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2024 Feature requests wishlist


Andrew Shpagin
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On 10/6/2008 at 3:51 PM, Andrew Shpagin said:

Have idea? Write it there.

since this is a wishlist thread i'll toss down all the things that would put 3d coat pretty much top of the pile for sculpting and painting:

1) true multires sculpting, being able to import a quad mesh at it's base resolution, maintain the UVs, sculpt in multiple subdivision levels, and bake normals/cavity/displacement from your highest to lowest subdivision levels. currently that's impossible, you have the broken and incredibly obstructive "conform retopo mesh" combined with decimation levels that don't work as well as using your original mesh.

2) multi-alpha brushes and paint blending in brushes, using one alpha to affect the other the way you can in most 2d paint programs so you can create much more interesting and expressive brushes and create more dirt/damage patterns to use for PBR texturing, being able to set a threshold for how much of the brush colour is mixed with the object colour for faster gradients and a faster way to achieve a painterly style, or just for smearing materials like grease into other materials like girt and dust when doing PBR texturing.

3) face sets/polygroups/selection groups/ whatever you want to call them, polygroups from zbrush basically, they make isolating parts of your model easier that you don't want to actually split, selecting and masking areas, creasing borders, guiding autopo, and even UVing your model considerably easier and more convenient, and are a lot more reliable than guide curves or saved masks or any of the tools we currently have available.

4) removing the arbitrary separation between sculpt, paint, uv, and polygon objects, and removing the locked in linear workflow demanded by the current "rooms" system. This would just make the entire creation process much more freeform and fluid, and there's no good reason for separating the objects since they're literally the exact same thing, it would also allow people the option to continue using rooms as premade workspaces for related tools, or to create their own tailored room to their workflow, similar to zbrush you'd be able to roughly sculpt in your basic shapes, autopo them to get a cleaner surface and better edge flow, crease the edges as needed and subdivide so you can continue sculpting, all without having to do the sculpt in the sculpt room, autopo that and end up in the retopo room, change over to the modelling room, manually fence sharp edges, go back to the sculpt room, grab the mesh from the retopo room etc. which some might argue isn't a big deal, but when you're working on more complex models with more parts and you either have to add 30 operations to each action, export to another program for rebuilding then import back (probably the fastest option right now), or spend the extra time polishing it up in the sculpt room.

5) overhauling the way texturing is done, smart materials are ineffective for detailed painting since you have no way to really combine or alter the automask on each layer, and there are no blending modes in smart materials, this leaves you with making groups of layers that you clip mask against each other to create the mask you actually want, then you can use that final layer to clip the layer you actually wanted to mask, a better system would just be to add masking layers that you can attach to a paint layer and build up your mask inside that using the procedural masking options form smart materials combined with actual blending modes to let you combine "always on top" with "less on concave" to make a dust layer that sits on the top of an object but hasn't got into the crevices that aren't exposed.

 

these might be huge projects but definitely worth doing to make the overall user experience massively more enjoyable and less frustrating to learn, and bring an already great set of tools together to make the workflow less frustrating for more experienced artists.

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1 hour ago, Tieguaili3D said:

since this is a wishlist thread i'll toss down all the things that would put 3d coat pretty much top of the pile for sculpting and painting:

1) true multires sculpting, being able to import a quad mesh at it's base resolution, maintain the UVs, sculpt in multiple subdivision levels, and bake normals/cavity/displacement from your highest to lowest subdivision levels. currently that's impossible, you have the broken and incredibly obstructive "conform retopo mesh" combined with decimation levels that don't work as well as using your original mesh.

2) multi-alpha brushes and paint blending in brushes, using one alpha to affect the other the way you can in most 2d paint programs so you can create much more interesting and expressive brushes and create more dirt/damage patterns to use for PBR texturing, being able to set a threshold for how much of the brush colour is mixed with the object colour for faster gradients and a faster way to achieve a painterly style, or just for smearing materials like grease into other materials like girt and dust when doing PBR texturing.

