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3DCoat 4.9 BETA testing thread


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I forgot to mention, that Res+ test was on a Surface Mesh.  Resample to 20mil meshes takes just as long. :(
I tested subdivision in zbrush on a 12mil poly model and it took 3 seconds to go to 45mil.

Edited by Werner_Z
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I believe 3D-Coat is having trouble making a simple conversion of a 1.5 million polygon mesh in Surface Mode to Voxels Mode.
I am almost 1 hour waiting and 3D-Coat does not leave the calculation screen: Not Responding. I will have to restart the program.

My Steps to the above problem:
- I merged two arms into the character's body (using Boolean operation) in Surface Mode and then I pressed the Convert to Voxels button. I had 1.5 million polygons and in converting to Voxels I set 700,000 polygons, Close Holes and Subdivide the mesh by 2 times.
After these steps, Not Responding Screen....and 3d-coat not work more.

As I said, just to remind you of some other 3d-Coat issues I'm going through:
- Problems with Res + (It takes too long to subdivide and does not support high amounts of polygons and Performance is not good).

- When the mesh has large amounts of polygons the performance of the brushes is very low.

- Drag Stroke is with problems.

- Problems using the Resample command (taking too long);

   Just like when you hit the ENTER button while in Surface Mode.

- Problems converting a Surface Mode mesh to Voxels.

Edited by Rygaard
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14 minutes ago, Rygaard said:

I believe 3D-Coat is having trouble making a simple conversion of a 1.5 million polygon mesh in Surface Mode to Voxels Mode.

To me, it makes much more sense to create a new vox layer, choose a resolution for it, and then right click > merge visible.
This method is :
-
quasi instantaneous,
- it gives you much more control than simply entering a number in the box and praying that the outcome will be what you want.
- It preserves the original surface mode object
- It gives you a vox layer that has a density that is compatible with your other layers (1 - 2 - 4 - 8, etc)

 

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1 hour ago, lesaint said:

To me, it makes much more sense to create a new vox layer, choose a resolution for it, and then right click > merge visible.
This method is :
-
quasi instantaneous,
- it gives you much more control than simply entering a number in the box and praying that the outcome will be what you want.
- It preserves the original surface mode object
- It gives you a vox layer that has a density that is compatible with your other layers (1 - 2 - 4 - 8, etc)

 

You're right. There is this possibility and I confess that I had forgotten it.

To be honest, I'm testing the possibilities that 3D-Coat offers us and whether those possibilities will work if we need to use them.

It's good to know that this technique of setting resolution on a layer and using the Merge Visible command works as you described it. I will still test.

But the functions I tested are basic 3D-Coat functions and could be working with a high performance and stable. Unfortunately, as you said, we still have to pray ...

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I usually take a pragmatic approach and look for workarounds. But yes I agree that the most intuitive commands, the ones that first come to mind *should* work...

When you test the merge visible method you will see that it works best when the surface mesh is watertight.
When it is not, it creates artifacts that sometimes ruin/hide part of the mesh.

The solution to that can be quite tedious and time consuming.

Again we stumble accross a simple function that *should* work, but doesn't, in most cases.
I always dread to try this, and I make sure I save my file before I attempt to use the "close holes" function from the geometry menu.

Sometimes it works like a charm, but too often it just fails, but that is nothing compared to the numerous times it leads to 3d-c freezing and you have no other option but to end the process.

So, you need to thicken the surface mesh, just enough, not too much or it will spill over to the wrong side in thin areas.

After you have thickened the mesh you can use merge visible on a vox layer without any artifacts.

Then comes the tedious part : you have to fill the inside by hand somehow, without altering the surface.

 

Edited by lesaint
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I agree with you.
Always saving the work or project before performing a 3D-Coat operation / function that requires calculation is more than necessary, I would say vital!

Right now, for the sake of just doing "sculpture drafts" that could turn into more serious projects, I'm not so careful that I keep testing the commands, functions, brushes ... because I already know in advance that I'm going to have great chances of having a problem, critical error or bug in an unstable 3D-Coat version.
My biggest intention is to report these problems.

Thank you for the explanation.
 

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Yes when doodling, just experimenting with shapes and all, having to always be afraid to perform an action is quite distracting and can break the mood...

That is why I stay away from surface mode as much as I can. Because it is surface mode operations that are the most dangerous.
There are bugs with undo that can break a voxel layer too, though. And I feel it is absolutely impossible to train onself to use undo carefully.

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Attention:
Serious problem when using VoxTree's visibility button (hiding a Layer object), save the project and then reopen the project.

When I saved a project in 3D-Coat, with two geometries hidden (each in its own layer) by the VoxTree visibility icon (button), 3D-Coat erased my two geometries from the project's VoxTree layer, leaving only the two layers (
Both geometries were in Voxels Mode).

Because when I went to open the project again and I pressed the visibility icon to make the geometries visible again and restart the work on them, the two geometries no longer existed in their respective VoxTree layers, only consisting of zero polygons in each layer.

