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Volumetric sculpting


Andrew Shpagin
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This topic is created to collect information about volumetric sculpting. I plan to start making it from approx 10 of july. I want to release 3.0 at september (approximately).

Please write there different interesting links about volumetric sculpting, feature requests. It could be good to make some list of must-have features. It could be good to classify features

Let us do it together!

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well iv only used 3dcoat for about a couple hours now, but spent last week looking at competing apps. zbrush is crazy powerful for volume sculpting and the price is not really off the charts, seems reasonable for what you get. I agree with what another user posted in a following topic:

"I see 3d-Coat as more of a "detailing" application. It's unbelievable for painting and adding small, intricate details without headaches. It's competing with applications like BODYPAINT more so than Zbrush/Mud"

I bought it as a direct competitor to bodypaint and think its bread and butter would come more from refining that angle than as a zbrush competitor, even though it seems the backbone is there for it. . Very happy with the purchase my only other option was bodypaint and didnt feel like spending 900 bucks. 3dc fit the bill perfectly. painting on the UV map, so to speak etc at bodypaint does for future feature set IMO. so for what its worth, my humble 2 cents.

but to stay on topic, mayas artisan brushes simple and powerful

*edit* didnt see that painting on the texture flat was already an option... scratch that idea then =)

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well iv only used 3dcoat for about a couple hours now, but spent last week looking at competing apps. zbrush is crazy powerful for volume sculpting and the price is not really off the charts

Hi Awnold,

Andrew was refering to sculpting approach which is not inside Zbrush and the like. It might look similar but works differently under the hood.

What I'd be very interested in is all precision tools which are also inside the Sensable products (and shown in the feature demos ion their website).

Spline import, extact numeric translations, arrays, mirroring etc. History would be nice (change one object in e.g. an array of ornaments and all instances

get changed too. It would be really nice to see a technically usable sculpting package at a far lower price tag as ClayTools.

Holger

Some examples here: http://sensable.com/industries-video-gallery.htm

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This topic is created to collect information about volumetric sculpting. I plan to start making it from approx 10 of july. I want to release 3.0 at september (approximately).

Please write there different interesting links about volumetric sculpting, feature requests. It could be good to make some list of must-have features. It could be good to classify features

Let us do it together!

Very cool! ZB/MB doesn't have anything like this..so it should make 3DC such a appealing and unique application with a low price. I'd be interested in seeing your wishlist Andrew. To be honest i've never used any volume sculpting app, so i wont know what to ask for, beside being able to sculpt on extremely detail mesh like ZB3.

Please keep us posted on your progress of 3.0 thru your blog, i'd love to read everything about it :D exciting time!

PS> you still plan on releasing a 3DC 2.10 Mac version before starting on 3.0 development?

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I'd be interested in seeing your wishlist Andrew. To be honest i've never used any volume sculpting app, so i wont know what to ask for, beside being able to sculpt on extremely detail mesh like ZB3.

At least for me If it is not possible to get the same amount of detail with volumetric it doesn't bother.

If you are able to have such tool as Claytool or freeform have that will be awesome.

It allow you to quickly sculpt anything and especially hard surface with an extreme precision and ease.

Being able to sculpt with disregard of geometry and got these hard surface tool is a gold mine.

So if 3DC become this kind of sculpting appz (like Sensable software are) I think it will relay Zb to the detailling side.

And if you are able to do both thing that will be the cherry on the cake :)

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If it handles sequences/morphs, the creation of and management thereof, I'll like it.

If this ups the precision capabilities of the maps, I'll like it.

If it helps with 3DTrees, which I really really really hope you get back to for a bit of update love, I'll like it.

As long as it is smooth to work with and doesn't have annoying "catch up pauses", I'll like it.

Andrew, I have to ask: what do you have in mind as I can't say I am familiar with what you speak of. OFf to google it but that's a chance for myriad errors.

Edit: Something like this, with haptic feedback?

