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Multiple Maps from 3Dcoat Retopo Room


supermoby
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Hi,

 

I'm coming from Topogun and I have found 3DCoat retopo room to be heaven sent.

 

I've pretty much found all the info I needed on these forums but one thing still eludes me and unfortunately it is a make or break thing because it's the last link in the chain - without it all my work is worthless.

 

I'm here to ask any expert for advice on the following:

 

I have broken down my retopo object into several uv sets. How do I export (from Retopo room, NOT paint) the maps for these uv sets... So far I get overlapped maps on one map. In other words my 3 displacement maps are superimposed into one.

 

Now for the question of why I don't take my object to the Paint room... because I could not find one single way, after literally dozens of tries based on the 3DCoat tutorials and docs to get it into the Paint room without artifacts.

 

Thank you all so much.

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Above the upper left hand corner of the viewport there is a drop down menu option to make a new uv set. Do that, and then move the desired uv islands (a.k.a "shells") to the new uv set that you have created. That way they will not all be superimposed upon each other. You can do this the same way in either the Retopo room or the UV room. Make sure to click on the "Apply UV" button when you are done.

AbnRanger shows how to do it in this video here:

There is also good information in this video here:

Also, you can merge to the Paint Room and then just export your model without any of the maps and the UVs you created will remain intact for baking operations in an external app like Xnormal.

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Above the upper left hand corner of the viewport there is a drop down menu option to make a new uv set. Do that, and then move the desired uv islands (a.k.a "shells") to the new uv set that you have created. That way they will not all be superimposed upon each other. You can do this the same way in either the Retopo room or the UV room. Make sure to click on the "Apply UV" button when you are done.

 

 

Thank you for trying to help me. I watched both video but it does not seem to address my issue specifically. Will rewatch again to make sure I have not missed anything.

 

"Above the upper left hand corner of the viewport there is a drop down menu option to make a new uv set. Do that, and then move the desired uv islands (a.k.a "shells") to the new uv set that you have created. That way they will not all be superimposed upon each other. You can do this the same way in either the Retopo room or the UV room. Make sure to click on the "Apply UV" button when you are done."

 

I did that. I know how to create and move UVs between sets. Problem was only when baking out. It bakes one map only with the 2 sets superimpossed.

 

So to be clear, creating uvs is not the problem, just baking out the multiple maps for each set from Retopo room.

 

"You can do this the same way in either the Retopo room or the UV room."

 

My UV room is empty... I only worked in Retopo room. Can I move between Retopo and UV room without Paint?

 

"Make sure to click on the "Apply UV" button when you are done."

 

For the life of me I cannot find such a button in the Retopo room. It exisits in the emtpy UV room and it keeps giving me an error that I must press unwrap before proceeding - which I do but it doesn't fix anything.

 

"Also, you can merge to the Paint Room and then just export your model without any of the maps and the UVs you created will remain intact for baking operations in an external app like Xnormal."

 

If I merge to the paint room I get artifacts as noted.

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It is always good to state what version of 3DCoat you are using. The newer beta versions have features that have been added that might help you. Andrew address the problem you are having a few beta versions back. We could not import or export multiple uv sets from the retopo room.

 

My version ---- Linux 4.1.08B which is the latest beta for the Linux version of 3DC.

I have no problems exporting multiple uv sets with displacement maps from the retopo room using the bake texture function under the retopo menu or just exporting the uv multiple sets using the export function.

 

In the preferences menu be sure to select "Treat retopo groups as objects"

If you use the bake texture feature under the retopo menu be sure to first export your model with the uv sets then choose that model to bake the displacement maps to.

 

EDIT:

 

Now concerning artifacts in the displacements, I can only guess as you show no picture of your retopo mesh, so I will add a few words here.

 

Displacement maps like even quad polygons as much as possible. Very long elongated polygons not so good as they tend to cross 2 axis planes at the same time making them non-planar.

Any Non-Planar polygons are a big no -no in Displacement maps...

Good retopo topology plus a good uv seam layout is a must.

 

Also your scan settings are important as well.

 

The first above three are the biggest offenders I have seen down through the years helping with 3DC. Improper scan settings can be added to the mix as well. These problems cross all 3D applications. Now you might know these already but since no information was given, I just went ahead and added it here.

