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V4.5 BETA (experimental)


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I would like to ask if there is work done on retopo and autoretopo as well , or only focused on pbr for 4.5.

 

Thank you.

 

Andrew is focusing on the Paint Room for features at the moment, as he did with the Sculpt Room for a very long time. I fairly certain next up that the UV and Retopo Rooms will get some love (because we direly need better UV support, such as multiple tiles visible and editable in the exact UV map it was imported with, and not torn to their own UV maps, half-measure work around).

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Thanks. I did not see it.

I will delete my entry.

 

 

Edit:

How could i close or delete it?

Actually installing newest 3dc fixed this problem. Did you try to delete 3dc folder in mydocs? I also installed 3dc to new location in program files. If everyghing works ok I will mark it as resolved.

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@Andrew

What did you think about Fill Layers like in Substance Painter?

Would it be possible to store the Material in a layer that we could change and modify it on the fly?

 

Would this be the equivalent of a "Solid Color" layer in PS? If so, and it was transferable as such, that would be nice.

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@Carlosan

I dont have that Options, i only see Move and Monitor.

 

@Jose

I am on the latest Build, and if i fill a Layer with a normal material, it wont gets filled with metal.

But you are right, if i use one of the preset materials, it works. Thats weird.

 

@Polyhertz

I dont know what a Solid Color is, i dont have PS.

But a Fill Layer is an easy way to modify a color, without always klicking on Fill or do some experiments until you are satisfyed.

 

Here you see a good example.

All the basecolors are created with Filllayers. You see, it is non destructive and very easy to use.

Edited by Malo
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4.1.17D 64 bit Linux version plus the windows 32bit newest 4.5 beta8 (running under wine in Linux) are not importing some obj files correctly... This effects both the Paint Room when importing and the retopo room when unwrapping.

I imported this simple wings3d model for PPP as a test to show you. In the picture on the right is the model imported into the paint room, faces are missing.

On the left side of the picture is the same model loaded into 4.0.13A. The model loads correctly. I used auto un-wrap in both cases.

I checked the simple model in Hexagon and found no problems with it and I never had problems with Wings3D models before.

 

This problem also effects the retopo room. The missing faces are seen but when you create your seams and unwrap, you get some twisted uv-islands.

I can create seams and unwrap the model correctly in 4.0.13A in the retopo room.

The 3DC file has been sent to support plus the obj file I sent to support as well.

 

I installed a completely clean version 4.1.17D to test...

post-518-0-79595700-1422094672_thumb.png

Edited by digman
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A few observations based on beta8 :

 

- It seems like the option to send a screen-projected screenshot of a model to Photoshop for "handpainted" diffuse projection painting has been removed - I could only manage to send the regular textures/UVs to Photoshop. Maybe there is some kind of incompatibility between that workflow and the new PBR painting tools ?

 

- If the PBR painting tools are advertised as being 100% compatible with Marmoset Toolbag, then there is an obvious need to have at least a few of the default Toolbag environment images included with 3DCoat 4.5. I suppose that there might be a way to manually convert these, but it would be great if the user didn't have to do it all by oneself.

 

I hope this helps !

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A few observations based on beta8 :

 

 

- If the PBR painting tools are advertised as being 100% compatible with Marmoset Toolbag, then there is an obvious need to have at least a few of the default Toolbag environment images included with 3DCoat 4.5. I suppose that there might be a way to manually convert these, but it would be great if the user didn't have to do it all by oneself.

 

I hope this helps !

 

I agree, I managed to snag a few on free ressources sites but there are great panoramas in toolbag that I miss in 3dc.

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Btw, I know it's first pass but changing panoramas takes way too long. Previewing the meshes under different lighting condition is very important in pbr and having to wait so long to load another panorama is a bit annoying.

Would love to see an optimization on load times when more important matters are handled.

For comparison it takes about 40 seconds on 3dc while it's almost instant in toolbag, maybe the panoramas in 3dc would benefit from a low res mode (as in alternative files, not lowering the current one, higher res has its use for highly reflective objects) ?

In toolbag they're significantly less detailed.

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Btw, I know it's first pass but changing panoramas takes way too long. Previewing the meshes under different lighting condition is very important in pbr and having to wait so long to load another panorama is a bit annoying.

Would love to see an optimization on load times when more important matters are handled.

For comparison it takes about 40 seconds on 3dc while it's almost instant in toolbag, maybe the panoramas in 3dc would benefit from a low res mode (as in alternative files, not lowering the current one, higher res has its use for highly reflective objects) ?

In toolbag they're significantly less detailed.

I may cache panoramas and may do that if you used some panorama already it will switch instantly.

But first calculation will be long anyway. It takes so much time because I need to callculate light scattering globally.

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Here you see a good example.

All the basecolors are created with Filllayers. You see, it is non destructive and very easy to use.

 

After spending a bit more time talking to the guys at Allegorithmic, there's a bit of info that is important to keep track of. That bit is that whats being done in Substance Painter is vector based. From this I do not believe they can ever get the same kind of painterly feel one would get with 3d coat, and why I woudlnt want 3d coat to give up that feeling to copy Painter on that aspect. I would better and more artistic painting ability over dynamic texture generation.

