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Features request priorities - share ideas for improving the program


Carlosan
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Switching between perspective and orthographic modes has bothered me since the start.  I know which is which, but sometimes it's hard to tell which one you're in until you turn on the grid to see.  Can we have either a quick grid preview that pops up for a second after we switch and then fades away or at least some indicator in the tool that says "P" or "O?"

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It would also be helpful to see a preview of the layer's contents pop up like you do when you float your cursor over a model or spline.  This could help in situations where a user is passed a file from another user who doesn't follow a clean or understandable layer naming convention.  I would recommend this new "feature," be toggled, so that it doesn't affect performance for those who don't want to use it.

3D Coat actually brightens the layer you select, in the Voxel Room, so it does highlight or preview...when you click on it

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Switching between perspective and orthographic modes has bothered me since the start.  I know which is which, but sometimes it's hard to tell which one you're in until you turn on the grid to see.  Can we have either a quick grid preview that pops up for a second after we switch and then fades away or at least some indicator in the tool that says "P" or "O?"

You can see the the icon change in the Navigation bar when you switch to one mode or another. That's how I've always noticed it, and the 5 key on the NUM pad toggles between them. Works well for me.

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AbnRanger,

 

What I mean by preview on the layer is to show an image of what's in the layer, just like you see when you float your cursor over a model in the Models tab.  As far as the perspective/orthographic icon, I see the change now, but it's so subtle I've missed it this entire time.  Might be something to consider changing for other users.

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AbnRanger,

 

What I mean by preview on the layer is to show an image of what's in the layer, just like you see when you float your cursor over a model in the Models tab.  As far as the perspective/orthographic icon, I see the change now, but it's so subtle I've missed it this entire time.  Might be something to consider changing for other users.

I understand what you are saying, but keep in mind that Andrew already has a huge Wishlist from the community to consider. The more that's added, the less likely you'll get the one you REALLY, REALLY wanted....about 2yrs ago. So, if something in 3D Coat already works pretty well, I personally would hope that other high priority requests get attended to, instead. You already have a preview or sorts, with Voxels...as I mentioned. What you see in the Models and Splines pallets are thumbnails created from the conversion to OBJ files. 3D Coat is essentially exporting those layers that you drag and drop into the pallet, and creates a thumbnail of them...rather than make the user have to guess, based on a file name.

 

So, it seems rather redundant to ask him to spend precious development time to highlight (point out) a layer, that is already highlighted by clicking on it. If that user doesn't know which object are which, they have that and they can simply hover of the object in question, hit the H key and it is selected (layer highlighted too).

 

Same goes for Perspective/Ortho....what is already there works fine for me, so again....I'd much rather Andrew spend time on things many of us have been requesting for a long time...like Paint Room improvements. Not saying those things couldn't use some improvement, but I have come to learn that feature requests need to be well considered before making them, cause they might make it harder for you to get the bigger things you asked for, months/years ago.

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The problem with the ortho/persp icon is that it's too small, I can't blame the guy who did them, I tried to make a clearer version but with 16*16px it's really hard to make a very noticeable difference between the two.

I have never had a problem distinguishing the two icons, personally. One is perfectly rectangular. The other has some distortion. Easy to discern, imho.

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Well like everyone else I got used to it, or more like learned to switch between the two modes to see which one is which in my case, but if you make a poll asking if the icon distinction is clear, I'm sure the result will not be what you expect.

I've been waiting for him to put a toggle in the Nav bar, or icon in the Tool Panel (Paint Room) for the 2D Texture Editor. It's way too powerful of a feature to be hidden away in a Menu list. Same thing for Auto Retopo. MAJOR, MAJOR feature...and instead of it intuitively being placed in the Retopo Room, as a sub-section of the Tool Panel, it's hidden away where no new user can find it. In a right-click menu from the Vox Tree Panel. :blink:

 

In Photoshop, the user has the Adjustment panel, to make changes like Levels, Hue and Saturation, etc. In 3D Coat, instead of having a prominent place for the different adjustments, where they are easily found and accessed, they are hidden in the menu...of a menu option. :wacko:

 

How about Layer Masks? For a LONG, LONG, LONG time...I didn't even know they existed in 3D Coat. I saw a tut from Chris Werner that touched on it a bit. But if someone doesn't show you where/how, you'd never, ever find it! :unsure:  There is no icon at the bottom of the layer panel to create one, like in Photoshop (so that's where one would intuitively look for it). Even as it is...it's still a rather convoluted workflow, creating and using one. Can't even see a thumbnail or any indication what part is actually masked...except to hide the layer.

