3D-Coat 3.0 ALPHA

[Bancho]

Thank you Andrew.

GROW is splendid!

I can simplify that I smooth the difficult surface so far.

3.00ALPHA-12(DX)

WinXP Pro sp2 32bit

Dual-Xeon3G HT

3G Ram

RadeonX1950

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

http://www.k2.dion.ne.jp/~output/c/3d-coat.html

[tildee]

Thank you Andrew.

GROW is splendid!

I can simplify that I smooth the difficult surface so far.

3.00ALPHA-12(DX)

WinXP Pro sp2 32bit

Dual-Xeon3G HT

3G Ram

RadeonX1950

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

http://www.k2.dion.ne.jp/~output/c/3d-coat.html

Nice dragon!

Oh you have different text. But I think the same functionality - because you are also happy with it...

That's what it looks like on my computer (Win XP Pro 32 bit)

[Bancho]

Nice dragon!

Oh you have different text. But I think the same functionality - because you are also happy with it...

That's what it looks like on my computer (Win XP Pro 32 bit)

Thank you!!

Really?

Then what is this?

Yes!! I am happy, too.

[Andrew Shpagin]

Thank you!!

Really?

Then what is this?

It is because you have choosen not English language

Cool dragon !

[Bancho]

It is because you have choosen not English language

Cool dragon !

OMG!!

[Andrew Shpagin]

OMG!!

Just copy last tags from English.xml to your language file (preserve xml structure).

[akira]

All alpha releases have functionality of 2.10.05 and even better - some improvements in retopo tool was made. It is as stable as 2.10.5, so you can use it as release (of course volumetric is in alpha stage)

Volumetric sculpting is separate module that does not affect overall stability.

Just a reminder:

There's no backward compatibility from 3.0 to 2.10, which means once you save your work in 3.0, you won't be able to open it in 2.10 anymore.

[3dioot]

Andrew,

What do you think of the sampling? Ive been looking closely at the brush "cursor" and it seems it allready does the average normal thing eventhough im not certain how or if thats applied to the brush. Are those principles allready at work without me knowing about it?

Because if they are its just one thing left. The brush fallof (which is not the same as brush profile curve). If they arent, well, id love to seem them implemented ofcourse.

What i mean with the brush fallof is nothing but a gradient that blends the outer edges of the projected brush into the sculpt (nomatter how the orientation of the brush is to the surface below). So you dont get these upstanding ridges when your painting over smaller strokes. The theory is "simply" that towards the outer edges of the brush the influence diminishes to zero. This automatically leads to a "rounding of" of the brush stroke. Ofcourse this value should be controllable by the user. Here is a short example from zbrush.

Here is a small movie from zbrush. As you can see the inner circle in the brush cursor stands for the fallof value. The first stroke is done with almost no falloff. The strokes are performed with full pressure. As you can see you almost get a perfect half circle as a stroke profile. When the brush orientation differs like whenever you sculpt over a non planar surface this will lead to ridges appearing on the outside of your brush stroke. The second stroke is done with a fair amount of falloff. As you can see it hardly detracts from the shape of the brush but does make sure there is a nice blend going on. The third and final stroke is done with alot of fallof, in fact so much so that it influences the brush shape quite heavily. It turns into an elipsoid eventhough the stroke was done with full strength. The resulting stroke however is very, very smooth.

http://screencast.com/t/GcnzyeQ9QMc

Let me know if this helps.

3dioot

[Bancho]

Just copy last tags from English.xml to your language file (preserve xml structure).

I am sorry.

I should have said a while ago.

I switched to English language in the pull down menu.

Thank you again Andrew.

[Andrew Shpagin]

Andrew,

What do you think of the sampling? Ive been looking closely at the brush "cursor" and it seems it allready does the average normal thing eventhough im not certain how or if thats applied to the brush. Are those principles allready at work without me knowing about it?

Because if they are its just one thing left. The brush fallof (which is not the same as brush profile curve). If they arent, well, id love to seem them implemented ofcourse.

What i mean with the brush fallof is nothing but a gradient that blends the outer edges of the projected brush into the sculpt (nomatter how the orientation of the brush is to the surface below). So you dont get these upstanding ridges when your painting over smaller strokes. The theory is "simply" that towards the outer edges of the brush the influence diminishes to zero. This automatically leads to a "rounding of" of the brush stroke. Ofcourse this value should be controllable by the user. Here is a short example from zbrush.

