V4.1 BETA (experimental 4.1.17D)

[BeatKitano]

We know about the "Customize UI" or the hide right click menu Andrew. It's just that by default the tool list is waaay too big.

Look on the boards, some users don't even think about click draging to show all the tools available there.

This needs to be adressed somehow you've choices to make.

[alvordr]

If you don't use some brushes - press RMB and hide them.

How do you get them back if you do?

[AbnRanger]

If you don't use some brushes - press RMB and hide them.

I understand that....but the point is, the brushes in Voxel mode need to match the behavior in it's Surface mode counterpart as much as possible. Frustrating to have all these different brushes with similar names, but vastly different behavior. Also way too confusing for new users

[BeatKitano]

@Alvordr

Edit>Customize UI

 

Btw this options may be a little bit too powerful, I mean, hiding the option to hide tools ? Oo

Deactivating ui items I can understand, removing the options seems a bit extreme to me.

[alvordr]

Ah, OK, tnx Beat.

[digman]

How do you get them back if you do?

Check picture...  Show all tools in section.. Yes it could give us a list of hidden brushes and we choose the one we want unhidden.. This is Andrew's first pass at creating what we have been asking for sometime now...  We can have our own created brushes in the left tool panel and not use the preset brush panel if we so desire.. nice.... Thank you Andrew for this...

[alvordr]

Hmm...I learned some stuff today

[AbnRanger]

@Alvordr

Edit>Customize UI

 

Btw this options may be a little bit too powerful, I mean, hiding the option to hide tools ? Oo

I think it's a shame to hide Auto Retopo in a right click menu in the Voxel Room. Should have it's own dedicated section in the Retopo Room, where one would expect to find it. The UV Texture Editor in the Paint Room needs it's own icon or toggle. Instead it's buried/hidden in a menu list. WAAAAAAAYYYYYY too powerful of a toolset to be hidden like that. Needs easy access to toggle on and off. At some point soon, I think Andrew needs to just stop, study the UI and think about ways to make it as easy as humanly possible for new users to grasp. It's getting more cluttered and more confusing....even if you can hide parts of the toolset. It's not the same thing as consolidation.

[BeatKitano]

What about a HIGH FIVE \o/ thread AbnRanger ? 

Still I don't want to rant, Andrew has done some amazing things lately, I want to be positive

[digman]

What about a HIGH FIVE \o/ thread AbnRanger ? 

Still I don't want to rant, Andrew has done some amazing things lately, I want to be positive

 

Andrew indeed has been working very hard,,, Thank you Andrew!!

[AbnRanger]

 

Andrew indeed has been working very hard,,, Thank you Andrew!!

I agree. The Surface mode brushes are on the threshold of something amazing. But like any construction project, there is always some cleanup necessary afterward. I think matching the voxel brushes with the Surface mode brushes is necessary. For example, CLAY in Voxel mode should behave very similar to the way CLAY does in Surface mode. And BUILD should likewise be very close to Buildup and BuildClay, in Surface mode. Is that really too much to ask?

 

I never knew switching from Voxel Mode to Surface could cause such nasty results....so, as full object (Tangent?) Smooth routine should be done whenever one switches from Voxel to Surface mode and after Resampling in Surface mode (resampling leaves the same mess that voxel mode does).

[alvordr]

Example of a project I'm working on using the carve tool all over the place and little smoothing, except around the handle.

 

[BeatKitano]

That's why I'm not discarding it, some people will have use for it.

 

Now the question is: I suppose you're using it with lasso/curves and such. Is carve the only tool capable of doing this (randomly: clay)?

 

Try, other brushes. Carve tool is used because of it's name, but other tools have the same properties and are less likely to be used because they don't have the "right" name.

This is why we're calling to a little tidying up of the tools. 

[AbnRanger]

That's right. The Cutoff tool effectively replaced using the CLAY or CARVE tool to trim with selection modes (from the E-Panel)

[BeatKitano]

I was going to say it. And this is true for surface mode too. Some get duplicated, renamed, but they essentialy do the same thing under the hood, but the use has never been studied or even considered (clay to cutoff, what a weird idea, right ?).