 

 

Andrew is focusing on the Paint Room for features at the moment, as he did with the Sculpt Room for a very long time. I fairly certain next up that the UV and Retopo Rooms will get some love (because we direly need better UV support, such as multiple tiles visible and editable in the exact UV map it was imported with, and not torn to their own UV maps, half-measure work around).

 

Out of curiosity does he just work on one room at a time, or rather does each update focus around one particular aspect of 3DC? If so does this mean that other aspects of 3DC  generally remain untouched, like sculpting...uvs..ect? Finally, just an opinion here though still new to 3D Coat, I would hope some focus could be used to refining and streamlining the UI bit (would be easier to sell as well). By this I mean general layout, polish, context sensitivity and unifaction of similar or common UI functions, sliders and over all presentation.

Edited by RabenWulf
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One last thing that Paint Room, or maybe more adequately - Sculpt Room,  needs, is the ability to sculpt while vertex-painting colour, glossiness and metalness at the same time.

Painting over baked Paint Room maps is always destructive. In case of severe changes to the model, you're toasted.

 

One more thing. A bug report that I have not yet filed on Mantis:

If you import a model that has vertex colour information (which currently is read from an MTL file in case of OBJ import, instead from vertex colour attributes), then no paint layer is created for that layer(!). Meaning, no adjustments can be made to it. You can't duplicate that layer or do anything with it.

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- It seems like the option to send a screen-projected screenshot of a model to Photoshop for "handpainted" diffuse projection painting has been removed - I could only manage to send the regular textures/UVs to Photoshop. Maybe there is some kind of incompatibility between that workflow and the new PBR painting tools ?

 

This is actually one of my favorite features in the paint room when doing classic hand painted textures.

I don't see why PBR would be an issue? Just have an options box that lets the user select which map type(s) are projected, and have special layer groups for each one (seeing as how 3DC supports that now) if multiple are projected at once.

Personally though I'm happy so long as it can still be used to do old school work.

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PolyHertz : exactly ! "Edit projections in external editor" is pretty much the one feature that justifies 3DCoat for me. And of course the newly added PBR workflow with smart conditional materials is another great addition.

 

And I agree, in theory I don't see any incompatibility between the PBR workflow and "Edit projections in external editor", but still something must have happened here since both the menu entry and the ctrl-alt-P shortcut are missing in 4.5. Maybe there is still some issues to work out regarding the layering of exported PSDs if the scene contains any of the new PBR information ?

 

At the end of the day, the two systems should really be able to work with each other. The conditional material parameters (like cavity, convexity and direction) would be extremely useful for "old school" handpainted texturing ; and the PBR workflow would benefit from being compatible with Edit projections since there are times when surface details are just easier (and faster !) to paint in Photoshop on a screenshot than straight on the model.

Edited by pior
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A few more notes on 4.5beta8 :

 

- On overall interface responsiveness

This is something that I brought up way back in the day (version 2 maybe ?) and I feel like it would be worth mentioning again. Basically, despite its very impressive set of features 3DCoat seems to still have some problems when it comes to UI behavior. This is without a doubt a minor point, but it does affect the "feel" of the program for lack of a better word. Here is a video attempting to show the issue, comparing the menu behavior of 3DCoat with the menu behavior of the most basic Windows program I could think of, Notepad. The video was recorded at 60fps for clarity.

 

Pay attention to the way the 3DCoat dropdown menus do not follow the mouse, and the way they close if the mouse is away from them when for a certain amount of time when they actually shouldn't. There is probably more to it than that, but I feel like these two seemingly small details illustrate the issue well.

 

 

This behavior is probably the price to pay for using a unified UI API for cross-platform release, and to be fair other software packages suffer from similar symptoms (Zbrush being the obvious). But it might be worth looking into this just for the sake of making the program feel less "glitchy". The help area flashing very fast at the bottom of the interface is another example of that.

 

- On brush preview

There needs to be an option to disable the white ghosted brush preview. I know that it disappears while painting, but it is still a hindrance when one is just about to lay a brush stroke as it tends to hide parts of the area being worked on.

 

2015-01-2504_57_32-LDshoulderPBR0013b_-3

 

I hope this helps ! Despite these issues, 4.5 is shaping up to be a truly fantastic release :)

Edited by pior
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- On brush preview

There needs to be an option to disable the white ghosted brush preview. I know that it disappears while painting, but it is still a hindrance when one is just about to lay a brush stroke as it tends to hide parts of the area being worked on.

 

You can disable this in preferences :) .  I dont understand how anybody can sculpt with this on.

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After spending a bit more time talking to the guys at Allegorithmic, there's a bit of info that is important to keep track of. That bit is that whats being done in Substance Painter is vector based. From this I do not believe they can ever get the same kind of painterly feel one would get with 3d coat, and why I woudlnt want 3d coat to give up that feeling to copy Painter on that aspect. I would better and more artistic painting ability over dynamic texture generation.

 

I dont like the painting in Painter, 3d Coat is much more handy, thats true.

But if you want to change some colors on your model, it is always a trial and error until you get what you want or need.

And i think Filllayers would be good start to work more in a non destictive way.

 

I was hoping Andrew could give some feedback on it, if it would be possible to create something like Filllayers for 3d coat.

But, maybe i should create some requests if he wont answers.

Edited by Malo
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