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Please, could anyone tell me if there is a reproject tool in 3D-Coat? I need it urgently...


Rygaard
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Hey everyone,

I would like to know one very important thing if there is a feature that I am urgently needed in 3D-Coat.

I'm making a character. I used the Decimate Proxy Method to be able to make changes in the pose of the character, especially in the arm. After the character was lighter, I hid the whole character except for the arm, in which I began to repair the arm (using Pose Tool, Move Brush).
Finally, when I finished all my work, I pressed the button that serves to exit the proxy mode and return the character with the original amount of polygons and then I saved the file.

When I realized and looked at the character, I do not know how this must have happened, but in several places of the character the mesh was distorted and displaced. These places should be protected because I had previously hidden these parts to be able to use the Pose Tool and Move Brush.
I believe that somehow 3d-coat did not respect the hidden mesh and even then made a mess in those areas.
At the same time, I tried to use CTRL + Z to undo all the changes to recover the character in the original state (before my work I did on the arm). But 3D-Coat just went back to the mesh proxy and stopped there (no longer allowing undo) while remaining the messy mesh of the character.

In this project, I'm using Tortoise HG (I'm new to this program) to save all my modifications rather than saving multiple files as I was accustomed to doing.That means I have only one project file.
Due to my desperation and the very late hour I thought of reverting the file to the previous state I had saved in Tortoise HG (which would be a file before the modifications in the arm), but I messed up and went back to a file very early , where I lost practically all the accessories and much more of this project. And to complete the tragedy, I could not undo this action in Tortoise.

Luckily, I had exported the character in .3b (before the changes in the arm) and also I had exported the character with the changes in the arm in 3b. (but with the other parts of the body messed up).

Having said all this, I wonder if there is a way to reproject the good parts I've made of the (messy) character to the character who has the correct mesh?

I know that in 3D-Coat there is the Copy tool (voxels mode), but for me to do this procedure I will have to convert my character to Voxels and so I will lose many details that I already did in Surface mode. I know that to keep these details, I will have to increase millions of polygons and I think my computer will not support it.

So, is there any way to transfer the work I did on the arm (bad file) to the correct mesh (good file)? Similar to the mesh reproject functionality that exists in ZBrush?

thanks...

 

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 @Tony Nemo Many thanks for trying to help me ....

Sadly, I do not have this option enabled for auto save ... I must have disabled for some reason in the past!

I hope someone can help me on some transfer tool (in 3D-Coat) from one mesh to another .... Unfortunately, I do not have auto save.

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Without a clear idea of your need,  clean up the work you want to save and save the file. Import the stuff you want to update and prepare it for merger with your previous work , Merge the files and save your new project.  Enable autosave and set the interval between savings to fit your work style.

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1 hour ago, Tony Nemo said:

Without a clear idea of your need,  clean up the work you want to save and save the file. Import the stuff you want to update and prepare it for merger with your previous work , Merge the files and save your new project.  Enable autosave and set the interval between savings to fit your work style.

Thank you for your time trying to help me!
Great tips you gave me, but that's not exactly what I need right now.

I needed a 3D-Coat tool that was similar to a tool that exists in ZBrush for transferring details from one mesh to another as it is called Project All.

Project All: The Project All operation will project sculptural detail from a source mesh to a target mesh. The meshes do not have to have similar topology but should be broadly similar in shape. Source and target meshes should be SubTools in the same list, and for best results should be the only two visible SubTools. The other settings in this section will affect the result of the projection.

That said, I'm working on a sculpture in Surface mode, where I have many details and I would not want to lose the detailing and sculpting work I've done. So I would like to transfer the good parts of a mesh to another mesh that is in the correct mesh.

I think I'm figuring out one way ... but if you or anyone else has an idea of performing that detail transfer from one mesh to another it would be great!

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3 hours ago, Rygaard said:

Thank you for your time trying to help me!
Great tips you gave me, but that's not exactly what I need right now.

