Advanced Member popwfx Posted February 21, 2013 Advanced Member Report Share Posted February 21, 2013 There is always a problem with the paint room in the "v4.00.Beta12" when we try to distort a material, it simply disappears and it is no longer possible to display other materials. To reproduce: 1) Load a model 2) In the paint room, import a material & open it 3) Try to distort this material to fit the model Result: 3D-Coat no longer displays the textures/materials and projection painting (using photographies) become useless... If anyone knows how to report this problem on mantis, please let me known. Can you please describe your step 3 exactly? Because unless I don't understand what you mean, it seems to work for me Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Advanced Member popwfx Posted February 21, 2013 Advanced Member Report Share Posted February 21, 2013 Btw Andrew, thank you for making material painting now respect the alpha channel!! This makes my life much easier now and getting certain effects is easier than doing it other ways. I appreciate that you've fixed this! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Member stry Posted February 21, 2013 Member Report Share Posted February 21, 2013 Great job Andrew! Loving these betas! A quick note, has anybody else had problems with the Cut Off tool not working (as in, not doing anything at all) in the surface mode? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Member David Tailliez Posted February 21, 2013 Member Report Share Posted February 21, 2013 Can you please describe your step 3 exactly? Because unless I don't understand what you mean, it seems to work for me Sorry, my fault, the step three is: Load a texture (face photography from 3dsk by example) for painting a model (using projection), then try distort the texture to fit the head, the texture simply disappears. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Advanced Member popwfx Posted February 21, 2013 Advanced Member Report Share Posted February 21, 2013 Sorry, my fault, the step three is: Load a texture (face photography from 3dsk by example) for painting a model (using projection), then try distort the texture to fit the head, the texture simply disappears. Ahh I see what you mean. What happens for me is that as soon as you select "Distort Image" from the Material Preview Options panel drop down, the heads up display overlay material texture does vanish visibly, but it is still there - just its opacity has gone to 0% despite being there. What this means is if you distort the image by painting after you have done this, you cannot tell you distorted the material because it is invisible. If you then switch back to Paint mode and paint, it will paint your distorted material projection, only now you cannot see the material in paint mode either. But painting does apply the distorted image to your mesh -- however, as you say, this is useless with this visibility bug, because you can't actually see how you distort the material image so you can't tweak it how you like it before painting. Also, now the material image is stuck invisible regardless of the opacity setting even in Paint mode, UNLESS you "Clear Distortion" then the material overlay opacity snaps back to the currently set opacity for the projection. Sorry, I didn't understand what you meant before, however I can now confirm this happens for me too in beta12 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Advanced Member popwfx Posted February 21, 2013 Advanced Member Report Share Posted February 21, 2013 Didn't see your Mantis, but this gif may help explain it to Andrew: Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Carlosan Posted February 21, 2013 Report Share Posted February 21, 2013 what about memory used by undo ? I found undo slow looks like 3DC was constant looking for files in Undo folder, i duno... Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Andrew Shpagin Posted February 22, 2013 Author Report Share Posted February 22, 2013 Updated to 12A - fixed mask/material distortion problem - fixed hotkey definition problem - several other mantis issues fixed, but first 2 are major Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Member David Tailliez Posted February 22, 2013 Member Report Share Posted February 22, 2013 Updated to 12A - fixed mask/material distortion problem - fixed hotkey definition problem - several other mantis issues fixed, but first 2 are major Very fast update ! Great job Andrew Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Advanced Member popwfx Posted February 22, 2013 Advanced Member Report Share Posted February 22, 2013 Updated to 12A - fixed mask/material distortion problem - fixed hotkey definition problem - several other mantis issues fixed, but first 2 are major Wow! Amazingly fast - thank you!! Maybe I'll make animated gifs from now on if it helped at all Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Advanced Member Zeddicus Posted February 22, 2013 Advanced Member Report Share Posted February 22, 2013 The hotkey one has been bothering me for a while now, so I'm glad I finally posted it on Mantis (wasn't 100% sure whether it was a bug or just human error on my part lol). Thank you for the quick update, Andrew! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Taros Posted February 22, 2013 Report Share Posted February 22, 2013 Since version 3 of 3D Coat I have a problem with understanding the difference between materials and UV-sets in 3D Coat. See my attachments and explain me please what "materials" in UV room are good for? Is it a bug or a riddle posed by Andrew for us? I guess there is something really strange and wrong... Thank you Chris Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Advanced Member Zeddicus Posted February 22, 2013 Advanced Member Report Share Posted February 22, 2013 Yeah it should be renamed from Object Materials (Surfaces) to UV Sets and consolidate all functions between them (since they do differ a bit) and then remove the drop down one. The popup is a better choice I think to contain everything. It's name is not entirely inaccurate by the way as it does have an affect on materials/textures and associated polygons. The lock prevents you from making accidental alterations to all layers that are on that UV set. The visibility icon can be useful when painting too. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Taros Posted February 22, 2013 Report Share Posted February 22, 2013 OK. But when I rename the UV-set at the start, why the origin one is still existing in the "materials" window later? See my example image in the uv-room. But when I create a new uv-set in the pull down menu inside the uv-room, then there will be a set created with my new name. Very confusing... Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Andrew Shpagin Posted February 22, 2013 Author Report Share Posted February 22, 2013 Materials imo are just part of standart hierarchy of objects in Max/Maja/LW (in LW called surfaces). So this is supported mainly for compatibility. Generally I think UV-sets+objects will be very enough for all purposes. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Advanced Member Zeddicus Posted February 22, 2013 Advanced Member Report Share Posted February 22, 2013 Yeah it can be confusing. The drop down governs UV sets only, while the popup governs more than that (materials & polygons i.e. surfaces) and does so via each UV set. This can be pretty useful if you plan your UV's carefully. For example the mesh I'm painting now has three UV sets, one of which is the teeth which have their own UV set. It's very hard to paint the back side of these, so in order to do so I just hide the other two UV sets. Since it governs polygons and materials too, they vanish and now I can paint all sides of the teeth without any interference, nor worry that I'll accidentally paint on areas I don't want to. It's a much faster means of doing it than freezing or using the hide tool (which never works very well for me). Edit 1: If you want it to be less confusing, after creating a new UV set just go to the popup window and rename the surface. I suppose 3DC could ask the user what they want to name the newly created surface any time they create a new UV set, along with a little description of what it is for. That way it wouldn't automatically have the same name as the UV set which confuses folks. Personally I think it makes sense to have the same name as the UV set, or at least something very close to it just so you know which set of surfaces will be affected when toggling the lock and visibility icons. And hopefully my posts made sense with how little time I had to prepare them (seeing as we're all commenting at the same time, I was trying to be quick). Edit 2: How about naming the popup "Selections Sets" instead of "Materials"? That is a bit long though, so maybe "Surfaces" would do. I thought of another way to describe it too, at least for those familiar with 3ds Max. You know how you can select a bunch of polygons and make them part of the same smoothing group, then easily select them all again later by using the select by smoothing group feature? The materials popup in 3D Coat is akin to that, but instead of using smoothing groups it uses UV sets to determine which polygons are part of a group. The name of each group is automatically created any time you create a new UV set and 3DC uses the name you chose for your UV set as the name for the group (which is where the confusion begins). You can rename the group listed in the Materials popup to anything you want so that it's different from the name of the UV set, but the polygons it governs will always be the same ones that were part of the UV set you created. And just like having a bunch of polygons selected in 3ds Max, you can freeze and/or hide them using the icons in the Materials popup. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Carlosan Posted February 22, 2013 Report Share Posted February 22, 2013 Materials and UV-Sets have the same meaning but you are using different words... and anothers name confusion Old Mantis request open http://3d-coat.com/m...view.php?id=797 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Advanced Member popwfx Posted February 22, 2013 Advanced Member Report Share Posted February 22, 2013 Materials imo are just part of standart hierarchy of objects in Max/Maja/LW (in LW called surfaces). So this is supported mainly for compatibility. Generally I think UV-sets+objects will be very enough for all purposes. Actually, this functionality is excellent. Sometimes when UVing or Retopoing or Painting or whatever, having access to the "materials" or object