And what's even more painful is that since their properties span over multiple tool, alternative, useful modes could be implemented, but they're not.

Example: before Artman's brush flatten what just that: you eat the surface linearly. Since his brush, probably due to luck, his flatten now also raise the surface linearly as an alternative mode (using ctrl).

Alternative mode could be generalized to quite a few brushes, but they don't because they have the same root and we only use the primary function of the root tool with a few changes in setting (not even behaviour !). 

Result you ask ?

 

User requesting more behaviours, Andrew adding more brushes, while some of them could be complimentary functions of existing brushes.

[alvordr]

For some reason though, and I can't remember why, I found the Cut-off tool to be more problematic than Carve.  I want to say that I had to smooth out the result, as you suggested with Carve, but I've been using Carve on a daily basis.

[alvordr]

I could care less which tool does the same thing, but one thing I would definitely change is how when you invert the sphere tool it simply cuts a hole in the mesh completely all the way through.  I would expect it to trim out a sphere shape or at least a rounded version of the cutout (E-panel) to the depth specified.

[BeatKitano]

For some reason though, and I can't remember why, I found the Cut-off tool to be more problematic than Carve.  I want to say that I had to smooth out the result, as you suggested with Carve, but I've been using Carve on a daily basis.

Maybe, that's why there needs to be a concerted effort to sort the brushes, and get rid/hide lesser brushes. If carves works flawlessly and and carve is basicaly a duplicate of clay with ctrl modifier (just an example) then why not merge both and add a "carve mode" to clay (just an example !).

 

In the past many would've complained that "yeah but we need to check that option". We don't have this issue anymore, you can duplicate a tool in the tool tray with your settings if you want to, and you could use preset panel with your custom settings.

 

What are we waiting for, for trimming the tools and make it cohesive ?

[AbnRanger]

I was going to say it. And this is true for surface mode too. Some get duplicated, renamed, but they essentialy do the same thing under the hood, but the use has never been studied or even considered (clay to cutoff, what a weird idea, right ?).

And what's even more painful is that since their properties span over multiple tool, alternative, useful modes could be implemented, but they're not.

Example: before Artman's brush flatten what just that: you eat the surface linearly. Since his brush, probably due to luck, his flatten now also raise the surface linearly as an alternative mode (using ctrl).

Alternative mode could be generalized to quite a few brushes, but they don't because they have the same root and we only use the primary function of the root tool with a few changes in setting (not even behaviour !). 

Result you ask ?

 

User requesting more behaviours, Andrew adding more brushes, while some of them could be complimentary functions of existing brushes.

Yes, it works the same, but in Surface mode, Raul developed the Cutoff tool to leave extra geometry around the edges in order to maintain sharpness/detail of that edge...so, it's a quasi-decimation algorithm. BTW, when I was talking about the CLAY and CARVE brushes, and their usefulness....I was talking about BRUSHING behavior....not using it as a cutting tool with selection modes in the E-Panel. As brushes...they suck pretty bad, IMHO. But perhaps they were meant to be crude and jagged. In comparison with the new brush work....it's almost like comparing Photoshop to Microsoft Paint.

 

All the brushes should receive this level of refinement...not just a few that Artman likes. That's not a knock on Artman. Just saying that it needs to be consistently good throughout the whole room.

[BeatKitano]

I don't like their behaviour (clay is fundamentaly broken as stated before) carve is a choice. I don't mind having weird brushes as long as they have UNIQUE functions (we can hide them as Andrew stated), but I'm a power user. A new user will be overwhelmed, you need to break down the tools for easier access. Photoshop categorizing is not just because it was practical and nice to look at. It's because it also give the user a sense of "hierarchy" in the tool functions.

In photoshop you're shown the fundamental tool from the start, as the user start to discover the software he'll eventually discover those extra tools. 

 

Great tools are always those that don't splash everything right at your face, but let you discover the richness they offer, layer after layer. I still discover new tricks in photoshop after more than 20 years working on it and I'm still waiting for a competitor software that has this level of polish and feature.

