3D-Coat 3.0 ALPHA

[3dioot]

Ok, I agree, but maybe we can add some hot point on the line to call menu and switch between move/rotate/scale faster?

Thats a good idea. Ive been thinking along those lines as well. Its easy to implement and would lead to little clutter. I allready have an idea how to do it. Little unsure about it bringing up a whole menu; perhaps its better to just have it toggle between the three. Pressed for time now but will get back to it later.

3dioot

[philnolan3d]

I've had some time to play with the transpose tool now and I'm sorry to say it's really the first 3DC tool that I'm not totally thrilled with. In fact I'm not really liking it that much at all. I was really expecting something like the tools in Sculpt mode. Or even a full rig, something like if you made a whole character out of the curve tool. I have a hard time selecting what I want and when I do get it selected I wonder about when I go on to another area, then want to change the first area again.

[Deadman21]

I've had some time to play with the transpose tool now and I'm sorry to say it's really the first 3DC tool that I'm not totally thrilled with. In fact I'm not really liking it that much at all. I was really expecting something like the tools in Sculpt mode. Or even a full rig, something like if you made a whole character out of the curve tool. I have a hard time selecting what I want and when I do get it selected I wonder about when I go on to another area, then want to change the first area again.

I agree I am also having a very hard time selecting areas even with the "select with pen" mode areas of the mesh refuse to become selected. I have also noticed sometimes after using the line tool then switching to select with pen and painting out those areas that did not ge selected, when i rotate the selection it becomes distorted unlike what it should be.

I think the basics of selection should be working before we worry about the gizmo In the current state it is useless to me. I too would eventually hope for some type of bone system but maybe thats asking too much at this time. If it was as reliable as the sculpt areas transform that would be great.

[3dioot]

While im of to make dinner now (and probably will have to do some other stuff after that first) i cant help but chip in here. Yes i agree the current selection methods do not cut it. You cant even select your whole model at once if you would like to (i tried that yesterday to sculpt something really simple and i couldnt). Ive been hammering on about a seperate selection system outside of transpose for this reason. It can (and should) encompass everything you have now and a fair amount of extra. The sphere, ring, line and pen but all a lot more polished and stable. You could call it paint selection. Essentially the inverse of freeze with some powertools included.

I think this would solve the selection pains you guys are experiencing (and i am too; i had to do lots of cleanup after using pen with transpose for my mellon head sculpt) and it would open up transpose to become a lot more streamlined that it is now. As Deadman says i think its a good idea to get selection/paint selection/masking/whateveryounameit working and polished first and then take a good hard look at transpose again. Its a bit like i said before. Without masking (read as; good selection method) implemented its hard to really judge or use transpose for what its worth.

3dioot

[cyartist]

Again this the way it should be done.

http://www.kunzhou.net/publications/MeshPuppetry.wmv

Andrew do not be afraid to go all the way on this I know you are brillant enough to solve this.

Do it like the link shows and call it "CoatRigger" and you will hear no more compliants ever.

No current app has a rigging solutuion so simple as this so you should create the best solution possible to stand out

just like you have with Volumetrics.

[Andrew Shpagin]

Again this the way it should be done.

http://www.kunzhou.net/publications/MeshPuppetry.wmv

Andrew do not be afraid to go all the way on this I know you are brillant enough to solve this.

Do it like the link shows and call it "CoatRigger" and you will hear no more compliants ever.

No current app has a rigging solutuion so simple as this so you should create the best solution possible to stand out

just like you have with Volumetrics.

I have seen that video, but I am not sure it could be used for big object that has no low-poly cage. One day I investigated this method deeply.

[renderdemon]

Personally I'm really against that kind of stuff,inverse kinematic is a poor way to pose character.

It's slow,isn't precise,and it's hard to setup.

Animation is a thing,posing for modelling is completely another story,you have to do much more precise and good looking poses.

[Deadman21]

Ok heres a question we seem to be avoiding (or at least im having trouble wrapping my brain around) What is our intended work flow with volumetric sculpting? I personally like to paint my models using symmetry in kinda a zeroed (to use a poser term) position. How can I do that if I pose the volumetric sculpt first, not to mention I have not created any UVs or such. Now I do understand having the ability to transform certain areas of the model to help in the sculpting process, thats not what Im talking about.

