V4.1 BETA (experimental 4.1.17D)

[Andrew Shpagin]

The trouble with adding new tools is that the existing

The trouble with adding new tools is that the existing tools have not been completed, debugged, stabilized and production tested, you need to form a team of dedicated testers not the very public that have purchased your software, these people (the buying public), do not want to test software they just want to make money from it, this is why they purchased the tool/s, to complete a task. I know this is a tough critique, but I have, like many others, tried to use your software in a production environment but failed because of software bugs or tools which seem to have a random quality to them.

T.

tools have not been completed, debugged, stabilized and production tested, you need to form a team of dedicated testers not the very public that have purchased your software, these people (the buying public), do not want to test software they just want to make money from it, this is why they purchased the tool/s, to complete a task. I know this is a tough critique, but I have, like many others, tried to use your software in a production environment but failed because of software bugs or tools which seem to have a random quality to them.

T.

New tools added mosly to make toolset more closed - to be able to get to purpose. For example fill is too weak and can't completely close hole. It has it's limit. So I am adding Lute tool to be able to close it completely.

Purpose of posting builds there -

1) My report of what is done

2) To be in touch with comunity and fix most problematic areas at first.

Just example. I see thread - http://3d-coat.com/forum/index.php?showtopic=14677#entry95848

I am thinking how to achieve desired purpose. And I see that it is too hard and inaccurate with what we have

So I am

1) Improve what we have to it's limit (introduced sampling radius, buildup, stabilized pen rotation).

2) Introducing tool that more dedicated to such problem.

Btw, I forgot to mention one important change -

Now pen rotation during the stroke stabilized, no mode random angular jittering. It is important for all derected brushes like

1) Any brush that uses stripes or rotate along stroke in both Paint and Voxels room

2) Rapid, claws brushes

[digman]

Andrew has stated many times he will not stop developing new tools to meet needs or various workflows and he just it stated again. I personally am happy with that decision... Keep up the great and hard work you are doing Andrew.

[artman]

1) Any brush that uses stripes or rotate along stroke

I noticed that change,very welcomed addition. New norm sampling work awesome with my flatten and polish presets,now really fine work is possible.

I will show how strong it is in 2 days.

[PolyHertz]

What kind of black magic would it require to get development time put into really fixing up the paint room (at the very least the three in my sig)?

[Tser]

New tools added mosly to make toolset more closed - to be able to get to purpose. For example fill is too weak and can't completely close hole. It has it's limit. So I am adding Lute tool to be able to close it completely.

Purpose of posting builds there -

1) My report of what is done

2) To be in touch with comunity and fix most problematic areas at first.

Just example. I see thread - http://3d-coat.com/forum/index.php?showtopic=14677#entry95848

I am thinking how to achieve desired purpose. And I see that it is too hard and inaccurate with what we have

So I am

1) Improve what we have to it's limit (introduced sampling radius, buildup, stabilized pen rotation).

2) Introducing tool that more dedicated to such problem.

Btw, I forgot to mention one important change -

Now pen rotation during the stroke stabilized, no mode random angular jittering. It is important for all derected brushes like

1) Any brush that uses stripes or rotate along stroke in both Paint and Voxels room

2) Rapid, claws brushes

Don't you see Andrew, this is exactly what I mean, The latest version that you need to download to hopefully have the bugs resolved from the previous builds also has new tools in it which invariably have bugs in them, you have to stop releasing builds with new features/tools, and concentrate on releasing bug fix builds so that we know that we are downloading an updated version with bug fixes. If you have a tool which doesn't perform the task which it was meant to then don't release it until it does.

I for one don't have the time to be a beta tester, but with every build you release I feel that I am.

I think that you are a very talented programmer and the work that you have achieved by your self is quite incredible, but you have to understand the mindset of the artist which is using your software, they are like regular people who, say purchase a car, they don't want to be a mechanic and fix any problems the car might have, and they don't want to keep constantly driving it back the the car lot to get problems fixed, they just want to drive the car to work and back and do the shopping and know that it will perform these functions day in day out.

T.

[artman]

Beat,try this brush ....if you are still here ....hehe

clay 4.zip

[Marc Wakefield]

Honestly guys!

I know this will not go down too well and I do not want to offend anyone as I am sure we all have our own 'issues' we need to deal with but please cut Andrew some frickin slack!

He is obviously working very hard to do everything he can to make 3D Coat the best it can be.

Maybe I am crazy or maybe I do not use the same workflow as the rest of you (Sculpt, Retopo, UV, Bake, Paint, export) but I just do not seem to run in to the problems that some of you report.