Here is a small movie from zbrush. As you can see the inner circle in the brush cursor stands for the fallof value. The first stroke is done with almost no falloff. The strokes are performed with full pressure. As you can see you almost get a perfect half circle as a stroke profile. When the brush orientation differs like whenever you sculpt over a non planar surface this will lead to ridges appearing on the outside of your brush stroke. The second stroke is done with a fair amount of falloff. As you can see it hardly detracts from the shape of the brush but does make sure there is a nice blend going on. The third and final stroke is done with alot of fallof, in fact so much so that it influences the brush shape quite heavily. It turns into an elipsoid eventhough the stroke was done with full strength. The resulting stroke however is very, very smooth.

http://screencast.com/t/GcnzyeQ9QMc

Let me know if this helps.

3dioot

Of course I have average normal and all required data - far and near plane from your picture. I will improve canve again using your ideas. Today and tomorrow I am improving curves and merge, then willl return to carve.

Curve improvements will be very interesting

[3dioot]

Thanks for the reply. Curious to see the results. I hope it will make a big positive difference. Will you also try to implement the brush faloff; i think thats a big part of it feeling smooth as well.

If these "changes" result in a smooth carve i think its also worth it to take a second look at clay. Currently it seems you have implemented smooth as part of the clay brush. This is appearant because when you use the clay brush the smoothing does not scale with depth. I.e. take the clay brush, turn depth to 0 and you will end up with a smooth brush. I think this is very unnecessary and makes the brush very slow when you use a big radius (or scale your model up). This will take some experimentation but you can probably achieve the same result if, for the clay brush only, you use a "sample sphere" thats something like 1.7 x the actual radius of the brush. This means it will be much more averaged by its surrounding surface while it looses its erosive quality's (which are the fault of the inbuild smoothing part) which make it currently so hard to use on finer shapes. Its probably (asumption on my part) also alot faster to leave the smooth out of the clay brush.

Cant stop trying to figure it all out and make it better.

Thanks for listening.

3dioot

PS

Im curious about your curve improvements. Appearantly it is your workflow to just tackle things as they come along without any specific order. Seems to work great so far. Ill admit it made me a little nervous at first. I thought when you were done with a brush it would not be up for improvement after you moved on to the next phase. But it seems you have no problem reiterating over stuff to make it perfect. Makes me very happy and confident in my purchase.

[Andrew Shpagin]

My style of work - improve now the area where I have great idea. Now I have great idea about curves

I need some inspiration to make something really good. So I am making some zig-zags

[Andrew Shpagin]

Every idea has some incubation time. Then something perfect can be born...

[3dioot]

That makes sense. Thanks for being so open about your way of working. :lol: Really thanks.

Im more of a planner myself (character trait). Ive done an ICT study so im familair with certain development methods but they were all really structured. I gues that was what i had in my mind so thats why it puzzled me to see you zigzag. Its also harder to see the direction in which this is going but you've shown allready your a magician with code and take suggestions really well so that point is mood. Besides im not much of a programmer and certainly cant do the things you can do. Im a keen observer though and am good at solving "logic puzzles". (at least i think i am) So i try to help in that way.

To show you how much of a planner i am ill share with you the "roadmap" i had in my mind (cant help it; this just came to me once i started thinking about where this could go). I post it with the utmost respect for you and your way of working.

* Phase 1 (sculpting basics)

- Voxel equivalents for the bread and butter brushes

--- Standard brush (carve)

--- Flatten

--- Pinch

--- Smooth

--- Move/Tweak

-voxel grid increasing/decreasing

* Phase 2 (scene management)

- seperate file format for voxel sculpts (can hold one sculpt v.s. *.3b which can hold more)

- ability to handle multiple objects (both voxel and mesh) in one scene

- scene lister to be able to select the different objects for sculpting and transforms (ability to hide them, freeze them etc)

- ability to transform individual sculpts/objects (move, rotate, scale)

- ability to export individual voxel sculpts (reason for the new file format)

- ability to import voxel sculpts

- ability to import meshes with the option to convert to voxel or the option to do that later

- ability to merge/subtract/difference voxel sculpts with eachother

* Phase 3 (voxel sculpt generation)

- Parametric based (alot like polygon primitives in other packages with values to be entered like width and height)

--- Cube (with as many options as possible such as a value to chamfer the edges)

--- Sphere (with the ability to chop it in half or turn it into a pie shape)

--- Cylinder (with the ability to round of the ends so it becomes a capsule shape)

- Spline based

--- Lathe (revolve a curve around an axis to get vase like shapes)

--- Loft (create a surface from multiple contour curves)

--- Spline extrude (create a surface form a closed spline and give it a thickness)