To me and maybe im alone here but my biggest hurdle in this is (and I have said it before) getting to a low poly mesh easily. Andrew has added the reduction of pollys but its not what i think it should be to be useful. I know that sounds harsh and I dont mean for it to but a low poly triangulated mesh does not help me. Very difficult to UV. So right now (and this works very well) is to retopo the model then add the UVs, Paint and then worry about posing.

Im curious as to what other people might have for their intended work flow.

[cyartist]

Personally I'm really against that kind of stuff,inverse kinematic is a poor way to pose character.

It's slow,isn't precise,and it's hard to setup.

Animation is a thing,posing for modelling is completely another story,you have to do much more precise and good looking poses.

Well if your the natural way things move then you actually be against nature itself.

Did you look at the video it is a point and click skeleton. How hard is that to set up?

Trans pose is a poor solution for posing becuase the weight of the body is connected to all parts

that is the natural order of forms in motion.

Making the tool able to extend out to a full rig is the best of both worlds. So if you just want single area leave it at one tool

if you want to do a leg use three connected tools and so on.

You gotta be open minded on these things to get the best tool possible and not be influence by things that have already been done.

[JamesE]

Well if your the natural way things move then you actually be against nature itself.

Did you look at the video it is a point and click skeleton. How hard is that to set up?

Trans pose is a poor solution for posing becuase the weight of the body is connected to all parts

that is the natural order of forms in motion.

Making the tool able to extend out to a full rig is the best of both worlds. So if you just want single area leave it at one tool

if you want to do a leg use three connected tools and so on.

You gotta be open minded on these things to get the best tool possible and not be influence by things that have already been done.

I'm against the full body solution (for now) as well. In my opinion transpose should really just be solved as far as the current interface/manipulator appearance and functionality goes for a single tool, much like how zbrush works, as this is the easiest method to implement and it is almost working as such now. Transpose is a MINOR feature for me at this point. It's nice to have, but not crucial. Not in the same way that stuff like 64 bit (performance is super high on the list), 2d painting and the general improvement of volumetric sculpting (it is already nearly done in terms of being able to ship it as a new feature for 3.0). Get that stuff done for 3.0 and worry about adding more to it - transpose rigging, evolving the sculpting and painting etc from there.

I'm at the point now where I'm finding the volume sculpting quite usable as it is - at least in terms of getting a mid-high rez mesh done and retopologizing from there. 3.0 doesn't have to be perfect. But it needs to be useable in my daily work in a game pipeline, and right now it's only just seeing some limited use in terms of hashing out meshes with volume and retopologizing them. I'm still doing all my mesh sculpting in zbrush due to the performance mostly, and none of my paint work in 3dcoat yet. 3.0 could very well change that for me. But transpose won't be one of the features that influences that.

[renderdemon]

For me we have to try to be realistic.

3dcoat is a good program for retopologizing,for sculpting and for painting.

Some people are not happy that volumetric sculpting is becoming powerfull,they want more focus on painting.

So we go in rigging?

The tool you posted cyartist can be good for a general purpose program(like Blender for example),I think(MHO!)that 3dcoat should focus more on innovations on sculpting and retopologizing(some other I think will prefer painting).

Personally I dream to have more polycount,anisotropic quad remeshing(this is a killer application because you could start working in 3dcoat,and trasfer easily the work everywhere so 3dcoat could be more used in a workflow),not rigging.

Bye

EDIT:

The current transpose isn't fast enough to pose huge volumetric sculpt,I don't think that this pose system(the one pointed out by cyartist) can be made fast enough to work on real volumetric mesh.

[cyartist]

:

The current transpose isn't fast enough to pose huge volumetric sculpt,I don't think that this pose system(the one pointed out by cyartist) can be made fast enough to work on real volumetric mesh.

Do not underestimate Andrew! He can do it. The pose system I pointed out works on large meshes and is very simple to use.

[Deadman21]

Anisotropic quad remeshing have not heard of that before but after researching that is exactly the type of thing Im hoping for myself

As far as posing using transform tools you are right my mesh is only 6 million and just getting the model to twist at the waist is a chore.

Still thinking my work flow will be sculpt, retopo, paint and the pose, anybody got better ideas??

[renderdemon]

Do not underestimate Andrew! He can do it. The pose system I pointed out works on large meshes and is very simple to use.

Never !

I thanks Andrew for this great program.

