Decimate destroys my Model Low Proxy view

[pgson]

I'm starting to wonder if I have the magic touch on critical bugs with this program...

 

I've been trying to cache my model to work on it on a lower proxy. It hasn't worked before. Decimate didn't work, nor has decrease all volumes, etc. None of the voxel menus worked for me, and by not working I mean that they all cause the system to stop responding and/or crash, including close holes and clean up mesh, etc. I thought it was due possibly to holes in the mesh, but no I think this is some real problem.

 

The only thing I was able to finally do to continue working is to resample. Not the best method, but it got my model lower to continue working.

 

However, I needed to pose the model and reduce an area's size, but in order to do that, I wanted to free up resources by finally trying to cache the layer... Well, it didn't outright crash, though I thought it had again it was so slow. It does, however, utterly destroy the model:

 

 

 

When I go return to the high poly model, it's fine again:

 

 

I'd love it if someone tells me I'm just missing some very easy setting somewhere that caused this, or that there is an easy explanation for this and that I can move on. It's been a little frustrating these crazy bugs, or other issues like slowdowns doing random things. Modeling itself hasn't been a problem.

 

Since my last issue, I've upgraded my PC instead of the Mac, so I'm running the 7B beta on Windows 8, AMD 6300 Black, 8GB memory, Radeon 7790.

 

 

Hope someone can help. Thanks.

[Tony Nemo]

How much of the 8GB of memory are you using with this model?

[pgson]

Looks like it's using 1.8 GBs. I also turned on all the hidden pieces that are off above. I am sure it goes a little higher after a bunch of sculpting, etc.

 

Just took a look while it's trying to cahce the layer. It spikes over 4.6 GBs of memory used. The program locked the computer for a minute, but it's responding now, still decimating, and the memory has receded to 3.6 GBs. I am sure it's going to look like above again.

 

Yup, it sure does. Memory has calmed all the way to 740 MBs.

Edited October 9, 2013 by pgson

[Tony Nemo]

By the hair of your chinny-chin-chin!

[TimmyZDesign]

Hi pgson,

I've been reading a bunch of your posts on the forums here recently. I have also encountered a lot of the problems you have been describing, but I have gradually learned over time how to play nicely with 3D-Coat to avoid a lot of these kinds of issues.

The best suggestion that I can give you is to try to keep your overall project resolution as low as possible. You had mentioned that your project was something like 40 million polygons at one point, and honestly I think that is just way too high. If I go that high, I always have a lot of problems on my machine (slow-down, tools stop working, etc.) If I were you, I'd make it my first priority to use various methods to reduce your poly count to a suggested maximum of like 10 million. Try cutting up the model into pieces, and then decimate those pieces, or use the decimate SHIFT action with a brush to manually reduce the poly count in areas that have less detail. There are various other tricks for poly count reduction that I am sure you have already read about in other threads. Also try and get it into Zbrush and run Zremesher on it if you can, then bring it back to 3D-Coat. Alternately you can also try autopo or manual retopology on it.

In the future try and keep your overall poly count lower on your projects. If it starts to get high, start decimating, break it into parts, cache it, etc. just don't let it get so outrageously high so you can still manage it.

That's just my two cents. It seems to work for me on my projects. Remember, you can still get a lot of detail without having really huge polycounts.

[ajz3d]

Hello Pgson!

 

Timmy is right. 40 millions is a total overkill for most of the things I can think of. It can only bring trouble, so don't be afraid to decimate the mesh from time to time during sculpting. Decimation does a really good job in 3D Coat.

 

About your problem. Have you tried to decimate by just a little bit, like 1-2 percent? Does it explode too?

If it does, then maybe try running a couple of Smooth All iterations (tangent smoothing) before decimation. It slightly alters triangles and might help to prevent the sculpture from exploding.

I rarely run into this problem, but if I do then usually introduction of small changes in the mesh (like described above) helps.

 

Just my 5 cents.

 

P. S. Nice sculpture!

Edited October 10, 2013 by ajz3d

[pgson]

High Timmy Z,

 

Thanks for the reply. I agree with you and have tried to cut it back. I never wanted it that high in the first place. Back in August I made the base sculpt and had to shelve it for a while until I could get to it again. Using the V4 build then on a Mac, I seemed to have issues with sculpting in both voxel and surface mode with the model eventually getting lots of artifacting. I upped the rez a couple of times, but never close to 10 million. That seemed to always work. I also read on another blog that it's ideal to keep it lower, and an artist out there uses basically nothing more than 10 million and still gets a ton of detail.