- Surface based

--- Tube

--- Spike

--- Surface extrude (draw spline on surface and extrude that outward)

Phase 4

- Create a logic order in the way current tools are presented in the interface

- Look for workflow improvements (like sticky keys to change radius and pressure on the fly)

- See wether you are pleased enough with the basics of certain tools to extend them, if not retry

Then you repeate the whole shebang. First round is really a tryout and proof of concept for some things. For example i consider the brushes a proof of concept. If they arent great the rest doesnt have much use (imho). The parametric creation however is just three in each category. Each category could easily grow to 10 or more tools but thats not important in the first iteration. Its more important to create something that works well, that you and the users are pleased with and what can then simply be expanded upon in the next iteration.

Next round can be something like this (just as an example).

Phase 1

- add clay brush

- add spray brush (i love that brush but i would have expected it to come later)

- add ability to create masks

- add ability to hide parts of sculpt

- rotate part of sculpt tool (this is essentially posing)

- scale part of sculpt tool (this is also essentially posing)

Phase 2

- Add option to make certain sculpts see through with scene lister

- Add option to assign different materials to different sculpts with scene lister

Phase 3

- Add new tools for the three categories

Phase 4

- Create a logic order in the way current tools are presented in the interface

- Look for workflow improvements (like sticky keys to change radius and pressure on the fly)

- See wether you are pleased enough with the basics of certain tools to extend them in the same manner, if not retry

And so on.

But.. Thats just how it was taught to me and it has much to do with personal preference. And i ended up working in a totally different field anyway. :lol:

Im gratefull you were willing to share the way you work and im certain it will all turn out great.

Sincerely,

Jan-Willem

[tildee]

I'm nearly speechless. I could sculpt hours and hours. It's really fun. I took one of the default heads and must force me now to stop. I could add details over details.

I haven't done something like that ever!

I can't wait for more updates.

If my wife would see with what I spend my night-time...

[Monsoon]

I'd like to throw in a couple of wishes if I may.

I love the mesh on the pen tool. Stamping geometry anywhere I want it is so very cool. Great for sci fi tech stuff. However, while working I found myself wishing for a couple of things....

One is rotational snap of the mesh/pen in maybe 45 degree increments relative to the plane of the object. I couldn't get a good line up once I left zero on the pen rotational slider. Just couldn't get it straight after that.

The other is X and Y scale of the pentip mesh as well as radius. I found myself wanting to make the pen mesh wider or longer instead of just bigger.

Are either of these things possible?

M

[Crusoe]

It's kinda slow on my notebook to add voxels to both sides of the object at once using Symmetry. Would it be possible to have a button that you can click and mirror the voxels over?

[Bancho]

Is there method for the reset curve or delete a curve-point?

By without restarting 3DC.

I make a plane for the symmetry body and draw curve-points on there.

As for me, I want the function that the curve points do not go to the -X direction, when X symmetry is ON.

3.00ALPHA-12(DX)

WinXP Pro sp2 32bit

Dual-Xeon3G HT

3G Ram

RadeonX1950

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

http://www.k2.dion.ne.jp/~output/c/3d-coat.html

[Andrew Shpagin]

Press esc to delete last curve, delete /backspcae will delete last point.

Curves are in serious improvement now.

[Andrew Shpagin]

It's kinda slow on my notebook to add voxels to both sides of the object at once using Symmetry. Would it be possible to have a button that you can click and mirror the voxels over?

Of course there will be command "Mirror" so that you will be able to paint on one side and then mirror it.

[Andrew Shpagin]

To show you how much of a planner i am ill share with you the "roadmap" i had in my mind (cant help it; this just came to me once i started thinking about where this could go). I post it with the utmost respect for you and your way of working.

Thanks for plan I can agree with most of what told.

[Andrew Shpagin]

I'd like to throw in a couple of wishes if I may.

I love the mesh on the pen tool. Stamping geometry anywhere I want it is so very cool. Great for sci fi tech stuff. However, while working I found myself wishing for a couple of things....

One is rotational snap of the mesh/pen in maybe 45 degree increments relative to the plane of the object. I couldn't get a good line up once I left zero on the pen rotational slider. Just couldn't get it straight after that.

The other is X and Y scale of the pentip mesh as well as radius. I found myself wanting to make the pen mesh wider or longer instead of just bigger.

Are either of these things possible?

M

There is rotation slider, you can set numerical value there... But there are radians, I will change it to degrees.

Scaling along axis - ok, I will do that.