Volumetric sculpting makes me happy,I can try things that without it simply I'll never ever done,it's a totally different approach.

[Psmith]

Transpose vs. Rigging

Some have spoken highly of the transpose system of "Brand X". Personally, I never found that system very functional, fast, intuitive or pleasant to use. I don't think I would use the current "Transpose" system in 3D-Coat, for the same reasons.

Those who claim that skeletal rigging is not a good way to pose a character for modeling purposes must not like it for some specific reason, like overall complexity and the time it takes to create a rig. I would agree with that assessment, as it applies to the most common ways of rigging a character. That is why I and others would like to see a full body solution that is much simpler and faster. It doesn't have to be the "Kunzhou" solution, although his method is, indeed, very elegant, streamlined and natural.

Just look at the limitations of transposing with "Brand X" and with the current 3D-Coat system:

Very difficult to select the desired area to be transposed.

Very difficult to define the axis of rotation.

Since "falloff" is automatically assigned, it is very difficult to avoid undesirable "pinching" in joint areas.

Does not lend itself to "entire character" posing - only usable for one portion of a limb at a time.

Watch this video to see what I mean:

http://3dcoatings.net/TransposeTroubles2.mov

If 3D-Coat is to become an application artists choose over other solutions, there really needs to be several things that set it apart and make it superior and more pleasant to use than the rest. Voxel sculpting is one, and, I think simple, full body posing is a good candidate for a second choice. Now, I'm getting ahead of myself, but, adding some form of simple animation system to be used with a revolutionary "rigging" system would put 3D-Coat far ahead of any competing solution.

Psmith

[philnolan3d]

I don't think we necessarily have to do a whole body rig. One example of not needing a full body is this dragon that I'm working on. He has two heads / necks. In the sculpture I'm basing him on the necks are twisted to look over one another (left head bends to the right, right bends left) and one of his "paws" is up in the air. So really I'd l only need to rig the heads and paw, maybe the tail. I just like the bone idea because it stays where you put it in case you want to further adjust it later.

[Mantis]

[...]

Personally I dream to have more polycount,anisotropic quad remeshing(this is a killer application because you could start working in 3dcoat,and trasfer easily the work everywhere so 3dcoat could be more used in a workflow),[...]

Are you from bay raitt's forum (aka Spiraloid)?

The first time I heard about this method was on his forum and he was wondering, as I did, why noone has ever done this before.

Psmith:

I think you are a little bit optimistic by saying that an animation software using this kind of rigging will beat all competition.

This kind of rigging is a little bit simple.

For a "professionnal" animation that's unusable. A rigging is not that simple for animation.

It can be a good posing tool but using it for animation is not realistic at all, that's the simplier rigg you can get and you can't customize it.

Without counting that every rigg are different and there is no "One Rigg who rule them all."

But for posing purpose the greatest advantage I can see of this vs transpose is that it keep the form, and it's especially useful for a knee bending like they show it, and transpose doesn't do this.

So making a transpose tool who use this strenght will really rock, but I think it can't be done with a continuous line but you should probably have 2 segments.

The flaw you are pointing can be fixed so that's not a problem.

[Psmith]

Mantis:

Did you watch all of these videos?

http://www.kunzhou.net/

I don't find the puppeteering movement limited or simplistic or amateuristic or non-professional, as demonstrated in these videos, at all. Rigging is quick, simple, specific and professional, all at the same time. Joints only need to be placed where needed, so in the example stated by Mr. Nolan, he would only need to place joints in the neck. So, the term "full body" is only relative to what is needed in each specific example.

Look at these videos again, I think you will be amazed.

Psmith

[renderdemon]

Are you from bay raitt's forum (aka Spiraloid)?

The first time I heard about this method was on his forum and he was wondering, as I did, why noone has ever done this before.

Well,no,I know spiraloid,years ago sometimes I read it but I know anisotropic remeshing for another reason.

I like using Blender,3 years ago(more or less)they implemented lscm uv mapping(one of the main resercher was Bruno levy,so I have take a look at his studies,one of his papers is for quad remeshing).

Yes,quad dominant remeshing is cool,isn't the perfect solution for animation (retopologizing by hand is better) but could be a really good solution,you could have good meshes than can be uv mapped,animated,subsurfed and so on.

I also don't understand why nobody try to do that(math isn't easier but not impossible)

[JamesE]

Are you from bay raitt's forum (aka Spiraloid)?