Chuckle, make me crazy, why don't you!!

http://www.inition.com/inition/product.php...mp;SubCatID_=38

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Here are a few ideas :

Standart primitives (sphere, cubes, cylinders, torus) to quickly build up models

a 'Draw in 2d, then extrude' tool

Spline tool with variable radius: great to create trees or octopus :),

a snakehook brush like zbrush's

a spline deformation tool, and a posing tool.

importing .Obj : great to be able to use a library of models

boolean operations between models

I'd like to be able to use a 'template' model to draw things on a model

post-476-1214722609_thumb.jpg

post-476-1214724093_thumb.jpg

post-476-1214724112_thumb.jpg

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I especially love these feature that you can see in these videos:

http://fr.youtube.com/watch?v=nmLKdFJCzQw

At the begining he is importing a premade ear and tweak it, that can seriously cut some time in the creation process.

Next he is cloning fingers at 2:55 that can really be usefull.

I like also the trim tools that you can see in this video http://sensable.com/documents/Galleries/Vi...o_WithAudio.wmv

Being able to get clean hard edge is what really miss to Mud and Zbrush.

It seems to have an interesting function to help this, it's the coarseness setting, I never used any sensable software so I don't know how it really works, I will take a look later at this.

I found this on the web, http://www.antoniuskoester.de/download/pdf...ickRef91_en.pdf

That can be nice to take a look at it.

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The goblin video shows a lot of useful tools. especially the 'create 3d model from a profile'. The extrude from a curve in the solde shoe video rocks too.

It seems that Claytools keek multiple objects separated until you merge it. It could be more helpful to clone parts (fingers, ears)

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I have to say, watching those videos makes me think the process could

be quite slow and tedious (viewport navigation looked especially painful and function

processing seemed like it could be somewhat 'toe-tapping' as well).

Also, the toolset appears a bit alien to me (not coming from a nurbs background).

On the plus side, however, the results look clean, tight, and professional (also liked

the masking and 'stamping' options, in addition to how he cleaned up the extrusions

on the shoe sole video). ;)

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Sorry, as far as suggestions go:

1. Claytools had the ability to connect the app to 3dsMax via a "host app", similar to what MESSIAH STUDIO does for Maya. This was how you were able to "retopo" the voxel mesh, once it was converted to polygons.

2. Since Voxel to Polygon conversion results in some ugly "scan data" type results, it would be good to implement a polygon decimation engine like PolyCrunch.

3. The ability to "fuse" primitive shapes, like "metaballs" or to sculpt and keep them seperate entities. Some kind of "threshold" slider would be pretty useful. I'm thinking if you were to place two spheres in close proximity, you'd get different results based off of a threashold slider

Threshold.jpg

-Rodney Brett

Freelance Artist/Technical Director/Instructor

Ex'pression College for Digital Arts

rbrett@expression.edu

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Thanks for sharing interesting info!

I am glad that voxel/volumetric sculpting is really interesting to all community!

It just makes a lot of sense to me right now, especially with the app you are developing. Rather than compete with Zbrush/Mudbox on a "poly" level, you can explore alternate, more efficient memory management solutions.(which you've already made strides in). It's not "brute force" poly power, but using polys where you need them and when you need them. I can foresee Mudbox 2 to be targeted at workstations, especially if they go the "poly" route. Simply because it's OpenGL tech, and the way consumer video cards are heading right now, there is a wider gap between the consumer/hobbyist cards and the workstation ones.

To be able to sculpt on the Zbrush equivalent of 5-10 million polys with voxels on a modest laptop would turn many heads. Couple this technology with well-thought brushes and you have a recipe for Zbrush/Mudbox killer. ;)

One other thing I'd like to mention.. Good application development has a lot to do with taking things away as it does with adding new features. Silo is a good example of this methodology. Whatever you can streamline into one action instead of 3, get rid of redundancies, etc. Maya used to have "extrude edge" and "extrude face", now they just have "extrude".