I usually have a firm grasp of most software within a few days of using it and have not encountered a single potential 'obstacle' in 3D Coat that I have not been able to overcome.

Andrew is not 'just a programmer', he is a creative visionary just like a lot of us here. What do you think will happen if he loses his drive and 'love' for what he is doing.

Do you really want to try to force the man to stop enjoying his job?! Would you like him to give up on 3D Coat completely with phrases like 'you blew it' ?

He has dedicated years of his life to this software and this kind of thing is actually pretty cruel...

Please try to remember that we are all human.

I am always excited by the new features that appear in 3D Coat and very glad that Andrew continually pushes the boundaries of what this software can do.

If you do not like Beta software, don't test it and stick to the stable versions. It's pretty easy to do.

Peace out

Edited July 8, 2013 by Marc Wakefield

[BeatKitano]

Thank you Artman for trying.

Unfortunately no amount of fiddling with the brush parameters can help. The brush engine is fundamentaly flawed...

I activate buildup and i get this with your brush, the surface sampling is a disaster (and that's what has been plagging 3dcoat's brush feeling since the very beginning imo)

See this uneven surface on the second try ? This is the sampling failing, playing with surface sampling param doesn't help.

You could say "it's buildup, it's new, it's buggy and gonna get fixed", the problem is buildup is only the amplifier here, the problem is deeper and it's here with every brush (first two "all brushes" paragraphs) .

[Elizeusz]

I wonder why some people who use zbrush and say it is so perfect are still here and use 3dcoat ? It is not logical for me.... if You found other soft better for You then work in it that is all. Andrew is doing his best for 3dcoat. For me some discusions here are strange, there are lot of people in the world and all of them have different taste and will want something different from UI in 3dcoat for example. There is zremesher in zbrush which is much better that autopo in 3dcoat and in mudbox and so what ? Everything needs time, maybe Andrew needs some time to think about it maybe he doesn't know how to do it for now like Marc said we are all humans. I think this is good idea to give beta versions here if some do not want to use it then use stable version but a lot of us want to check what Andrew is doing.

[artman]

Thank you Artman for trying.

Unfortunately no amount of fiddling with the brush parameters can help. The brush engine is fundamentaly flawed...

I activate buildup and i get this with your brush, the surface sampling is a disaster (and that's what has been plagging 3dcoat's brush feeling since the very beginning imo)

See this uneven surface on the second try ? This is the sampling failing, playing with surface sampling param doesn't help.

You could say "it's buildup, it's new, it's buggy and gonna get fixed", the problem is buildup is only the amplifier here, the problem is deeper and it's here with every brush (first two "all brushes" paragraphs) .

Of course some amount of fiddling can fix this....

You talk about brush engines like some occult force....brushes are nothing but settings...and now we got flatten curve AND normal sampling so...of course it is possible to create perfect clay brush.I will find way.

[BeatKitano]

I wonder why some people who use zbrush and say it is so perfect are still here and use 3dcoat ? It is not logical for me.... if You found other soft better for You then work in it that is all. Andrew is doing his best for 3dcoat. For me some discusions here are strange, there are lot of people in the world and all of them have different taste and will want something different from UI in 3dcoat for example. There is zremesher in zbrush which is much better that autopo in 3dcoat and in mudbox and so what ? Everything needs time, maybe Andrew needs some time to think about it maybe he doesn't know how to do it for now like Marc said we are all humans. I think this is good idea to give beta versions here if some do not want to use it then use stable version but a lot of us want to check what Andrew is doing.

You're right, I've a bad habit of asking the best from the bests. Freeform sculpting is there but as it's a huge technological progress I should settle on poor brush handling, and half assed tool implementations.

I get that now. Sorry.

@Artman

You can't solve this one, if every parameter were exposed maybe, you don't have access to what's ticking for now. You can only try to hide this behaviour, but until Andrew fixes it, the brush will always feel "not quite there".

[Tser]

Honestly guys!

I know this will not go down too well and I do not want to offend anyone as I am sure we all have our own 'issues' we need to deal with but please cut Andrew some frickin slack!

He is obviously working very hard to do everything he can to make 3D Coat the best it can be.

Maybe I am crazy or maybe I do not use the same workflow as the rest of you (Sculpt, Retopo, UV, Bake, Paint, export) but I just do not seem to run in to the problems that some of you report.

I usually have a firm grasp of most software within a few days of using it and have not encountered a single potential 'obstacle' in 3D Coat that I have not been able to overcome.

Andrew is not 'just a programmer', he is a creative visionary just like a lot of us here. What do you think will happen if he loses his drive and 'love' for what he is doing.