I needed a 3D-Coat tool that was similar to a tool that exists in ZBrush for transferring details from one mesh to another as it is called Project All.

Project All: The Project All operation will project sculptural detail from a source mesh to a target mesh. The meshes do not have to have similar topology but should be broadly similar in shape. Source and target meshes should be SubTools in the same list, and for best results should be the only two visible SubTools. The other settings in this section will affect the result of the projection.

That said, I'm working on a sculpture in Surface mode, where I have many details and I would not want to lose the detailing and sculpting work I've done. So I would like to transfer the good parts of a mesh to another mesh that is in the correct mesh.

I think I'm figuring out one way ... but if you or anyone else has an idea of performing that detail transfer from one mesh to another it would be great!

Have you tried the COPY tool, in Voxel Mode? You may have to tweak the position and shape with tools like TRANSFORM, POSE or MOVE, but with Voxels, it will merge with the underlying object perfectly.

 

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2 hours ago, AbnRanger said:

Have you tried the COPY tool, in Voxel Mode? You may have to tweak the position and shape with tools like TRANSFORM, POSE or MOVE, but with Voxels, it will merge with the underlying object perfectly.

 

Thank you very much for the tip!
Yes, I was even thinking of using the Copy Tool in voxel mode.
The only problem is that I'm on surface mode and I've already applied surface details that I do not want to miss.
Converting to Voxels, I'll have to use millions of polygons to keep all the work I've done and I do not know if my computer will support (I'll still buy a new pc). I believe it will freeze the pc.

Would you have another alternative in surface mode? If I have no other alternative, I'll do the Copy tool technique in voxels mode as you suggested!

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What I do sometimes is chop my mesh up into separate pieces and then merge in the detailed parts I need and then smooth out the transition.  It's not as convenient as reprojection, but it works really well in my experience.

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27 minutes ago, gbball said:

What I do sometimes is chop my mesh up into separate pieces and then merge in the detailed parts I need and then smooth out the transition.  It's not as convenient as reprojection, but it works really well in my experience. 

This might work fine ... great tip! Thank you!!!!
In one of the tests I did earlier it worked ... I cut, for example, the arm and inserted it into the good mesh.
The only thing that can happen with this type of method is that in Surface mode the Boolean operations are sensitive ... ie depending on the shape you mix, a window appears and 3D-Coat warns that you can not perform the operation for certain reasons. But depending on the way you position a mesh in the other mesh the operation is carried out successfully!

Maybe we could have a new tool in 3D-Coat that makes it possible to transfer details in Surface Mode in a similar way or even better than we already have with the Voxels mode Copy tool!

This would be a great tool for us in surface mode!

 

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You're right Rygaard,

The main problem with that method is that the merge often doesn't work in Surface mode.  I can usually find a way to get it working, but it would be great if it merged 100% of the time in surface mode like it does in voxel mode.

A surface mode projection should work.  I think with Andrew's work on sculpt layers, that will become more of a possibility.

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@gbball

... You need luck and a little patience to run a more complex Boolean operation in surface mode. Usually, you get it!

I believe the algorism used for Boolean operations on voxels mode is much more effective by nature to add or remove volumetric pixel (extremely powerful). Already on surface mode is another story!

I've been trying to help in some way by suggesting ideas about Sculpt Layers, even I made a video about it at the other topic I created.
Of course, sculpt layers will be one of the best things ever done in 3d-coat among many that have already been created ... a true paradise for all of us!

I think we could have a new tool also related to transfering details from one mesh to another in surface mode. Since you have a lot of details sculpted on the surface mode, you will not want to switch to voxels mode because you may lose details and depending on how your sculpture you will end up merging one surface with the other (example are the fingers of the hands or feet if they are too close together will merge).

With this, a transfer detail tool between one mesh to another in Surface mode would be ideal. Something similar to Project All that exists in Zbrush or something similar or better than the Copy tool that exists in Voxels mode of 3D-Coat with more options (controls) to us... Would not that be great? :) 

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What sort of computer do you have? I've been dealing with a few objects lately that I needed to convert to voxels and back to surface again, I'm only on a Surface Pro 4 (doesn't even have a graphics card!) and it works fine, a bit slow to calculate but that's expected.