The first time I heard about this method was on his forum and he was wondering, as I did, why noone has ever done this before.

Psmith:

I think you are a little bit optimistic by saying that an animation software using this kind of rigging will beat all competition.

This kind of rigging is a little bit simple.

For a "professionnal" animation that's unusable. A rigging is not that simple for animation.

It can be a good posing tool but using it for animation is not realistic at all, that's the simplier rigg you can get and you can't customize it.

Without counting that every rigg are different and there is no "One Rigg who rule them all."

But for posing purpose the greatest advantage I can see of this vs transpose is that it keep the form, and it's especially useful for a knee bending like they show it, and transpose doesn't do this.

So making a transpose tool who use this strenght will really rock, but I think it can't be done with a continuous line but you should probably have 2 segments.

The flaw you are pointing can be fixed so that's not a problem.

No offense to any who think that full body rigging should be higher priority, but I've been rigging characters for over 10 years in most of the known packages. The Zbrush transpose tool is by far the easiest, least time consuming method I've ever used for posing a character - fingers and toes included. I'm all for adding a posable rigging solution but it really shouldn't be one of the development priorities for 3.0. Just being able to compete with the other commercial options in terms of sculpting and painting needs to be addressed first. 3dcoat is no competition yet - these areas really should be addressed first and foremost. Right now it is just a cheap alternative for those who don't want to spend money on production level tools like Zbrush or Mudbox - not a replacement option in a studio environment by any stretch. There's a big difference between what those apps are capable of vs 3dcoat at the moment.

The two big things missing from the transpose tool right now to finish it for a 1.0 release are obviously selection masking, and a proper manipulator/representation for the tool. I say finish those 2 things and call it a 1.0 feature as it will at least then be on par with what zbrush can do. Rigging can come later.

The images I attached to this post were done using the transpose tool in zbrush, with very little correctional sculpting applied at all (sure it could use some, but that wasn't the point of the test). It was really just a test to see what I could do with the tool with as little effort as possible. A full blown rigging solution would not get you any better results any faster.

I actually disagree with mesh puppetry as an acceptable solution for posing. Even the videos demonstrate that there is a significant amount of coding work required to get production quality results. I also don't like how it changes the volume of the mesh in some of those shots. This makes it no better than a transpose tool as you will always need to correct the joints and mesh one limb at a time in general to preserve forms and proportions. At the very least there is a significant amount of work required to reach even the research levels they produced - more than enough justification to bump such a pursuit further back into a point release or even 4.x update. Also, the last thing I want to see in any of my modeling programs is pointless, nearly useless animation tools that waste development time and effort chasing after features that are best left to dedicated animation packages. This is the path to bloatware.

[Mantis]

@Psmith: I didn't watch all the video, but from what I seen I'm not conviced.

You can't have all the control you can get on a traditionnal software, you can get a facial rigg and so on.

The current animation software are so much more advanced than this, that's just the tip of the iceberg.

Even if I admit that's seduciong you can't argue that by adding this you will rock all other animation.

Animation is not just pulling the tip of a bone.

@renderdemon: Quad remeshing is quite elegant, and it can help you to make a rough mesh with a little tweaking in not time. So that's quite seducing.

@JamesE: Totally agree.

Trying to make a big rigging automated solution is kinda useless and it's a luxury.

if you want to use your model for an animation you'd better sculpt it in T-pose and rigg it in an appropriated software.

Transpose is a great tool for its simplicity, that's enough for posing in a sculpting software.

I think that the rigging tools presented for our purpose, is like trying to kill a mosquito with a bazooka.

Refining transpose is better than spending weeks on trying to make a so complex tool.

But James even if I agreed with you, your example of your posed character doesn't fit well while speaking about posing in a Volumetric software.

You rely on your topology to keep the form of your character.

But here Topology will not help you because you don't have such a thing. It's like posing a character with evenly spaced quads.

If you do this you will have much more deformation than with an optimized mesh.

So I really think that it will be a weakness.

