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Scary M's Sketch book


Scary M
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Leigh, Andrew recently added all the core Surface Brushes to the SURFACE TOOLS section, in Voxel Mode, and moved that section right under the Voxel Brushes. It includes the FREEZE Brush with the Freeze Menu available as well. I pushed to get all these additions to make Voxel Mode like a true Hybrid mode, where an experienced sculpter could do the vast majority of their work in it, working virtually seamlessly between Voxel brushes and Surface Brushes.

4.9.41 includes the Surface Smooth brush as well as the SHIFT and CTRL + SHIFT  menu's. Please try using TANGENT SMOOTH in either of those 2 menus, and RELAX as a very low-grade smoothing algorithm without degrading the major surface contours much if any. Tangent Smooth will really help clean up the nastiness along the edges when using the SURFACE PINCH brush. I noticed it works really well in areas like the eyes and creases around the nostrils, etc., when they get a little jagged along the contour lines. It helps me not to have to increase the resolution much, if any, to smooth those areas out. When I need just a little more smoothing but as strong as a normal smoothing brush, I like to use RELAX in the SHIFT menu. I think you'll like it once you start playing with it.

The PRESETS Panel has folders now along with some pretty decent presets you may want to test...including some in the POLISH folder. They work with the Surface Tools in Voxel mode, as well as in Surface mode.

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2 minutes ago, Scary M said:

Ooo That is exciting ill DL and have a play this afternoon

 

Very cool. BTW, the Move tool in Voxel mode is basically the Surface Move tool by default. To re-voxelize, all you have to do is select a Voxel Brush after using it.

Another brand-spanking new feature in 4.9.41, is the ability to use EXTRA DETAIL in the SHIFT or CTRL + SHIFT menu, to basically dynamically tessellate under your brush, as long as you have a SURFACE TOOLS brush active. It's like having LiveClay tessellation available with a hotkey....all while you are technically still in Voxel Mode. If you do a bunch of sculpting edits/work with the Surface tools brushes, you can switch your layer to Surface mode and 3DCoat will store all of that work on the currently selected sculpt layer. 

You could create a duplicate > switch to Voxel mode if you want to work with Voxels for a while and later project those changes back onto the Surface mode layer, like the workflow shown in the video I linked to, earlier. Just mentioning some of the recent changes you might not have been aware of if you are just coming back from a lengthy spell away from the app

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Don I'm not sure I see a need for the project brush, it cannot work in any benificial way in its current environment for me.

It would be an awesome addition to the Retopo room but even then unless we could sculpt on an organised mesh or quad topology that isn't automatically triangulated then it's still a little redundant. It just adds an extra step.

Sorry if that seems negative but I'm looking at from this point of view. Why would I Need to clone to a voxel volume (Which in nature will have less detail) then reproject all that inferior detail back onto the higher res surface mesh? By the stage at which I need to project detail onto a surface mesh it need to have. The only advantage of switching to a lower res state would be to make large changes, however those lower res changes would likely be too great to be re projected, ie moveing or scaling)  it's probably just the way I work with the tool which hasn't really changed in past 5 years. 

Another way it could have been benificial would be to project multiple volumes onto a single surface mesh for printing.  However with my workflow if I had that case I would clone and combine all the pieces into a vox volume the convert it to surface anyhow so what would the be left to project. Therefore my analogy that the tool is kind of redundant in its current environment stands. If all we can do with the tool is project one form of non organised mesh onto another non organised mesh.

Not a rant I just don't see the point. I'm sure some people use it all the time.

Core Brushes being the the vox room is nice and I do like the smoothing options very good addition. 

I'd love to play with the custom brushes properly but until the clay brush works correctly (as in negative CTRL removes clay, which it doesn't it just adds clay)I have no need to set them up. 

Sculpt layers are great too use layers in Zbrush all the time. Great addition.

Edited by Scary M
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19 hours ago, Scary M said:

Don I'm not sure I see a need for the project brush, it cannot work in any benificial way in its current environment for me.

It would be an awesome addition to the Retopo room but even then unless we could sculpt on an organised mesh or quad topology that isn't automatically triangulated then it's still a little redundant. It just adds an extra step.

Sorry if that seems negative but I'm looking at from this point of view. Why would I Need to clone to a voxel volume (Which in nature will have less detail) then reproject all that inferior detail back onto the higher res surface mesh? By the stage at which I need to project detail onto a surface mesh it need to have. The only advantage of switching to a lower res state would be to make large changes, however those lower res changes would likely be too great to be re projected, ie moveing or scaling)  it's probably just the way I work with the tool which hasn't really changed in past 5 years. 

Another way it could have been benificial would be to project multiple volumes onto a single surface mesh for printing.  However with my workflow if I had that case I would clone and combine all the pieces into a vox volume the convert it to surface anyhow so what would the be left to project. Therefore my analogy that the tool is kind of redundant in its current environment stands. If all we can do with the tool is project one form of non organised mesh onto another non organised mesh.

Not a rant I just don't see the point. I'm sure some people use it all the time.

