3D-Coat 3.0 ALPHA

[otsoa]

I already improved this essentially, you will be able to set transparency inside the object.

Good ! Much work already done !

[buqa]

Once i had an idea about visual setup of reference images, you just put the two images on background (of course it works with even more images as well) and then draw two lines on both of them. Then the algorythm should place, scale, rotate or even correct perspective (if the lines are concurrent or divergent) of these two images.

You only have to decide whitch lines hsould be horizontal and which should be vertical (in case when they will be getting near 45 degrees, but those would be very bad references )

This should be faster, more intuitive and maybe even more precise then numeric input in image reference setup.

In the exapmle below will be in the end all lines horizontal and side and back image will have the same distance between red "rails". If you can treat reference image as polygon, this transformations could be quite simple.

[SonK]

I love the new icons, they are much easier on the eyes!

[Taros]

Once i had an idea about visual setup of reference images, you just put the two images on background (of course it works with even more images as well) and then draw two lines on both of them. Then the algorythm should place, scale, rotate or even correct perspective (if the lines are concurrent or divergent) of these two images.

You only have to decide whitch lines hsould be horizontal and which should be vertical (in case when they will be getting near 45 degrees, but those would be very bad references )

This should be faster, more intuitive and maybe even more precise then numeric input in image reference setup.

In the exapmle below will be in the end all lines horizontal and side and back image will have the same distance between red "rails". If you can treat reference image as polygon, this transformations could be quite simple.

This is not really necessary if you have a good 2D tool like Photoshop. But I've seen your idea in the upcoming Modo Version, there in the texture editor.

[Tony Nemo]

This is not really necessary if you have a good 2D tool like Photoshop. But I've seen your idea in the upcoming Modo Version, there in the texture editor.

"In the exapmle below will be in the end all lines horizontal and side and back image will have the same distance between red "rails". If you can treat reference image as polygon, this transformations could be quite simple."

That's a good addition to any app. I prepare reference images in PS, but that's because I have to.

[3dioot]

Hello everyone,

Great work on the latest version Andrew. Its starting to look and feel very professional indeed.

I wanted to bring this bug under your attention.

Ever since you implemented "Tablet navigation" normal navigation has been broken.

When you choose maya style navigation you disables the empty screen navigation. But it doesnt work like it did before.

Before when you pressed alt and clicked (lmb) it would ALWAYS put the rotation point under your cursor. Nowdays it only does that the FIRST time you press and hold alt and click. If you want to place it somewhere else you need to let go of ALT and click again or it will stay stuck in its original place.

Another bug is that when you alt click in empty screenspace the anchor point no longer snaps to the nearest surface of your sculpt. Instead it defaults to the last point you used for the anchor point. This was another great but subtle feature that i sorely miss.

This makes navigation worse then it was. It was a really smooth system before. Please restore it so that every click that you make with alt pressed adjusts the "anchor point" you rotate around. It would mean alot to me. (and probably quite a few others)

Also another really important bug.

You cannot assign hotkeys to any of the voxel tools. This has completely broken version 83 for me.

Thanks

3dioot

[tree321]

Phil, I took the liberty of censoring your image you posted above.Some of us are not used to that kind of stuff.

Of course I'm kidding,I've done many nudes in my day.Just having fun!

[philnolan3d]

Ha! Sorry I didn't even notice since I was focusing on the head. The pic is part of a set from http://www.3d.sk I highly recommend them, even though there is a small fee.

[Pimpmymonkey]

Ha! Sorry I didn't even notice since I was focusing on the head. The pic is part of a set from http://www.3d.sk I highly recommend them, even though there is a small fee.

Hi Phil,

Can you tell me what format the pics come in when you pay for them?

P. Monk

P.S. Sorry for the off topic question but I've been looking at 3d.sk and I can't seem to find an answer. I know that the pics are high res but if they come in

a low quality jpg format, like their freebies, then I'll have to think hard about it.

[philnolan3d]

They are JPEGs but like you said they're high res, like 3000x2000. I actually was a member for a few months and downloaded like 8GB of images then closed the account. Here's a sample:

When I first joined it was $10 USD a month, it looks like prices have gone up though.

[Pimpmymonkey]

Hi again Phil,

Thanks for the quick reply.

I have a few partial sets that I've collected from 3D World mag and few other places and I like them.

