3DCoat manage it too, it's just a painful process to import each textures in each tiles, i'm saying nothing else.

All the other packages do not necessarily support it, the only time I've even seen it is in 3ds max.

What do you meant by don't support it?

In Maya,Max,and for sure Houdini you can do these assignment.

Dynamically Arnold ,Renderman, Guerilla,Mantra support it and i'm pretty sure that vray should have these kind of reader.

As soon as you support a scripting language (for assignment) or have a proper API (to make read dynamically the textures by the shader) ,you support it.

Once again sorry for my weird english, may be there's misunderstanding.

Kind,

Pixo

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There isn't much benefit. One of the lead artists at Magnetic Dreams told me he didn't want to try 3D Coat (was using Mari, but they were having issues with having to upgrade/maintenance) because it didn't have UV tiling. I asked him to articulate just why that was fundamentally better than UV Sets. He couldn't answer it. This is what I think the problem really is. People see this approach used in some other packages (Mari, Mudbox...Maya and Max can arrange in tiles, but it is set up to work in UV sets by default) and they suddenly think 3D Coat is flawed because it doesn't arrange them in a spread out (tiled) fashion, instead of a layered or stacked arrangement (UV Sets).

Read what i said , gave you at least one argument and a important one.But i repeat myself again,3DCoat support it.It is just painful to load all the textures in different tiles.

Mari let you define a variable $UDIM in your string name, and is able to load all the map automatically.

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Ok so i have been playing around with the beta demo.

3dcoat.jpg

I loaded 1 map for the Face, Chest and Right Leg. All at 4k

From just playing around a little its pretty good. I cant find how to paint in UV space (im sure its in the manual).

To be honest the only big flaw i can see is that Layers are not independent per map. They are global. And it did take a chunk of ram about 10 gb but that might be because i was testing alot.

It would be great to store layers per 'Material' but im sure that is quite a big undertaking.

That is actually a feature. Most folks want to be able to paint across UV maps and objects. If you want to isolate them then keep a layer independent by working on it exclusively inside it's UV map, in the UV (2D) Texture Editor.

You can see a brief demonstration of it at about the 15:45 min. mark in this video:

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For anyone upgrading from v3 I've found a few things missing even after moving the contents of the v3 My Documents folder to the v4 one. For one I noticed that all my pens (brushes) were missing aside form the default ones. I found them in the Program Files 3DC folder:

C:\Program Files\3D-Coat-V3\textures\patterns

So I copied them to the same folder in V4 and that fixed it. There may be other missing things too like any Masks you've added yourself. Perhaps for V4 everything like this should be moved to the Documents folder so that it's all in one place.

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Read what i said , gave you at least one argument and a important one.But i repeat myself again,3DCoat support it.It is just painful to load all the textures in different tiles.

Mari let you define a variable in your string name, and is able to load all the map automatically.

Then you'll be the one to contact Andrew and point this out, right? ;) Me and Haikale have asked him about modifying the naming convention to make it easier to send texture maps to Mudbox, using it's applinks. Currently, it's pretty tough to do (have to use workarounds to get it to work), all because of the naming convention differences. Some scripting for this might help a great deal.
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Then you'll be the one to contact Andrew and point this out, right?

I did it actually ahahah, it look like i'm not alone.

And you are totally right ,the only issue is the naming convention to read textures, i find myself to don't have any problem with the current 3DC "UV set".

Other solution a proper scripting language.

Cheers,

Pixo

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Can I ask for left-justification in various list boxes (VoxTree, Paint Layers, etc.) instead of the text being centered? Or at least an option to left-justify it? I find following a jagged vertical line very hard on eyes, especially when I have many layers in the scene.

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@digiman, yeah that looks like the best workflow. It would be nice to be able to be able to visual tell whichs layers will affect which part by having a tree-like structure under it.

ie

Mat 1

|__Layer 1

|__Layer 2

Mat 2

|__Layer 1

|__Layer 2

But i could see how that would conflict with the current workflow of having a separate layers tab.

@AnbRanger: Thanks for the info and vid. Although Im not quite up to speed with 3dc posts like yours and the youtube channel will make it much more painless.

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It would be nice to be able to be able to visual tell whichs layers will affect which part by having a tree-like structure under it.

Agree

Thinking about V4 new features... for me today an optional node system in the Paint Room is a must.

----------------------------------------------

Mental MiIl nodes system is a good example

F10_mill_textures_crackles2.jpg

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Here is a little glitch,anyone get this or have any ideas.I use a Wacom Bamboo.If 3DCoat does anything processor intensive,my Wacom becomes unresponsive in certain areas.Usually the Right Mouse Click button! ( my mouse works fine) To fix it I have to press the "FN1" button on the tablet. This minimises 3DCoat....then I press it again to maximise. It works ok then? Very strange.I went thru a period of my Wacom not working at all a while ago.(pre 3dCoat) So I was always having to fiddle about with the drivers.So now it is generally pretty stable, Im loathe to start messing about with the drivers unless I really have to!

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Minor gripe in v4 but it does increase my time and effort to finish my task. Using the retopo tools and noticed the snap detection is much worse than before. Using Add/Split it will work great on the starting point, but when connecting the last point to fill the face, it has horrible detection and falls off the intended point half the time. In the previous version, you could circle the reticle around and it would continue to detect and snap to the final point.

