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3DCoat 4.9 BETA testing thread


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10 minutes ago, Carlosan said:

May be... paint Mesh and UV mesh need to consolidate (as you can found on Mari) IF we can detach UV editor to second monitor. So UV editor on Paint room will be the new UV room, but no retopo mesh. -1.

Think about stages and stage modifications. 

In the creation process we go through stages and almost always those stages receive revisions and request for changes and modifications in which we must go back to move forward.

Uv room is confusing to me, and hazardous to use.

However, if I remember correctly it has attractive tools that are not in the retopo room. On the other hand it lacks important things you can do in the retopo room.

What if Uv-room and Tweak room were combined, and changes made in uv room did not break paint layers ?

I think it is important that Retopo mesh remain separated and unaffected by changes made to the paint mesh.

the notion of Sculpt mesh - Retopo mesh - Paint mesh is amazing and perfect, imho.
The trouble is that it is obscure, hidden behind the scene, probably unclear and confusing.
Maybe what would be needed would be a monitoring room that show the relation between the types of meshes.
It could show information like corresponding vox layers and retopo objects for baking.
It would also be a perfect space to centralize operations for taking a mesh from one type to another. Currently those tools are spread apart and sometimes hidden
-Retopo menu > Take mesh from paint room
-Bake menu > update paint mesh with retopo mesh
-Geometry menu > retopo mesh to sculpt mesh
-right click vox layer menu > retopo via decimation > cancel

One thing that is seriously lacking in my opinion is the option to bake the paint mesh to the sculpt mesh (with roughness/metal/displacement).
That is, because when you decide to paint on the paint mesh instead of the sculpt mesh, then making changes to the mesh or uv's often mean breaking paint layers.
The baking tool in the texture menu (to bake to a new mesh on disk) is kind of a last resort thing, it helps save some data and not have to redo everythng, but... it is not perfect
I think that being able to bake to a very high poly sculpt mesh instead would be more reliable.
When the painting is stored on the sculpt mesh, I feel it is safe there. Drastic changes can then be made to the retopo mesh and the painting is safe on the high poly for baking.

Another thing that is lacking but less critical is the option to export selected paint objects, not all of them at once.
When you want do do that, you need to save, delete some paint objects, export, and remember NOT TO SAVE again, which is error-prone

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4.9.06A

1) Selecting edges in retopo room on selected edges = shift+control  = nothing happens.

2) radial symmetry 6 sides in retopo room didnt work well. Using move for one vertex should effect move for all 6 side vertices but it acted weird.

3) in sculpt room & retopo room, trying to shift "sculpt obj to model folder(sculpt room)" or "retopo obj to rtpmodels(retopo room)" didnt work.

 

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1.07.2019 4.9.07 [beta]

- Presets got folders structure.

- Possibility to assign hotkeys to curves RMB menu. Hotkey will act as if you clicked RMB over the curve under cursor and performed the action. Same rule acts for sculpt objects.

- Correct "Reset space" in transform tool - in correspondence with tooltip.

- Default colors for seams/sharp/sharp seams changed to more bright. Generally, you may tweak all that colors in preferences.

- Lasso works correctly in voxel tools - it cuts surface where applicable. Apply button appears when it should appear.

- Fixed empty floating windows problem.

- Restored View Size option in render settings.

- More tools included in Voxel/Surface toolset.

- A lot of bugs reported in this thread fixed.

 

Sending crash reports, any feeback appreciated! I am looking it carefully.

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6 hours ago, lesaint said:

Please, no. :/

Care to elaborate? I see no logical reason for wanting to keep them separate. If you want to edit/fix the Paint Mesh, or make basic transforms, where you can set the pivot point and such, you have to jump through a bunch of hoops and the result is oftentimes not satisfactory. When baking, you are just baking to the same lower poly mesh. 

LESS CLUTTER

LESS CONFUSION

MORE EFFICIENT 

Please, YES!

