3D-Coat 3.0 ALPHA

[rimasson]

I'm looking for the next beta.

I've installed the right cuda toolkit, i can't install cuda drivers because of hardware compatibility (my quadro FX 1500 dosen't support cuda) and none of the version (dx, gl, 32 and 64 bits) are working...

[geo_n]

I'm looking for the next beta.

I've installed the right cuda toolkit, i can't install cuda drivers because of hardware compatibility (my quadro FX 1500 dosen't support cuda) and none of the version (dx, gl, 32 and 64 bits) are working...

there's a non cuda alpha 42. it worked for me.

[rimasson]

Thanks. The first page wasn't updated yet when i downloaded the alpha 42...

[Andrew Shpagin]

Excuse, but no update for this weekend.

Now I am working over objects tree (like subtools in ZB).

It is absolutely important for modeling. There was many support queries and some non-programming stuff, so this feature is not ready.

[philnolan3d]

Excuse, but no update for this weekend.

Now I am working over objects tree (like subtools in ZB).

It is absolutely important for modeling. There was many support queries and some non-programming stuff, so this feature is not ready.

I was wondering about this subtool business. I have this character's body (as seen in the VS WIP forum) and I have her head in a different file. One needs to be much higher res than the other. So is the idea that I will be able to bring them both in and keep them at separate resolutions? Perhaps increase res on one without affecting the other? This also comes into play with clothing, a nude (human) character might not need much res for detail, but the clothing might need more. Going back to the head / body would there be a way to smoothly attach the neck to the shoulders?

[3DArtist]

Looking forward to playing with the object tree!

Will the objects tree allow a low resolution option for each object to free memory for other object(s)?

I do notice an increase (about 2x) in performance using CUDA but i get mesh tearing when using large brushes.

Small feature request: Can you add a slider to adjust the perspective view?

[Andrew Shpagin]

I was wondering about this subtool business. I have this character's body (as seen in the VS WIP forum) and I have her head in a different file. One needs to be much higher res than the other. So is the idea that I will be able to bring them both in and keep them at separate resolutions? Perhaps increase res on one without affecting the other? This also comes into play with clothing, a nude (human) character might not need much res for detail, but the clothing might need more. Going back to the head / body would there be a way to smoothly attach the neck to the shoulders?

That is exactly what I am doing. Different resolutions per object, cloning details...

[Andrew Shpagin]

Small feature request: Can you add a slider to adjust the perspective view?

That is not hard. I think I will add it together wit improved cam workflow.

[jedwards]

Phil: Yep that's pretty much exactly what you'd use it for. This is why for almost 2 years now Zbrush 3 has been an indespensable tool to me. Most of my next gen game character work ends up being between 20 - 30 million polygons, spread out over sometimes dozens of different subtools within the same file... all at various resolutions depending on how much detail I need on each. It's great that mudbox can do this now too but I've become so used to using zbrush for that kind of heavy work, not to mention all the extra tools like mesh extraction, transpose, etc that mudbox doesn't have, I'm still using zbrush. If 3dcoat had this right now I'd be using it in our studio to work on my current character task as it's one of the few major things missing that allows for unlimited design and construction possibilities.

Andrew: Thanks so much for realizing the importance of this feature and prioritizing it!

One thing I've noticed with the transpose tool... The select with brush mode is my favourite by far for doing more complicated posing ala zbrush, but I find it misses spots on meshes, possibly where the voxel density is lower, like at the toes on a foot for example. But even trying to paint with large strokes to select quickly, sometimes little holes in the selection occur that you can't fill in. Obviously this messes up the transformation by putting dimples or worse... spikes in the transposed mesh. Is there any way to refine this to make it more accurate and efficient? A selection marquee might be nice too if possible as it's probably the quickest way to select large chunks of mesh like a leg, which can then be refined by with the brush mode for a nice smooth deformation at the bend point. I realize this is all still alpha stuff, but thought I'd mention it in case you weren't aware Andrew.

