Several problems since upgrading to v4

[Winter Dragon]

Hi there,

 

I bought 3d Coat back in March when it was still v3, and every time I checked for updates it said v4.00 Beta was the latest. It wasn't until last night that I realized v4 has been out for a while, so I did the upgrade thing and downloaded 4.04B. I found 3d Coat a little confusing before, but now a lot of things have changed or look different, or are called something else.

 

 

Paint Room

 

1) I was using a mask called 'elephant' which gave a nice wrinkled skin for a creature I've been working on, but since moving to v4 I cannot find this mask. There are many new ones, but not the one I have been using in v3. What happened to it?

 

2) Under the layer window there used to be controls for the layer's % opacity and relief. Where did they go? I cannot see them anywhere and they were really useful.

 

3) When I import paint layers for a mesh that has identical uv island borders and layout, I get ugly seams showing approximately 2 pixels thick. The problem is the layers do not 'pad' or 'bleed' beyond the edge of the islands by a few pixels. Is there some setting I can change prior to exporting layers so I don't get seams on import? I found a Mantis ticket dated 2009 on this very issue, an it says it's still active four years later. What's going on?

 

 

Retopo Room

 

I have a low polygon triangulated mesh (~35k triangles) that I want to quadify in 3d Coat using the auto-topology tool. I tried the wizard from the wizard screen when 3d Coat starts up, but this melted details of my mesh into ugly geometry, like upper and lower jaw was melted together, ears were melted, horns were melted.. this is before it told me to draw the control lines.

 

So I made a new scene, and did 'File' > 'Import' > 'Import for RETOPO'. This brought in my mesh without any melting, I then put all my control lines on but:

 

 

4) 'Brush' button will not paint on the mesh where I want the quads to be high density. v3 used to paint areas a gray-ish brown which basically made more quads in those areas to preserve details. Why isn't this working? I click 'Brush' but nothing paints onto the mesh in the Retopo room.

 

5) I want to test the control lines I've drawn on the mesh but I cannot start the auto-topology wizard. In v3 I'm certain it was listed in the Retopo menu at the top, but I can't find it in v4. How do I make it create the quadified mesh?