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4 hours ago, lesaint said:

Uv room is confusing to me, and hazardous to use.

However, if I remember correctly it has attractive tools that are not in the retopo room. On the other hand it lacks important things you can do in the retopo room.

What if Uv-room and Tweak room were combined, and changes made in uv room did not break paint layers ?

I think it is important that Retopo mesh remain separated and unaffected by changes made to the paint mesh.

the notion of Sculpt mesh - Retopo mesh - Paint mesh is amazing and perfect, imho.
The trouble is that it is obscure, hidden behind the scene, probably unclear and confusing.
Maybe what would be needed would be a monitoring room that show the relation between the types of meshes.
It could show information like corresponding vox layers and retopo objects for baking.
It would also be a perfect space to centralize operations for taking a mesh from one type to another. Currently those tools are spread apart and sometimes hidden
-Retopo menu > Take mesh from paint room
-Bake menu > update paint mesh with retopo mesh
-Geometry menu > retopo mesh to sculpt mesh
-right click vox layer menu > retopo via decimation > cancel

One thing that is seriously lacking in my opinion is the option to bake the paint mesh to the sculpt mesh (with roughness/metal/displacement).
That is, because when you decide to paint on the paint mesh instead of the sculpt mesh, then making changes to the mesh or uv's often mean breaking paint layers.
The baking tool in the texture menu (to bake to a new mesh on disk) is kind of a last resort thing, it helps save some data and not have to redo everythng, but... it is not perfect
I think that being able to bake to a very high poly sculpt mesh instead would be more reliable.
When the painting is stored on the sculpt mesh, I feel it is safe there. Drastic changes can then be made to the retopo mesh and the painting is safe on the high poly for baking.

Another thing that is lacking but less critical is the option to export selected paint objects, not all of them at once.
When you want do do that, you need to save, delete some paint objects, export, and remember NOT TO SAVE again, which is error-prone

If you want a separate mesh, you should be able to copy/duplicate a PAINT OBJECT to work on and bake to that once your mesh edits are done. There is no good reason to keep them separated entirely, like they are now, where the Retopo tools are not available at all, to Paint Meshes. You have to send a copy (which currently clears everything else in the Retopo room...not good) > make changes and UPDATE PAINT MESH WITH RETOPO Mesh = messed up texture maps/UV's.

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13 minutes ago, AbnRanger said:

Care to elaborate? I see no logical reason for wanting to keep them separate. If you want to edit/fix the Paint Mesh, or make basic transforms, where you can set the pivot point and such, you have to jump through a bunch of hoops and the result is oftentimes not satisfactory. When baking, you are just baking to the same lower poly mesh. 

 

This should be moved to a different thread, it's beta testing, not feature requests.

Anyway, I WANT my retopo meshes to be a separate entity from the paint mesh.
-I can store different meshes in retopo objects that I do not necessarily want to bring to the paint room at a given time.
-I can have a quad version in the retopo room, and a triangulated, or even subdivided mesh in the paint room

Painting on the "paint mesh" is very risky as you pointed out in your next post. I prefer to do all the painting on the sculpt mesh.
baking is the very last step in the process, when you do this.

So, after baking, when you notice errors that you need to correct, either in the paint room or after exporting, you just delete the paint mesh and go work in the retopo room then bake again.

if the errors are minor or you are in a hurry, you can always use the tweak room/uv room to make small repairs, but it is risky, you could break paint layers.
I don't think fixing 3d-c so that the paint layers never break is easy or it would have been done already. So, best option imho is to make use of the sculpt layers to paint a high poly in full PBR.

Treat the sculpt mesh as the final painted mesh.
Treat the retopo mesh as an intermediary, easily fixable low poly, and you can store different versions for different purposes.
Treat baking to the paint room as the very last step. As an analogy, when you bake a cake and you find that you made a mistake, the cake is not fixable. you start over and bake again.

