3D-Coat 3.0 ALPHA

[artaq]

Like tree321 mentioned before, the new voxel follow is *awesome* for doing smooth mesh pulling and such, perfect for clothing. I've attached a quick and dirty fun denim wad to show off how much I enjoy using it .

Andrew, I had some difficulty originally getting the mesh into Modo; it kept crashing whenever I would attempt to bring it in directly... I had to first bring it into Maya 2008, then re-save it back out to an OBJ that modo would properly read... I know you're not here to play support on any other products, but do you see a reason why this would happen? Thanks again for all your wonderful work, this is very exciting stuff!

[Andrew Shpagin]

Like tree321 mentioned before, the new voxel follow is *awesome* for doing smooth mesh pulling and such, perfect for clothing. I've attached a quick and dirty fun denim wad to show off how much I enjoy using it .

Andrew, I had some difficulty originally getting the mesh into Modo; it kept crashing whenever I would attempt to bring it in directly... I had to first bring it into Maya 2008, then re-save it back out to an OBJ that modo would properly read... I know you're not here to play support on any other products, but do you see a reason why this would happen? Thanks again for all your wonderful work, this is very exciting stuff!

Nice something!

About export - it is in birth stage. I will improve it much.

[Andrew Shpagin]

Mac version of V21 is uploaded!

www.3d-coat.com/Serega/3D-Coat-3-00-ALPHA-21.dmg

Please delete old "Shaders" folder in prev installation before installing.

[3DBob]

Andrew,

Seriously pleased with the comments on layers - as I said - you Rock!

3DBob

[maggot]

http://3dbrush.kriska.hvosting.net/forum/i...ost&id=1194

That blob is amazing! If you could paint bleach and acidic paint marks and cuts over it so it looked drippy and stained, that could be the new blob for the 3d coat logo (just a suggestion of course) [basically like a discarded artists jeans rolled into a ball-title 'ready to be washed']

[Mantis]

I was thinking of a posing tool that could take advantage of transpose (quick posing) and bones (hierarchy).

Here is a little drawing to show my thoughts.

The main problem with Transpose is that you can't scale a part that is above an other one, without distorting both of them.

For example if you have an arm and you want to scale it without affecting the forearm, you can't.

In my drawing, it is a transpose-like tool but it can allow you to have 2 joints.

One for the arm, [AB] and the forearm [bC].

If you scale down [AB], [bC] will just follow without being scaling down, like it works with bones.

I don't talk about rotation because transpose can handle it, so that's not a problem.

Let me know what you think about it.

P.S: Is it possible to make the circle who represent the brush disappear while sculpting?

It's quite disturbing, it's better to see your actual stroke progressing under the crosshair, like in Zbrush or Mudbox.

[Andrew Shpagin]

Andrew,

Seriously pleased with the comments on layers - as I said - you Rock!

3DBob

I have looked your file - it simply consists of Zeros (but small header).

It looks like failure during writing.

Do you know way how to reproduce it?

[Scott]

The current releases are looking excellent on the volumetric side, however I just had a hard reset caused by low memory, I increased resolution 3 or 4 times and basically I watched it climb from 700Mb to 2.5Gb+ before "Fatal Error" dialog box and

Windows is low on memory message, after that it required a reset. It would be nice to see a warning or a limit being set to stop this from happening. Something like Max Polycount.

Also does 3DC have masking for Voxels? (I'm not in front of that PC to test after crash) And can this be used to lower the memory footprint in the future? I know Mudbox and ZB both use Masking as a way of lowering the memory needed, I.e mask out part of the object and "remove" or "Hide" and only the visible polys/voxels will take up RAM, the rest is written to a temp file on the HDD until it's needed again. I'm wondering if this is something 3DC can still improve on?

Also i notice that 3DC only uses 25% of my Quadcore CPU system when doing anything is MP working in the current releases. Is 3DC well threaded? For example Modo is very slow with painting/sculpting unless "Threaded Optimization" is used. Does 3DC have both threaded rendering and painting/volumetric tools that are Multithreaded? It would be nice to think that 3DC could still get faster with Multithreading and some 64bit and CUDA enhancements in final builds too.

But it's been amazing progress, I hope some customization and workflow issues are addressed over the 3.0 cycle (but so far it's definitely starting to look like a ZB, MB beater in many areas.) Well done to Andrew and community, I look forward to watching the continual updates on 3.0. Keep up the good work!..

PS. I also occasionally notice some problems with the RedWax shader (I like it a lot) when sculpting with shadows, and a few other minor bugs i will track down.

PPS..I would also love to be able to "Center Object" with a selected shortcut Key.