Do you really want to try to force the man to stop enjoying his job?! Would you like him to give up on 3D Coat completely with phrases like 'you blew it' ?

He has dedicated years of his life to this software and this kind of thing is actually pretty cruel...

Please try to remember that we are all human.

I am always excited by the new features that appear in 3D Coat and very glad that Andrew continually pushes the boundaries of what this software can do.

If you do not like Beta software, don't test it and stick to the stable versions. It's pretty easy to do.

Peace out

There is no disrespect intended with any of my comments, also there has never been a stable version, just beta versions, some more stable than others, the definition of a stable version is stability, 3DCoat is getting better with every version, but I think this solo development effort is impeding the software, the larger the program gets the harder it becomes to find bugs, but hay, this is just my opinion.

T..

[BeatKitano]

Anyway, "drama" time is over. You can choose to forget what I said and move on Andrew, at this point it doesn't matter to me anymore. But I'm sure I'm not the last (and definitely not the first I'm sure you noticed) to go for the reasons give before.

The question is: what will you do with the next one basicaly saying what I'm saying.

I wishes you sincerely good luck for the future as you've been nice to us in the past.

Goodbye (for good this time).

[Andrew Shpagin]

Anyway, "drama" time is over. You can choose to forget what I said and move on Andrew, at this point it doesn't matter to me anymore. But I'm sure I'm not the last (and definitely not the first I'm sure you noticed) to go for the reasons give before.

The question is: what will you do with the next one basicaly saying what I'm saying.

I wishes you sincerely good luck for the future as you've been nice to us in the past.

Goodbye (for good this time).

I plan to polish brush engine several days more. I hope to bring it to better state and this time any feedback regarding reason of any brushing problems especially important. After that I should switch to other tasks (see requests above regarding paint room for example) and point may be lost.

I really vote for stopping "drama" and continuing to work.

[Andrew Shpagin]

I wonder why some people who use zbrush and say it is so perfect are still here and use 3dcoat ? It is not logical for me.... if You found other soft better for You then work in it that is all. Andrew is doing his best for 3dcoat. For me some discusions here are strange, there are lot of people in the world and all of them have different taste and will want something different from UI in 3dcoat for example. There is zremesher in zbrush which is much better that autopo in 3dcoat and in mudbox and so what ? Everything needs time, maybe Andrew needs some time to think about it maybe he doesn't know how to do it for now like Marc said we are all humans. I think this is good idea to give beta versions here if some do not want to use it then use stable version but a lot of us want to check what Andrew is doing.

Regarding question - why use 3DC if ZB is so good. It is well understood - 3d-coat offers some workflows that ZB does not (and of course vice versa). Tools are complementary. Of course peoples want to use 3dc workflows flawlessly. It does not mean that ZB workflows are so perfect. There are own problems.

I understand this and trying as I can. I should choose between a lot of requests, it is not easy. But first priory are most painful issues.

The other "problem" is that sometimes I am getting Big idea and it is too hard to avoid it.

[manticor]

Andrew would it be possible to modify your code for the splitting meshes to make a fillet boolean function? This would be great for hard surface modeling.

Ive made an example image below .

[Andrew Shpagin]

Andrew would it be possible to modify your code for the splitting meshes to make a fillet boolean function? This would be great for hard surface modeling.

Ive made an example image below .

You may do split with fillet easily, just enable "Complex joint profile"

But general fillet for booleans is far not easy task.

[Andrew Shpagin]

Seems I found reason of "waves" in Rapid2 brush with buildup. After tests I will offer new build.

[manticor]

You may do split with fillet easily, just enable "Complex joint profile"

But general fillet for booleans is far not easy task.

Just tried it out.Looks close enough using this method.Thanks for the tip

[digman]

Seems I found reason of "waves" in Rapid2 brush with buildup. After tests I will offer new build.

First, Thanks Andrew for continuing to improve the brush engine.

The brush engine in 3DCoat is a not clone of Zbrush. If you try and make 3DCoat's brush engine work like Zbrush, you will fail and be frustrated.

Now to play the devil's advocate in Beat's video. He is showing only one way of brushing... Yes, I can cause the same effect by that style of brushing plus he has the depth setting really high. He is stretching the polygons as well leaving to a poor deformation of the mesh. You can see this from the side view at the last. It at least appears that remove stretching is not enabled but the video is not very high in quality which also does not help..

If you do not have removing stretching enable, then after a couple of strokes you mush press enter to remove the stretching of the polygons. I work both ways using surface mode brushes with remove stretching enabled and disabled depending upon what I phase of the sculpting I am at... Remove stretching is not the perfect solution and still could do with some optimizing. This would need to be shown in a video to Andrew, which I have not done yet..