 

Newest betas.

http://3d-coat.com/forum/index.php?showtopic=10395

Edited by digman
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Sorry if I was not clear, but I was suggesting that you can bypass baking maps in 3D-Coat altogether (if it is not working for you), and just use 3D-Coat for retopo and making UVs. Then export your retopo model and your high poly model for baking within some other external app like Xnormal.

But here is a video about texture baking in 3D-Coat:

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Hello Digman & thanks for trying to help out.

 

The latest - 4.1 - It's the demo versio I dl a few days ago - Win 7- 64.

 

"I have no problems exporting multiple uv sets with displacement maps from the retopo room using the bake texture function under the retopo menu or just exporting the uv multiple sets using the export function.

In the preferences menu be sure to select "Treat retopo groups as objects"

If you use the bake texture feature under the retopo menu be sure to first export your model with the uv sets then choose that model to bake the displacement maps to."

 

It does not work for me unfortunately. I finally got it to bake the multiple maps by using your suggestion of "choose that model to bake the displacement maps to"... BUT the problem is that while the maps for each UV set gets baked to a map, they don't get added as refference in the mtl file... On top of that, when I open the obj in Mudbox (my destination) I have the superimposed UVs again.... instead of the 2 UV sets.

 

I've tried an fbx but that crashes both the GL and DX versions of 3D Coat. For some strange reason it probably doesn't like multiple uv sets. I say this because ealier on in the process I was able to save fbx just fine - before I split them up in multiple sets.

 

Is there a way to upload screen shots - I can't seem to figure it out.

 

Thank you -

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Sorry if I was not clear, but I was suggesting that you can bypass baking maps in 3D-Coat altogether (if it is not working for you), and just use 3D-Coat for retopo and making UVs. Then export your retopo model and your high poly model for baking within some other external app like Xnormal. But here is a video about texture baking in 3D-Coat:

Hi -

 

As far as I know and tested, Xnormal does not support multiple UV sets.

There also seems to be a problem with exporting multiple UV obj or fbx from 3D Coat. The obj has superimposed UVs in one set and FBX just crashes no matter what version of 3D Coat I use. See above....

 

Thank you - I'm watching the tutorial as I write this.

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There is a step missing here somewhere and it's like we're trying to help blindfolded. In college, if you had an issue while working in the lab, you'd call the instructor or lab assistant over to help. The first thing they would do is look at your screen to see what is going on. You are explaining what the problem is, but we don't have a clue what's actually taking place. You'd be surprised how many issues raised here is simply some small little thing....that we cannot see on our end.

 

That's why screen recordings are so helpful. Not only here, but if you have to send a bug report to (support@3d-coat.com) and/or Mantis (bug reporting/feature request site for 3D Coat) at 3d-coat.com/mantis .It helps us and Andrew get right to the source. Otherwise, it's often frustrating for you and us, both.

 

Jing is one good free screen recording app, and they will host the video, free, too.

 

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There is a step missing here somewhere and it's like we're trying to help blindfolded. In college, if you had an issue while working in the lab, you'd call the instructor or lab assistant over to help. The first thing they would do is look at your screen to see what is going on. You are explaining what the problem is, but we don't have a clue what's actually taking place. You'd be surprised how many issues raised here is simply some small little thing....that we cannot see on our end.

 

That's why screen recordings are so helpful. Not only here, but if you have to send a bug report to (support@3d-coat.com) and/or Mantis (bug reporting/feature request site for 3D Coat) at 3d-coat.com/mantis .It helps us and Andrew get right to the source. Otherwise, it's often frustrating for you and us, both.

 

Jing is one good free screen recording app, and they will host the video, free, too.

@AbnRanger  - Thanks for trying to help me. I did as you suggested. My workflow was as follows:

 

1) I have retopoed the geometry

2) I have created seams and unwrapped

3) I have created UV sets and distributed parts among them - I have just 2: "body" and "rest"

4) From this point on you can see in the included video how the different things I tried played out.

 

I'm probably not understanding something correctly but I can't figure out what.

 

Updated: I have seen some people say that obj has problems with multiple UV set.

 

However, for me, FBX with multiple UV sets crashes the program.

 

GOAL: Get the retopo with the multiple UV sets and multiple displacement maps into Mudbox and continue doing what I have to do. Seeing that obj and fbx are the only common formats between 3dCoat and Mudbox, how can  I solve my dilema?

 

Thank you

 

PS: Not familiar with tiles - would that work better in a 3d Coat > Mudbox scenario? Need very high res.