This is not the first time that this huge problem has happened to me.

I don't know if it's happening only when the layer is Voxels Mode. I don't remember when I lost geometry in the past if it was in Surface Mode.

Therefore, CAUTION, you users when saving a project with hidden objects (VoxTree visibility button).
You are at a great risk of losing the geometry of your work.

 

//fixed

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Follow these steps :
-create a new layer with geometry in roughly the same space as your lost voxels.

-Select a layer with lost voxels.

-Select the fill tool and set its depth to 0

-"paint" with the fill tool on the geometry you created in the first step for that purpose, but with the empty layer selected.

The lost voxels should start reappearing where you paint.

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27 minutes ago, lesaint said:


Don't erase the file


Edit : AND DON't SAVE IT!

I had saved and was already recreating the geometries. Lucky I had enough UNDOs and it didn't crash.

24 minutes ago, lesaint said:

Follow these steps :

I did not know this tip!
Thank you so much for the steps!
My two geometries (voxels mode) have returned from the "land of erased"!
So far, I do not believe this worked!
Thank you again!

BUT......

This problem could be fixed!
Please fix this big error.

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When I am in voxel mode and do a proxy, and then restore it, it enters voxel mode as it should.

But, if I do the same thing, but actually edit the proxy(like using the move brush for example), and then restores it, it always goes into surface mode instead of voxels as it should.

This is on the MacOS build 4.9.04.

Best regards
//Morgan

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19 minutes ago, lesaint said:

Not sure I understand, what do you mean?

You recovered your voxels through this method, yes ? (lucky about the undo's, saving makes the lost voxels vanish for good)

I meant that the steps you passed me worked and I was able to recover my geometries!

Before you wrote the tip, I had already saved the project with new geometries (one on each new layer) that I was going to work on.

So, I read the steps you wrote.
And I pressed CTRL + Z until the moment I had the two layers of geometries that were erased and from this point I followed what you told me.
And it worked correctly. I had no problems.

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15 minutes ago, MorganNilsson said:

When I am in voxel mode and do a proxy, and then restore it, it enters voxel mode as it should.

But, if I do the same thing, but actually edit the proxy(like using the move brush for example), and then restores it, it always goes into surface mode instead of voxels as it should.

This is on the MacOS build 4.9.04.

This behavior seems to be normal in new versions of 3D-Coat.
I had already been through this, and I noticed the same thing as you.

Currently, when you are in Voxels Mode and using Proxy Mode, not only Move Brush, but also Pose Tool and probably other tools... when you return from Proxy Mode, automatically the mesh will be converted to Surface Mode.
And you were right earlier when I was working on Voxels and returning from Proxy Mode, if I'm not mistaken the mesh remained on Voxels ...

I don't know if this is a bug or if it is the current behavior of 3D-Coat.

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3 minutes ago, Rygaard said:

This behavior seems to be normal in new versions of 3D-Coat.
I had already been through this, and I noticed the same thing as you.

Currently, when you are in Voxels Mode and using Proxy Mode, not only Move Brush, but also Pose Tool and probably other tools... when you return from Proxy Mode, automatically the mesh will be converted to Surface Mode.
And you were right earlier when I was working on Voxels and returning from Proxy Mode, if I'm not mistaken the mesh remained on Voxels ...

I don't know if this is a bug or if it is the current behavior of 3D-Coat.

Well, it is a behaviour that is really annoying, so I hope it is a bug... Either way, it is reported now, I think... This is the place to report beta bugs, right?

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53 minutes ago, MorganNilsson said:

Well, it is a behaviour that is really annoying, so I hope it is a bug... Either way, it is reported now, I think... This is the place to report beta bugs, right?

Sure! You're in the right place!
Feel free to help report any bugs or malfunctions of 3D-Coat!

Only in this way will we have a more stable program.

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1 hour ago, Speike-Styles said:

So when is there going to be a Proper real Build Release without any bugs?

It seems like You  " The Devs " keep on introducing cool new features with every release.

Yet somehow 3DCoat has never really been Stable. There is always one bug that pops up after every release that wasn't there or like that 3 years ago.

Why create so many new tools before making it Stable first. Each Stable release has until now not been stable. Used to be the other way around.

There is always either one thing that works really well on every stable release, but then other places it is just messed up and makes everything Crash.

Please please please make one real Stable Version without new features. Just squash those dam bugs so tired of them. 3D Coat would be so Powerful if not for every uncanny release. Again I would love to use it more, but ZB just really has the overhand atm, but I totally miss working inside of 3DCoat.. Ever since Matcaps have been removed 3DCoat just introduces way to many bugs to enjoy it for good. And PBR workflow is great, but lats the simplicity of a simple matcap... it should not be " yay another release I wounder what is broken this time"  it should instead be " Yay a another release time to switch easily and wow my workflow just improved....

 

Thank you..

The entire period between releases are generally BETA. Prior to a release, Andrew spends weeks doing nothing else but bugfixing. That is when you can expect the most stable versions.