3) face sets/polygroups/selection groups/ whatever you want to call them, polygroups from zbrush basically, they make isolating parts of your model easier that you don't want to actually split, selecting and masking areas, creasing borders, guiding autopo, and even UVing your model considerably easier and more convenient, and are a lot more reliable than guide curves or saved masks or any of the tools we currently have available.

4) removing the arbitrary separation between sculpt, paint, uv, and polygon objects, and removing the locked in linear workflow demanded by the current "rooms" system. This would just make the entire creation process much more freeform and fluid, and there's no good reason for separating the objects since they're literally the exact same thing, it would also allow people the option to continue using rooms as premade workspaces for related tools, or to create their own tailored room to their workflow, similar to zbrush you'd be able to roughly sculpt in your basic shapes, autopo them to get a cleaner surface and better edge flow, crease the edges as needed and subdivide so you can continue sculpting, all without having to do the sculpt in the sculpt room, autopo that and end up in the retopo room, change over to the modelling room, manually fence sharp edges, go back to the sculpt room, grab the mesh from the retopo room etc. which some might argue isn't a big deal, but when you're working on more complex models with more parts and you either have to add 30 operations to each action, export to another program for rebuilding then import back (probably the fastest option right now), or spend the extra time polishing it up in the sculpt room.

5) overhauling the way texturing is done, smart materials are ineffective for detailed painting since you have no way to really combine or alter the automask on each layer, and there are no blending modes in smart materials, this leaves you with making groups of layers that you clip mask against each other to create the mask you actually want, then you can use that final layer to clip the layer you actually wanted to mask, a better system would just be to add masking layers that you can attach to a paint layer and build up your mask inside that using the procedural masking options form smart materials combined with actual blending modes to let you combine "always on top" with "less on concave" to make a dust layer that sits on the top of an object but hasn't got into the crevices that aren't exposed.

 

these might be huge projects but definitely worth doing to make the overall user experience massively more enjoyable and less frustrating to learn, and bring an already great set of tools together to make the workflow less frustrating for more experienced artists.

i second these ideas!

number 4 is a big one!
i honestly dont see why we seperate rooms and confuse the workflow,

we could have a drop down menu for our tools depending on the job but honestly baking would be alot easier, you could have each mesh in a layer like alot of programs do... this would also help the ui,and how people start to learn how to use it...

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On 9/12/2022 at 2:04 AM, Elemeno said:

i second these ideas!

number 4 is a big one!
i honestly dont see why we seperate rooms and confuse the workflow,

we could have a drop down menu for our tools depending on the job but honestly baking would be alot easier, you could have each mesh in a layer like alot of programs do... this would also help the ui,and how people start to learn how to use it...

that was my thinking, it's simplify things without forcing people that like the current system into learning a new workflow, they could still use rooms the same way they do now, everyone else could work in whatever workflow they choose

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A missing option witch could help a bit in retopology,
While snapping a retopo over a really thin mesh, like clothes for exemple, often the vertices are snappedon the wrong side of the Ref Mesh.

A quick to fix it would be to select retopo and push vertices or face in the normal direction, witch is not available in the options

Another way would be to snap from camera view angle, i don't know...

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Ideas to improve:

1.  remove stretching should be something similar to blender dyntopo fanction where you have collapse and add details as you stroke(not after.  

Blender is beast  for blockout single form just from that( even if its on low polycount).

2. merging/splitting/ texture sets (materials) to  compensate for normal map rotation when rearranging uvs  (merging all normal info on one layer option?)   

Materials treated like xrefs or ps smart objects.

3. Collapse all created layers to an id map option when baking many high to low objects.

Edited by micro26
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On 9/14/2022 at 11:42 PM, blackant Master said:

A missing option witch could help a bit in retopology,
While snapping a retopo over a really thin mesh, like clothes for exemple, often the vertices are snappedon the wrong side of the Ref Mesh.

A quick to fix it would be to select retopo and push vertices or face in the normal direction, witch is not available in the options

Another way would be to snap from camera view angle, i don't know...

It may not be exactly what you are hoping for, but there are snapping options at the top of the UI, in a drop list (just to the right of Auto Snap and visible when Auto Snap is enabled), for "snapping to nearest/along normal/outer surface." One dirty little trick I use, when something hasn't snapped properly, is to turn Auto-Snap off (temporarily) > select the problem vertices (via the SELECT tool in Vertex mode) > RMB click and choose RELAX. You may need to click RELAX a few times to get a good result, but it works pretty efficiently for me.

