V4.1 BETA (experimental 4.1.17D)

[philnolan3d]

I'll submit a report about this after I've tested it out some more but it looks like the CutOff tool ignores the E-Panel's Depth Limit setting if you're using Draw With Closed Spline and the tool is still active, in Add Points mode. Once you press Esc or manually go into Edit Points mode it works fine.

[T.H. ROCK]

Got this message when I started Beta Version Cuda 4 1. What does it mean, other than the obvious?

[JimB]

Got this message when I started Beta Version Cuda 4 1. What does it mean, other than the obvious?

Must be close to release, better get your money ready guys.

[BeatKitano]

Not necessarily, T.H Rock didn't tell which release he uses and if it's the latest then he probably has played with his system clock at some point.

If this message is a glimpse of the future it could also mean this beta was meant to expire soon as a new beta was taking it's place (could also be that Andrew forgot to change the deadline timer in this build thus making it expire faster than the others)

[esepablo]

hey andrew, whenever im using the points/faces tool inside the retopo room i have to hold down Ctrl if i want to rotate my model. any way of disabling this

in previous versions i didnt have to hold down 'Ctrl'

(im using zbrush navigation)

[Andrew Shpagin]

Got this message when I started Beta Version Cuda 4 1. What does it mean, other than the obvious?

Probably you are using some old beta, it should not appear in beta11 version or later

[Tser]

Hey there Andrew, any chance for a more recent Linux version?

I really want to give it a thorough test run to see how far you have come with stability and bug squashing,

I have just finished a long, drawn out stint with ZBrush/Softimage and now ready to give 3DC a go.

T.

[T.H. ROCK]

Probably you are using some old beta, it should not appear in beta11 version or later

Yes sir, that was it. I upgraded and the problem went away. Thank you.

[johnnycore]

Did the development for 3.7 stop?

I've decided to give 3DCoat another chance for painting models but I realized I dont want to use v4 for production models since I still have too many problems with the beta versions.

However in 3.7 I now have some very annoying bugs.. when I use E for line tool in the paint room I am not able to undo this.

I'm not sure if this will be fixed.. I just redownloaded the latest v4 beta to see if the bug also exists over there..

So my only workaround in v3.7 for now Is to lay down the perfect strokes and check/uncheck the layer if its really on the correct layer and then save it.. and repeat this process with each step..

[johnnycore]

Same bug appears in v4....

Steps to reproduce :

- create new layer

- lock other subobjects (not sure if this has anything to do with it but this is what im doing)

- use the newly created layer as a mask for a layer useing the blending tab (invert it)

- use the E shortcut and set the tool to line

- turn on projection painting (im using a diffuse and specular map)

- draw a line

- check / uncheck the layer to see if it turns on / off (sometimes the line still stays there while it should be in the correct layer, and when this happens you cant undo it and have to restart)

- if if is working like you're expecting try drawing another line and repeat the steps again.. at some point it appears again

- another thing that might cause it: im using a custom brush created with a curve editor

Some other bugs I found in (every) v4 beta:

At my work I sometime download the latest OSX build and see how development is going using a trial mode:

-When trying to rotate, zoom, dolly the viewport using ALT + (LMB, RMB, MMB) my viewport automatically offsets the viewport when holding down ALT + (LMB, RMB, MMB)

Kinda hard to explain.. Windows/Linux does not show this problem

- When using projection painting sometimes I use a diffuse map, and specular map only and I want to use the brush for creating depth but somehow depth from brush does not work when using projection painting when I leave my depthmap slot empty, this does not happen in v3.7..

- The opacity values from projection painting does not work.. it always shows 100% of the texture

I hope this information helps.. I have no time to post this on mantis this is as close as I can get with helping out..

[philnolan3d]

I don't even know how to word this in a bug report. I posed the mannequin and then in Surface mode used Live Clay and other tools to fill in the gaps and smooth the transitions between parts. I started having some problems with the mesh so I switched back to Voxel mode. When i use Smooth or any other tools it completely removes all of the Surface Mode work I had done.

