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[Feature] Intelligent brush masking ?


Werner_Z
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Good day fellow sculptors.

I remember submitting requests for a more intelligent masking on brushes (especially on the move brush) over the years.

This has been something of a workflow showstopper for me, and it has reached a point where I am slowly researching other software to replace my workflow. In other words, a deal breaker.
My question is this. Will we see something of the sort in the new 2021 version?

We need to have some sort of geo edge length detection, that can isolate areas through connection, but limited by edge path. Here is an example from 3d Coat. I have to use freeze masks to isolate
the upper eye lid before I can push and pull. Also attached is a quick capture of how Houdini handles this.

The new release of blender has silhouette masking in real time. Why would anyone battle with freeze masks in 3dCoat, when I can do this without thinking in blender or elsewhere.

The same goes for proper UDIM support, but I will talk more about that in a separate thread.

 

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Maybe i am wrong but you comparing different methods of modelling, sculpt masking vs low poly modelling soft selection, this is not fair, try to make soft selection polygon model if it will have millions of polygons, it will be very slow. And you cannot select loops and straight lines in sculpt because it have different topology with small triangles. 

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Thanks for the replay sprayer but I think you are missing the point.

I am not comparing 3dCoat to other applications to bash it.  I am bringing it up because of the fact that this has been requested over and over, and will improve
the move brush allot for doing things like blend shapes.  It has absolutely nothing to do with Edge Loops.

It is not that hard. The closest point under the center of the brush is connected to all other points through edges. It can be dense or it can be low res.
If we had a filter that would calculate edge length by crawling, we could have the correct falloff.
Take a look at this image. 
The brush radius overlaps the bottom points and will affect them in 3dCoat. Other applications lets you choose how the points are affected inside the brush radius.
Surface mode will pick the point on the mesh that is closest to the center of the brush. From there it will go to a neighbor point, and it will keep doing this until it reaches the outer circle of the brush. This means that even if the points are close to the selected point on the bottom part of this mesh and falls within the brush radius, it will be to far via edge crawl and would be excluded.

This is super fast to calculate...even on hi res triangular meshes. Houdini allows me to do this on very heave geometry without a problem, and for this reason I export my meshes from 3dCoat to Houdini as obj, then do these simple move adjustments. Then I have to export back to 3dCoat to continue sculpting.
I would like to avoid this and stay in 3dCoat until I am done.
 

Surface_distance.jpg

Edited by Werner_Z
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Yes i know how that works in other software. I have 3ds max it have also some option to keep soft selection after moving, and adjusting curve of selected radius, also it can make selection across surface with connected edges not volume. But in my test it is slow already on 2kk polys(4kk triangles in 3ds coat).
Maybe we need curve.
Though with freeze option via menu you may achieve similar effect, for example you may click freeze selection then invert and then move. There is also options to sharp and smooth freeze mask but it not very strong as you may want, also you ca n draw freeze area with brush options

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The falloff is just a multiplier. I don't care about changing that. Brush alphas takes care of that.
Selection happens under brush radius. All we need is a "connected" or "Surface" filter. Job done.

If the developers tell me they can't do this on the Move brush, I am definitely using the wrong software.

 

Edited by Werner_Z
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This is something that you're right is missing.  It's very important for modeling.  Zbrush has move topological which does what you're talking about.  It would be useful for making adjustments to lips, eyelids, fingers, etc.  I wonder too if it's an oversight or is there some technical reason that makes it difficult to implement.  I too have been hoping for this kind of functionality and have to find workarounds.  Keeping things on separate layers helps.

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32 minutes ago, Werner_Z said:

Yeah, I wanted to post that video originally but did not want to post zbrush stuff here.

Yeah I've been criticized hard for doing that here but see, I vastly prefer working in 3d Coat to working in Zbrush....I'm a big fan of  Andrew's so I figure if we do this once and awhile when necessary it help's 3D Coat to be even better than it is now.

 

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I had an email conversation with Andrew on Mon, 30 Jul 2018 and sent him a video to explain, to which her replied
"
Thanks! Now understood, we plan something similar. "

It was probably my fault by not requesting this through the right channels. I know Andrew is very busy.
 

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  • Carlosan changed the title to [Feature] Intelligent brush masking ?
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