 

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On 9/16/2022 at 3:55 PM, AbnRanger said:

It may not be exactly what you are hoping for, but there are snapping options at the top of the UI, in a drop list (just to the right of Auto Snap and visible when Auto Snap is enabled), for "snapping to nearest/along normal/outer surface." One dirty little trick I use, when something hasn't snapped properly, is to turn Auto-Snap off (temporarily) > select the problem vertices (via the SELECT tool in Vertex mode) > RMB click and choose RELAX. You may need to click RELAX a few times to get a good result, but it works pretty efficiently for me.

 

Yeah, I'm also using this technic, actually because there is no other way to make it… But it's nice for 1 or 2 vertices, and it starts becoming really annoying when the number of vertices increase...

But the problem is a little bit different in my case, because the topology may look good from the face, but when you rotate the camera you can see that vertices are snapped on the other side of the mesh. Because cloth are thin, the "snap to normal" is good because the normal are really near to each other.


So i simple process would be to select faces and use a "Push faces in normal direction", the same as the Z-Bias do but for real.

 

Screen2022-09-17 15 57 25.png

Edited by blackant Master
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53 minutes ago, blackant Master said:

Yeah, I'm also using this technic, actually because there is no other way to make it… But it's nice for 1 or 2 vertices, and it starts becoming really annoying when the number of vertices increase...

But the problem is a little bit different in my case, because the topology may look good from the face, but when you rotate the camera you can see that vertices are snapped on the other side of the mesh. Because cloth are thin, the "snap to normal" is good because the normal are really near to each other.


So i simple process would be to select faces and use a "Push faces in normal direction", the same as the Z-Bias do but for real.

 

Screen2022-09-17 15 57 25.png

That sounds like a good feature request. :good2: Also, for auto-snapping, the Surface Snapping mode should strictly disable vertices from penetrating into or through a Voxel/Sculpt object. Period. You would think it would behave this way, already.

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A Better tool to position pivot for material painting while using Mappings cylinder, for example:

On this image, I have to place the center of my cylinder between arms, so the repetition can be projected correctly on the sleeves.

The use of the yellow gizmo is useless, it is only working for scale.

The use of floats for X, Y, Z is hard to manage, i have to spend time to find the right value check between ± values... takes too much time

 

Screen2022-09-17 19 44 26.png

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A texturing request...

I understand the workflow surrounding clipmasks for layers.  I get that they work on transparency rather than greyscale values.

However, if we have a layer in greyscale that we wish to use as a mask, as I understand it, we have to export that layer to an external paint program and convert it into a image with transparency based on either the black values or the white values, then re-import it.

It would be a great time-saver if there was an option on the right-click menu for layers, which could convert a greyscale layer to one with transparency. The standard appears to be black=fully transparent; white= fully opaque; and the grey values have varying levels of transparency in between.  I'm not a programmer, I don't imagine it would be too hard to script a function which looks at a layer's luminance, and apply that to the layer's transparency. 

If this feature already exists and I just haven't found it yet, then I apologise... 

:) 

Derek

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Hello, I'm very new to 3dcoat and I think it's a lot of fun!

I want it to succeed.

Right now I can only think of one request for the program itself.

When setting up a new room Please make it possible for us to assign a custom keyboard shortcut file Just for that room.  (Overriding global settings)

@Andrew Shpagin Please stay safe and keep up the great work!

My second request would be for the 3dcoat community,  we have some AMAZING experts and I am wondering if someone with both 3dcoat and zbrush experience will post a series like  "A Migration guide to 3dcoat for zbrush users"

 

Anyways  thank you for your time and attention!

--Joshua

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14 minutes ago, jammer42777 said:

Hello, I'm very new to 3dcoat and I think it's a lot of fun!

I want it to succeed.

Right now I can only think of one request for the program itself.

When setting up a new room Please make it possible for us to assign a custom keyboard shortcut file Just for that room.  (Overriding global settings)

@Andrew Shpagin Please stay safe and keep up the great work!