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Remember that some artist use only one room inter-changed in their workflow with other apps. Some only use PaintRoom for handpaint, others only the tools of retopo. That individuality is good to keep...

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2 minutes ago, Carlosan said:

Remember that some artist use only one room inter-changed in their workflow with other apps. Some only use PaintRoom for handpaint, others only the tools of retopo. That individuality is good to keep...

It doesn't mean there would be a merging of ROOMS....just Meshes. Like you can paint on a SCULPT (room) OBJECT...in the PAINT ROOM. Same would apply to working on a single mesh structure in either the Paint Room or Retopo (probably would be renamed to Topo or Topo Edit). 

If you want to do retopo work on a mesh that has no paint or UV's you still could....just create a new Mesh layer and when you are ready to bake, you simply bake from the Voxel/Sculpt object to that mesh...no COPY of the Retopo is sent to another room. It's already there. The baking would just add new paint layers to the same mesh. 

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12 minutes ago, Andrew Shpagin said:

Just for clarification where we go:

The tweak room will be removed. Instead, all paint and retopo objects will be editable in sculpt room. There will be branches "Paint objects" and "Retopo objects" in VoxTree.

Is there a possibility to allow the surface mode of Sculpt Room to allow geometry to accept UVs?
This way we could open texture maps directly in geometry and have the opportunity to use Displacement maps to physically deform and apply the mesh surface. And so have compatibility with Sculpt Layers these displacement maps.

I say this because there are many techniques (one of these techniques would be using XYZ Texture) that could be performed using texture maps in geometry that would accept and have UVs.

For example, in Blender, users have access to Modifiers (non-destructive process) such as Displacement Modifier, Muti Resolution Modifier, Booleans Modifier, and many others. And most of these modifiers use UVs - texture maps.

Thanks

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19 minutes ago, Rygaard said:

Is there a possibility to allow the surface mode of Sculpt Room to allow geometry to accept UVs?
This way we could open texture maps directly in geometry and have the opportunity to use Displacement maps to physically deform and apply the mesh surface. And so have compatibility with Sculpt Layers these displacement maps.

I say this because there are many techniques (one of these techniques would be using XYZ Texture) that could be performed using texture maps in geometry that would accept and have UVs.

For example, in Blender, users have access to Modifiers (non-destructive process) such as Displacement Modifier, Muti Resolution Modifier, Booleans Modifier, and many others. And most of these modifiers use UVs - texture maps.

Thanks

This would be excellent to have in 3DC. As it stands now I either have to do the displacement in another tool and bring it back to 3DC, making a static point in the workflow where if something goes wrong I'd have to go way back to that point to redo it, and potentially lots of other work (completely undesired). Or, use another sculpting tool. :( I'd rather stay in 3DC and have this as a function that you could have it toggle on/off. And if the UVs change it just doesn't work until you specify the UVs for it. Done and done. Any chance on this happening in 4.9 @Andrew Shpagin?

Thanks!

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53 minutes ago, Rygaard said:

Is there a possibility to allow the surface mode of Sculpt Room to allow geometry to accept UVs?
This way we could open texture maps directly in geometry and have the opportunity to use Displacement maps to physically deform and apply the mesh surface. And so have compatibility with Sculpt Layers these displacement maps.

I say this because there are many techniques (one of these techniques would be using XYZ Texture) that could be performed using texture maps in geometry that would accept and have UVs.

For example, in Blender, users have access to Modifiers (non-destructive process) such as Displacement Modifier, Muti Resolution Modifier, Booleans Modifier, and many others. And most of these modifiers use UVs - texture maps.

Thanks

This would certainly shatter the barrier between scultpting and texturing, a welcome development. Another reason for me to make the shift over to Blender. Thanks.

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@Javis , @L'Ancien Regime , @Andrew Shpagin and everyone,
I know this is not the place for suggestions, but I would like to take advantage of the moment Andrew has spoken about the direction that 3D-Coat might take.