 

I'd much rather these things get fixed before we worry about whether or not the orthographic/perspective view icons are different enough. As you can see, there are much bigger fish to fry.

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I would like a raycast select poly tool in the paint room( similar to modo or xsi's selection tool).I find the hide tool a little awkward even with rectangle select.It would be a lot better if we could select a group of poly's and then grow the selection and then hide ( or freeze )the unselected parts,also selecting poly elements aswell would be a nice addition.Also some way of creating visibility groups from all the models elements would be a pretty good addition....I suppose you do have the option to setup this in an external package before import but being able to do this  quickly in 3DC would be great too.

 

if anyone has any good info on best practices in this area in the the paint room please let me know .

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3D Coat's UV tools are very good and I like to use them in conjunction with other programs like Max, Maya, and Zbrush. This relates to working with imported meshes and doing UV work in 3D Coat.

 

In the UV room I would like for object lock and visibility to affect the UV preview. I can not select faces, islands, vertices or edges in the 3D view - only in the UV preview and sometimes parts of the model are widely scattered on the UV map, making them tough to select as a group. If I want to re-uv part of a mesh but leave some alone or I want to move faces from one UV map to another, it can be difficult to select the parts of the model I want to work with.

 

Currently the object visibility buttons will ghost out the "invisible" objects, but they are still selectable in the UV preview window. If they were eliminated from this view when designated as not visible in the objects menu or they were locked when their object was designated as locked, it would be easier for me to isolate parts of the model. If the visibility and lock applied to UV operations it would allow me to do operations on some parts of the model and leave other parts alone. So I might choose to do different kinds of mapping to different parts of the model. This is currently doable if I move parts of the model to a different UV set but again without visibility and lock working for the UV preview window it is hard or tedious for me to find all the various bits that I need to move in the UV preview sheet.

 

Being able to select elements in the 3D window would also help, but just the ability to lock or hide objects would be sufficient for much easier isolation of parts.

 

Thanks

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  • 1 month later...
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I added dll ant txt file, but updating of my 3d-coat from Steam was a bit problematic after that. It given me error on updating. But from the second time it succeed.

Btw, I am interested in feedback about "Export to Steam workshop" - does it produce what expected?

Please contact me via support@3d-coat.com

 

 

 

 

 

 

And big thanks to everyone for voices in support, patience and testing!!!

 

I can't to give a try right now, but i could test out when i get some more time.

 

Andrew i would like to know what to expect with the Next version of 3Dcoat, and it seem that the stuff that is In, right now is the physically based rendering.

Now that is will start to be the standar for Game engine too, it would be important tfor 3D coat to have that support .

 

I can provide you some good article on the one you will surely by yourself understand the power of this method, and i guess it would be so nice to have that supported ion the render room of 3Dcoat,

 

theory : https://www.marmoset.co/toolbag/learn/pbr-theory

technical : http://www.marmoset.co/toolbag/learn/pbr-practice

 

and there are good link on at the footer, 

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I can't to give a try right now, but i could test out when i get some more time.

 

Andrew i would like to know what to expect with the Next version of 3Dcoat, and it seem that the stuff that is In, right now is the physically based rendering.

Now that is will start to be the standar for Game engine too, it would be important tfor 3D coat to have that support .