$33.00 a month now. The jpg bothers me but if it's lossless jpg I guess that would be okay. Anyway, I haven't found a better outlet.

Thanks for the 411, I appreciate it.

P. Monk

[ghib]

Before when you pressed alt and clicked (lmb) it would ALWAYS put the rotation point under your cursor. Nowdays it only does that the FIRST time you press and hold alt and click. If you want to place it somewhere else you need to let go of ALT and click again or it will stay stuck in its original place.

3dioot

I'm glad you brought this up. I was sure there was something different about the navigation system but just couldn't put m finger on it. Well done for spotting

[Amber]

I would rather see more improvements in what actually 3DC was created for - displacement and texture painting.The photoshop <> 3DC coat bridge need attention for speed and stability.3DC needs shaders for displacement/texture like in Zbrush, voxels shaders are awesome could we have them in displacement mode ? The UVs and render may be useful but I if somebody is serious about it will use rather more advanced tools for that.

3DC needs

- stability

- more stability

- displacement and texture painting improvements

- better workflow

- more speed in UI (laggy) /dis and texture painting

I could live without voxels,uv,render and so on but displacement and texture painting should get most of attention otherwise we will get little of everything instead of most of something.

[kay_Eva]

I would rather see more improvements in what actually 3DC was created for - displacement and texture painting.The photoshop <> 3DC coat bridge need attention for speed and stability.3DC needs shaders for displacement/texture like in Zbrush, voxels shaders are awesome could we have them in displacement mode ? The UVs and render may be useful but I if somebody is serious about it will use rather more advanced tools for that.

3DC needs

- stability

- more stability

- displacement and texture painting improvements

- better workflow

- more speed in UI (laggy) /dis and texture painting

I could live without voxels,uv,render and so on but displacement and texture painting should get most of attention otherwise we will get little of everything instead of most of something.

disagree!

Maybe amber is a professional but I'm not. I don't have Zbrush or Photoshop and therefore using 3d Coats Voxels, UV, Render along with everything else is something I like very much and I think it's important particularly for non professionals who don't have every program under the sun at their disposal.

I understand that the needs of pros and non-pros is a little at odds with one another at times so it's up to Andrew to balance them out.

If anything, for my needs I would ask for even more voxel features, and then yes the displacement and painting, followed by everything else of course.

[Skaven252]

Tested the newest build after a bit of a break. The new textured voxel materials look awesome! :lol: (this is the first time I saw them). I especially like the way the "Tree" material works, as it seems to have some kind of Top/Bottom blending applied to it (moss appearing on horizontal surfaces and bark on vertical ones). I shall presume users will be able to build their own, similarly working materials in the future (like it's already possible with the box texture mapped materials). Also, will the texture be projected to the object when Quadrangulating it for painting? That would be totally awesome.

Just wondering.. what is the plan / status on dual dislpay support? I'd find it very useful to be able to move some of the tool windows (especially the 2D view) to my secondary display. I thought this would have come as a part of the interface overhaul... but that's still in progress, right?

One little comment... in voxels with the Increase tool, Smoothing works when you press Shift. But there's no way to adjust the strength of the smoothing, other than by switching to another tool (like Clay or Fill). Should the Smoothing slider also be visible in the Increase tool?

[philnolan3d]

But there's no way to adjust the strength of the smoothing, other than by switching to another tool (like Clay or Fill). Should the Smoothing slider also be visible in the Increase tool?

Actually there is, if you keep holding shift while you RMB drag up and down it changes the smoothing strength. Of course not holding shift and doing that just changes the normal brush strength. Also dragging left / right changes the brush size.

[Lahoreh]

I agree with Amber about the painting part of 3D Coat and most of all, I think 3D Coat require great improvment in memory use and clean up of the memory. Since the .83 build i can't barely load saved projects because they seems to require lot of more memory. In the version before the .83 build I tried to load some material. After some loading 3D Coat was getting very slow and I had to reload 3D Coat to add some new materials. I know Vista doesn't help about that... Otherwise the new interface look very good and pro and the new functions (like voxel) are very interesting even if i mostly use the paint part of 3D Coat

[Dirceu Franco]

Actually there is, if you keep holding shift while you RMB drag up and down it changes the smoothing strength. Of course not holding shift and doing that just changes the normal brush strength. Also dragging left right changes the brush size.