In this video I made a while ago, suggesting a single mesh in 3D-Coat, I talk about the many features and techniques the artist could have at hand that would allow freedom, ease, and unlimited power in the creative process. and performing workflow with extreme quality.


https://youtu.be/mxKqYxiNRWs

In the video, I used Blender to demonstrate, and my intention is not to make 3D-Coat become Blender.
But yes, maybe it does inspire @Andrew Shpagin and 3D-Coat developers to implement fantastic things that would change the 3D-Coat workflow for the better.

Some people may ask, but if Blender can do all this, why not use Blender?
For me, 3D-Coat is a powerhouse and handles millions of polygons without the system crashing, just like painting in Paint Room.
Other than that, 3d-Coat has a lot of tools and features that I love. I never thought I'd like a program so much the way I like 3D-Coat.
So I really wish I could just work with 3D-Coat instead of breaking my workflow and changing programs every time I needed certain functionality, which I know and have a lot of faith that @Andrew Shpagin could implement inside the 3D-Coat.

The things I talk about in 'video' are NOT TO REPLACE what is already implemented in 3D-Coat, but to enhance something that already exists or implement functionality.

The main things that I talk about in the video are:
- The advantage that a single mesh can have UVs.
- Modeling and sculpture in the same mesh.
- Opening of UVs in this mesh.
- Creation, painting and use of texture maps in this mesh.
- Use and advantages of Multi-Resolution that have UVs or not.
- Creation and use of Vertex Groups with weight influence to select vertices with various types of goals.
- Implementation of non destructive modifiers using Vertex Groups and UVs. Among the main modifiers are: Multi Resolution, Displacement, Boolean and others.

In the case of the Displacement Modifier, this would be very important for the artist to create and paint displacement maps and then to preview and to apply the Displacement map to physically deform the mesh surface. And that would be compatible with Sculpt Layers so that the artist has full control of the mesh surface from which texture map was applied.

The advantage of Andrew's ability to implement Modifiers in 3D-Coat is that it would give us incredible power in a completely non-destructive process. And everything we did would be shown in real time.

Just imagine the possibilities of what I demonstrated and said in the video inside 3D-Coat ... I would venture to say just one thing:
"I'm sorry ZBrush... We are now in a new era!"

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4 hours ago, Andrew Shpagin said:

Just for clarification where we go:

The tweak room will be removed. Instead, all paint and retopo objects will be editable in sculpt room. There will be branches "Paint objects" and "Retopo objects" in VoxTree.

That sounds quite interesting.

Could sculpt layers hold information for the retopo objects too ?
For example if you use the pose tool in the sculpt room, you can make the retopo mesh conform to the sculpt mesh : The transformation to the sculpt mesh is on a sculpt layer, but not the transformation to the retopo mesh.


As for people asking for uv mapped mesh in the sculpt room, I think what andrew said covers that : you will be able to sculpt on the paint mesh (which by definition has a uv map). The question is, will you be able to use the live clay tools on it, creating or removing geometry whilre retaining the uv's.
If so, maybe there is no need to make the sculpt mesh itself hold uv's ?


Also, I think it is related, I would like a mesh imported to the retopo room to retain its weight painting (not the armature), and to retain them all the way through baking to the paint room and re-exporting.


 

Edited by lesaint
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1 hour ago, Rygaard said:

@Javis , @L'Ancien Regime , @Andrew Shpagin and everyone,
I know this is not the place for suggestions, but I would like to take advantage of the moment Andrew has spoken about the direction that 3D-Coat might take.

In this video I made a while ago, suggesting a single mesh in 3D-Coat, I talk about the many features and techniques the artist could have at hand that would allow freedom, ease, and unlimited power in the creative process. and performing workflow with extreme quality.


https://youtu.be/mxKqYxiNRWs

In the video, I used Blender to demonstrate, and my intention is not to make 3D-Coat become Blender.
But yes, maybe it does inspire @Andrew Shpagin and 3D-Coat developers to implement fantastic things that would change the 3D-Coat workflow for the better.

