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Full V4 Workflow Request


ooky
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Hi

I've been watching tonnes of tutorials. The mouse one, the pirate one, and seemingly hundreds of others.

But I still get pretty confused by the overall workflow.

Is there a video that goes from:

Voxels > retopo/Autopo .(both options would be handy) > UV > Paint > Export.

If not, it would be amazing if someone fancied doing one. I think it's the main stumbling block for people migrating. A lot of tutorials spend too much time on people sculpting away, which is only so useful (there's tonnes of tool vids out there), and not enough time explaining the workflow and all the various options.

It would also be useful to see how to use only parts of the pipeline, like bringing in sculpts from elsewhere and retopologising then exporting... Although I guess the overview vid could cover that.

Here's an example of my confusion (which I admit exists on many levels)

V4 may have changed this, but if you create a voxel sculpt, and you're going to do microvertex painting. Does that mean that once the mid-level mesh is created you've effectively finished with the voxel sculpt? So it would be best to roughly sculpt the form in voxels, then do all the detail on the mid-level mesh created for painting on?

Any de-confusing advice welcome

cheers

Olly

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Yeah... I've watched it now. It's not ideal. There's so much information missing. Plus if you want to refresh your memory about anything you've got hours of sculpting or painting to trawl through before you find what you need. The manual is pretty terrible too - no where near enough detail.

For example I'm trying to "Merge into Scene" here's the extent of the information upon that:

Merge into scene (microverts):
Merges the currently selected
Retopo mesh into the Paint Room
and Objects Panel - making it
ready for texturing using the
“Micro-Vertex” method. Use this
on objects where you wish to paint “actual” displacement
in real time.

That's it, so far as I can find. The manual needs wayyy more detail, and should have links to context specific videos...

You need videos detailing how you go from one room to the other.

All the help videos are just in some random order, and there's hundreds of them. I have never been as confused by a product as 3d-coat. I think it would be relatively easy to sort out. I just can't get at the information I need.

Like the video series I was recommended to learn the flow - the ghost game character, the bit where he unwraps the character is 40 minutes long... The information I'm trying to get is simple, but I can't watch 40 minutes every time I'm trying to get answers.

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Here are a few that help describe a typical workflow, but understand this....because we all want so many options, it naturally results in a steeper learning curve. Different people are going to use 3D Coat differently and thus their workflow is likely going to vary from your own. There are basically 2 major entry points into the pipeline and they start at opposite points:

1) Import model directly into Paint Room for Texture Painting, UV editing, and even basic sculpting and transform tools in the Tweak room. This is the Legacy workflow...before Voxels and subsequently Retopo tools entered the fray.

2) Merge Model into the Voxel Room (can be done easily from your app, using the Applink plugins), or build a model from scratch within the Voxel Room, using the Voxel Modeling tools and Kitbashing toolset.

This entry point into the pipeline leads through the Retopo Room, and once you have the Retopo mesh in place and your UV's done there > Retopo Menu > adjust the Baking cage via BAKING SCAN SETTINGS (adjust the inner and outer cage accordingly) > Retopo Menu > Merge to (whichever mode you prefer). This will bake all the shader information and sculpting details onto maps and merge them into the Paint Workspace/Room...for you to inspect and do further texture work, if you like.

At this stage, you can continue to do some sculpting, using the paint tools (image-based sculpting) and you'll be surprised how well and efficiently it handles ulta-high frequency details....like fine wrinkles, skin pores. In fact this is the perfect place to do this type of work, as you have true layers and layer masking capability...even the ability to dial up or down the amount of depth/displacement on each layer. You have a magnification tool that lets you even paint areas where you want to reduce or increase the depth level. Another tool (third one down in the tool panel) that has the option to sharpen or blur the depth.