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9 minutes ago, AbnRanger said:

The entire period between releases are generally BETA. Prior to a release, Andrew spends weeks doing nothing else but bugfixing. That is when you can expect the most stable versions.

Sorry, but I don't even remember stable release anymore... it's always something messed up.

I've been working with 3DC almost exclusively for over 2 years and... at the beginning it was fun, but when the real job began, it was very often a frustrating process.

 

 

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On 1/14/2020 at 11:36 PM, Rygaard said:

I meant that the steps you passed me worked and I was able to recover my geometries!
 

By the way, I personally believe that this occurs when you close 3d-Coat too soon after saving.

(and yes I know that 3d-C supposedly continues saving after you close it).

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59 minutes ago, lesaint said:

By the way, I personally believe that this occurs when you close 3d-Coat too soon after saving.

(and yes I know that 3d-C supposedly continues saving after you close it).

To be honest with you, I don't remember if I closed the program anytime soon after I saved the project.
Maybe yes....

But I didn't realize that after you hit CTRL + S (or save in the menu) 3D-Coat would continue the saving process.
I recognize that this is new to me after many years using 3D-Coat.

I confess that this is not so pleasant news, because I thought I would be "saved" from any program error as soon as I hit the Save button.
From now on, I'll wait longer.... before closing the program.

Do you think I could close the program after how long I hit the save button?

Could developers put a warning window for users not to close the program while the program is in the save period (even after the program has saved)? Or a countdown?
Or maybe this is some other bug?

Edited by Rygaard
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7 hours ago, Mihu83 said:

Sorry, but I don't even remember stable release anymore... it's always something messed up.

I've been working with 3DC almost exclusively for over 2 years and... at the beginning it was fun, but when the real job began, it was very often a frustrating process.

 

 

I understand the frustration, but the last few weeks prior to a release, Andrew comes here and says to users like yourself, who may still be encountering issues, to report them. He does this to help insure the release is as stable as he can make it. If you don't report anything, he may not know there is a problem. Send him an email, with screengrabs of the scene or screen recordings of the problem, and explain the circumstances that cause it, as well as what build and OS you are using it on.

I've had problems in the past that I blamed on 3DCoat and it turned out to be a graphic card driver one time, another time it was a Wacom driver, and another time it was my Anti-Virus app suddenly and without warning, deciding to flag 3DCoat on it's own. So, not every problem is the fault of the application. A high percentage of it might be, but that's where we can help insure our personal workflow isn't affected....by simply reporting all the problems we encounter.

I report a bunch, myself, and Andrew does usually fix them by the next build or two.

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1 hour ago, AbnRanger said:

He does this to help insure the release is as stable as he can make it. If you don't report anything, he may not know there is a problem. Send him an email, with screengrabs of the scene or screen recordings of the problem, and explain the circumstances that cause it, as well as what build and OS you are using it on.

In less than a year I sent a description of more than 40 bugs. Whether in text form or recording a video where everything is shown in detail.

Of the bugs in almost two years, fixed about five. Some continue to manifest themselves.

Regarding drawing on the reference and other trifles.

The only thing that really pleased me was the more or less working Boolean operations (I was delighted when I saw that I could cut the mesh in any way, in any order, then duplicate it, and subtract one from the other - and after a few minutes I I get a result that doesn’t crash 3D coats. This is really a breakthrough and it makes me very happy).

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For all the time. I repeat. For almost two years that I have been using this program, the ONLY stable version for me is 4.9.05. The only one. Version .17 is declared as stable. However, in the same thread I regularly see some new bugs, some critical moments that interfere with the work.

I wrote that the new release is being repaired by something that did not work well in the previous version. And they break what worked well the same in the previous one.

I wrote about this to the developers and the forum. No reaction.

It's just that developers use users as free beta testers.

Deal with it.

Nothing will change.

 Just let us enjoy at least some stability.

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7 hours ago, Rygaard said:



Could developers put a warning window for users not to close the program while the program is in the save period (even after the program has saved)? Or a countdown?
Or maybe this is some other bug?

I'm not entirely sure hidden voxels vanish when you exit 3dc too early after saving, I don't have proof.
What I can say is that it has been my habit now for a long time to always wait a few seconds after saving before I exit 3dc  (more seconds if the file is big, just two or three seconds if the fils is small)

Ever since I do that, I don't think it happened again.
Honestly I thought maybe the problem had gone away when I heard that 3dc would continue saving even after you close.

So when it happened to you it was the first occurence I heard of in a long time.

I think yes a progress bar for saving would be a really cool idea, in any case.

****
There is another possible bug related to saving, but again I am not entirely sure :
Sometimes saved files can't be opened. I believe this happens when I have deleted a bunch of paint layers and vox layers from a complex file, and then continued working on the remaining objects.

****

So I try not to take saving for granted. I tend so save incrementally, so as to not lose everything.

However, you don't really know until you have tried reopening the files, and I remember at least once when quite a few of my incremental saves were corrupt, and so were the autosaves.
 

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