For the 3d-Coat 10 beta, I noticed you have Tweak vertices, Slide Edges, and Tweak with brush. You could consolidate this into simply "slide" or "tweak". Slide could slide verts/edges/faces on a multicomponent level. Tweak could be modified with a single keystroke or pulldown submenu to "tweak with brush".

Sorry for going off-topic. It's just one of the reasons why Silo is easy to "blind use". You don't have to refer to the manual very much to learn the application. Maya's always had this problem for new users to learn. It has more to do with organization/cleanup of UI then the app itself. Lots of my new students forget where all the actions are simply because they are not in a very logical place.

If you check out CHEETAH 3d for the Mac, it's another fine example of good UI design. Although it's an All-In-One app(Model, texture, rig, animate, render), similar to Maya, it feels "light" and simple. Martin Wegenmayer is another "one man show", just like you, my good sir! :)

-Rod

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I want to describe what is volumetric sculpting slightly more. The data consist of 3D array of bytes (0.255) N x M x K. Every byte is a degree of filling if the cell. How to convert is into something visible? There is marching cubes algorithm (en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marching_cubes) that allows to triangulate this data. I know how to modify this algorithm to make it in extremely fast way. The surface will look smooth (not like pic in wiki) because vertices of triangulated mesh will lay not on centers of edges but will be slided in dependence of near verts weight. Once I was making something like this to generate non-trivial landscape for HAOE game (see examples of landscape there and there )

The main advantage of using 3d-coat for volumetric sculpting is that you can't achieve too big resolutions with volumetric sculpting, but you can make volumetric model and continue detaling it on normal map level to the very high degree that is inaccessible for pure volumetric sculpting.

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The main advantage of using 3d-coat for volumetric sculpting is that you can't achieve too big resolutions with volumetric sculpting, but you can make volumetric model and continue detaling it on normal map level to the very high degree that is inaccessible for pure volumetric sculpting.

:huh: So your saying with volumetric sculpting in 3.0, we wont be able sculpt extremely detail models like ZB3/MB2? :o

but of course...either way im stilled looking forward to 3.0 :D

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There is big difference between ZB&MB approach and volumetric approach. if you want to extrude arm from sphere in ZB&MB you need to drag surface and then subdivide it additionally. It produces loooong triangles. In that case you need to retopologise surface. Also you can't make a hole or change topology essentially (of course you can add new sub-objects, I don't know if ZB offers some polygones management like bridge, delete face,...).

In volumetruic approach you will simply add arm to sphere without any care of topology. But making wrinkles or pores - it is task of painting, not of volumetric sculpting. 3D-Coat will combine both approaches so it will be powerful combination.

But volumetric approach has some problem - coming back to low (or middle) polygones. Of course there is no problem to produce high-poly mesh with small faces, but after volumetric sculpting you need to convert it to less heavy amount of polygones. Then retopologisation can be performed. I think that till this time I will add some half-auto retopo to simplify this process.

So, volumetric sculpting gives a huge freedom but there is some cost while coming back to usual polygones.

Until it is not done I can't estimate how big meshes could be sculpted without lags, but I will make it as fast as possible.

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:huh: So your saying with volumetric sculpting in 3.0, we wont be able sculpt extremely detail models like ZB3/MB2? :o

but of course...either way im stilled looking forward to 3.0 :D

A voxel cube of 256*256*256 contains as many datas as a 16 000 000 millions polys model.

I did some Unified skin test (a kind of voxelling on a model) on some of my models in Zbrush with a lower density (170 * 170 *170 )

The result is enough to sculpt a nice shape.

Maybe using multple voxel cubes could minimize the datas amount

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A voxel cube of 256*256*256 contains as many datas as a 16 000 000 millions polys model.

I did some Unified skin test (a kind of voxelling on a model) on some of my models in Zbrush with a lower density (170 * 170 *170 )

The result is enough to sculpt a nice shape.

Maybe using multple voxel cubes could minimize the datas amount

Of course many cubes will be used, I think 8x8x8. Every cube will be marked as empty or full or half-filled. Full and empty take no space. So there is NO memory problem (1 byte per voxel or 4 bytes/voxel if collor will be applied), ony polycount to display can be problem. Storing of volumetric model takes much less space then usual surface-based model.