[3dioot]

Yep, I do on my GeForce 6600 GT

I still get rings on Geforce 68ooGT too. They do seem to have decreased in amount but they are definately still there.

Updated to V21. Depth in extrude linked to pressure + speed improvement + light bugfixes.

Thankyou very much for the update (in your weekend!). It feels awesome.

Now all it needs are the following bugfixes and it will be perfect. I am so happy with it. Its my favorite brush (even with the bugs).

- projection is infinite.

It will touch your sculpt both above and below the brush into infinity instead of influencing only the first surface that is under your brush. This kind of makes it unusable at the moment since it will wreck other parts of your sculpt while you work on the nose for example.

- When radius increases so does the depth of the brush.

This is incorrect. I dont know why it does this but please correct it.

About layers:

they will be implemented soon. There will be blending operations (soft add/subtract, boolean add/subtract), some layers can be procedural (curves, objects, etc). They can be changed any time but using smooth, carve will be limited on this layers until they will remain procedural.

mac version of V21 is on the way.

Yay! Seperate teeth and eyes! Hurray!

3dioot

[philnolan3d]

Like tree321 mentioned before, the new voxel follow is *awesome* for doing smooth mesh pulling and such, perfect for clothing. I've attached a quick and dirty fun denim wad to show off how much I enjoy using it .

Andrew, I had some difficulty originally getting the mesh into Modo; it kept crashing whenever I would attempt to bring it in directly... I had to first bring it into Maya 2008, then re-save it back out to an OBJ that modo would properly read... I know you're not here to play support on any other products, but do you see a reason why this would happen? Thanks again for all your wonderful work, this is very exciting stuff!

Maybe I'm missing something. Did you retopo that and then export, or did you somehow export straight from the voxels or reference mesh?

[3dioot]

Just wanted to say on the mergerefmesh (confusing name > maybe change it to "to polygons" untill someone thinks up a better name) option i had more or less the same thing Artaq experienced.

I didnt try to import it into another package but i noticed it suddenly became very slow in 3dcoat after i converted it. In other words just the skin from the voxel sculpt i was working on really lagged my system while the voxel sculpt had been very fast! I knew this was not right so i exported the model as an obj. This was 25.4mb I then opened it in Softimage XSI where i could spin it around in realtime (the mesh seemed to be problem free). I then exported it again from XSI to a new obj file. This file was suddenly 47.9mb but after importing it back into 3dcoat i could spin it around in realtime without a problem. No slow cursor on the mesh either! I know its a low priority (as it should be) but just so you know there are things a little bit off with it at the moment. Still im very happy cause now i can play with the retopo and paint tools on my voxel sculpts. Hurray!

Edit

It turns out i did not need to reexport from another package. Just exporting your mergerefmesh out to obj and back in will make 3dcoat become fast again. Perhaps 3dcoat doesnt really go out of voxel sculpting mode when you only press mergerefmesh or something like that? So just for clarity.

Using only mergerefmesh to get a polygon mesh makes 3dcoat very slow.

Exporting that mesh and importing it back in makes 3dcoat very fast again.

3dioot

[BluEgo]

The tools seem to grow better every day

Well, I want to share what are my toughts about some of these tools:

1) Clay is a little strange to me, it doesn't fill very well holes, an it doesn't lean very well against hard edges in my opinion. I have the feel that where there are some cavities, this tool should fill them, and where there is a plane it simply extrudes just a little.

It lacks also of alpha brushes, I hope to see this feature to "clone" the clay tubes by zbrush

2) Both Carve and extrude are more similar to the "Layer" tool in ZBrush than a standard tool. What I don't like of these tools is that, if you hold pressed the stroke, and you pass with your pen/mouse over and over the same stroke, the depth, once reached the value you set, will not raise.

I would like see the option to see the surface continue to grow, maybe with a check-option.

3) I really like how curves work. I don't know if there is this option, but when I draw curve points they snap to the surface, which is awesome, but when I try move some of these points, they move around the scene. There is a way to move these points with a constrain to the surface ?

Thank you Andrew, you are a legend !

[Ztreem]

I love that many tools has got a speed up, but the tool I use the most, the Clay tool, is unworkable it's got several times slower. It used to be one of the fastes tools now it's the slowest, why?

I use the latest build on a PC.

[Mantis]

Are you able to use Carve on cylindric shape or am I the only one who got a bug?

[3dioot]

The tools seem to grow better every day

Well, I want to share what are my toughts about some of these tools:

1) Clay is a little strange to me, it doesn't fill very well holes, an it doesn't lean very well against hard edges in my opinion. I have the feel that where there are some cavities, this tool should fill them, and where there is a plane it simply extrudes just a little.