surfaces is great. It lets me focus on specific parts of my mesh if I want to hide one of the surfaces . The problem is not that materials/surfaces have the same name, the confusion arises because when you first go to UV, 3DCoat creates a UV set for each of the existing material/surface names - it is unrelated to the actual object surfaces, it just chooses to create a uv set per surface name. It took me awhile to figure out that it wants to create a uv set per object surface when loading a model for UVing. That is not always what you want -- in fact, I may have surfaces for eyes, sunglasses, body, etc, but only want uvs for head and body and sunglasses or whatever --- so we have to manually create the UV sets as we need them in the UV room and copy islands to the correct UV maps. This is desired behavior as how could 3DCoat possibly know how you want to organize your UV maps? But as far as functionality goes, I like being able to hide and show surfaces/materials in any room. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Member hOss Posted February 22, 2013 Member Report Share Posted February 22, 2013 How about calling the pop-up "UV Mat" for UV Materials? Just a suggestion. -Patrick Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Advanced Member popwfx Posted February 22, 2013 Advanced Member Report Share Posted February 22, 2013 How about calling the pop-up "UV Mat" for UV Materials? Just a suggestion. -Patrick Technically, it's a "UV map" and I would think a "UV set" is all the UV maps in your mesh. OK. But when I rename the UV-set at the start, why the origin one is still existing in the "materials" window later? See my example image in the uv-room. But when I create a new uv-set in the pull down menu inside the uv-room, then there will be a set created with my new name. Very confusing... The confusion arises because when you create another UV map (or "UV set" as 3DC calls them) it creates an entry in the surfaces/materials section which enables you to hide and show geometry associated with whatever polygon islands are in that map (again a VERY useful feature). I agree it is somewhat confusing, and might need some terminology tweaks, but once you get the hang of it, I really believe this is pretty easy and way down there in the list of confusing things in 3DC. It really is minor in comparison to other things that have no real analogue outside of 3DC. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Reputable Contributor AbnRanger Posted February 22, 2013 Reputable Contributor Report Share Posted February 22, 2013 Materials imo are just part of standart hierarchy of objects in Max/Maja/LW (in LW called surfaces). So this is supported mainly for compatibility. Generally I think UV-sets+objects will be very enough for all purposes. Andrew, in the English version of 3D Coat, Scratches2 is misspelled (Surface mode tool panel). It is spelled (wrongly) Scartches....instead of Scratches. Also, in Surface mode, in the SHIFT key menu (top of UI), it should be Add Detail...not All Detail. Figured it was important to get any typos corrected before final release. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Advanced Member Zeddicus Posted February 22, 2013 Advanced Member Report Share Posted February 22, 2013 Technically, it's a "UV map" and I would think a "UV set" is all the UV maps in your mesh. You're right in that one could think a UV set was a group that included multiple UV maps, but I don't think it really confuses people. Not as badly as the materials popup does certainly. Figured it was important to get any typos corrected before final release. There are a ton of typos, and confusing grammar as well. Much of it can be found in those little descriptions you get when you hover over something, while some things have no descriptions at all. I've been debating for a while now whether or not it would be worth my time to track them all down. Where would be the best place to post such a list if I did? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Carlosan Posted February 22, 2013 Report Share Posted February 22, 2013 I think just the naming changes are needed prior to the release. That way it's viewed as part of the overall V4 changes/enhancements. UI structure changes can take place in the normal V4 (post release) cycle. Again, my proposed changes are: 1) Fix typos 2) Change Materials Panel to something like "Surfaces" to alleviate the confusion of seeing 2 different "Materials" tabs in the same UI. That is embarrassing for an app that is trying to compete with those that are staples in Game and film studios worldwide 3) Change Carcass Mesh to something more appropriate, like "Viewport Mesh" 4) Change Autopo to Auto-Retopo. No confusion at all, and it's not hard to pronounce. 5) Change "Move Vertices" in Retopo Room, to "Move Elements" 6) Change "Masks" to "Stencils" to remove any confusion with Layer Masks or Masking (Freeze tool) in other apps. They are appropriately named "Stencils" in Mudbox, and is the most accurate term (at least in English, anyway). 7) Change "Voxel" Room (tab) to "Adv. Sculpt" (Advanced Sculpting) Room. Why? Because most of the focus, in the past few years, has been on Surface mode sculpting. When V3 was released, the focus was all on Voxels. It is now a full-blown dual-platform workspace. The word Advanced also implies that there are Basic Sculpting tools elsewhere in the App...meaning even more options. 