But that doesn't mean that you can't use Transpose for this purpose

[JamesE]

I agree, you'll probably have more corrective sculpting to do with volumetric, but hopefully this tool is useful for both volumes and polygon meshes. I don't think I'm going to be doing any super detailed volumetric sculpts with 3.0 myself so a general posing tool that at least helps me establish or modify a pose while sculpting is fine - in fact, very much desired since I am building out the forms from nothing when volumetric sculpting. In this case you really don't want a full blown skeleton when the mesh doesn't even resemble a human or other creature at this point. You are more likely to pull out limb shapes from a torso blob and the use transpose on the fly to bend the limbs and proportion them as you go, to establish a base pose. After that it's just refinement sculping with the occasional proportion or slight pose tweak, all of which is much better suited to a tool you can activate on the fly and NOT have to build a rig out of.

Side note: Zbrush also has a special deformation type you can do by holding down the alt key that helps preserve the mesh at joints as well if you are rotating a limb for instance. Not sure how or if you could even apply such a thing to a volumetric mesh. Overall the main purpose of transpose is only to help you do general posing, much like you would with an armature and clay. You still have to go in and sculpt the material to get the best results and that should be the main goal for a first gen tool.

[Andrew Shpagin]

Mesh puppetry is interesting but main problem is that it is very time consuming. So, I am making at first urgent tasks like

- make transpose too better (now I am implementing 3dioot's ideas)

- make layers

- CUDA (I need it for marketing and for speeding up)

- 64 bit

I have one offline task for webmaster (when he is not busy) - investigate TAUCS library that can be used to implement some important algoritms:

- reverese smoothing (imortant for export of low poly mesh that after smoothing in LW/max... will look like object in 3DC)

- local transform - something like mesh puppetry.

And I think that quad remeshing is very important. It can make VS much more usable. I have my own ideaa on this question - make additional subtools in retopo tool:

• automatical detection of edgeloop. Like slice but without need to draw line - only one click.
  
• automatical detection of edgering - line along minimal curvature direction until changing of sign of curvature.
  

[SonK]

Mesh puppetry is interesting but main problem is that it is very time consuming. So, I am making at first urgent tasks like

- make transpose too better (now I am implementing 3dioot's ideas)

- make layers

- CUDA (I need it for marketing and for speeding up)

- 64 bit

I have one offline task for webmaster (when he is not busy) - investigate TAUCS library that can be used to implement some important algoritms:

- reverese smoothing (imortant for export of low poly mesh that after smoothing in LW/max... will look like object in 3DC)

- local transform - something like mesh puppetry.

And I think that quad remeshing is very important. It can make VS much more usable. I have my own ideaa on this question - make additional subtools in retopo tool:

• automatical detection of edgeloop. Like slice but without need to draw line - only one click.
  
• automatical detection of edgering - line along minimal curvature direction until changing of sign of curvature.
  

Sound great Andrew, im looking forward to CUDA and 64-bit and quad remeshing.

[rimasson]

Transpose is enough for me.

I'd just like to be able to : transpose a whole model without the need to select some part of it

have a active mask while i'm sculpting.

[Taros]

Very nice news, Andrew.

A good work need time, so take as much as you need. Nobody likes tools with a lot of unique "highlights" and possibilities, but useless or full of bugs.

Every good artist will use only a hand full of features, not more to realise great models and art. And the most important is, that this few tools works perfect and smooth.

Be creative

Chris

[Andrew Shpagin]

Updated to V37

I have implemented new handlers like 3dioot described (with small altering)

[renderdemon]

I like new handlers,seem working good

[Mantis]

Rimasson was not the first to ask for moving a whole object with transpose.

Personally I am not very fond of this kind of thing, I really prefer to use regular gizmo ,with the ability to custom your pivot point, to move scale and rotate object .

It is a real pain to place eyeball with transpose in Zbrush, you are limited to the screen space movement, or you have to setup the transpose line in the direction you want to move it, It is really unpleasant and doesn't beat a regular gizmo to this task and it's worst when you use it for rotation.

So I'm for a transpose tool for posing purpose and a regular gizmo for rotation, scaling and moving task.

Just test the new transpose handlers and they are really great.

But it miss a handler who allow you to move the whole line at once instead of having to move both point one by one.

And about transpose by itself, I found difficult to judge for the strenght of the fallof with the actual color, a gradation between colors like I show it before (Here)could help.

But it really goes on the right way, good job Andrew!

[rimasson]

you can see better the strengh of the faloff by decreasing the intensity of the light in 3dc

i found a bug : when you use the select with pen in transpose mode, and you remove selected parts, the brush leaves circle artifacts behind.