Member Chip_M Posted January 29, 2014 Member Report Share Posted January 29, 2014 I'm running into some issues and need some workflow advice because I'm probably missing some things on how to best manage the task at hand for efficiency. I've sculpted the basic form for a character's hair and now I'm adding the fine details that I'll bake into a normal map so that there will be individual strands in the specular highlights. I'm using the scratches2 tool in spline mode with a radius of about .250 to create the strands. I lay down my spline and apply scratches2 and then switch to freeze and apply it along the same spline so I mask what I've already done and can get the look of interweaving strands without ending up with crosshatching. In order to resolve the strands and not have them pixelated junk I had to crank the resulution up to 16x. This is causing me all sorts of problems. I've lost hours of progress to out of memory crashes, have holes and tears appear in the surface for no reason, and it's just generally turning out to be a miserable experience. I tried caching the mesh in surface mode and that seemed to be working great, until I tried to save my progress and had another out of memory crash and a corrupted save file as a result. This is on a machine with 32GB of RAM. How are people able to do very fine detail in 3DC in surface mode without these problems? This is in the latest beta build. Any advice would be greatly appreciated. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Member Chip_M Posted January 30, 2014 Author Member Report Share Posted January 30, 2014 So I added a large page file to my D drive and tried again. Got to about the same point before trying to save and having another out of memory crash, despite it telling me that I had over 33GB of memory free on the status bar. This is maddening. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Carlosan Posted January 30, 2014 Report Share Posted January 30, 2014 any pic will help 16X is a lot... the size is very huge ? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Reputable Contributor AbnRanger Posted January 30, 2014 Reputable Contributor Report Share Posted January 30, 2014 Use the Muscles tool instead (Voxel mode works best). It's perfect for this situation. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Contributor Tony Nemo Posted January 30, 2014 Contributor Report Share Posted January 30, 2014 I'm laying down roof tiles at 32X (at 16X they meld together). I only have 12GB of RAM so your model must be huge. I can hardly imagine laying sown single strands, I would finish with Hair in C4D. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Member Chip_M Posted January 30, 2014 Author Member Report Share Posted January 30, 2014 In surface mode isn't the size arbitrary? Seems the only thing that would matter is polygon density, and it had to be dense enough to resolve the scratches. Muscles and curves are great for building the corn but not for final detailing. I tried to take as screenshot when the first hole appeared which is usually a sign of impending doom but it was too unresponsive at that point. I'll take some tomorrow to show what I'm doing. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Member Chip_M Posted January 30, 2014 Author Member Report Share Posted January 30, 2014 (edited) Muscles and curves are great for building the corn but not for final detailing. Er, building the form. Stupid auto-correct. Edited January 30, 2014 by Chip_M Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Reputable Contributor AbnRanger Posted January 30, 2014 Reputable Contributor Report Share Posted January 30, 2014 In surface mode isn't the size arbitrary? Seems the only thing that would matter is polygon density, and it had to be dense enough to resolve the scratches. Muscles and curves are great for building the corn but not for final detailing. I tried to take as screenshot when the first hole appeared which is usually a sign of impending doom but it was too unresponsive at that point. I'll take some tomorrow to show what I'm doing. In many cases, that is true, but you can build hair strands on top of head, while being on it's own separate layer. I just find that working with Muscles tool in Volume more, is more fluid and fast. It's much slower, IMHO, in Surface mode, for some reason. I think it's because 3D Coat is literally just building the strands with voxels, and is less calculation intensive than build geometry from scratch. It's also why merging different layers and booleans are MUCH faster in Volume mode, than surface mode. Surface is faster in just pure sculpting terms. But most everything else, Voxels are faster. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Member Chip_M Posted January 30, 2014 Author Member Report Share Posted January 30, 2014 Here's some screenshots of what I'm working on. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Member Chip_M Posted January 30, 2014 Author Member Report Share Posted January 30, 2014 (edited) Here's a screenshot from 3ds Max of the end result of one I'd done this way previously without running in to this problem. I'm not really sure what's different this time around other than that I'm doing the strands a bit smaller than I did on this one. Here's the finished product inside Second Life which is the target platform. Edited January 30, 2014 by Chip_M Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Reputable Contributor AbnRanger Posted January 30, 2014 Reputable Contributor Report Share Posted January 30, 2014 Personally, I think that is way too dense. That hair cap I did for the Hobbit wasn't even half that Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Member Chip_M Posted January 30, 2014 Author Member Report Share Posted January 30, 2014 In polygon density you mean? If it's less dense it won't resolve the scratches tool cleanly. Since the end result of the scratches ends up being a specular map I could do it outside of 3DC but being able to work directly on the form rather than on the UV template makes it much easier. I've exported the finished base as a new obj and am going to experiment with changing it's scale before brining it back into 3DC for another try. I'm really at a loss as to why I was able to do this without issue before and this time can't get more than a few strokes in before a crash. If memory serves I was at 8X last time, but was hoping to achieve a finer, cleaner result this time. Can 3DC just not handle that kind of poly density? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Member Chip_M Posted January 30, 2014 Author Member Report Share Posted January 30, 2014 Here's what it looks like trying to do it at 8X. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Member Chip_M Posted January 30, 2014 Author Member Report Share Posted January 30, 2014 The first hole appears. This is in the middle of a spline stroke and it should only be moving vertices. Notice how the freeze is darker around it as if it applied the stroke twice at that control point? Am I hitting a bug in the spline tool? When I brought the exported obj into Max to check scale it was huge so I scaled it down to a realistic size in real world units, reset its xform, and reexported to 3DC to see if that would make a difference. It had been 67 million polys at 16X previously, and is 44 million at 16X now. I can understand scale making a big difference in voxel mode, but what difference does it make in surface mode beyond floating point precision? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Member Chip_M Posted January 30, 2014 Author Member Report Share Posted January 30, 2014 So I switched back to voxel mode to repair a couple of holes, then switched back to surface and got this - even more holes. I'm about to give up. This is ridiculous. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Reputable Contributor AbnRanger Posted January 31, 2014 Reputable Contributor Report Share Posted January 31, 2014 Every once in a while I get this kind of issue, but it's pretty rare. I don't switch to voxel mode, unless I need to do some kind of Boolean operation or if I need to use the Muscles tool, etc. Didn't have any trouble at all working with hair on this model....lots of LiveClay work on the skin pores and hair...used the Crease clay (inverted) tool on the eyebrows, etc. Try and send the file to Andrew (support@3d-coat.com) and explain the trouble you are having. He's usually pretty responsive regarding bugs. In all of this, you never did mention what build you were using. Sometimes people are using a very old beta build and they are madder than a hornet cause the BETA build isn't rock solid. Andrew did a lot of work recently to fix holes in meshes and such. 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Member Chip_M Posted January 31, 2014 Author Member Report Share Posted January 31, 2014 I was using the latest beta build. I reverted back to the current release build to see if that made a difference but I encountered the same problems there as well. Random holes appearing in the mesh and out of memory errors. The bottom line seems to be that I just can't work in sufficient resolution to do what I want to do. I'm currently working on retopo and will try getting the effect in the paint room instead. One thing I can't seem to figure out is how to get a brush with a mask to behave the same way the scratches tool does. I thought maybe I could use a brush alpha that's just a few dots and have it follow along a spline path and achieve basically the same thing, allowing me to do several strands at once. Is something like that possible? If not I'm not going to be able to do it in the paint room either. Having to do one strand at a time would take days. Because of the length of the strands and needing the look of finely combed hair, being able to use the stroke along spline is really what I need. It's not something I can freehand and get the look I'm after. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Reputable Contributor AbnRanger Posted January 31, 2014 Reputable Contributor Report Share Posted January 31, 2014 (edited) You can do what you are trying to do, in the Voxel Room, but it's hard to tell what really is going on, without a screen recording of some kind. JING is always a good free option...and you can upload the rendered video to their server (screencast.com) The stills help a little, but a recording helps best on really tricky issues. Try to close the file > close the app > delete the Options.xml file in your "MyDocs/3D Coat V4 folder (it gets buggered up once in a while and exhibits bug-like behavior). Then re-open the app and file. This might help a bit as well: There is also a new FILL HOLES tool in Surface mode. You might want to test that. Edited January 31, 2014 by AbnRanger Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Member Chip_M Posted January 31, 2014 Author Member Report Share Posted January 31, 2014 I should have also mentioned that I'm running the 64bit CUDA version, Win 8.1, 32GB RAM, and a GTX 780. It's possible I could be running into a RAM or drive issue but I've not had issues previously. When I first started having holes appear I tried the fill holes tool and 3DC didn't find them even though they're clearly visible in wireframe. There may just be something funky with this model too. I built the base forms in Max using splines with cross section and surface modifiers then shelling them and adding a turbosmooth. I merged those pieces into a voxel layer in 3DC, closed invisibe hulls and filled voids, then finished off the base form with a lot of smoothing, and laying down curves and blending them in, I didn't have any problems at all until switching to surface mode to do strand detailing. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Reputable Contributor AbnRanger Posted January 31, 2014 Reputable Contributor Report Share Posted January 31, 2014 (edited) I should have also mentioned that I'm running the 64bit CUDA version, Win 8.1, 32GB RAM, and a GTX 780. It's possible I could be running into a RAM or drive issue but I've not had issues previously. When I first started having holes appear I tried the fill holes tool and 3DC didn't find them even though they're clearly visible in wireframe. There may just be something funky with this model too. I built the base forms in Max using splines with cross section and surface modifiers then shelling them and adding a turbosmooth. I merged those pieces into a voxel layer in 3DC, closed invisibe hulls and filled voids, then finished off the base form with a lot of smoothing, and laying down curves and blending them in, I didn't have any problems at all until switching to surface mode to do strand detailing. I think I recall some mention of holes/explosions when using the scratch brushes...but I thought that was some time ago. I never use them. Personally, I'd just rely on the Gum brush for that, and a good brush alpha with those scratches/lines. In the Brush Options panel, you can experiment with SPACING at the bottom and check rotate brush with curve, etc. Another thing you could do is create a group of strands (use a plane that is stored on another separate layer) with the Muscles tool, or snakes tool. Once you have the strands looking right > drag and drop that (strands only) layer into the models pallet. This will store it in MyDocs/3D Coat V4/ VoxStamps/Objects. Now go to the STRIPS pallet and click on the + icon. This will let you find that new obj file of the strands (you just created), once you find/pick it, you'll have a new panel come up that lets you create a 3D brush alpha from a model. Instead of just an object in the center, you want this to extend from the top to the bottom (no gaps)...so that the strips can continue on in an uninterrupted pattern, along the length of your stroke/spline. You can see the process about halfway through this video: This is what was used for the sticthes in this video: Edited January 31, 2014 by AbnRanger Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Member Chip_M Posted February 1, 2014 Author Member Report Share Posted February 1, 2014 (edited) I finished doing retopo and UV layout and tried making a custom strip and using it to paint depth in the paint room instead. It's working perfectly so far and giving me the same ability to switch between applying the brush along a spline and then freezing the same stroke. Thanks a bunch for the help. Edited February 1, 2014 by Chip_M Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Reputable Contributor AbnRanger Posted February 1, 2014 Reputable Contributor Report Share Posted February 1, 2014 I finished doing retopo and UV layout and tried making a custom strip and using it to paint depth in the paint room instead. It's working perfectly so far and giving me the same ability to switch between applying the brush along a spline and then freezing the same stroke. Thanks a bunch for the help. Yeah....some things can be done as easily or more efficiently in the Paint Room. Skin Pores and very fine wrinkles is one such example. Some Dragon Scales and the like, would be another. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Member Chip_M Posted February 1, 2014 Author Member Report Share Posted February 1, 2014 Yeah, it's a lot faster working on the retopo mesh too and ultimately it's giving me exactly what I was after with the added bonus of it being completely nondestructive. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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