Core Brushes being the the vox room is nice and I do like the smoothing options very good addition. 

I'd love to play with the custom brushes properly but until the clay brush works correctly (as in negative CTRL removes clay, which it doesn't it just adds clay)I have no need to set them up. 

Sculpt layers are great too use layers in Zbrush all the time. Great addition.

I understand where you are coming from and I personally would not normally see a need for a Reproject tool. Someone else requested it, but It is quite handy in some circumstances. For example, many users over the years have complained that once you start working with LiveClay, you are sort of stuck and cannot go back to Voxel Mode, to use any of it's tools or brushes, or you stand to lose some detail. I personally don't often see a need to do that, anyway, but on rare occasion I might and others have....that's why they brought it up. I'm thinking of situations where they may want to use VoxHide, which is quite popular and works only in Voxel mode. Another circumstance might be situations where the FILL brush in Voxel Mode works way better than in Surface mode.

As for the Clay Brush not subtracting when CTRL is held down (or Invert Action is checked in the Toolbar) I'm not sure I understand what you mean. It subtracts on my end. I tested the new BASE BRUSH in the CUSTOM  section of the Tool Panel (Surface Mode). It somehow doesn't work with CTRL. I showed that to Andrew just now and he should fix it soon

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@Scary M

Thx for sharing the issue.

IF Buildup settings is ON, and spacing is 0.040, i can replicate it

IF Buildup settings is Off, and spacing is 0.040, i cant replicate it

IF Buildup settings is ON, and spacing is 0.1, i cant replicate it

 

NObuildup.jpg

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I told Andrew that he should change the button for the CTRL ACTION section, "COPY SETTINGS FROM REGULAR" to "INVERT REGULAR BRUSH SETTINGS"

The DEGREE parameter seems to be a percentage of the main DEPTH value...similar to how it works in the Smart Materials Editor, when adjusting Smart Material layer depth. The value there is based on the value in the DEPTH parameter in the Toolbar 

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@AbnRangerSorry cant agree.

Ctrl action does not mean invert action, it just add dual command (you don't necessarily have to use the same brush).

Note:

To talk about the functionality of ctrl action key please open a new post and keep this post for Scary's personal work. Thank you.

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I think your missing the point, Ctrl action with the clay brush especially should funtion as the clay brush does normally currently its a weird negative value, that has unpredictable results compare it to the standard surface clay build up or Rapid brush and see how they function on the Ctrl stroke. if i use the custom clay brush i would want at least that funtionality. right now i can get far more from the rapid and the clay buildup brushes than the custom brushes. I would want a predictable brush

I certainley would not want to switch out brushes just to depress in the surface in a predictable manner.

Currentley the brushes only work on one stroke to add in a positive direction from the surface subtraction is not viable with the custom brushes as they stand. 

Edited by Scary M
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26 minutes ago, Carlosan said:

@AbnRangerSorry cant agree.

Ctrl action does not mean invert action, it just add dual command (you don't necessarily have to use the same brush).

Note:

To talk about the functionality of ctrl action key please open a new post and keep this post for Scary's personal work. Thank you.

CTRL does indeed INVERT in all other brushes. Therefore, IMO, it should be the default option for that button.

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24 minutes ago, Scary M said:

I think your missing the point, Ctrl action with the clay brush especially should funtion as the clay brush does normally currently its a weird negative value, that has unpredictable results compare it to the standard surface clay build up or Rapid brush and see how they function on the Ctrl stroke. if i use the custom clay brush i would want at least that funtionality. right now i can get far more from the rapid and the clay buildup brushes than the custom brushes. I would want a predictable brush

I certainley would not want to switch out brushes just to depress in the surface in a predictable manner.

Currentley the brushes only work on one stroke to add in a positive direction from the surface subtraction is not viable with the custom brushes as they stand. 

So, if you click on the COPY SETTINGS FROM REGULAR (in the CTRL Action section), and then just gave the DEGREE setting a negative value of that number, it doesn't work predictably? It seems to on my side. Multiple strokes, too.

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30 minutes ago, AbnRanger said:

So, if you click on the COPY SETTINGS FROM REGULAR (in the CTRL Action section), and then just gave the DEGREE setting a negative value of that number, it doesn't work predictably? It seems to on my side. Multiple strokes, too.

See video

 

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3 minutes ago, AbnRanger said:

Any chance JITTER is turned on in the BRUSH OPTIONS panel, or some extended length in spacing?

Ok. I found the problem. If you set a value over -5, 3DCoat goes crazy. Change it to -1 to -5 and it seems to work OK. It's a bug of some kind, for sure. 

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I think that best way to see the issue is that you first clay one area (keep mouse button pressed and do some small moves) then do same thing with ctrl. Totally different feeling. And these things matter for sculping artists.

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No Don, Its not the same as opposing stroke is not the key, the Custom brush simply does not have the opposite stroke set, all your doing is creating a Positve stroke with a -smoothing angle which gives the impression that its a standard CTRL Stroke

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