 

When I went back to it and decided to go into surface mode, I upped the rez one more time and kept it a little over 10 million. I never wanted to go higher. For whatever reason, the new sharp preset from Artman really made it jump. I also could have done with less detail here and waited for the paint room, but I see others doing detailed sculpts with tons of creases before going in the paint room and they don't have the issues I did with the detail making the polycount jump insanely. I don't know, but it seems like a real issue.

 

I did reduce the model and went back to only do a few details to bring some of them back. The body model is about 25 million right now. I think the main issue, that I didn't know about, was before ever going into surface mode, I should have apparently maybe, reading from digman's post in another thread, chose fill voids and close invisible hulls. It seems that there are a lot of unseen holes that are being fed, somehow, by adding creases to the surface. I see them pop up with using the freeze tool to mask out a portion of the model. When I clear that mask, there's a lot of little artifacted holes, that do close, or can be smoothed over, but shouldn't be there to begin with.

 

Frustrating. All of this. And it shouldn't be. On the plus side: kudos to adding spell checker here in the forums. I definitely appreciate it.

 

 

ajz3d, thanks I'll try those options. When you see something like this, you start to think the worst, but perhaps doing something like Smooth All might be all it needs... I hope so. I kept the decimation level before at something like 80% percent of the original to try and preserve the most detail.

[ajz3d]

Well I don't guarantee that it will work but it's worth a try.

[pgson]

Well, this is the result of Smooth All:

 

 

 

The result of Decimate at just under 2% :

 

 

 

 

Welcome to my world... Would someone mind telling me why Smooth All, Tangent Smoothing, keep sharp detail, should result in cutting off the top half of the model?

 

The Decimation at 2% is better, but still obviously unusable. With only a little more detailing left on portion of the arms and ribs you see, that aren't in the finish covered by clothing, I guess I will just detail those areas and then try auto retopo, and if that doesn't work -- manually retopoing it all. If that doesn't work, well, you're going to be looking at one unhappy camper.

[pgson]

Ok, I've tried, in the event to help pinpoint what the problem is, to see what would happen with models before the detailing with the sharp preset occurred. And as I suspected, a stage of my model back when it was 10 million polygons, but before me putting a bunch of creases into it, works just fine without any problems at all when caching the layer. It takes less than 30 seconds and no explosions occur that I can see. I tried a stage where I just started adding creases under the eyes and it also worked just fine, at 12 million polygons. So, somewhere in the interim of adding all of this detail work and upping the resolution, the model seems to have its surface area compromised to the point 3D-Coat simply can't account for it.

 

Model after just starting detailing (adding thumbs to not spam the thread with massive images):

 

 

Decimated:

 

[pgson]

Since I can't edit the above: Ok, I went and took the model from surface mode back to voxel mode, ignoring the slight hit it takes to the details because I wanted to see if this would solve it. In the voxel layer, right click menu, I chose fill all voids and close invisible hulls. I then went back to surface mode, which also cut half of the model off, until I hit undo, which restored the model in surface mode fully (which still seems like a totally weird bug; perhaps it was going off of the previous build of the mesh instead of the new one). I then clicked to cahce the layer and it worked, in under 15 seconds this time.

 

 

That is what has to be done to solve this. I don't still know if it will occur again in detailing in surface mode, but I believe these base steps of preparing the model for surface mode first shores it up.

 

And on that note, it would be grand if that's either done by the program by default (sounds like the best option to me, as hardly anyone is ever going to know to do this otherwise), or a warning telling you that you should probably do this first comes up before it allows you to go to surface mode from voxel mode.

 

 

A little Leary to go forward here still... By they way, this also worked to export an obj properly, which I tried to do on the earlier model before detailing and it had holes in the face when I brought it back in. So, this issue would also affect exporting of obj's.

 

 

Also, I checked this in Zbrush and the obj comes through just fine. In both 3D Coat and Zbrush, it's closing off parts under the indent of the mouth and a portion of the inner eyelid, but other than that, the surface is perfect.

Edited October 10, 2013 by pgson

[Carlosan]

0001275: Disappearing surface

http://3d-coat.com/mantis/view.php?id=1275

 

0001235: Before change sculpt modes, ask user to clean surface first

http://3d-coat.com/mantis/view.php?id=1235

[Tony Nemo]

At this point in it's development and considering your modest amount of RAM, it would be wise to achieve your former (and problematic) detail in the Paint room.