Some people may ask, but if Blender can do all this, why not use Blender?
For me, 3D-Coat is a powerhouse and handles millions of polygons without the system crashing, just like painting in Paint Room.
Other than that, 3d-Coat has a lot of tools and features that I love. I never thought I'd like a program so much the way I like 3D-Coat.
So I really wish I could just work with 3D-Coat instead of breaking my workflow and changing programs every time I needed certain functionality, which I know and have a lot of faith that @Andrew Shpagin could implement inside the 3D-Coat.

The things I talk about in 'video' are NOT TO REPLACE what is already implemented in 3D-Coat, but to enhance something that already exists or implement functionality.

The main things that I talk about in the video are:
- The advantage that a single mesh can have UVs.
- Modeling and sculpture in the same mesh.
- Opening of UVs in this mesh.
- Creation, painting and use of texture maps in this mesh.
- Use and advantages of Multi-Resolution that have UVs or not.
- Creation and use of Vertex Groups with weight influence to select vertices with various types of goals.
- Implementation of non destructive modifiers using Vertex Groups and UVs. Among the main modifiers are: Multi Resolution, Displacement, Boolean and others.

In the case of the Displacement Modifier, this would be very important for the artist to create and paint displacement maps and then to preview and to apply the Displacement map to physically deform the mesh surface. And that would be compatible with Sculpt Layers so that the artist has full control of the mesh surface from which texture map was applied.

The advantage of Andrew's ability to implement Modifiers in 3D-Coat is that it would give us incredible power in a completely non-destructive process. And everything we did would be shown in real time.

Just imagine the possibilities of what I demonstrated and said in the video inside 3D-Coat ... I would venture to say just one thing:
"I'm sorry ZBrush... We are now in a new era!"

Unless some forum rules have changed I'm not aware of, this is still the place for ideas.

I also happen to agree with you. ;)

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Some of these suggestions sound really good, and I'm not a developer,  but is it possible that performance could be negatively affected by these changes? Also, how difficult would it be and how long would it take to implement these new features?

One thing Andrew needs to think about is, if Blender continues to improve it's sculpting and painting abilities, how he can differentiate 3D-Coat from Blender. Maybe by better performance, or cleaner, easier to use UI?

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14 hours ago, Andrew Shpagin said:

Just for clarification where we go:

The tweak room will be removed. Instead, all paint and retopo objects will be editable in sculpt room. There will be branches "Paint objects" and "Retopo objects" in VoxTree.

This makes sense since the tweak room is basically low res sculpting. Honestly I haven't used the Tweak room in ages.

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14 hours ago, Rygaard said:

Is there a possibility to allow the surface mode of Sculpt Room to allow geometry to accept UVs?
This way we could open texture maps directly in geometry and have the opportunity to use Displacement maps to physically deform and apply the mesh surface. And so have compatibility with Sculpt Layers these displacement maps.

 

This would be really nice. For a lot of my work in 3D scanning I get the object scanned with textures but I may like to have a medium res mesh exported. The problem there is that if bring it into the sculpt room I get low res textures. So I always have to make my scans really high res.

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So off the bat! Wow. Nice redesign of the UI Andrew! Feels fresh! I do have to relearn some icons, but hey, first world problems. Now I'll just have to find how to use Sculpt Layers after activating it in the preferences. Clap-clap! i love it though!

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I dont know is it fixed problem when edge loop is marked as cut for uv, then I can not mark it as hard edge loop. I need to mark every single edge, but not complete loop. So I need to unmark as uv cut, mark ad hard edge and again mark as uv cut. Very frustrating. I hope it is fixed. I like to cut my uv maps, then mark hard edges and bake maps. This way whemever I have uv cut matching hard edge, loop doesnt work and I need to select one by one all around.