Here's a video:

http://screencast.com/t/IYzkf8Yx

Edit: I just noticed if I do the switch to voxels with wireframes showing I can see that no conversion is happening. The mesh still looks like a Surface mesh with varying density.

[BeatKitano]

THis happened to me a few times, usualy after converting vox<>surf. That's why once I set in surface I never go back. Also this can happen with resym/resample but it's random Definitely a bug though.

If you export the mesh to obj you'll probably get an exploded hull of vertices. Sometimes you can even get different parts with different scales, like cloned meshes inside their clone but smaller. It's really weird.

[philnolan3d]

Those sound like the kind of bugs that popped up in the early days of voxel sculpting.

Edit: well here's a shock. I exported the Surface mode model anf loaded into LightWave and it was perfect except for a couple of floating triangles which were stretched to 0,0,0. So I was able to delete all of the internal voids, which i would have done in 3DC anyway, delete those other floating polys, and load it back into 3DC.

[BeatKitano]

Not a big corruption then (but you still got those spikes I experienced all over the model in my attempt to recover).

With the introduction of scripting, could there be a way to record every "result" action (not talking about mouse navigation and things like that), in a lightweight way Andrew ?

It could help to get a "script" of the events to reproduce bugs like those. Most of the time we know those exist but can't reproduce and they never get fixed. Those don't appear often but they can destroy a lot of work if you're not careful.

Besides that could also help beginner, with a script replay they could potentialy learn from "live" tutorials, with a script file (a simple text file would do), it's light (could easily be uploaded whenever needed), and it's easy to do: you just record your action and everything speak for itself (maybe an option to add caption to fill the possible voids ?)

[alvordr]

I converted a posed mannequin to a voxel first, merged it, and then went to surface mode. I was able to smooth the body out and then go back and forth to Voxel and Surface as I wished without any real issue.

Version 4.0b12D

[BeatKitano]

Yes, like that it works, it's what's done to the model in between that cause the issue, if this was as simple as your step it would've been solved looong ago.

[AbnRanger]

I don't even know how to word this in a bug report. I posed the mannequin and then in Surface mode used Live Clay and other tools to fill in the gaps and smooth the transitions between parts. I started having some problems with the mesh so I switched back to Voxel mode. When i use Smooth or any other tools it completely removes all of the Surface Mode work I had done.

Here's a video:

http://screencast.com/t/IYzkf8Yx

Edit: I just noticed if I do the switch to voxels with wireframes showing I can see that no conversion is happening. The mesh still looks like a Surface mesh with varying density.

I found that if you get some niggly little hanging pieces or anomolies, using the Reconstruct option from the Surface mode SHIFT or CTRL + SHIFT options, will eat away at them like Smoothing does in Voxel mode. I asked Andrew what this tool is designed for, and he said that was one of it's primary intended uses. Using the RECONSTRUCT tool itself in the LiveClay group, works differently (and for that reason they should be named differently), but it is good for cleaning up parts of a mesh that may get fudged up a bit. You just paint select the area you want to fix, and hit APPLY.

[philnolan3d]

Yes, that's what I use it for when I'm in Surface mode. I was also using it to repair holes.

[Andrew Shpagin]

Updated to beta 13

Changes:

- Important! Baking settings improved a lot to get full control over the baking - bit.ly/154tlJd

It allows to set different scan depth for different areas of the mesh.

- Baking will take into account externally loaded normalmap

- Tiled voxel space introduced to produce tiled textures in voxel room. It is easy to export result via File->Export->Export depth along Y. See wizard in Start menu->Surface mode

- File->Export->Export depth along Y may be useful to produce textures, masks and alphas too.

- Huge amount of typos fixed.

- improved compatibility with LW11, now textures will load automatically.

- Auto seams will act on current group only.

- A lot of mantis reported problems fixed, a lot of work done for stabilisation and cleaning.

Linux/max expected in 3-4 days

[Andrew Shpagin]

Not a big corruption then (but you still got those spikes I experienced all over the model in my attempt to recover).

With the introduction of scripting, could there be a way to record every "result" action (not talking about mouse navigation and things like that), in a lightweight way Andrew ?