What makes me confuse is, if you drag up smooth brush strength its will influence the power of brush. If the smooth strength is 0 the increase doesn't work. I hope is being clear, because my spelling capacity is poor.

Many thanks!

[lc8b105]

What makes me confuse is, if you drag up smooth brush strength its will influence the power of brush. If the smooth strength is 0 the increase doesn't work. I hope is being clear, because my spelling capacity is poor.

Many thanks!

Are you sure what you changed is "Smooth" but not "Depth" ? The yellow curve is "Smooth" value while the red curve is "Depth" value.

To change "Smooth" value you need to hold on "Shift" key and right click and drag the cursor on the object.

[artman]

Also, will the texture be projected to the object when Quadrangulating it for painting? That would be totally awesome.

one can always dream...

awesome it would be indeed .

[renderdemon]

Hi,it's possible to disable the size and fallof control from the wacom pen when using it(intuos 3 pen)?.

I'm going crazy,the way I use the pen makes me always change the radius size and fallof for brushes and smooth brush when using volumetric sculpt even if I don't want.

For changing size I use keys [ and ],ant it is all I need.

There is a way to change this behaviour,please?

[Dirceu Franco]

Are you sure what you changed is "Smooth" but not "Depth" ? The yellow curve is "Smooth" value while the red curve is "Depth" value.

To change "Smooth" value you need to hold on "Shift" key and right click and drag the cursor on the object.

Yes! Exactly and now I think it is a bug. But only for me? I don't understand why?

Smooth "1"

Smooth "0"

[Amber]

I don't have Zbrush or Photoshop and therefore using 3d Coats Voxels, UV, Render along with everything else is something I like very much and I think it's important particularly for non professionals who don't have every program under the sun at their disposal.

They are free alternatives.Gimp ? Blender ? In fact, I have no idea why anybody would like to use 3DC for UV mapping when you can do it in a free Blender which delivers more advanced features.There is only one Andrew and his time is limited like time of each human being.He can work only limited number of hours every day.So what's the point of adding stuff like UV mapping and rendering.And it's not software rendering it's GPU rendering so it's useful only for some people.

People will ask for everything, some people ask here for further development of tree generator, soon they will ask to add bones and animation and so on.And generally more features=more bugs.You can even make SL sculpts now in 3DC It's all cool, you don't complain for free dinner but I feel it's not main selling point of 3DC.

For example 3DC 3.0 is almost ? finished but :

- you can't easily rotate your pen (until you have 3D conexion)

- you can't save a pen with custom settings

- strips/pen rotation have been improved but they aren't that good like in Zbrush (lazy mouse)

- navigating folders in pen panel is akward

- I'd love to have in 3DC drag-and-rotate single stroke brush from Zbrush

- you can't easily paint with transparency

- no shaders in paint/displacement mode

etc etc

I mean is there is still a lot of room for improvement in basic or core features which should get most of Andrew's attention.

-------------------------------------------------------------

v.83

Rendering doesn't work ? - when I press render object becomes almost completly transparent.

[philnolan3d]

Are you sure what you changed is "Smooth" but not "Depth" ? The yellow curve is "Smooth" value while the red curve is "Depth" value.

To change "Smooth" value you need to hold on "Shift" key and right click and drag the cursor on the object.

I'm pretty sure that "smooth curve" is green while the outer circle is yellow.

I have no idea why anybody would like to use 3DC for UV mapping when you can do it in a free Blender which delivers more advanced features.

Uh, its awful interface?

[sgiff]

Hi, I just went out and bought a new video card so I could take advantage of the new CUDA voxel sculpting however I have two questions:

First when I tried to use different pens in voxel modes I only got the same smooth round pen, no textured voxels only smooth shapes. Somehow messing around with it I finally got the different pens to show up so that I could paint texture displaced surfaces but I'm not sure what I did to get it there.

Second when I import an object for Pixel Painting it is extremeley slow to the point that it's unusable in my opinion. Is there something I am missing here.

The new video card I purchased is a GTX 9500 + with 500 meg DDR3.

[philnolan3d]

For your first question I think it's simply that some voxel tools work with the pen alphas and some do not. For example Build will show the texture of an alpha, but Increase with the same pen will just look smooth and round.

[kadu3d]

Uh, its awful interface?

