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AWESOME! Paint Your Voxels and Render in Maya Viewport 2.0 easily


fneill
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As I mentioned in previous threads I do Maya PREVIS work where I render thousands of frames of animation of my characters in Maya 2013 in just minutes with Maya 2013 RENDER VIEWPORT 2.0 rendering mode. And that includes ambient occlusion and depth of field and high anti aliasing at those speeds. So I was really happy when I found out 3D Coat rendered PTEX files (No UV's love it!). But Iam also very happy that 3D Coat exports VERTEX COLORS (no UV's!) IN THE VOXEL MODE and that also views and renders VERY WELL in Maya 2013 VIEWPORT 2.0 fast rendering. I just rendered a 30,000 frame animation of a character I made in 3d Coat. Rendered all frames in 15 minutes. HOWEVER, couple things you need to turn on before you can view and render VERTEX COLORS in MAYA 2013 VIEWPORT 2.0 MODE. So here is my workflow for COLOR VERTEX exporting to Maya 2013.

1. In VOXEL MODE scultp your model. Switch to paint mode (make sure to turn on VIEW SHOW VOXELS IN PAINT ROOM) and paint your model (no uv's needed of course!). When done just export it from the paint room model as an FBX.

2. Then IMPORT in to Maya 2013 as FBX. Turn on RENDER VIEWPORT 2.0 MODE, Then select your model and go to DISPLAY POLYGONS VERTICES'S and then in the ATTRIBUTE EDITOR turn on DISPLAY COLORS.

3. See image below. Its that easy. Now your painted textured VOXEL model from 3d Coat VIEWS and RENDERS the polygon vertices's in the VIEWPORT 2.0 mode. Now thats cool!

anybody have comments on this OR comments on PTEX rendering in Mayas Viewport 2.0 mode PLEASE comment as Iam slowly becoming a simi expert at rendering both PTEX and COLOR VERTICES'S in Maya 2013 RENDER VIEWPORT 2.0 mode.

SEE IMAGE BELOW COMMENTS WELCOMED :)

post-14679-0-08503300-1350506168_thumb.j

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One good thing to mention is that if you are in voxel mode and you switch to the paintroom and start painting your voxel object is switched to surface mode (true polygons) automatically. You are no longer in voxel mode. If you switch back to voxel mode your color will be stored but not shown in voxel mode. Switching back to surface mode will display your color again if you so desire.

Just a heads up for newer users to be aware of...

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On my animation characters in 3d coat I voxel sculpt them at about a million. Then I click on paint room and paint and texture. Then when I export AS A MODEL from the paint room I put the final reduced poly count to around 15k. Thats perfect size for large animations rendered in Maya Viewport 2.0. PTEX and COLOR VERTEX painting really are a huge dream come true for game engines and character animation like Iam doing. Especially for COLOR VERTEX until PTEX catches on more. I like them both. And quality is really very good. Thanks 3d Coat!

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Still don't know what's the benifits!

I will speak for my benefits. For me the benefits are HUGE.

1. In the voxel mode I sculpt away at my 1 million or whatever poly high rez character. Using the dozens of incredible tools in the voxel mode AND in the voxel surface mode.

2. I then click paint room. I color and texture my model. I then export via fbx. I have NOT had to do ANY UV work as when you export voxels from the paint room (converted to polys of course) the paint and textures are added to the vertices so no UV work needed. Maya reads that color vertice mode as well as many game engines.. 3D Coat ask me my final poly count. I put in 15k or so. ALL DONE. Ready to import in to Maya.

3. Soooo I have not had to do any UV work as UVs not needed in the exporting color by vertices mode. Thats saves an incredible amount of time. Also in Maya I use their pre built characterized skeleton and drop it in my 3D Coat character and adjust the bone to fit in the character and instantly have an instant IK characterized character ready for keyframing or adding animation files to.

4. When in Maya using the Maya VIewport 2.0 rendering mode I render in less than a second a frame. Instead of minutes or hours per frame. That saves me hours of rendering time. Render quality is amazing.

So for me, from 3d Coat Voxel to Maya Animation is extremely fast and saves me hours of work. I hate doing UV work. This is really beneficial if someone is doing GAME CHARACTERS or PRE VIS work where you need to make thousands of frames of fast animation and rendering to show what a final movie with high quality rendering will eventually look like. Thats the benefits for me.