It could help to get a "script" of the events to reproduce bugs like those. Most of the time we know those exist but can't reproduce and they never get fixed. Those don't appear often but they can destroy a lot of work if you're not careful.

Besides that could also help beginner, with a script replay they could potentialy learn from "live" tutorials, with a script file (a simple text file would do), it's light (could easily be uploaded whenever needed), and it's easy to do: you just record your action and everything speak for itself (maybe an option to add caption to fill the possible voids ?)

Generally I plan such sort or recording, but still not found time for that, not as easy to do. But some day recording definitely will be there.

[philnolan3d]

The new features look very nice, I'll test them out right away!

[Carlosan]

great !

Ty Andrew !

[alvordr]

1) Trying to move to... or change parent... of a layer in the Voxel room still makes the pop up menu out of range of my cursor when I try to select where to move to... or change parent...

The pop up disappears by the time I can get my cursor up there to choose. Can we fix this please? It should be a matter of getting the popup to appear in closer range of where the cursor is.

2) The check for updates isn't working either. I just noticed that 4b13 is posted, but when I check it from 12D in the Help menu it says I'm up to date.

[BeatKitano]

1) can't answer about that

2) the update is for stable releases. But for the clearly beta identified build it would be cool to have an alternate feed for betas only.

[alvordr]

Version 4b13 change:

"Important! Baking settings improved a lot to get full control over the baking - bit.ly/154tlJd

It allows to set different scan depth for different areas of the mesh."

...if this is what I think it is and works well, it's a HUGE boon for 3DC. One thing that's bothered me is that you get inner and outer bake settings for the whole set of Retopo groups and Voxel layers, when those settings don't always work well for one part vs another. If this means what I think it does, we now can bake various parts with different settings to our liking, without having to do it one by one, manually.

Thanks Andrew!

[ajz3d]

Hey, good show again Andrew!

I've noticed that you've fixed the swapped colours bug in "Export depth along Y". Superb! However, I found a tiny bug in this new function that leads to a crash: http://3d-coat.com:8...iew.php?id=1041

The new bake settings look very promising.

[alvordr]

The help tip for the "Snapping Method" for "Method of Baking" in the Baking settings pop up should read:

There are two baking methods:

1) SNAP TO CLOSEST ALONG NORMAL This is the simplest method. 3D-Coat will take the closest point from the repoto surface to the object. It provides a good result in most cases, but if you have floating elements over the surface, it will not capture them.

2) SNAP TO OUTER SURFACE This method will take the farthest point along the normal. Thus, even floating pieces will be captured. However, it requires an accurate setting of scan distance. It may capture unnecessary details if the distance is too big (E.g. a neighboring finger on a hand). If the scan distance is too small, some details may be missed. In this case, add an "influence sphere" to set different scan distances for problematic areas.

[alvordr]

We may need a tutorial on how to do the new baking settings. I get the general concept, but I'm not quite understanding how to add an influence sphere. Do I simply pick zone and click once, or draw points around the area? What if the area is a tight concave area that's hard to identify?

EDIT: Never mind. I had Add/Split active, as well. Once I picked a zone, it looked like I could still pick points.

[ajz3d]

Alvordr, the sphere seems to be the only shape available for influence object.

I have three one problems with the new influence objects.

First of all, when you set its radius to whatever size you need and then you press Pick zone to move it around, the radius resets to default.

Second, there doesn't seem to be any way to enable visual feedback for influence sphere's in depth and out depth.

Lastly, wherever I put the influence object, normal map bakes completely white. I'm still trying to figure out how to use it properly though, so I might be doing something terribly wrong.

Scratch that! Aah I get it!

Some observations:

- You need to put influence sphere inside the retopo mesh. Only then tweaking in/out depths will be visible and the object will actually influence the mesh.

- Influence from two objects doesn't stack up.

Edited March 15, 2013 by ajz3d

[alvordr]

The baking settings don't remember the last option I chose, once I've baked. If I'm tweaking it, I have to make sure to change "Snap to outer surface" each time.