 

I can provide you some good article on the one you will surely by yourself understand the power of this method, and i guess it would be so nice to have that supported ion the render room of 3Dcoat,

 

theory : https://www.marmoset.co/toolbag/learn/pbr-theory

technical : http://www.marmoset.co/toolbag/learn/pbr-practice

 

and there are good link on at the footer, 

On one hand, I can easily agree with this. But on the other, I find that 3D Coat can quickly get bloated with things it was never really intended to do....while leaving a lot of current features unpolished/unrefined. Things such as Hair/Fur, Bones/Rigging, and yes...even a more full-featured renderer. I asked Andrew about the prospect of licensing Messiah Studio (for a 3D Coat Animate version), have it tightly integrated so the workflow between the two is pretty seamless. Everything 3D Coat is missing in a major 3D App, Messiah offers, and vice versa. This way Andrew doesn't have to do all the grunt work for all these kinds of features. But, after further deliberation, I doubt too many people would be interested.

 

It is what it is. An app that hands model assets over to the bigger 3D Apps to perform those tasks. The vast majority of users, here, already own/use one of those apps. Without animation capabilities and such, it would be very limited in usefulness, no matter how good the renderer might be So, compared to the many other feature requests, I think a full-blown renderer would be baking a pie before the apples are sliced, if you will.

 

I think REAL Sculpt layers in the Voxel Room, should be the next major task. Why? Because it's the one major limitation remaining in the Voxel Workspace. You can't sculpt multiple layers on a single object (ie. one for wrinkles, another for bumps/horns...another for skin pores and blend each one, or mask part of one out. Both ZBrush and Mudbox have had this capability for ages, and sculpters with experience in these apps will continue to look down their noses at 3D Coat, until this functionality becomes part of the Voxel toolset. I know many others want full Vector Displacement support...not the very limited amount it offers currently. Others want some attention given to the Paint Rooom and it's Layers. So, there is plenty that needs to be done, internally, before stepping beyond the scope of what 3D Coat was intended to do

 

With all of that said, I think Raul was going to try and add Blender's Cycles engine into 3D Coat, but had to go back to Cuba...so, that development stalled. Maybe he can return this year and get that re-started.

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4.1 is supposed to have a big push for the paint room. Paint layer groups is apparently going to happen (which I am really looking forward to), and hopefully Photoshop compatible masks and the ability to dissable texture culling as well.

 

PBR would be nice I agree, It's taking over rapidly in the games space; Marmoset 2, UE4, Cryengine, Unity5, etc. all have it. The new Substance Painter app also has it.

In 3D Coat, each Paint layer is essentially a layer group, itself...having 3 maps (Color, Spec and Depth). I would like to see Andrew expose those 3 maps, with some kind of toggle, so users could lighten the overall data that has to be stored in memory and processed by the CPU. Then enable masks per layer/map, with a thumbnail...just as it works in PS

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On one hand, I can easily agree with this. But on the other, I find that 3D Coat can quickly get bloated with things it was never really intended to do....while leaving a lot of current features unpolished/unrefined. Things such as Hair/Fur, Bones/Rigging, and yes...even a more full-featured renderer. I asked Andrew about the prospect of licensing Messiah Studio (for a 3D Coat Animate version), have it tightly integrated so the workflow between the two is pretty seamless. Everything 3D Coat is missing in a major 3D App, Messiah offers, and vice versa. This way Andrew doesn't have to do all the grunt work for all these kinds of features. But, after further deliberation, I doubt too many people would be interested.

 

It is what it is. An app that hands model assets over to the bigger 3D Apps to perform those tasks. The vast majority of users, here, already own/use one of those apps. Without animation capabilities and such, it would be very limited in usefulness, no matter how good the renderer might be So, compared to the many other feature requests, I think a full-blown renderer would be baking a pie before the apples are sliced, if you will.

 

I think REAL Sculpt layers in the Voxel Room, should be the next major task. Why? Because it's the one major limitation remaining in the Voxel Workspace. You can't sculpt multiple layers on a single object (ie. one for wrinkles, another for bumps/horns...another for skin pores and blend each one, or mask part of one out. Both ZBrush and Mudbox have had this capability for ages, and sculpters with experience in these apps will continue to look down their noses at 3D Coat, until this functionality becomes part of the Voxel toolset. I know many others want full Vector Displacement support...not the very limited amount it offers currently. Others want some attention given to the Paint Rooom and it's Layers. So, there is plenty that needs to be done, internally, before stepping beyond the scope of what 3D Coat was intended to do

 

With all of that said, I think Raul was going to try and add Blender's Cycles engine into 3D Coat, but had to go back to Cuba...so, that development stalled. Maybe he can return this year and get that re-started.

abnRanger, did you really understood what Physically based rendering is ? it is exactly in the scope of 3Dcoat ; if 3D coat do not do that, Zbrush with.
and there are still a lot of software that handle PBR right now, you can't compare this request with people who ask for an animation module to integrate in 3dcoat, sorry but that has none sense.
 