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10 hours ago, philnolan3d said:

This would be really nice. For a lot of my work in 3D scanning I get the object scanned with textures but I may like to have a medium res mesh exported. The problem there is that if bring it into the sculpt room I get low res textures. So I always have to make my scans really high res. 

Would be great!

Please let me be very clear when I talk about suggestions or ideas.
My suggestions or requests for tools and features are not intended to remove any features or tools that already exist within 3D-Coat.
All the things that exist within 3d-Coat I love and are important in any workflow.

The intention is only to improve features and tools that already exist according to the possibility. And implementations that would help and add to any workflow that already exists and thus would allow you to have more alternatives to further improve your work.

As I said above, there would only be more opportunities for you to use certain techniques according to your needs and what you would like to do at that particular time.

The opportunity for 3D-Coat to export different geometry resolutions is extremely useful and could never be taken from 3d-Coat.

What I said at no time would be something to replace or finish something that already exists and that works well in 3D-Coat, just alternatives that could be more efficient and important for a given task.

The artist would have the freedom to choose the best way to accomplish his goal and considerably increase his creativity and productivity process.

I as an artist, having 3D-Coat as my main program, I can't lie or hide about one thing:
I miss a lot of the various features and tools I used to use to perform different and diverse techniques in my work when I used other programs.

Unfortunately, every time, I have to break my workflow and export a geometry of millions of polygons I'm using to Blender and then return to 3D-Coat.
The biggest problem I face every time is that Blender doesn't have the same performance as 3D-Coat and that makes all the features I use in Blender take too long to come to the point of crashing my computer for cause of the density of polygons I usually use (millions).
So it becomes a very difficult and frustrating job.

Sorry, but I think that a lot of things I said about the video I posted and about geometry accepting UVs, enabling important techniques in a workflow, would be in my humble opinion as an artist things that would change the life of any artist for better. :)

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@Andrew Shpagin

I can confirm the crash I was getting in 9.0.06 with my large file crashes the same in 4.9.07 as well.

I sent you the file just recently using that pcloud site (took several hours for it to upload). The only difference between 9.06 and 9.0.7 is I upgraded my graphics card from a 980 ti to a 2070 Super so don't think its gpu related at all. As mentioned before this crash does not repro in 9.04 for me, just the newer ones. I sent in another crash report from 9.0.07 just in-case the call stack changed but I think its the same one.

 

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18 hours ago, dexsoft said:

I dont know is it fixed problem when edge loop is marked as cut for uv, then I can not mark it as hard edge loop. I need to mark every single edge, but not complete loop. So I need to unmark as uv cut, mark ad hard edge and again mark as uv cut. Very frustrating. I hope it is fixed. I like to cut my uv maps, then mark hard edges and bake maps. This way whemever I have uv cut matching hard edge, loop doesnt work and I need to select one by one all around.

Am I the only one here noticing this problem or I am doing uv and baking wrong way.

I want to share my expirience with making models in this fantastic software.

I am not doing high poly models at all. I make low poly in maya, import in retopo, make uv and then simply mark hard edges. Then I transfer into paint room without baking. Working like a charm :)

Every hard edge is there. All others are roumded very nice. Sometimes I dont use marking hard edges but instead I use smooth angle without bake. 30 angle usually makes great results bronging roumded surfaces very smooth amd sharp edges with nice shading. 

then you can paint deatils in paint room. This is way best workflow I ever found thnx to 3d coat!!!!!

 

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On 11/1/2019 at 6:29 PM, thinkinmonkey said:

Shortcuts seem working now.

Thank you, Andrew.

Shortcuts seem to work but you have to reset them.

Retopo objects panel keeps disappearing when reopening files.

It would be nice to have an extensive list of the bugs that were actually fixed. It seems that most of the recent problems are still there ?

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