8 Texture Editor is a MAJOR part of the Painting toolset, so there is no way it should be hidden in a Menu, where a new user would have a hard time finding it on their own. Either leave it docked within the default layout, at least, or add an icon that toggles it open (to the left of the panels on the right side of the UI). I asked Andrew about this before and he agreed that an icon would be best. I think he just forgot. i am atm almost with no time to make the FIX TIPOS list please sorry may be i can begin this weekend... i hope There are a ton of typos, and confusing grammar as well. Much of it can be found in those little descriptions you get when you hover over something, while some things have no descriptions at all. I've been debating for a while now whether or not it would be worth my time to track them all down. Where would be the best place to post such a list if I did? hmmm... what if we share a google excel doc ? i use it to made group changes to docs and help a lot... Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Reputable Contributor AbnRanger Posted February 22, 2013 Reputable Contributor Report Share Posted February 22, 2013 i am atm almost with no time to make the FIX TIPOS list please sorry may be i can begin this weekend... i hope hmmm... what if we share a google excel doc ? i use it to made group changes to docs and help a lot... Andrew has to make the changes on his end, because every time I correct the English file on my machine, it gets overwritten with each successive build. It gets to be a pain in the bum having to copy past the corrected one each time I install a new build. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Member hOss Posted February 22, 2013 Member Report Share Posted February 22, 2013 I'm sure if somebody had time to correct any typos or grammar in the English hint files and submitted it to Andrew he would include the corrected file with any successive builds. Never hurts to try. -Patrick Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Contributor TimmyZDesign Posted February 23, 2013 Contributor Report Share Posted February 23, 2013 Yes, there are a lot of typos and bad grammar in the English version. It confuses me a lot. Even after using 3D-Coat for several years, there are still features that I do not understand how to use properly because the tool tips and naming are so confusing. I don't usually have time to do "trial and error" to figure out what the intended functionality is. I am very thankful to Zeddicus for explaining the Material panel and UV sets connection so that I can finally understand that. Until now I did not realize that you could actually hide objects by clicking on the eye icon in the Materials panel in the UV room! Such a useful feature! I wish I had been able to understand that earlier. Also, there is an Objects palette in the Paint Room which I have never been able to figure out. As far as I can tell, it doesn't really do anything because I often have multiple objects in my scenes, but this palette does not seem to affect them. And lastly, there are two completely different palettes in the Paint room which are BOTH named "Materials". Confusing. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Contributor TimmyZDesign Posted February 23, 2013 Contributor Report Share Posted February 23, 2013 Oh, I also wanted to say a big thank you to Andrew for making all the selection modes in the E panel able to transform! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Reputable Contributor AbnRanger Posted February 23, 2013 Reputable Contributor Report Share Posted February 23, 2013 Yes, there are a lot of typos and bad grammar in the English version. It confuses me a lot. Even after using 3D-Coat for several years, there are still features that I do not understand how to use properly because the tool tips and naming are so confusing. I don't usually have time to do "trial and error" to figure out what the intended functionality is. I am very thankful to Zeddicus for explaining the Material panel and UV sets connection so that I can finally understand that. Until now I did not realize that you could actually hide objects by clicking on the eye icon in the Materials panel in the UV room! Such a useful feature! I wish I had been able to understand that earlier. Also, there is an Objects palette in the Paint Room which I have never been able to figure out. As far as I can tell, it doesn't really do anything because I often have multiple objects in my scenes, but this palette does not seem to affect them. And lastly, there are two completely different palettes in the Paint room which are BOTH named "Materials". Confusing. Absolutely. Can we please fix that, Andrew? It has to be utterly confusing to a new user and worst of all it communicates that "3D Coat doesn't have it's act together." I like "UV Mat." When I export to 3ds Max using the Applink, it creates a sub object Material based on the content (UV sets/materials) in that panel. And those are based on the different UV sets. UV Mat sound like the clearest option.I hope, though, as Javis has mentioned a few times...that we just get one single Outliner panel, just as you have in Mudbox, Maya, Max, Ligthwave and every other major 3D program. Each Voxel, Mesh Object or UV material has it's own icon and hierarchy. Would make sense to have icons at the bottom that filter what is listed. So, if you only want to see Voxel objects, you click on icons at the bottom to filter out Paint Room Objects, Retopo Mesh Objects, and UV Mats. The Vox Tree is actually an Outliner panel....a hierarchy panel. Not a true LAYER panel. So use that as a starting point for an Outline Panel, that's consistent and usable in every room. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Carlosan Posted February 23, 2013 Report Share Posted February 23, 2013 sorry im lost -again- What is exactly Material and Object in 3DC How are named outside 3DC in another apps ? for I/O like maya, mudbox, zb, lw, softimage, 3dmax, modo or blender ? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Advanced Member popwfx Posted February 23, 2013 Advanced Member Report Share Posted February 23, 2013 sorry im lost -again- What is exactly Material and Object in 3DC How are named outside 3DC in another apps ? for I/O like maya, mudbox, zb, lw, softimage, 3dmax, modo or blender ? I'll explain in terms of Lightwave, but all apps are pretty much similar to this: "Materials" in other applications are synonymous with "a group of texture settings to get the look you want" -- In LightWave, they are called "Surfaces" - Each polygon can only be assigned to one particular surface name. The way you assign them in Lightwave, is to select the polygons you want, then create a surface and assign those selected polys to that surface name. Then each surface has it's own settings to control the render look of of those polygons -- so surface settings in Lightwave could mean those particular polys are assigned a UV map and image textures applied to that UV map for those polys, or a procedural (only Lightwave) shader to control the surface look, or a gradient (again only Lightwave) etc. UVs & textures & normal/spec/color/diffuse maps tend to be the commonly shared surface settings between 3D apps. 3DCoat when importing a Lightwave object with surfaces (there is at least 1 surface called Default if you haven't created or named any), calls these Lightwave surfaces "Materials" This is confusing because projection painting within the Paint Room where you load a texture into a projection paint overlay is ALSO called Materials inside 3DCoat.. Anyway, when you examine your Lightwave object in 3DCoat you can open a separate Materials popup so you can see the listed named surfaces that are already in your object when importing. 3DCoat enables you to lock specific polygons that are assigned to surface names or change their visibility. This lets you protect or hide them so you can either see your model better or avoid painting on particular surfaces. Now. Here's where it gets a little confusing. Objects are Mesh files. in Lightwave you can save an individual object into multiple Layers - so some geometry is on layer #1 and some on #2 and so on. This is non-connected geometry. If the geometry is contiguous, then it has to be on the same layer in Lightwave. Ok, so when you import a multi-layer object into 3DC, these layers in Lightwave are called "Sub-Objects" in 3DC. Which also has a popup and lets you lock or hide different layers. Each subObject may have one or more surfaces - or all subobjects could even contain polygons with the same surface name. So depending on how you created your object you can control what you can see or work on inside 3DC using either 3DCoat's Materials (i.e. Surfaces) popup list, or via 3DCoat's Sub-Objects list (i.e multiple layers within that object). Now to further confuse terminology, when you import an object into 3DC to UV paint, 3DC recognizes the Surface names in your object and offers to create a "UV Set" (.i.e. a UV vertex map) for each of the surface names-- So there ends up with these named UV maps also able to hide or lock certain polygons via its own popup list in 3DCoat too. Now there is also something called Retopo Groups, which is effectively layers for non-connected geomtery when you are retopoing an imported model (or one from the Sculpt room). So that list too lets you hide different geometry in that room too. So basically there are multiple ways to skin a cat. Typically, I have surface names for things like shirt, pants, body etc in Lightwave, and might have layers (3DC Sub-objects) for disconnected geometry like sunglasses or hat, etc. however when I am UVing - unless I have an already UV'ed object I want to tweak, I usually create the UV sets (i.e. UV maps) inside 3DC, and arrange them how I think works best for optimization of the model. So this means that the polygons in a given UV set may or may not necessarily be the same collection of polys that I use in a surface (i.e. 3DC Material) - probably not most of the time. As far as I know 3DCoat does not let you create Sub-Objects (i.e. geomtery layers - other than Retopo Groups I mean) or Materials (i.e. named surfaces) from within 3DCoat. It just uses whatever was imported. However, it does obviously let you create multiple UV sets (i.e UV vertex .maps) and move polygon islands from one to the next. Hope this makes sense, and anyone please correct me if I am wrong anywhere. 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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