TOTALLY AGREE, Blender ergonomics is horrible.

Sometimes engineers think that they don't need artists, that they can build a building without an architect, create a software without a designer...The results are softwares like Zbrush, UVLayout, Bender, MAX (I actually dont know how max is right now...)

When the interface/ergonomics is bad - you need to memmorize a technic/workflow instead of understand it. There is no place for intuition, logistics, common sense...

Its amazing but in Zbrush I always need to go to the tutorials to do smenthing I already done before! -- " Humm to retopologyse I need to go to the...humm...Oh.. RIG menu!" " to get the object in perspective I need to go to the display menu...no! Its in the DRAW menu!" -- As opposed to Mudbox which the interface is so logical that in the first experince with the software it seems you already know everything...

This also reminds me of a time when Houdini had that awkward interface/workflow. I was trying to learn it and just gave up... But after release 9 (totaly reworked GUI), learning Houdini is just delicious...It seems like I already know 30% of the software!

Maybe what I really want to say for this particular forum is that I totally support the investments in the new interface, its VERY good but there is still room for improvements!!! And the best thing is: Andrew listens to its clients; I remember asking for a feature and a few days later it was done!

Good luck Andrew -- THE FASTEST CODER ON THE PLANET!

[psyborgue]

TOTALLY AGREE, Blender ergonomics is horrible.

I like it. r,g and s for rotate, translate and scale, pressed twice for screen space, (plus xyz keys for constrain to axis, pressed twice for local axis). Very logical and very very quick once you get used to it. You'll never want to touch touch a manipulator/gnomon again! All the frequently used keys are on the left side and easily accessible to one hand, leaving a hand free for the mouse. numpad is well used for ortho camera switching and constrained camera rotation. I think the people who hate it just aren't used to it. A lot of thought went into the ergonomics of blender.

It has a lot of top-class features too, such as it's UV tools. Best i've used. If people find the interface ugly, they can switch to the "rounded" theme (included) or wait until 2.5 with the interface overhaul.

[NinjaTaco]

They are free alternatives.Gimp ? Blender ? In fact, I have no idea why anybody would like to use 3DC for UV mapping when you can do it in a free Blender which delivers more advanced features.There is only one Andrew and his time is limited like time of each human being.He can work only limited number of hours every day.So what's the point of adding stuff like UV mapping and rendering.And it's not software rendering it's GPU rendering so it's useful only for some people.

People will ask for everything, some people ask here for further development of tree generator, soon they will ask to add bones and animation and so on.And generally more features=more bugs.You can even make SL sculpts now in 3DC It's all cool, you don't complain for free dinner but I feel it's not main selling point of 3DC.

For example 3DC 3.0 is almost ? finished but :

- you can't easily rotate your pen (until you have 3D conexion)

- you can't save a pen with custom settings

- strips/pen rotation have been improved but they aren't that good like in Zbrush (lazy mouse)

- navigating folders in pen panel is akward

- I'd love to have in 3DC drag-and-rotate single stroke brush from Zbrush

- you can't easily paint with transparency

- no shaders in paint/displacement mode

etc etc

I mean is there is still a lot of room for improvement in basic or core features which should get most of Andrew's attention.

-------------------------------------------------------------

v.83

Rendering doesn't work ? - when I press render object becomes almost completly transparent.

It's a bit of a silly post when you can just as easily say that UV mapping, which is a basic feature in 3dc is already available so it should be improved. That and you can also say the same for features that you are asking to be improved. "You can't easily rotate your pen" "you can't save a pen with custom settings" Other free software packages offer those features, So Amber please don't ask for features that have already been offered in other applications. Just use the other applications that offer that feature.

Basically your post says, you want your requests to be answered and don't care for the feature requests of other users.

[philnolan3d]

I like it. r,g and s for rotate, translate and scale, pressed twice for screen space, (plus xyz keys for constrain to axis, pressed twice for local axis). Very logical and very very quick once you get used to it. You'll never want to touch touch a manipulator/gnomon again! All the frequently used keys are on the left side and easily accessible to one hand, leaving a hand free for the mouse. numpad is well used for ortho camera switching and constrained camera rotation. I think the people who hate it just aren't used to it. A lot of thought went into the ergonomics of blender.

That's the thing, how is G for Translate logical? Besides which, everything you describe here is the keyboard shortcuts, not the interface.