I don't understand very well how the shader have to be build to support the PBR in 3Dcoat, i am just an artists tha works with the technology of today, and now standart comes to PBR, if 3Dcoat don't follow it i repeat another software will do that instead. and ijust thought that painting data on model was the scope of 3Dcoat i am sorry if i have wrong.
Also i am not interested in the rendering engine of 3d coat, but if you work on PBR shader, the viewer have to be capable to display what you are painting.
So no it not about the improvement of One Shader for the paint room ideally ( fresnel is necessary from what i know).
and a refine of the layer system to bring it to deal with more Channels to paint on your object as refletivity, microsurface, gloss map.
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I think a better snap retopo mesh to form would be a good thing to have.  Currently, it doesn't work well when you've decided to make a symmetrical mesh assymetrical.  Granted, there are limits to how well something like this could work.

 

However, in an example where the right hand and arm were angled downward more, using a previously created symmetrical retopo won't snap to that arm and hand well.  Improving the ability to snap/conform of retopo meshes would be super helpful.

 

Something like what this program can do is what I'm thinking of:  http://www.russian3dscanner.com

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Procedural Textures making patterns at Paint Room

 

A mix in between NoiseMaker and DDO maybe ?

 

noisemaker_ui2.jpg

 

3.jpg

+1.Yes, please. but somewhere at the top of the list, needs to be REAL sculpt layers (per object) with masking or morph targets. This is THE feature that both Mudbox and ZBrush have long had, and 3D Coat missing. I asked Andrew about this several months before V4 was officially released and he said he would look into it right after that release. IMHO, it's the No.1 obstacle to attracting top notch sculpters from the ranks of Mudbox and Zbrush, to 3D Coat. It's just too important of a feature, for them to give up, in order to switch to sculpting in 3D Coat.

 

Andrew has knocked down that performance and brush feel/options/presets obstacles. This is the last one standing, IMHO. And in that regard, it should have a higher priority than even the Paint Room stuff (which I am in favor of seeing, as well). I think this is the key ingredient to moving 3D Coat squarely into the same ranks as ZBrush and Mudbox, in terms of sculpting. Paint Layer improvements can wait, IMHO, as they work pretty well, now...except for the sliders.

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....you simply CANNOT do that in the Voxel Room. The closest thing to it is in the Paint Room, with Image-Based Sculpting. But that's not the environment/workspace you want that capability. You want to be able to do this with the advanced sculpting tools in the Voxel Room.

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abnRanger, did you really understood what Physically based rendering is ? it is exactly in the scope of 3Dcoat ; if 3D coat do not do that, Zbrush with.
and there are still a lot of software that handle PBR right now, you can't compare this request with people who ask for an animation module to integrate in 3dcoat, sorry but that has none sense.
 
I don't understand very well how the shader have to be build to support the PBR in 3Dcoat, i am just an artists tha works with the technology of today, and now standart comes to PBR, if 3Dcoat don't follow it i repeat another software will do that instead. and ijust thought that painting data on model was the scope of 3Dcoat i am sorry if i have wrong.
Also i am not interested in the rendering engine of 3d coat, but if you work on PBR shader, the viewer have to be capable to display what you are painting.
So no it not about the improvement of One Shader for the paint room ideally ( fresnel is necessary from what i know).
and a refine of the layer system to bring it to deal with more Channels to paint on your object as refletivity, microsurface, gloss map.

 

Ok. I may have misunderstood what you were asking. Sounded like a request for a full-blown unbiased renderer, etc. I asked Andrew (months ago) about some type of dDo or Substance Designer plugin, so the user could take the textures to another level, before being exporting out of 3DC. He said he had something in mind for similar type of functionality. Sounds like he's working on it, now.

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