Cheers

[GED]

just wondered is anyone else having issues with the inverted brush(holding ctrl) being very very weak compared to the power of the brush without holding ctrl? is there a way to change settings or workaround this...like a seperate setting for inverted strength? otherwise I will just have to wait till I have a new computer and try again then

[Andrew Shpagin]

just wondered is anyone else having issues with the inverted brush(holding ctrl) being very very weak compared to the power of the brush without holding ctrl? is there a way to change settings or workaround this...like a seperate setting for inverted strength? otherwise I will just have to wait till I have a new computer and try again then

Maybe it is only in Grow/thaw tool with cuda enabled.

Try build, airbrush, extrude and sphere.

[philnolan3d]

BTW I just wanted to share that I re-downloaded and re-installed the CUDA driver and toollkit, rebooted, and re-installed v42. Now everything seems much nicer after some quick tests. The blockiness I saw before is gone and there are no more problems with increasing the res. The only thing that's the same is the speed. Cuda off = slower than normal. Cuda on = normal speed.

Random bug that's been around for the past several versions (even before CUDA), the W key to show wires doesn't work. I just see one line. That's on both of my computers.

[akira]

Random bug that's been around for the past several versions (even before CUDA), the W key to show wires doesn't work. I just see one line. That's on both of my computers.

Hi Phil, you'll get your wires back by turning off incremental rendering.

When incremental rendering is turned on, the modified area will be rendered into a texture first, then paste this texture onto a screen aligned polygon,

the single line you saw is the triangle edge of the polygon, so "w" trick still works, not a bug.

akira.

[philnolan3d]

Oh thank you I would have never guessed that.

[GED]

Maybe it is only in Grow/thaw tool with cuda enabled.

Try build, airbrush, extrude and sphere.

thanks andrew fantastic tools youre making here, thanks for the tips, Ive only played around with grow and thaw alot so far, I tried the other brushes but wasnt sure what to expect them to do so its hard to say if they are working well or not, they seem fine to me.

I am so impressed by your efforts, you guys at 3D coat must be seriously gifted.

heres a wip of some alien creature, made from just one sphere and grow and thaw in about 2 hrs still having trouble with the brushes strength so I was switching between cuda on and off haha

[Roger_K]

Phil: Yep that's pretty much exactly what you'd use it for. This is why for almost 2 years now Zbrush 3 has been an indespensable tool to me. Most of my next gen game character work ends up being between 20 - 30 million polygons, spread out over sometimes dozens of different subtools within the same file... all at various resolutions depending on how much detail I need on each. It's great that mudbox can do this now too but I've become so used to using zbrush for that kind of heavy work, not to mention all the extra tools like mesh extraction, transpose, etc that mudbox doesn't have, I'm still using zbrush. If 3dcoat had this right now I'd be using it in our studio to work on my current character task as it's one of the few major things missing that allows for unlimited design and construction possibilities.

Andrew: Thanks so much for realizing the importance of this feature and prioritizing it!

One thing I've noticed with the transpose tool... The select with brush mode is my favourite by far for doing more complicated posing ala zbrush, but I find it misses spots on meshes, possibly where the voxel density is lower, like at the toes on a foot for example. But even trying to paint with large strokes to select quickly, sometimes little holes in the selection occur that you can't fill in. Obviously this messes up the transformation by putting dimples or worse... spikes in the transposed mesh. Is there any way to refine this to make it more accurate and efficient? A selection marquee might be nice too if possible as it's probably the quickest way to select large chunks of mesh like a leg, which can then be refined by with the brush mode for a nice smooth deformation at the bend point. I realize this is all still alpha stuff, but thought I'd mention it in case you weren't aware Andrew.

Cheers

James How are you finding 3dc with high res meshs? im trying to paint a pretty hi res mesh at the moment and its just freezing solid when ever i select the paint tool.

[JamesE]

James How are you finding 3dc with high res meshs? im trying to paint a pretty hi res mesh at the moment and its just freezing solid when ever i select the paint tool.