My second request would be for the 3dcoat community,  we have some AMAZING experts and I am wondering if someone with both 3dcoat and zbrush experience will post a series like  "A Migration guide to 3dcoat for zbrush users"

 

Anyways  thank you for your time and attention!

--Joshua

you can assign shortcut to any room as simple as press "end" on keyboard while hover over the name of room and assign your shortcut

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Let me see if I can more clearly explain,  I know how to assign shortcuts, also any shortcut configuration can be saved and loaded at another time.

What I am requesting is for a user specified hotkey layout be loaded when the user goes to a room where the user has indicated that they want to use that custom layout for that room specifically.

3dchighlight.jpg

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@Andrew Shpagin

Also there is one more quest that I can think of as a newbie.

I would like a search text field at the top of any window with multiple objects.

For example if I want to find the voxhide brush, I would like to type hide and then only the items in the tools panel have the word 'hide' in the name.

I think this feature would also be useful in other panels such as stencils, materials, etc.

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Why quads mesh is better than triangles?

Quad meshes have a natural advantage over triangular meshes when representing the local geometry of a surface; since there are two logically orthogonal directions (u and v) for the surface, quads can be designed to follow these isoclines, producing meshes that reflect the underlying geometry.

 

You use quads for anything you’re planning to animate.

The reason for it is because quads form loops/strips and any sane modeling software allows you select the whole quad strip at once. Also, quads animate better than triangles, when deformed by bones.

main-qimg-7654f4c61ee4b3e2854a934aa93bff
An example of face topology from polycount. I’m quite certain there are no triangles anywhere in it.

When you make a static model, technically you can use whatever you want, because model doesn’t deform. But still having quads should help.

AIAApaper2019-1988.pdf

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@Gorbatovsky

 

just find quads look smoother , easier for subdivisions

tri's however has a tendency to make edges seems jagged ... i'm not sure if that's just me but when i use zbrush oppose to 3dcoat when i'm polishing i get a cleaning ,smoother result and i'm not sure if that's quads or something else but its the only difference i can tell between the two

and when you're rotating the mesh while using quads the calculation to lower the mesh is a lot faster( i'm not sure about that i was just reading about it )

but i suppose it doesn't actually matter...

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55 minutes ago, Gorbatovsky said:

But, the question was asked on the mesh in the Sculp room.

Hi @Gorbatovsky  , I don't know if this could help you, but I'm sending a poor PDF that I created a long time ago about just the mesh structures and at the same time making some suggestions.
I think a quad mesh could be very welcome and would be very important for Sculpt Room (Workflow) within 3Dcoat.

Most people will answer you that the quad mesh would be more animated (which is true), but for workflow and sculptures within 3Dcoat would be very advantageous to have this option.
I've done several tests between triangular meshes and quads to really know if there is something concrete that could indicate that one type of mesh is better or not than the other type of mesh.
Therefore, I could see that in these tests the sculptures in the mesh on the quad became superior (not to mention the thin detail that can be done and obtained) than the sculptures with the mesh in triangles.

Even knowing that sometimes in the quad mesh structure may have some problems according to the topology that may be "stressed".
However, triangles mesh structures also have problems.
So, I think no mesh structure is completely perfect.
The user, according to the preference, could choose the mesh according to the used workflow that would give the most great results.

Just to note that a quad mesh brush is more "organic" because of the softness in the Calculated Mesh made through Catmull Clark.
In my sincere and humble opinion, I would be in favor of having quad mesh structures and also tris within the 3dcoat.
Which would enable techniques (even using UVs) and different workflows within 3Dcoat.
And with that, it would come up with great opportunities ...
Who knows ... the full unification of the mesh could occur (a single mesh or geometry used) in all Rooms within 3Dcoat.
But I'm aware that this would be very complex to be done because of the structure of how 3Dcoat works.

Anyway, I would love to see a workflow using quad mesh inside the 3dcoat.
For sure, I would sculpted a lot in Mesh Quads, that would be fantastic.

3dcoat mesh structure.pdf

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  • Carlosan changed the title to 2024 Feature requests wishlist
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