I created a Brush based off the LC General Brush that will build the mesh using the same style of brushing that Beat used but with a lower depth setting... I have no problems...

Could the default building of some brushes be better, yes of course but to say that 3DCoat's brush engine is a piece of &**& is both incorrect and rude...

I use the sculpting brushes everyday and am aware of both the strengths and weakness of the brush engine and brushes...

Picture is the result of my created brush using the same style of brushing that Beat used in his short video. I have been using this brush for quite sometime now...

No more comments from me on this matter, I will make a brush engine video once the linux version of 4.0.05 is released...

[BeatKitano]

Why don't you download Artman's brush and try it, I choose his not because I could create a scene with a predetermined brush stroke pattern and with a problematic brush, but because everyone can experience it.

It's 20% depth (buggy curve again !), remove stretching IS activated (you can see the re-tesselation right after mouse release !). So yeah. FOR THIS CASE IT'S TRASH.

Seriously defending Andrew is nice and all I can relate, but I don't talk for talking (I've been there since 2008, patiently waiting for v4 which was supposed to be the best freeform sculpting software on the market fyi). TNX AGAIN?

Oh and for the last time, why is there frigging brushes that don't work properly out of the box ? Do we need to create our own brushes that "somehow work" ? In taht case give the source code I'll help myself.

No seriously, why so many brushes that SIMPLY DON't WORK ?!

You know what, I wanted to go in simple terms, no word higher than the other, but this kind of talking is getting me in a bad mood now.

Meanwhile in another world:

[digman]

Ok, Beat, I'm in a bad mood as well and ready to do battle.

Remove stretching only works after you stop your stroke... In your video you never stop the brushing till you create a mess of the surface mesh. So what needs to change 3DCoat or your style of brushing. Answer all you want, be in a bad mood...

You are not the only one who can communicate out of frustration. I am very frustrated at you and I am done with this conversation...

[BeatKitano]

Look again, it's right there after mouse release.

See I'm not even bullshiting you, zbrush does a better work at the same brushing speed (I've even lowered my speed on the second stroke on 3dc !), WITHOUT RETESSELATING !

But yeah again, it's to the user to adapt to the software, because you know artists all draw the same way, at the same speed. Sometimes I've the feeling that to "stay in the good graces of Andrew" you'd say anything at someone insistently critisizing his work, and I'm not talking about you in particular mind you.

Anyway, we are a lot to love it at the beginning, and then after a while we move on.

BTW: Even on your brush sample we see the rampant lumpiness that also plagues 3dcoat (and that I thought would be eliminated with normal sample radius param), all those alpha dots that you can't get rid of in certain brushes, even with a very high value of fallof and a 1% spacing...

It seems you can't see it, so it's good enough for you, sorry for wanting more...

Oh I forgot: some people are proudly defending the brush engine qualities, but no one noticed that steady stroke doesn't even work !

I stated in the original post I simply erased out of exasperation that gave the pros and cons of this build (something the mods could confirm btw since they can see deleted posts).

Another stupid try to help that would have led nowhere anyway.

[JoseConseco]

BeatKitano - how about higher sample radius? I Hope I will have time to test this tomorrow.

Andrew Shpagin - thanks for implementing this stuff. About constructive discussion : I asked one of bleder developers who developed bleder sculpting in GSOC (he implemented plane offset, and lots of cool brushes in blender), about clay brush and Imbed. So he said:

"Many of the clay brushes will move vertexes towards or away from a plane which is computed as being at the mean of the normals and positions of all the vertexes. The offset moves that plane up or down from its computed value."

So maybe difference in brush feel are from the way they are implemented in 3dc? I mean

- in 3dc clay brush = displace + flatten

- vs cla brush = moving vertexes toward averaged surface plane normal ?

Or are those the same, just in different words?

[BeatKitano]

BeatKitano - how about higher sample radius? I Hope I will have time to test this tomorrow.

I thought so at the begining, tried at 200% (max), it somehow smoothes the overall stroke, but in the end also completely get rid of overlaping "raises" between strokes. Which acts a bit like gum, which is not useful...since we have exactly gum for that :/

[AbnRanger]

It is too easy to loose any motivation to do something.

I've been posting in these boards here with constructive help and advices on what should be changed.

And I've been trying new builds not just for fun but to solve different existing problems and to cover holes in different workflows.

Ok, I am just a customer, but really it is too hard to hear that I'm the bad guy after month of pleading and lots of threads about improvement on a software to promised so much but never delivered.

See what I did here ?