PPS: Watched hours of tutorials but could not find this workflow from Retopo room with multiple UVs... Always by going to Paint room etc...

Edited by supermoby
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You have one mistake in your exporting...  "Preserve positions of vertices while smoothing" This needs to be unchecked.

 

When I selected use Retopo mesh in the bake settings then yes, I too get only one uv set that contains in a overlapping fashion all the other uv sets. This would be a bug or an oversight when he made it possible to import and export multiple uv sets in the retopo  room.

 

When I select the exported obj file as the one to receive the projected textures then I get all the uv sets exported corrected.

 

Also the the preferred fashion is to merge to the paint room for your displacement map. I am more concerned about why you are getting artifacts than the problems you are having with exporting out of the retopo room using the bake texture feature.

 

The bake texture feature is really a hold over from version 2. The reason I would imagine that it does not write the texture information in the obj mtl file. Andrew even stated at one time, he might remove it because he whether not spend development time on it and it has been at times buggy in the past. He will work on it as problems arise in it's use though... :blink:

Edited by digman
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I sent you a pm about using voice communication and a screen sharing program to work on your problem if you are interested.

 

Thank you very much - I have pm you back with info.

 

I have no idea why going to the paint room gets everything messed up.

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I think the frequency of people not having problems with the bake means that it's something else.  Some step, somewhere...

 

One thing I noticed right off the bat (other than the crazy high resolution of the texture map) is that you have given no path or filename to any textures.

 

0eaGDgyq4tDPCv6d-Region.png

 

This might explains why you have no textures linked in your .mtl

Edited by alvordr
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0eaGDgyq4tDPCv6d-Region.png

 

This might explains why you have no textures linked in your .mtl

 

"I think the frequency of people not having problems with the bake means that it's something else.  Some step, somewhere..."

 

That's why I'm here, to figure it out. Last night Digman had the kind courtesy to give me a crash course in 3D coat and inform me on many issues I was unclear on in regards to 3D Coat :)

 

"One thing I noticed right off the bat (other than the crazy high resolution of the texture map) is that you have given no path or filename to any textures."

 

Crazy high resolution? Actually it's pretty normal for any animation and effects work. Unless you do games, 2k maps are obsolete... 4k are economical - and 8k are the norms.

 

The displacement map is clearly there (you can see in video). It doesn't get added.

 

According to the Obj format, the mtl should contain all file links including displacement.

 

Even after about 3 hours, with Digman guiding me, I was not able to output a proper mtl file that contains textures. This was from the Retopo room AND with another workflow by bringing the object into the Voxel room, Retopo and then baking to Paint.

 

Have you outputed from the retopo rooms baked maps for the obj and you have the links inside the mtl? If so, could you please share your workflow.

 

For example, in your screenshot I see you have the Temp file obj selected.... which would mean a temp mtl file, would it not?

Edited by supermoby
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I will add one more thing....it seems you are taking the long way home, here...as it were. Use the MERGE to _________options (either PPP/Per Pixel Paint, MV/Microvertex. The TEXTURE BAKING TOOL in the Retopo room is mainly for baking out a single map or rebaking a map, when your retopo mesh is already in the Paint Room. For, example, you could have gone from Voxels > Retopo > UV layout > Merge to Paint Room > started texture painting and decide you want to do a bit more sculpting in the Voxel Room.

 

You could go straight to the Voxel Room, sculpt and in the Retopo Room use the TEXTURE BAKING TOOL to bake a new normal and/or displacement map. At which point. From the Paint Room, you would create a new paint layer > go to the TEXTURES menu > IMPORT > Normal map or Displacement map.

 

You want to Merge to the Paint Room so you can inspect your baking results immediately, and make another attempt if you have to. It also sets you up for the next step/stage...Texture Painting.

 

 

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Crazy high resolution? Actually it's pretty normal for any animation and effects work. Unless you do games, 2k maps are obsolete... 4k are economical - and 8k are the norms.

 

Not unless you use UV tiles. I can assure you that four 2K UV tiles can be much more efficient when it comes to texel space usage than a single 4K texture applied to an object.

Edited by ajz3d
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Crazy high resolution? Actually it's pretty normal for any animation and effects work. Unless you do games, 2k maps are obsolete... 4k are economical - and 8k are the norms...