Hey Roger,

I'm not really using the paint tools much yet. I definitely see the performance hit you mention though with high rez stuff. I still do polypainting in zbrush if I need to paint anything high rez. The shaders and performance keep it securely in that spot for that type of work right now. I'm much more interested in the upcoming paint additions for working with low rez models and painting directly to a bitmap. This will most likely be when I drop modo and any other 3d painting solutions I was using or considering and start using 3dc more. A lot of my paint work is for game textures on meshes that are in their final state/resolution. I am usually needing to import baked normal maps AO, cavity etc maps in and clean up their seams before beginning a texture so I'm hoping 3dc will be good for this type of work at that point - in addition to full on, multi-layered texturing.

[Roger_K]

Hey Roger,

I'm not really using the paint tools much yet. I definitely see the performance hit you mention though with high rez stuff. I still do polypainting in zbrush if I need to paint anything high rez. The shaders and performance keep it securely in that spot for that type of work right now. I'm much more interested in the upcoming paint additions for working with low rez models and painting directly to a bitmap. This will most likely be when I drop modo and any other 3d painting solutions I was using or considering and start using 3dc more. A lot of my paint work is for game textures on meshes that are in their final state/resolution. I am usually needing to import baked normal maps AO, cavity etc maps in and clean up their seams before beginning a texture so I'm hoping 3dc will be good for this type of work at that point - in addition to full on, multi-layered texturing.

yeah the faceted shading is a bitch. I've had limited success subdividing / turbosmoothing the meshs in max using smoothing groups to keep them in shape. then exporting the collapsed mesh to 3dc, which smooths fine. this was for non organic models mind you. I actually did quite a bit of seam clean up on the Normal and Occlusion map im working on at the moment. I did however notice a clear drop in quality after the import (im going to take a look at that and see how i can tweak it, could just be a quality setting.) I've found loading the map in and switching to an unshaded view works fine for this sort of seam over painting.. obviously its a bit hit and miss with normal maps, but after normalising them and a bit of testing it works well.

I'm afraid im ignorant to these new proposed features. whats the deal with them?

[jedwards]

yeah the faceted shading is a bitch. I've had limited success subdividing / turbosmoothing the meshs in max using smoothing groups to keep them in shape. then exporting the collapsed mesh to 3dc, which smooths fine. this was for non organic models mind you. I actually did quite a bit of seam clean up on the Normal and Occlusion map im working on at the moment. I did however notice a clear drop in quality after the import (im going to take a look at that and see how i can tweak it, could just be a quality setting.) I've found loading the map in and switching to an unshaded view works fine for this sort of seam over painting.. obviously its a bit hit and miss with normal maps, but after normalising them and a bit of testing it works well.

I'm afraid im ignorant to these new proposed features. whats the deal with them?

Mostly just the ability to paint directly to a bitmap and not have to subdivide the mesh. Right now 3dc requires mesh subdivision to get clean, accurate strokes - more like zbrush. I would definitely want to be able to bring in a game rez vehicle or other non-organic prop as well. Stuff that has multple overlapping pieces that can be painted on as is. Andrew has mentioned making this possible... so you'd have a 3d paint solution more like what bodypaint, modo, or the new CS4 can do. This is much more desirable for games work - especially when you sometimes need to edit imported textures rather than paint new ones from scratch.

[Deadman21]

Just thought I would pass on some news about OpenCL. Very exciting stuff

http://www.macworld.com/article/137413/200...l?lsrc=rss_main

[Deadman21]

Just thought I would pass on some news about OpenCL. Very exciting stuff

http://www.macworld.com/article/137413/200...l?lsrc=rss_main

Just to add this as well

NVIDIA pioneering OpenCL support on top of CUDA

http://www.appleinsider.com/articles/08/12...op_of_cuda.html

[Andrew Shpagin]

Just to add this as well

NVIDIA pioneering OpenCL support on top of CUDA

http://www.appleinsider.com/articles/08/12...op_of_cuda.html

Good news! I was not sure that NVidia will support OpenCL.

But actually, they will release it not soon.. Especially for Windows...