It lacks also of alpha brushes, I hope to see this feature to "clone" the clay tubes by zbrush

2) Both Carve and extrude are more similar to the "Layer" tool in ZBrush than a standard tool. What I don't like of these tools is that, if you hold pressed the stroke, and you pass with your pen/mouse over and over the same stroke, the depth, once reached the value you set, will not raise.

I would like see the option to see the surface continue to grow, maybe with a check-option.

3) I really like how curves work. I don't know if there is this option, but when I draw curve points they snap to the surface, which is awesome, but when I try move some of these points, they move around the scene. There is a way to move these points with a constrain to the surface ?

Thank you Andrew, you are a legend !

1) I never liked the current clay for the reasons you describe. Try using the new extrude with a low value for strength and a fixed radius that is not dependant on pen pressure. Choose a nice alpha and play with falloff till you get a nice smooth slope. I think you'll like it.

2) In zbrush this actually works the same way (not just for the layer brush). I definately dont want these tools to grow forever (it would brake them). A maximum depth is a maximum depth. There could however be a toggle to make them additive so they DO take their "own" stroke into account when you circle around and cross it.

Are you able to use Carve on cylindric shape or am I the only one who got a bug?

Your not the only one. I think the problem you are experiencing is this one.

See this post

It has to do with carve's method of applying a stroke and how the insertion point is calculated. Currently when you add onto a surface it will take the deepest point it can find under the brush and use that as the insertion point. This means that when you use a cylinder to sculpt on the insertion point will end up deep inside the cylinder which would make most of the stroke embedded into the surface instead of drawn on top.

Try using the extrude brush. It doesnt have that problem. In fact, with a couple of bugfixes, i think it could replace "carve" altogether.

3dioot

[rimasson]

I've got a little request about the move tool :

actually, when you press shift, the model is moved perpendicualar to the surface normal.

i Zbrush, Whatever is the tool which you use, if you press Shift first, you switch to the 2nd brush mode (the default 2nd brush is the smooth brush, but you can change it if you want)

in 3d coat, if you use the move mode, and even if you press shift first, before moving a part of the model, you still activate the 'move normal mode, so if i want to use the smooth and move brushes, i have to continuously switch between the two.

could you change the way 3d coat work, in order to always switch to smooth mode, when you press shift first. ?

It will speed up my workflow

best.

[3dioot]

could you change the way 3d coat work, in order to always switch to smooth mode, when you press shift first. ?

It will speed up my workflow

best.

110% agree. Since move doesnt have a "reverse" action perhaps you can make ctrl perform the perpendicular action while shift keeps being smooth. This has been a bit of a pain for myself too.

Also since were talking workflow improvements i might as well make the list complete.

- shortcut to change radius by moving the tablet pen

- shortcut to change depth by moving the tablet pen

- shortcut to change falloff by moving the tablet pen

Each brush should remembers its OWN settings. In other words move keeps the alpha and faloff i selected for it regardless of what alpha i choose when i use extrude. Its a pain to have to set the settings correct for each different tool every time i switch. In other words; instead of the brush settings being global they should be local for each tool.

And this is a personal thing. I really dislike seeing the alpha and falloff curve inside my brush. Its distracting, it flips around all the time and it makes it hard to see my sculpt. The only thing id like to see in/on my brush would be a second ring to show the falloff value (not an intrusive graph; a ring). Please make the other stuff toggable.

3dioot

PS

I think we posted at the same time again Andrew. This isnt becoming a habit is it?

[Andrew Shpagin]

Really, maybe it is better to use SHIFT for smoothing and CTRL for normal move?

I know the reason why mergerefmesh produces laggy meshes. I will fix it and make new update.

[Andrew Shpagin]

I was thinking of a posing tool that could take advantage of transpose (quick posing) and bones (hierarchy).

Here is a little drawing to show my thoughts.

The main problem with Transpose is that you can't scale a part that is above an other one, without distorting both of them.

For example if you have an arm and you want to scale it without affecting the forearm, you can't.

In my drawing, it is a transpose-like tool but it can allow you to have 2 joints.

One for the arm, [AB] and the forearm [bC].

If you scale down [AB], [bC] will just follow without being scaling down, like it works with bones.

I don't talk about rotation because transpose can handle it, so that's not a problem.

Let me know what you think about it.

P.S: Is it possible to make the circle who represent the brush disappear while sculpting?

It's quite disturbing, it's better to see your actual stroke progressing under the crosshair, like in Zbrush or Mudbox.

Bone based? Interesting.

Anyway transpose will be there, but I am seeking for a good idea how it should be. Let us discuss it.

Who has mention about transpose?