Don't worry Andrew, that wow is my last you can now enjoy consensual critic to be confortable and do an half assed work. Too bad, I had great hope for this software. But you added useless things to appeal to a certain crowd, doing so you destroyed your nice STANDARD UI, and to top it all the general feeling is terrible.

You blew it. Now thank you anyway for the work, you did pretty well. To a point.

Beat, I asked you via PM if you would get with Andrew, the same way I do from time to time, to either record an issue I've been having or feature request that I think is important.....or share screens on Skype, to show him as if you were right there in his office, where these things are occurring and what you think it should work like (show him the same activity in the app you try to compare it with. Basically, you couldn't be bothered with it. You said it's not your responsibility. With that attitude, no wonder nothing got done to your satisfaction. I can never tell exactly what it is your fuss is all about. It's always kind of cryptic.

I've been just as frustrated as you, and more than once over the past 5 or so years. But just coming here to vent jaded criticisms has never helped as much as trying to get in contact with the source, trying to find a solution. There have been a lot of ideas/requests Andrew has added when I took this approach. Granted, it took an Act of Congress to get Multi-threading in 3D Coat, but apart from that, only constructive means of communication got results. However, there are a LOT of improvements/features I have asked for....Mantis request, videos and all...even multiple times over the span of a a few years. And nothing ever got done.

So, I certainly understand the frustration, firsthand. Lot's of times I feel unheard, even though I go through all the steps I can. But, I realize that Andrew has a lot of people asking for a lot of stuff, so it means we all have to take a number and wait in line. This is why I was hoping that V4 would be successful enough of a release to bring on another developer. I understand where Andrew is coming from, in not wanting to slow down and take the time to train someone on his code....but it's like any other occupation. Every job has it's necessary unpleasantries. Otherwise, the more the app grows, the more people who are going to be requesting and finding bugs, and thus making the others feel unheard. You HAVE to have help in order to grow. No way of getting around it. If you don't, then you get a lot of people frustrated like this.

I remember working at McDonalds, flipping burgers, as a teenager in High School. Normal traffic was no problem, but then you'd have entire buses of kids in Little League baseball, Football, Basketball, etc....and needless to say things would just get crazy. If feel like the more features Andrew adds, the more kids get off that bus, hungry as a bear, and mean as a snake ...so to speak.

[Garagarape]

Courage Andrew! Your work is much appreciated here.

We know you're fighting with a smaller team than Pixo guys.

You'll surely find what causes the brush imperfection and everybody

will be happy.

I wish I could give a hand. But I never got good marks at Maths...

Having a lot of fun with your soft anyway. + managed to make my company buy 6 licenses.

Tally ho!

"Give me some mud and I'll turn it into gold"

Baudelaire

[BeatKitano]

@AbnRanger

First, I understand this response is not even half directed at me, so I'll answer my part because I agree with the rest:

I did try to help AbnRanger, you can't say I didn't.

I tried to help with the ui overhaul, the doc design is ~30 pages with WORDS, and MOCKUPS (carlosa could give you extracts as he has a partial, old version of it). Nothing.

after that after a while taking it the hard way, i went on a rant after the brush enhancement thread pretty much failled which resulted in Andrew telling me:

-to post on mantis (I did)

-to create a thread with what I felt was lacking in the brushing area this. The red part tells the ending

Now you tell me I didn't make videos and such ? Yeah I didn't, I think I already gave plenty of things to work on.

And I'll say it again because I want this to be perfectly clear:

I'm not ranting, getting angry because I don't have MY FEATURES. I'm angry because I've followed this developpement for so long now that I grew to love this little piece of assembly. And to see it fail because of a lack of guidance toward user benefit is killing me.

I'm not angry because I don't have what I want (I already have what I want with other software minus the incredible feel of freeform sculpting 3dc offers), but because I've some sentimental attachement to this community (even if we had our debates) and software but it's not evolving.

I'm ranting because I've the feeling it's the only way to get the attention of Andrew long enough to get something done in the lacking areas (and that's very sad imo and that's also why I agree with the rest of your post btw).

[Creator]

I understand BeatKitano 100%. Sometimes frustration reaches other galaxies I'm wondering if this brushing bugs is somehow related to tablet driver. Anyone tested other tablets than Wacom ones? Sometimes it feels like 3DCoat miss level of pressure given from pen. Same thing happened with bug that puts 100% of pressure when you touch surface first time.

[BeatKitano]

No it's not tablet related, I've plenty of models around to confirm it's only related to the way the software handle spacing/interpolation and surface sampling (I would dare to say this is even related to the very first "gizmo" used to symbolize the brush: a sphere > radius affecting everything). That's ALL, that and a few brush behaviour that exist in competitor products but not in 3dcoat yet.