Depending on the detail in your arm of course, you might not have any issues converting it to voxels, merging it, and turning it back to surface mode. I've done up to about 15 million voxels, I can go higher but I haven't had a need to yet.

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1 hour ago, Gary Dave said:

What sort of computer do you have? I've been dealing with a few objects lately that I needed to convert to voxels and back to surface again, I'm only on a Surface Pro 4 (doesn't even have a graphics card!) and it works fine, a bit slow to calculate but that's expected.

Depending on the detail in your arm of course, you might not have any issues converting it to voxels, merging it, and turning it back to surface mode. I've done up to about 15 million voxels, I can go higher but I haven't had a need to yet.

Hi Gary Dave, I do not know if you understood what I meant earlier or if I could not be very exact in my explanation. I apologize if I have not been able to explain it right!

You're right, I would have no problem converting my character that is on the surface mode to Voxel mode. Of course, the configuration of my computer is old and to do this would take a while.
I gave the arm example for people to understand. But, I would have to convert the entire character to perform the Boolean operation in Voxel mode or use the Copy tool (also in voxels mode).

The problem of converting to voxels is the way I sculpt the character, parts of the body are very close to each other and when converting to voxels these surfaces merge with each other.
For example, the pose of the fingers and toes as they are very close together will eventually fuse with each other. Just as in the eyelids of the eyes that are almost closed they also fuse. That kind of behavior I did not want to happen.
So if I convert to voxels, unfortunately I will have problems.

So I would like and suggest that if we had tools that would perform operations like the Copy tool (Voxels mode) within the Surface Mode so that we could perform the transfer of details or shapes of parts from one mesh to another ... I I believe it would be of great importance and help for our work! That would be great, would not it? What do you think? Thanks for your comment.

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1 hour ago, Tony Nemo said:

Keep in mind that, if the joins are hidden, there needn't be a  boolean as you can make one object of the disjointed parts in Retopo.

I do not quite understand what you mean...

But my character at the moment is one piece and I'm working on surface mode.
I believe that when I used the Surface Hide tool to be able to hide body parts of my character and I could focus my work just on the arm ... I do not know what happened after having used the Pose and Move tools to do changes in the position of the arm, and when I finished the changes, I did a Unhide All ...
So I noticed that the parts that were hidden were affected in some way and ended up being deformed causing a mess in the mesh.

*** I made the changes in Proxy mode and then returned with the original mesh. I tried to do undo, but the most I managed was to return to proxy mode and ran out of my undos.

Honestly, I do not know if I did anything wrong or if there was a possible error in 3D-Coat at that time. Because I've always worked hiding parts of the surfaces and nothing like that has ever happened to me before.
I thank you for your time trying to help me!

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If you do not have enough system resources to use the Voxel COPY tool (for an entire character) just use the SPLIT tool in Surface mode to separate the parts (sort of like the Poly Groups tool in ZB) to it's own layer. Then you can use the COPY tool or the Clone tool on those parts. It's far easier on your system to voxelize an arm than an entire character, for example.

 

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33 minutes ago, AbnRanger said:

If you do not have enough system resources to use the Voxel COPY tool (for an entire character) just use the SPLIT tool in Surface mode to separate the parts (sort of like the Poly Groups tool in ZB) to it's own layer. Then you can use the COPY tool or the Clone tool on those parts. It's far easier on your system to voxelize an arm than an entire character, for example.

 

 
At the moment, I'm a bit limited with my system resources ...
So that I have the chance to work with my character, I will try to do this technique.
Many thanks for suggesting one more tip to solve my problem.

If Andrew could, in the future, make a Copy tool (which has in voxel) of transferring details and shapes (from one mesh to another) to Surface Mode would be of great help to us!
Unfortunately, currently, we do not have such a tool on surface mode ...
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