256x256x256 cube produces in average 100-200K of poly, no more - because of only surface is accounted and only surface area consumes some memory.

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You can compare - usual surface

xyz,normal - 24 bytes

quad list - 16 bytes fer face, face count approx equal to verts count - we will get 40 bytes per vertex

volume approach

8x8x8 - 512 bytes - in average 30-100 polygones - approx 8 bytes per polygon!

compare 8 and 40 (maybe even more because some additional info should be stored anyway - faces on edges, uv or other for surface modeling)

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I think that a tool who can average a surface, which we can select precisely (with spline like in the video who stick to the outline area, for example), could really help for hard surface modeling.

I like the way Freeform do the job really well but it rely too much on spline based shape created in an other software.

But averaging a surface precisely was what I miss the most while doing this armor, and while doing hard surface model in general.

Averaging an area by smoothing it by hand is not the best approach, it's time consuming and not perfect.

post-783-1214997282_thumb.jpg

An other problematic area on this armor was the kind of "feather collar". I did it by placing each feather hand by hand, doing the orientation, the scaling and moving all by hand.

I did a little illustration of a tool that I think could help to do these task.

post-783-1214997330_thumb.jpg

On the picture the blue line is the first stroke you are drawing and that represent the main line, that's your path, the two other spline will help to place the object.

Maybe the first guide line could be used as the placing guide, and the second line could be used as the scaling guide, like that you can manage the width of the resulting object.

Obviously these spline should be projected on the mesh.

I think it can help to create such pattern because even in 3Dsmax or Maya when you try to do this with a spline you don't ended with a good placement, the object doesn't keep the right orientation all along the path.

I think that's because it's base on only 1 spline and it doesn't have any "plane" information, if you base it on 2 splines you got your plane, so the objects will always got the right orientation an will stick perfectly on the surface.

Maybe these spline tools doesn't fit to a sculpting package, but at least for me it really fit to the sculpting process.

The armor was all done in Zbrush and even if it was not really optimal that was faster and more important, much more easy to tweak than 3dsmax.

P.S: Sorry for cutting your discussion, I was writing this while you were posting.

But I agree with you Andrew, the power of voxel modeling is that you are totally free of topology and you can add a bunch of clay on the fly.

Making wrinkle and so on, is just the final process, not the more important.

I rarely need to go over 300K poly to sculp a full figure, what consume the most is to subdivide enough to sculpt every fine details.

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Yes, I have seen this engine :) and even played a bit with that game.

But there is a big difference between future 3DC approach and cubes approach - 3DC will be abpbe do display/produce smooth images. Actually Voxelstain does not use marching cubes - there is simply set of small cubes, so the surface looks draft. Voxelstain approach uses 1 for geometry bit per vixel + color, but 3DC uses 8 bit for geometry and so able to produce smooth surfaces with clean normals.

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Hi guys,

What I'm looking for in a volumetric app is first the ability to sculpt down to tiny detail. I have to disagree with the fact that you cannot get as much detail as in a surfacic application with a volumetric application. I was able to work on a 100M poly (equivalent when exported in .obj) in claytools without a hitch. I was actually limited with the size of the exported model for Maya because I had no way to retopo into claytools.

Second, I'm looking for the volumetric app to enable to paint color onto the voxels.

Third, I'm looking for the app to enable direct polygon retopology onto the voxel model.

Then create UVs on this retopo model, and then bake normal and color onto it direct from the voxel database.

I mean, the whole point to me is to get rid of any topology or UVs constraint during the creation of the source asset. Then bake to whatever poly model you want. Zbrush and Mud2 are allowing to paint at micro-poly (with no need for UVs) but are still constrained to surface modeling. On the other hand claytools doesn't have color painting (freeform does but is more expensive). We need something that does both.

Oh and everything 64bits please.

Cheers,

Franck.

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