[bwtr]

Good news! I was not sure that NVidia will support OpenCL.

But actually, they will release it not soon.. Especially for Windows...

Andrew

I feel there is difference between what should be a final, STABLE, V3 version--very soon!--

and a V4 (V3.5?) versions--later!

Many are not, probably, going to be able to update thier current computer riggs for that Nvidia stuff in the current financial climate?

Concentration on that first approach without the sidetracks?

Just a thought,

Brian

[Andrew Shpagin]

Of course I am concentrated on making V3. nVidia stuff took only 2 weeks, so it is not big lap.

[Roger_K]

Andrew

I feel there is difference between what should be a final, STABLE, V3 version--very soon!--

and a V4 (V3.5?) versions--later!

Many are not, probably, going to be able to update thier current computer riggs for that Nvidia stuff in the current financial climate?

Concentration on that first approach without the sidetracks?

Just a thought,

Brian

lets not forget those people who have up to date rigs and would like to take advantage of these things. You seem to have a polarised view of what's important.

This isn't to say that i disagree with a feature freeze and bug fixing but you have to see it from both angles. I for one see great value in the NVidia work both for my

work machine and home system. Not stabbing at you mate but you have to look at it from all angles.

[NinjaTaco]

lets not forget those people who have up to date rigs and would like to take advantage of these things. You seem to have a polarised view of what's important.

This isn't to say that i disagree with a feature freeze and bug fixing but you have to see it from both angles. I for one see great value in the NVidia work both for my

work machine and home system. Not stabbing at you mate but you have to look at it from all angles.

Yeah. I wouldn't mind seeing 3dcoat take advantage of all the latest technology. I do totally understand that some people would want the software to address things that will affect their own home systems. At the same time I would at the very least like to see the cuda implementation optimized or some brush speed optimization if possible. After I've been sculpting with cuda on for a few minutes it just seems to go slower and slower even when I shrink the radius down to 8. I think it would be a mistake not to continue implementation. Especially considering that video cards that can take advantage of cuda are less than 100USD. With that said, maybe it's not a bad idea to put that stuff on hold and work on things in 3dc while nvidia works out any potential knick knacks with the cuda drivers and tools.

[bwtr]

. With that said, maybe it's not a bad idea to put that stuff on hold and work on things in 3dc while nvidia works out any potential knick knacks with the cuda drivers and tools.

Sorry if I was mis-interpreted.

What I was getting at is that, the sentence above was, as I also understand, the "not yet ready" of Nvidias ideas.

Several stages/associated plugins and whatever still to come before the totality of the new Nvida concepts will be fully practicable.

Brian

[Andrew Shpagin]

Some portion of news:

1) Next alpha is almost ready - tree - like structure, objects managements is there! Many interesting per-object manipulations, like extracting skin, etc. I will upload it tomorrow.

2) Good news for Mac users. I have bought MacBookPro MB133. It means that 64-bit version for Mac will be done. We used OSX 10.4 before, so we was not able to make 64-bit support. Now it is possible.

I have bought it for 1899$, at least I have chosen something. I was between MB133 and MB470 but finally stopped with MB133 because MB470 possibly have problem with NV9600 chip. In USA it is not a problem - you can simply replace notebook, but there in Ukraine it is simply impossible to replace it... Warranty is almost virtual.. So I chosen MB133 as a tested by time MBP. Btw 3DC works there faster then on my Windows desktop. Vista is really laggy system

[philnolan3d]

Some portion of news:

1) Next alpha is almost ready - tree - like structure, objects managements is there! Many interesting per-object manipulations, like extracting skin, etc. I will upload it tomorrow.

Btw 3DC works there faster then on my Windows desktop. Vista is really laggy system

It sounds awesome, I can't wait! Sorry to hear about Vista. I've had no problems with it since I built this computer with it over a year ago.

[Andrew Shpagin]

It sounds awesome, I can't wait! Sorry to hear about Vista. I've had no problems with it since I built this computer with it over a year ago.

Btw, now it is possible to merge several 3B files together.