Probably the biggest reason you'd want to do your high frequency sculpting detail in the Paint Room is that you can use the Materials pallet to sculpt and paint from the same Material simultaneously. None of the other competing apps offer that. You can only sculpt or paint....not both. Why is that so important? Let's say you want to sculpt and paint some rock cracks with Moss and such. In other apps you'd have to sculpt it out, and then go back and try to align the textures to match. In 3D Coat you can be painting the texture material and sculpting the cracks and moss texture all in the same stroke. You can even be a little lazy and use the rectangle or free form lasso selection mode in the E-Panel to knock it out in a single move of the cursor. It's pretty amazing.

At least test it out. Get a high res rock texture and test it out, using the Materials pallet. You can embellish it a bit further, by switching to the tweak room, to sculpt or move parts of the rock, to break up the forms a bit.

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Hi

 

its possible to jump from Retopo Room to UVRoom directly ?

 

I need to tweak manually some UVmap vertices to optimize texture mapping before bake the model from retopoR to paintR

 

ty

 

//edit

i found this lately, ty

 

post-10142-0-17753300-1422132687_thumb.j

 

post-10142-0-56894100-1422132689_thumb.j

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Hi

its possible to jump from Retopo Room to UVRoom directly ?

I need to tweak manually some UVmap vertices to optimize texture mapping before bake the model from retopoR to paintR

ty

There is no need to. You have a mirrored set of UV tools embedded within the Retopo Room, for this very purpose. This is explained a bit at the beginning of the following video:

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Thanks for your prompt and helpful reply AbnRanger. I'm certainly not giving up on 3D-coat, I realise I'm simply struggling with a learning curve. I do feel a couple of workflow specific videos could really help a lot of people who are migrating. I look forward to it all becoming second nature, it's a powerful toolset.

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I agree with ooky. What I would like to see is a "Quick start tutorial". Maybe, begin with a sphere, take a few minutes to sculpt a cartoon face, then proceed to the next phase (retopo, etc.). The entire video should be no longer than 30 min. There are many tutorials that show detailed aspects of each step along the way, but basic workflow tutorials are needed. These tutorials should only focus on the workflow and not on how each tool or function works, there are other more detailed videos for that purpose.

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Hi Alvordr

That video was great. I'd love to see more of them if you ever get the chance.

That's exactly the sort of tutorial that I think is missing, or buried in a pile of sculpting.

I'm making more progress now myself, and i really like 3d-coat for a lot of reasons. Maybe I'll try to make a tutorial myself when I get a bit deeper into it.

Thanks for the link though, really appreciated.

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Ooky,

No problem. I'm glad it helped. I did the same thing for the Cheetah community a while back. Once I stopped going to the forums as often people were asking where I went and what I did with the videos. I kept them, but I need to repost them. I prefer a stepped approach, as well.

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Maybe this will help for starters. I did this one when I was running into the same problem.

http://vimeo.com/60560370

I'm guessing you can open the surface room and import directly as mesh by default rather than worrying about it converting to voxel immediately. Only a guess... have to test the theory, but that would at least make sense to me... definitely trying to figure out 3DC myself... Getting some of the basics... by no means an expert though. Not even an expert in zbrush, but I'm much further down it's learning curve. The new ZB 4R6 release is pretty cool too. thanks for trying to answer a question of mine earlier. I mainly use ZB though and have Zapplink set up for that which means I don't have to do the whole obj export then import thing as it gets automated.... fun fun fun...I want to figure out the cloth simulator myself, but I haven't found a whole lot on that... yet. I'm tempted to get Marvelous Designer 2 for similar reasons.

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Yes, you can import without voxelizing...it's a check box in the pop up upon importing. This should put you in Surface Mode. I personally spend more time on the Voxel mode than surface, but I think most others use Surface mode. However, they tend to report that when they go from Surface mode to Voxel mode they lose details. I don't.

Zapplink in ZB is far better than many of those for 3D Coat, because it tends to just send things back and forth, whereas it appears that most of the applinks for 3D Coat send to 3D Coat, but not back again, so you have to do that manually (unless I'm mistaken).

The cloth simulator in 3ds Max is pretty good, but as far as 3D Coat's cloth tool goes, I haven't played with it very much.

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