 

Not really. For feature film work, 8k might be a normal, but for the rest of the industry, it's pretty extreme. In fact, Mudbox only had 2k map maximum capacity until recently...in 2013, I think it was...they changed it to 8k max. 3D Coat has had 16k capacity for a while, but it is pretty rarely used, based on use cases mentioned on the forums, here.

 

Doesn't really matter in this situation, though. It's still best to merge your Retopo mesh to the Paint room > Inspect & Texture Paint > Export to your 3D App (some apps like Max and Modo...maybe Maya has now, not sure) via Applink plugin (FILE > EXPORT TO > 3ds Max), or just a standard export process. FILE > EXPORT

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Most of the problems are just from the user not understanding 3DC workflows. Last night was just to see what workflow supermoby was using and explaining the ins and outs of 3DC. Tonight session was getting the proper model imported from Zbrush with multiple surface mode layers. Some general retopo insights plus retopoing for displacement maps. A few more sessions to go and then supermoby should have a good handle on it...

Edited by digman
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Not unless you use UV tiles. I can assure you that four 2K UV tiles can be much more efficient when it comes to texel space usage than a single 4K texture applied to an object.

 

They can be, agreed... but I was going for a full UV set. Would not mind using tiles though but would like to learn this workflow first. I know Mudbox is built on the many 2k UV tile principle. But even they had to admit that this was limited and users were asking for more.

 

Actually to be totally honest, I'd go with the Ptex workflow if I could and bypass all this UV madness.

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Not really. For feature film work, 8k might be a normal, but for the rest of the industry, it's pretty extreme. In fact, Mudbox only had 2k map maximum capacity until recently...in 2013, I think it was...they changed it to 8k max. 3D Coat has had 16k capacity for a while, but it is pretty rarely used, based on use cases mentioned on the forums, here.

 

Doesn't really matter in this situation, though. It's still best to merge your Retopo mesh to the Paint room > Inspect & Texture Paint > Export to your 3D App (some apps like Max and Modo...maybe Maya has now, not sure) via Applink plugin (FILE > EXPORT TO > 3ds Max), or just a standard export process. FILE > EXPORT

 

 Hey AbnRander

 

"For feature film work, 8k might be a normal"

 

Sorry my fault for not mentioning - Yep, that's what I'm training for. But it's not just feature film though - TV as well. Mudbox's recent decision to allow 8k is pretty evident of what the new norms are.

I think the standard was set by Mari and for very good reason. It's so much easier and more forgiving to work at high res and not worry about the stretches and sometimes pixelation that can be visible at low rez.

 

I could go down in res for tests though... but I want to keep the full res just to test things out. I like to push things especially when I'm in demo mode and considering buying the software.

 

As Digman correctly pointed out, a lot of it was from an incorrect workflow I picked up from a DT tutorial. I had thought that the workflow would be similar to Topogun, which is where I was coming from and the alternative I was looking for. Turns out that it may get a bit more complicated in 3D Coat but also there would be other advantages as a result.... I just have to weight things.

 

So far I'm starting to really like the program :)  - Mainly because of Digman's showing me what's what...

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 Hey AbnRander

 

"For feature film work, 8k might be a normal"

 

Sorry my fault for not mentioning - Yep, that's what I'm training for. But it's not just feature film though - TV as well. Mudbox's recent decision to allow 8k is pretty evident of what the new norms are.

I think the standard was set by Mari and for very good reason. It's so much easier and more forgiving to work at high res and not worry about the stretches and sometimes pixelation that can be visible at low rez.

 

I could go down in res for tests though... but I want to keep the full res just to test things out. I like to push things especially when I'm in demo mode and considering buying the software.

 

As Digman correctly pointed out, a lot of it was from an incorrect workflow I picked up from a DT tutorial. I had thought that the workflow would be similar to Topogun, which is where I was coming from and the alternative I was looking for. Turns out that it may get a bit more complicated in 3D Coat but also there would be other advantages as a result.... I just have to weight things.

 

So far I'm starting to really like the program :)  - Mainly because of Digman's showing me what's what...

Remember, Mari is designed to work on extremely beefy systems that can handle 16k-32k maps, etc. Mudbox moving up to 8k, finally, doesn't mean 8k is the NORM. There are just circumstances where it's necessary. Even Mudbox slows down a bit with 8k maps. So, it's not efficient to work that way unless you are have a beefy workstation, and even then, there is a noticeable performance difference. I've tested both 3D Coat's painting performance vs Mudbox, with 4k and 8k maps, and with the i7 970 (6-core/12thread...running at 4.2Ghz) and 32GB RAM, 3D Coat handles 4k very fluidly, but 8k starts to show some lag with very large brushes.