[pgson]

Thanks for the links and add of my problem to the issue tree, Carlosan.

 

To clarify one point above I said: I found close invisible hulls actually was the cause of the added geometry in the mouth and eye lids and that added geometry screws with zremesher (I realize after reading now that it's best not to do mouth cavities in 3D-Coat, but it's too late to go back now). It's an unneeded step, apparently. Fill voids is awesome, though. Bringing the model back into surface mode and back again after clean surface has been applied has proven to work, without the issues before and there are no holes any longer in the mesh. Just the odd need, as I mentioned with smooth all above, to undo since going to surface mode cuts off half the model. It undoes it just fine. I have gone back to voxel mode to merge the top portion of his head, to make that less of an obsacle with the crown pieces as they are. Worked great, so that was the final need for voxels. Anyway, the mesh in surface mode looks much more uniform in wireframe mode after clean surface and I think zremesher is going to work. Auto retopo doesn't really like the geometry of Kain's face, as no matter how I guide the loops, it doesn't mesh right at all. I'll play around in the future maybe to see what the issue is there, but for right now, the easiest method is what I am after.

 

 

The model is down to 15 million and should be ok after a zremesher step. I'll finish the detailing of the body then in paint. The main reason why detailing became so needed while sculpting here is this is trying to be as faithful a recreation as possible of this model's proportions. Yet, all there is of the model to work off of is the one game magazine image of half of it without the clothing, and the compressed fmv from the games, which you can only pull so many shots from to see angles and everything. The cracks and how they flow over the form also help define just how specific the proportions of the model are, which I've altered it greatly in the arms and other places even since the pics above. Only after adding the detail right where it should be can I see if I was totally right, or not. I just should have used less of it. I am lucky to have the material there is to see it from, though, so it's fine. The final, final base detail and proportions of the body have been completed, so that's the hard part done (until the next hard part, heh).

 

 

Now that I know what to not do, I hope this solves the issues I've been having. I appreciate the help, all who've posted. I don't mean to sound down on the program. I know it's a great program, but it's so frustrating when you've worked longer on something than you should have and so many issues keep happening.

[BeatKitano]

Now that I know what to not do, I hope this solves the issues I've been having. I appreciate the help, all who've posted. I don't mean to sound down on the program. I know it's a great program, but it's so frustrating when you've worked longer on something than you should have and so many issues keep happening.

 

That's why you need (you didn't know so I'm not blaming you in any way) to make iterative saves, especially if you use multiple version of 3dcoat on a project, the addition of bugs over extended period of time can literaly kill your project if you don't do iterative saves.

I know I've been here MANY times, and raged quite a lot in the past. So if you follow the advices given here, you should be fine from now on

[pgson]

Thanks again, BeatKitano

 

I actually have been saving many versions of this model. I had a previous issue with it  on the Mac, as my thread lower on the page will show. On Mac, there's some odd bug where 3D-Coat can ... wipe your file off your hard drive, apparently, with no notice at all. It leaves the .jpg of it, though, which is useless, lol

 

I almost lost two days worth of work with that, but I was able to find a program to reconstruct the lost data from the drive. This time around, auto save on, and new versions every major new step, copied to multiple drives. Heh, I no longer take any chances.

 

The issue here was that, not knowing what was causing this mess of brushes cutting through my mesh, increasing the polycount though to oblivion, I had to hold off until I knew what the cause(es) was(were) before I continued modeling. I was just hanging in limbo there waiting on some solutions. I could have started from a previous save and continued detailing, but that wouldn't have done me any good if this would have just all happened again.

 

Despite still issues that can be frustrating at times, the model's coming along. I hope to have it exported soon and then I can get on with painting it. I'll have to learn fast retopoing. I'm cramming a lot of stuff here trying for this ambitious project.

 

Anyway, I hope to have some good updates soon.

 

Oh, I forgot: Pilgway's YouTube channel updated with a tutorial on repairing a mesh with holes, so I thought that was interesting. It leaves out the options in the voxel menu, itself, but he covers the tools that can be used (and how much they can slow down even for him, heh). Who is the guy that does those, who also did the Cyclops sculpt? He does a very good job on them and I appreciate that he takes the time out to do them all.

Edited October 16, 2013 by pgson