[Bancho]

Always thank you!!! :lol:

3.00ALPHA-12(DX)

WinXP Pro sp2 32bit

Dual-Xeon3G HT

3G Ram

RadeonX1950

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

http://www.k2.dion.ne.jp/~output/c/3d-coat.html

[philnolan3d]

I don't remember if this was mentioned. I have no pen pressure control with the clay tool. Only the depth slider allows control of it.

[Monsoon]

There is rotation slider, you can set numerical value there... But there are radians, I will change it to degrees.

Scaling along axis - ok, I will do that.

Wow Andrew...you're a genie right out of the bottle!! Thanks....yeah I tried the numeric imput but 45,90,180,360 were all crooked from original starting position of zero as in the illustration. 45 is the closest I think....

0,45,90

180,360,0

[bobzilla]

When drawing with the Clay tool, the stroke is very "lumpy". I can't seem to get a nice smooth stroke. I've played with all the smooth settings, but they don't fix the problem.

Is that just the nature of the clay tool?

I'm using the Mac version.

[Andrew Shpagin]

When drawing with the Clay tool, the stroke is very "lumpy". I can't seem to get a nice smooth stroke. I've played with all the smooth settings, but they don't fix the problem.

Is that just the nature of the clay tool?

I'm using the Mac version.

Are you using Wacom pen? Does strength of bump depends on pressure?

[Monsoon]

Wow Andrew...you're a genie right out of the bottle!! Thanks....yeah I tried the numeric imput but 45,90,180,360 were all crooked from original starting position of zero as in the illustration. 45 is the closest I think....

0,45,90

180,360,0

I stopped with the pen for a second, and tried the 9 and 0 control for the rotation instead of the slider. A whole different ball game there. Now I understand how it's set and how it interacts with the main display....

[PoopaScoop]

When you merge an object in when symmetry is on a duplicate will appear. I think alot of people will assume that 1 object will come in or they won't remember that symmetry is on. Is it possible to have a warning box appear, saying something like "Do you wish to bring in the object with a mirrored dupicate?"

Feature Request:

I think it'd be great if there was a button that would quickly mearge in the sculpted mesh into the voxels area.

Thanks

[Psmith]

Using primarily a laptop with only 1 gig of memory, I seem to have hit the ceiling of around 1 million triangles for voxel sculpting. When I try to increase resolution beyond that, the alpha version ceases up. I am guessing that this is due to no virtual memory support in the voxel module.

I've been successful building up a moderately detailed voxel model, (even the speed of modeling is pretty fast), if I start with a merged and scaled down sphere as the base, and gradually increase the resolution in about 3 passes. I'm wondering if the solution for low powered users, (those on laptops, etc.), will be to model up to the 1 million triangle limit on the voxel side of 3D-Coat, export the model to the other side, and start adding detail with displacements instead of actual geometry.

I have an even lower powered Samsung UMPC with 1 gig of memory, running Windows Vista, (nice because it has a touch screen for sculpting), but 3D-Coat is unusable due to a real-time rendering artifact upon opening the initial voxel sphere, or any other merged object - (large spikey protrusions shoot out of the sphere into infinity) - making it impossible to model. Sure would be nice to have the option of using this super mobile solution for 3D-Coat speed modeling.

The voxel modeler is very exciting to me, especially the speed at which one can rough out nearly any concept. I hope that there will be a "save" function so that the voxel sculpts will be able to be modified in the main 3D-Coat module sometime soon. I think the foundation is already quite good for daily use with the sculpting tools Andrew has already supplied in the voxel module - especially for organic modeling.

Using a Wacom with a laptop presents some unique ergonomic challenges, especially when everything is "in your lap". What I mean, specifically, is that one hand needs to be exclusively used for balancing the tablet and stylus, and the tablet has to be sort of leaned against the front surface of the laptop for support. This balancing act makes it rather difficult to reach around and use the keyboard for things like changing pen diameters via the "[ and ]" keys. Would it be possible to have a "right click and drag" stylus shortcut for resizing the pen and other sculpting tools - at least while hovering over the voxel sculpt in the workspace - a kind of selectively activated stylus gesture?

Thanks so much, Andrew, for your creative endeavors with 3D-Coat. I am quite confident that this program will emerge as the tool of choice for many 3D artists. It is a real pleasure to use, and having all modeling, sculpting and texturing functions in one environment is very nice. Now, on another note, those posing dots make it very tempting for a user to try to start animating with 3D-Coat - the dots are already quite close to what I have seen in some experimental Siggraph videos demonstrating character animation without the need for a skeletal armature - have you seen these? Very tempting.

Psmith