Generic Sword

[Gary Dave]

I'm just working away on small things to get a better grip with 3d coat, It's certainly pretty intuitive but there's bits and pieces I keep running into that seem like I might be taking a poorly efficient route. So I figured I'd throw down a WIP and tag a few questions (possible requests) onto it as I go. I've already got a few so I'll just bullet point those.

1. When creating a "Free-form" primitive in the Voxel room you can use multiple symmetry axis' when moving points around, is there a way to get this functionality into general sculpting and even the Retopo room? Or is that a big no no?
   
2. I get the feeling that the physical scale of my models are important, should I be making things huge in the voxel room so I don't later have resolution issues or over-keen snapping/welding in the retopo room? By "resolution issues" I mean sometimes I'd create a free form primitive to cut out a small area, and so I'd make a really small object (in comparison to my model) but when I hit return to generate it, it's.... super low poly.*
   
3. Selecting faces/verts/edges in the retopo room. Sometimes I can't actually deselect, I have to switch to a different tool and then back again. I know about Ctrl to deselect but I mean more like "clearing the selection"... sometimes simply clicking in a blank area does it, but sometimes it does not. Either I'm missing something obvious or I'm experiencing some odd behaviour.
   
4. Once you send a retopo'd mesh to be UV'd and painted, is there any way to reverse that? So, for example... removing the mesh that's now in the Paint and UV rooms. Let me know if I'm not being clear enough on this one but basically, I retopo a mesh, send it to be UV'd, notice something (or lots) I want to change, go back to the retopo room.... annd now I've got my voxel model AND my "baked" mesh in there, as well as my retopo geometry. I know I can hide the voxels... but my question I suppose, is can I delete the "baked" mesh?
   
5. Sometimes my symmetry plane appears in the wrong position, I've no doubt this is something I'm doing wrong but I'm wondering if there's a more accurate way to get it back to the root than just holding TAB and pretty much lining it up by eye? Also... slight note, but even after I move my symmetry plane back with TAB, it often finds a way to revert itself back to the old/wrong position. Am I doing something incredibly stupid here?
   

Just an addendum to point 2 there, I know about res+, but sometimes I find myself res+'ing "more than I think I should be" in order to get the required detail.

Lastly, sorry for the words! I'm still learning, and still watching and reading whatever I can find.

[Garagarape]

Hello there! Welcome to 3dCoat forum!

I'll try to answer your questions.

1) There's no multiple symmetry axis alowed in 3dCoat I think.

But you can use the "Axial tool" to get what you need. It's prety close to

the nurbs way of thinking when we used to build a glass model by using

part of its silhouette and making it revolve.

2) You pointed out something that I noticed and never make the effort to understand.

But, yes, if you scale up or down too much a voxel model, you may experience problems

to get the details you need (though you can raise the resolution by one button click) or

slow down your machine. You have to test it and find what suits you (or ask someone that knows more than me )

3) Depends on the version you use. But it happened to me too.

4) You can delete your baked mesh by clicking a red cross in the paint room layer if I remeber well.

5) What do you mean by wrong position? Is the geometry structure moved when you go back to retopo?

There's a tool that makes retopo mesh follow voxel structure when you tweak it. With too much radical

changes on the voxel mode, you can have your retopo mesh going weird. It happens when you use the pose tool

without unchecking "update retopo mesh".

You will probably find solutions to your problems by watching the video tutorials on 3dCoat website.

Hope you'll find what you need.

[Gary Dave]

Cheers for the reply Garagarape.

I'll have to look into the Axial tool, it might be what I need. You can use multiple symmetry on the free-form primitives (before you apply them to the scene), which is super awesome and very handy.

As for my off-axis problem, here's what I mean: (just loaded the scene up, I had previously set the Z plane back to the centre)

I'm not sure what I've done to cause it to keep going off the centre like that, but I can't seem to get it to stay put, I have to keep manually TAB'ing it back in place which I think is causing me some other minor issues with not sculpting 100% symmetrically. It would just be handy if there was some sort of "reset symmetry to root of world or root of object" you know?

Thanks for the answers though! Good to know I can remove the baked mesh, and yes... I apologise if my questions are n00bish, I am reading the manual every now and again when I get stuck and also watching numerous videos when I get the chance.

[Carlosan]

off the centre

try

RMB over the layer

To Global Space

[Gary Dave]

Ah that's beautiful! And I see there's also an "Apply Axial Symmetry" in there too, which is dandy!

Thanks muchos.

[Gary Dave]

Trying to quickly wrap up this "complete" model/uv/texture tonight and I seem to have ran into another problem. Can't progress from this either:

I was in the paint room, messing around with layer orders and then my object suddenly looked like the above, and nothing I can do can get it back. The voxel model appears correctly, this is the retopo'd mesh that looks like the above in every room except UV and Voxels.

It's worth noting that the checker texture appears to be in some sort of screen space, ie... it doesn't move with my model, it's like my model is acting as a mask to a checker pattern behind the screen. It's also animated, as in it keeps on scrolling.

I shut down 3d coat, re-launched and re-loaded the scene but I still get the same issue. Have I accidentally hit some "show animated checker pattern" button, or is this a bit broken?

[ajz3d]

Hello.

You have frozen the whole texture. This is like masking in ZBrush, so it's nothing to be worried about. Just unfreeze it with Freeze->Unfreeze All command.

[Gary Dave]

Damn, now I feel stupid.

Not sure how I accidentally froze everything in the first place though, I was literally just moving layers around. Oh well, doesn't matter too much, thanks!

[ajz3d]

There are at least two ways to freeze all texture at once. If you were tweaking layers order, then perhaps you accidentally entered the right click menu and chose either Freeze Painted Pixels or Freeze Transparent Pixels.

The second way is via the said Freeze menu.