 

Mudbox is similar. It has this annoying pause initially (loading data to the Graphics card), but is really fast once it kicks in, with 4k maps. 8k has noticeable lag, too. 8k maps are MASSIVE. Remember even the best flat screens today only offer 4k. But that is super sharp detail even on a 60-70" screen. So, it's far more practical to split your maps up a bit, rather than trying to force everything on one. 

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Remember, Mari is designed to work on extremely beefy systems that can handle 16k-32k maps, etc. Mudbox moving up to 8k, finally, doesn't mean 8k is the NORM. There are just circumstances where it's necessary. Even Mudbox slows down a bit with 8k maps. So, it's not efficient to work that way unless you are have a beefy workstation, and even then, there is a noticeable performance difference. I've tested both 3D Coat's painting performance vs Mudbox, with 4k and 8k maps, and with the i7 970 (6-core/12thread...running at 4.2Ghz) and 32GB RAM, 3D Coat handles 4k very fluidly, but 8k starts to show some lag with very large brushes.

 

Mudbox is similar. It has this annoying pause initially (loading data to the Graphics card), but is really fast once it kicks in, with 4k maps. 8k has noticeable lag, too. 8k maps are MASSIVE. Remember even the best flat screens today only offer 4k. But that is super sharp detail even on a 60-70" screen. So, it's far more practical to split your maps up a bit, rather than trying to force everything on one. 

 

Mari is a DREAM - I've tried the demo on my 12 Core Macpro (32 mb ram - w/bootcamped Windows) and it absolutely rocks. For me it worked effortlessly... True I haven't had the time to dig into it and push it to the max, but the Mari technology makes handling the big sizes easy. 8k is like 2k in Mudbox. I think Mudbox and Mari process textures in totally different ways... at least when it comes to working in the viewport with textures.

 

I'm not that familiar with multiple 2k tiles workflow so I can't speak to it.

 

From the people that work for DD and other places here that I was able to pick their brain, the trend is towards the big sizes... for more than the obvious reasons (higher res quality etc)... I'm guessing it's easier to keep track of four 8k maps than 16 x 2k ones...

 

Also, I don't know if this is true (perhaps you can tell me), but you have to respect certain notation in the names for Mudbox to work with the tiles properly?

 

Anyway, I digress... point is I will need 8k for what I'm doing and probably more than that down the line - hero shots in efx are especially challenging and I don't know if you can even have too much... hence my crazy testing :)

 

Provided I get 3Dcoat - my next investment is definitely Mari.

 

Lol - anyway, I don't want to highjack this threat with non-relevant stuff. So far I'm still trying to find a workflow in 3DCoat (with the help of Digman) where I can take advantage of the powerful retopo tools.

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I think Mudbox relies more on the graphics card (not CUDA), so you would probably want a pretty substantial graphic card with plenty of VRAM. 3D Coat, instead, relies on the CPU multi-threading. This is why there is no annoying pause, initially, when painting with 3d Coat. With that system, 8k maps shouldn't be a problem.

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Yeah after reading more of this thread and getting a better idea of what you are trying to do, it seems to me that a multiple UV tile workflow will probably be best for you.

As you mentioned, each program uses a different naming convention for the UV tiles.

Mudbox is u1,v1. Zbrush is u0,v0. And Mari is 1001.

You can just use 3D-Coat for part of this process, and finish it off with other apps.

For example I find it easiest to do sculpting, retopo, and UVs in 3D-Coat, then I jump to Maya to setup my UV tiles as needed (just shift around the UV sets to the tiles I want), and finally I go to Zbrush to bake my maps. The Zbrush part is a little tricky because you might need to subdivide the retopo mesh and then shrink wrap it to the high poly mesh by using the Project All command. But once you have done that, then it is easy to bake displacement and normal maps because you will then have the necessary subdivision levels in Zbrush.

It sounds like you are trying to end up in Mudbox, so you would have to use the multi map exporter in Zbrush to export your maps, but then make sure they are named properly for import into Mudbox.

It might sound crazy to be using so many different apps, but each app has its strengths and weaknesses, and I really think it is nice to have 3D-Coat play a part in the workflow since it does so many things so well.

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