[digman]

Also with the carve tool, you can hold down shift plus ctrl keys when using the e-panel splines and it will cut out everything outside the spline...  At the moment you can not do that with the cut- off tool...

 

EDIT:  Well, what do you know, it is now possible with the cut-off tool to be used in the same fashion... I just checked...

[alvordr]

No argument here.  I would even say we need a freeze tool or mask in the voxel room.  It's really the only reason I go into Surface Mode at all.

 

Maybe, that's why there needs to be a concerted effort to sort the brushes, and get rid/hide lesser brushes. If carves works flawlessly and and carve is basicaly a duplicate of clay with ctrl modifier (just an example) then why not merge both and add a "carve mode" to clay (just an example !).

 

In the past many would've complained that "yeah but we need to check that option". We don't have this issue anymore, you can duplicate a tool in the tool tray with your settings if you want to, and you could use preset panel with your custom settings.

 

What are we waiting for, for trimming the tools and make it cohesive ?

[BeatKitano]

Also with the carve tool, you can hold down shift plus ctrl keys when using the e-panel splines and it will cut out everything outside the spline...  At the moment you can not do that with the cut- off tool...

 

 

See, why do we need it ?  (to be honest when Andrew added it to voxel I was surprised thinking that we already add quite a few "carve" already )

[alvordr]

Also with the carve tool, you can hold down shift plus ctrl keys when using the e-panel splines and it will cut out everything outside the spline...  At the moment you can not do that with the cut- off tool...

Now I remember why I liked Carve better.

[AbnRanger]

Also with the carve tool, you can hold down shift plus ctrl keys when using the e-panel splines and it will cut out everything outside the spline...  At the moment you can not do that with the cut- off tool...

That should change. I was wondering why it didn't work. Thought it was a bug that Andrew hadn't got around to fixing yet. It's another example of inconsistency with redundant tools. Too hard for even experienced users to remember all these nuances, much less new users.

[BeatKitano]

No argument here.  I would even say we need a freeze tool or mask in the voxel room.  It's really the only reason I go into Surface Mode at all.

 

You're joining AbnRanger for the consolidating of voxel/surface tools then And I agree it was requested many times in the past, Andrew said it wasn't possible, but many things have been accomplished now, maybe it changed.

[alvordr]

So ultimately, it would be great to just be in one mode that automatically switches to Surface or Voxel on the fly, depending on the tool you're using, with no noticeable change in the fidelity of the sculpt or visible change in the UI (Such as S or V).  Consolidating the tools between the two makes sense, but only if I can bring in things voxelized or not without losing fidelity, as well.

[BeatKitano]

So ultimately, it would be great to just be in one mode that automatically switches to Surface or Voxel on the fly, depending on the tool you're using, with no noticeable change in the fidelity of the sculpt or visible change in the UI (Such as S or V).  Consolidating the tools between the two makes sense, but only if I can bring in things voxelized or not without losing fidelity, as well.

 

That's basicaly what you can achieve with presets: clicking or using associated shortcuts automaticaly switches you to the corresponding mode (I asked for this ^^).

But there's still the problem of surface structure.

 

As for going surface to voxel: if you don't have enough res you wont keep your details, the only way to avoid that would be an automatic estimation, resampling and conversion. Problem: it can be long/crash (resolution too high needed) interrupting workflow. I wouldn't expect to much in that regard.

[alvordr]

You're joining AbnRanger for the consolidating of voxel/surface tools then And I agree it was requested many times in the past, Andrew said it wasn't possible, but many things have been accomplished now, maybe it changed.

As I recall, he said the freeze won't work because you're not just masking off the surface area, but the voxels behind it...but why should that be any different than using a tool with a mask, except that you can actually create the mask on the fly.

[digman]

I edited my other post, you can now do the same with the cut-off tool as the carve tool using shift and the ctrl key. I just checked. It was not possible a few versions ago... One of those little updates or bug fixes we get without knowing it...