[Mantis]

Ahaha 3dioot, I am thinking exactly the same for every point you are pointing.

I totally agreed every word in your post, that's exactly what I am feeling.

I agreed with Rimasson too, being oblige to switch to an other tool to smooth is quite annoying.

The current tools are great, but the workflow is not really good and slow the sculpting process.

If I can add, like I said before, adding an Inflat brush who push toward the surface normal would be greatly appreciated, because I find really difficult to sculpt on fingers and small cylindric shape for the moment.

[philnolan3d]

I like the bone idea, sounds useful. Heck even better if you could get IK, but that might be getting a little ahead of ourselves.

[rimasson]

Really, maybe it is better to use SHIFT for smoothing and CTRL for normal move?

I know the reason why mergerefmesh produces laggy meshes. I will fix it and make new update.

Ok for CTRL for normal move and shift for smooth

[renderdemon]

I think is better a general tool that can trasform,rotating (with fallof) some part of the volume.

I'm not against to bones and rigging,but as you sculpt you need a fast way to rotate regions,on the fly,spending time to put bones it makes you lose time for the sculpting.

[3dioot]

I think is better a general tool that can trasform,rotating (with fallof) some part of the volume.

I'm not against to bones and rigging,but as you sculpt you need a fast way to rotate regions,on the fly,spending time to put bones it makes you lose time for the sculpting.

Agree with renderdemon here.

I think zbrush has a pretty elegant solution with the masking (which is a 100% neccesity) and their transpose tool. The only thing i really dont like about their implementation is how it "snaps back" to its original position.

For example:

You draw a transpose line for a finger and align it properly.

You select an end of the transpose line and rotate the finger.

The transpose line snaps back to its original position which is now outside of the rotated finger.

You want to adjust the finger and have to redraw the transpose line.

If the transpose line would just keep its "new" position after you used it to transform it would work much more fluently.

3dioot

[Mantis]

I'm ok too for CTRL for normal move

And about the Transpose/bones Idea, I was thinking about something that can be as fast as transpose, and behave like bone.

You click on the shoulder, on the elbow and on the wrist and you have your Transpose/bones done.

That's just because with Transpose, for the example I gave, scaling the biceps will shrink all the arm.

If it behave like bones you will shrink only the part you want.

I don't know if it is possible but I don't think it will be harder to use than transpose, see it as a Transpose++

Edit:

I found a bug, when you are using ] to increase your brush size you can do it to the infinite, and if you do so it will crash 3DC, it need a cap limit.

I don't know if the other feel the same but for me smooth tool is really strange, it seems to work fine on the sphere, but if you do it on a cylinder it will dig in.

Take a perfect cylindric and smooth it, you will be able to dig it.

On a big shape it's not a big problem but the finer it become and the more unusable the smooth is.

In Zbrush the smooth brush got a preset who allow you to smooth valley or smooth hill, -100 smooth valley 100 smooth hills, by default it is at 0 and it average Hills and valley at the same level, don't know if it can help.

An other thing, is it possible to toggle the visibility of the Yellow circle who represent the brush while sculpting?

When mouse clic is done I want that this circle disappear and see only the crosshair, is there an option somewhere?

Thank you.

[3dioot]

I personally find the smooth in 3dcoat very nice. If you tweak the smooth slider it can smooth the finest edges and things (alot better then i can in zbrush after the latest patch). I normaly have it set to 0.7 or 0.8 and i can pretty much smooth anything without it digging or planarizing the surface. In fact i just tried it on a cylinder and i had no problems?

3dioot

[Mantis]

Are you sure? I test it once again and got the same problem.

I create a cylinder using curve, I smooth on the same area and I can clearly see that my cylinder has been dig.

I use smooth at 1 but even with a lower strenght you can see it, but it take longer.

I'm trying to upload a video to show you what I got.

[splodge]

ZBrush's transpose tool seems a little convoluted to me.

For transpose I would prefer a bend tool. You simply click on the area at the fulcrum point and move the mouse to see one side bend. Depending on which side of the fulcrum point you drag your mouse will determine which side is rotated.

[Christoph]

Really, maybe it is better to use SHIFT for smoothing and CTRL for normal move?

Yes please. Put back SHIFT for smoothing in to the MOVE tool and put the option for normal move to the CTRL key.

Also if you have the time. I will like to request again the option to maintain the Size, Depth and Falloff of each brush independently. Make this an option of switch on and off....PLEASE

Thanks

[philnolan3d]

What's with the shouting Christoph?

Anyway, I was just thinking what would be really nice for the Move tool would be a way to select an area and move it out from the mesh. Of course this could also be accomplished with a mask and the Extrude tool.