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Thanks for sharing this workflow!

I have a question though:

If the final poly count is 15k, then won't the resolution of the vertex painting be too low? I thought vertex painting only looks good at very high poly counts. For 15k poly models won't ptex be better?

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ptex is definitely better. Color Vertex is just quicker since its straight from voxel room to paint room painting and then reduce to 15k and export fbx. I use both. Since I use this for games and previs work quality is reduced at such low resolution exports. Thats where careful coloring comes in handy (not texturing when going down to 15k) when using color vertex.Still can look pretty good for a 15k character. When I want higher quality I export my models at 50 to 100k. 15k characters allows much more complex scenes and animations in Maya while rendering the thousands of frames quickly. Ptex really is the future (I hope). This is all about very fast modeling, exporting, animating and rendering. Also, keep in mind Mayas VIEWPORT 2.0 rendering mode does not get bogged down much with multiple lights and characters. Can have several 15k characters in the scene, several lights, ambient occlusion and depth of field and high anti aliasing and still render at a frame a second. Thats really awesome.

Thanks for sharing this workflow!

I have a question though:

If the final poly count is 15k, then won't the resolution of the vertex painting be too low? I thought vertex painting only looks good at very high poly counts. For 15k poly models won't ptex be better?

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I certainly understand the time advantages and all, but some things actually are worth the little extra effort. UV layout in 3D Coat is so fast, I just never even bother with Ptex...despite all of it's benefits. I did a video a while back where I showed you can easily (without even breaking a sweat) UV a full character in under 5 min. The main advantage you get there is that you can utilize the 2D Texture Editor in the Paint Room. It's such a powerful tandem having both 3D and 2D painting capability right in the same viewport. You can see a little sample of this starting at about the 15:45 mark in this video:

Giving up this ability to utilize Ptex or Vovel Painting alone, isn't worth it for me, personally. And It's probably better to use Autopo and bake the textures/details onto a normal map, than to use an exported model straight from the voxel room, when animating (unless the object is going to be static in a scene and not used in a game engine). Voxel Painting is good for hashing out the overall look before going through the Retopo Stage, for still renders in an external renderer and for quick prototyping.

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UVs, Ptex, Vertex Paint, voxels, polygons, all have their pros and cons. The beauty of 3D-Coat is that it isn't too hard to mix and match these techniques to get what you want. The more Andrew streamlines this integration, the more awesome 3D-Coat gets!

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AbnRanger you are so right. And your tutorials are some of the first ones I studied (Iam a newbie but learning quickly). Best tutorials I have found. Whats nice about 3d Coat is that it does it all for whatever you might need. Color vertex painting is CRITICAL for some game engines. Must use it then. PTex is great for a production when UV's take too much time and quality can be sacrificed some (even thought ptex can create awesome quality). For me right now I spend most of my time ANIMATING in Maya and Motionbuilder so I really dont have time for dealing with uv's (even though you are showing us how easy it is). Really as you mention unless you are working on game engines or just need super fast results like I do lately your way is the way to go. I just did a one minute sculpt in voxel room and painted a little paint as quick test 2 meg voxel export to 15k or so and rendered Maya color vertice. This character is just showing Mayas Viewport 2.0 with ambient occlusion and high antialising setting. That renders instantly. So working in a game engine with color vertices from 3d Coat and rendering thousands of frames is fast and easy :)

I certainly understand the time advantages and all, but some things actually are worth the little extra effort. UV layout in 3D Coat is so fast, I just never even bother with Ptex...despite all of it's benefits. I did a video a while back where I showed you can easily (without even breaking a sweat) UV a full character in under 5 min. The main advantage you get there is that you can utilize the 2D Texture Editor in the Paint Room. It's such a powerful tandem having both 3D and 2D painting capability right in the same viewport. You can see a little sample of this starting at about the 15:45 mark in this video:

Giving up this ability to utilize Ptex or Vovel Painting alone, isn't worth it for me, personally. And It's probably better to use Autopo and bake the textures/details onto a normal map, than to use an exported model straight from the voxel room, when animating (unless the object is going to be static in a scene and not used in a game engine). Voxel Painting is good for hashing out the overall look before going through the Retopo Stage, for still renders in an external renderer and for quick prototyping.

post-14679-0-34429600-1350595082_thumb.j

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This is so right, by the way thank you AbnRanger for all you great video tutorials.

