Merging Volumes Crashes 3D-Coat

[Grimmy]

I have built an object from several different volumes in the voxel room. I have then textured them all in the paint room. I now go to merge all my painted voxels together in the voxel room and 3D Coat crashes every time. Am I doing something wrong?

ie..am I supposed to merge before texturing?

Thanks

Edited June 1, 2013 by Grimmy

[AbnRanger]

I don't know that they are intended to be merged AFTER having painted them. Never tried that and probably not a good practice in any case. You can always sculpt on your models after painting, but I wouldn't push my luck beyond that.

[Grimmy]

Okay. So, is there a way of removing texture information from a volume?...Should I just use the erase brush?

That way,I figure I can then do a merge and do my painting again (Although I might try baking from a copy using 'Bake Colour there from all Volumes')

[digman]

There is lot of information that you need to be aware of:

First never paint on Layer "0" in the paint room when vertex painting, you can not erase without effecting the visible volume... Generally not a good idea to every work on Layer "0" as it is reserved for 3DCoat.

Plus merging many surface mode layers at one time could cause them to crash in the boolean operations. Surface mode is true polygons not voxels. That means boolean operations are more complicated. Do one layer at time and if you get the warring message that the boolean operation failed then you know there is a problem.

You can merged surface mode layers that have been painted but better to merge one layer at a time. I have tested it but if it works in all boolean operations, I do not know...

Always merge a lower polygon layer with a higher polygon layer in surface mode otherwise you lose your details in the higher layer. This is true with voxels has well but there it is called resolution... The numbers on your voxtree tab tell you the resolution. higher numbers mean a denser mesh. The bottom of screen will tell you the appox polygon count of each layer when they are selected.

[AbnRanger]

Maybe delete the layers and then try to merge layers together. It's not an ideal workflow, but I would still notify Andrew (support@3d-coat.com) and see if he can just have the color information dumped (instead) if merging is that destructive. Go to the HELP menu and choose "Send large file to Support" you'll get a screen that lets you upload a problem file (may zip it first to reduce size, if you think it will help).

In the mean time, you probably could do without merging, and if it leaves a slight seam in baking, it shouldn't be too difficult to use the clone stamp tool to clean that up after baking to a low poly mesh.

[AbnRanger]

There is lot of information that you need to be aware of:

First never paint on Layer "0" in the paint room when vertex painting, you can not erase without effecting the visible volume... Generally not a good idea to every work on Layer "0" as it is reserved for 3DCoat.

Plus merging many surface mode layers could cause them to crash in the boolean operations. Surface mode is true polygons not voxels. That means boolean operations are more complicated. Do one layer at time and if you get the warring message that the boolean operation failed then you know there is a problem.

You can merged painted layers but better to one at a time. I have tested it but if it works in all boolean operations, I do not know...

Always merge a lower polygon layer with a higher polygon layer in surface mode otherwise you lose your details in the higher layer. This is true with voxels has well but there it is called resolution... The numbers on your voxtree tab tell you the resolution. higher numbers mean a denser mesh. The bottom of screen will tell you the appox polygon count of each layer when they are selected.

Good points. I find merging voxel layers always faster, then trying to do so in Surface mode. Why? Cause it doesn't have to calculate which verts get merged and which get left behind. It just turns on/off voxels in a 3D Grid and immediately remeshes the entire thing, almost instantaneously. This is why it's best to plan out your workflow to take advantage of each mode's strengths.

If you want to do boolean type operations or merging, use Voxels when you can. If you are ready to do some high detail sculpting, then use Surface mode and LiveClay. So, try to stay in Voxels as long as you can, unless there are some brushes you like in Surface mode...even then you can always switch back and forth with relative ease. But when you reach the final stages of a sculpt, doing uber-high detail, switch to Surface mode and stay there. This is not a hard rule...just what I've discovered is a good practice.

[Grimmy]

Actually, in the end I got it to work. Here is what I did:

1. I set all my layer to voxel mode (some were in SUrface still)

2. One of my child volumes was 6* the resolution of the parent so I reduced this to 1*

3. I merged them one by one.

During this process, the object seemed to loose its texture information, but fortunately I had kept my old copy of the object in another layer. I unhid this and used the 'Bake color there from all volumes' button on the new merged layer. It looks like it's all worked perfectly!

I am glad this method seems to work because I can see that there is a big advantage to painting the objects while they are still individual volumes. During the painting process I was able to hide/show individual objects allowing me to paint the object much more easily. For example, I can't imagine trying to paint both the interior AND exterior of a car once the object is completely merged.

P.s I want to retopo my object as a low poly mesh and as far as I can tell I can only do an AUTOPO on a single volume rather than a collection of volumes. Is that correct?

Edited June 2, 2013 by Grimmy

[AbnRanger]

Actually, in the end I got it to work. Here is what I did:

1. I set all my layer to voxel mode (some were in SUrface still)

2. One of my child volumes was 6* the resolution of the parent so I reduced this to 1*

3. I merged them one by one.

During this process, the object seemed to loose its texture information, but fortunately I had kept my old copy of the object in another layer. I unhid this and used the 'Bake color there from all volumes' button on the new merged layer. It looks like it's all worked perfectly!

I am glad this method seems to work because I can see that there is a big advantage to painting the objects while they are still individual volumes. During the painting process I was able to hide/show individual objects allowing me to paint the object much more easily. For example, I can't imagine trying to paint both the interior AND exterior of a car once the object is completely merged.

P.s I want to retopo my object as a low poly mesh and as far as I can tell I can only do an AUTOPO on a single volume rather than a collection of volumes. Is that correct?

You can have multiple objects on a layer and Autopo will work on them, but yes, it runs one layer at a time. Why? Because you will likely want different parameters on different objects.