I can make a video of what I'm talking about if that helps Andrew. An easy repro is to make a quad in retopo and try to add a quad to it with Add/split. Increase brush size and circle your cursor over the final point. In version 3 it will stay locked. In version 4 it will unlock very easily. This has been a pretty big time killer believe it or not.

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With the new version 4 of 3D-Coat will come an all new Manual.

As 3D-Coat has gotten deeper and deeper - supporting more and varied workflow scenarios, it becomes impossible for one man, (me), to know and absorb all of the possible workflows - for every possible use.

Therefore, I am opening up the contents of the version 4 Manual to User contributions. I need workflow examples - laid out in easy-to-understand formats.

Anyone who contributes will be given full credit within the Manual and will be raised to the status of "Fantastic Contributor", automatically.

Please send me a private message if you are interested.

Greg Smith

Tbh, as a 3dCoat user, I think 3dCoat's workflow needs to be completely redone. From the ground up. The fact that there are so many workflows sort of implies that there isn't much confidence in any particular path and so Andrew continued to add more and more of them hoping to satisfy the various people's tastes. But instead, it just confuses me, especially when a bug shows up along the way - because you begin to wonder whether your workflow is the problem, or is there a bug, and if it is a bug, exactly at which action did the bug take place?

I think the entire functionality of 3dCoat should be reimagined, and the starting that the starting point for this rework should be Sculptris. Which, to me, just feels open and friendly to start using it. 3dCoat feels like, "Let's hope I don't push the wrong buttons this time"

I'm serious. Even for those of you who would knife me in a back alley for saying this, the workflow/UI is downright unfriendly. Start from Sculptris. Then slowly, and thoughtfully add 3dCoats features from there. Even the look needs to change. If a newbie joins and asks a bunch of questions about a weird workflow they want to try, only about 5 people on this forum would be able to tell him exactly how to do it, the rest of us would probably be pretty clueless. And we've been using this program for a long time. I just don't have the confidence that I could explain 3dCoat's workflow to ANYONE, in the same way I could explain other programs that I am familiar with. The overall concept behind the UI/workflow escapes me.

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Tbh, as a 3dCoat user, I think 3dCoat's workflow needs to be completely redone. From the ground up. The fact that there are so many workflows sort of implies that there isn't much confidence in any particular path and so Andrew continued to add more and more of them hoping to satisfy the various people's tastes. But instead, it just confuses me, especially when a bug shows up along the way - because you begin to wonder whether your workflow is the problem, or is there a bug, and if it is a bug, exactly at which action did the bug take place?

I think the entire functionality of 3dCoat should be reimagined, and the starting that the starting point for this rework should be Sculptris. Which, to me, just feels open and friendly to start using it. 3dCoat feels like, "Let's hope I don't push the wrong buttons this time"

I'm serious. Even for those of you who would knife me in a back alley for saying this, the workflow/UI is downright unfriendly. Start from Sculptris. Then slowly, and thoughtfully add 3dCoats features from there. Even the look needs to change. If a newbie joins and asks a bunch of questions about a weird workflow they want to try, only about 5 people on this forum would be able to tell him exactly how to do it, the rest of us would probably be pretty clueless. And we've been using this program for a long time. I just don't have the confidence that I could explain 3dCoat's workflow to ANYONE, in the same way I could explain other programs that I am familiar with. The overall concept behind the UI/workflow escapes me.

I actually like the 3DCoat "workflow" thats why I choose it over Mudbox / ZBrush the different rooms make sense to me.

I dont use all rooms for all projects; for some projects I only use the Paint room, for others only UV room.

Not 100% sure if you meant this with workflow.

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Tbh, as a 3dCoat user, I think 3dCoat's workflow needs to be completely redone. From the ground up. The fact that there are so many workflows sort of implies that there isn't much confidence in any particular path and so Andrew continued to add more and more of them hoping to satisfy the various people's tastes. But instead, it just confuses me, especially when a bug shows up along the way - because you begin to wonder whether your workflow is the problem, or is there a bug, and if it is a bug, exactly at which action did the bug take place?

I think the entire functionality of 3dCoat should be reimagined, and the starting that the starting point for this rework should be Sculptris. Which, to me, just feels open and friendly to start using it. 3dCoat feels like, "Let's hope I don't push the wrong buttons this time"

I'm serious. Even for those of you who would knife me in a back alley for saying this, the workflow/UI is downright unfriendly. Start from Sculptris. Then slowly, and thoughtfully add 3dCoats features from there. Even the look needs to change. If a newbie joins and asks a bunch of questions about a weird workflow they want to try, only about 5 people on this forum would be able to tell him exactly how to do it, the rest of us would probably be pretty clueless. And we've been using this program for a long time. I just don't have the confidence that I could explain 3dCoat's workflow to ANYONE, in the same way I could explain other programs that I am familiar with. The overall concept behind the UI/workflow escapes me.

I don't think 3dcoat needs to be redone, but it would certainly benefit GREATLY from a few month simplification/reordering of it's ui item.

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Is there a way to weld/sew verts/edges/islands together when editing the UV map in the Retopo room, this is the reason I do my UV's in Softimage/Maya, if not, I think it would be a needed feature and save me the hassle of exporting my retopo mesh for UV editing then importing back to 3DC for painting etc.

T.

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