AbnRanger you are so right. And your tutorials are some of the first ones I studied (Iam a newbie but learning quickly). Best tutorials I have found. Whats nice about 3d Coat is that it does it all for whatever you might need. Color vertex painting is CRITICAL for some game engines. Must use it then. PTex is great for a production when UV's take too much time and quality can be sacrificed some (even thought ptex can create awesome quality). For me right now I spend most of my time ANIMATING in Maya and Motionbuilder so I really dont have time for dealing with uv's (even though you are showing us how easy it is). Really as you mention unless you are working on game engines or just need super fast results like I do lately your way is the way to go. I just did a one minute sculpt in voxel room and painted a little paint as quick test 2 meg voxel export to 15k or so and rendered Maya color vertice. This character is just showing Mayas Viewport 2.0 with ambient occlusion and high antialising setting. That renders instantly. So working in a game engine with color vertices from 3d Coat and rendering thousands of frames is fast and easy :)

Thanks for the kind words. Even though I prefer to stick with UV's and a cleanly topologized model, there are occasions where Voxel (vertex actually) Painting and direct export is just the tool for the job. If you saw the Voxel Painting demo, the hair is a very good example of that. Before Voxel Painting, it was a bugger trying to retopologize and get a good baked result from. Now, I don't even have to do that, now. Being able to sculpt hair with the Muscles tool is the No.1 way to do hair, now, IMHO. Even if you want to use a Hair and Fur engine in an external package, you can use the sculpted hair as the Hair cap and simply grow hair from it (oriented in the same direction as the clumps/strands), to augment the sculpt or trace spline guides from it.
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Hi,

 

is there a way to export multiple vertex color sets from one object? I tried to use layers in 3d coat and it wont read as multiple color sets in maya. I try to render with one vertex color set as diffuse color and use the other one as an alpha map for the shader in maya. Is it possible to export from 3dcoat two or more color sets to maya?

 

thank you

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Hi,

 

is there a way to export multiple vertex color sets from one object? I tried to use layers in 3d coat and it wont read as multiple color sets in maya. I try to render with one vertex color set as diffuse color and use the other one as an alpha map for the shader in maya. Is it possible to export from 3dcoat two or more color sets to maya?

 

thank you

There are no color sets to export. You just export the MESH and Maya will need to use Vertex Color maps to display the color and specularity store in the Vertices. So, to clarify further, there are no image maps or layers to export. All the color info is stored in the vertices of the mesh itself.

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Thank you AbnRanger I have been looking for ways to export mesh with two different colors but I couldn't find something. As I understand one vertex wont be capable of storing multiple colour information. 

You can use layers galore on a vertex/voxel painted model, but when exported, 3D Coat merges/bakes all those layers down and stores it in the vertices of the exported mesh. Neither OBJ or FBX support layered color, spec, and depth, any way....as far as I know. However, you could bake all the color and spec info stored in Vertex Painting, down to a low polygon version of the model, from the Retopo Room > RETOPO Menu > Merge to PTEX, Micro Vertex (Displacement map in depth channel), or Per Pixel Painting mode (Normal Map in Depth Channel). That will send a copy of the Retopo Mesh(es) to the Paint Room, with the baked textures applied to corresponding Paint layers.

 

At that point, you'll see both your Voxel model and the Low Poly version, taking up the same space. So, you will want to hide the Voxel Object (you can bring the Vox Tree Layer panel into the Paint room, and dock it, through the WINDOWS > POP UPS menu....or go to the VIEW MENU and un-check SHOW VOXELS IN PAINT ROOM). Before going this route, I would suggest naming the Paint layers you've created/painted for the Voxel model, so it's not confused with the new paint layers created for the Low poly version.

 

You might add a "_Vox" extension on each of those, for example. Once you have gone through these steps, you can add layers and layers and export any one of them out separately (via the LAYERS >EXPORT menu) or (via EDIT > EDIT ALL LAYERS IN EXT. EDITOR menu) as a PSD file, with all the layers intact. So, you have a range of options, if you bake to a lower poly mesh and proceed. But Vertex Paint exports in a WYSIWYG fashion.

Edited by AbnRanger
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