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Need Help with Paint Room


Mack
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I am a total noob in the paint room. I primarily use 3DCoat for modeling.

I want to export a painted/textured model into blender with all the paint /texture on it. Using the Applink which works fine but the model gets imported into blender without any paint/textures.

I know I am making a bunch of mistakes in doing this, so I would love for someone to show me how to do this properly.

I attached a short vid of what I am doing.

Thanks

Mack

2021-05-08 17-02-18.mkv

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thanks. Do I have to UV wrap my model then paint on it? and Retopo?

I guess this is my issue :

Final thing and probably the most important, if you are not that familiar with 3D Coat, you should know that if you just sculpt something and go to the paint room, paint over it and you want to move it to Blender, it will not work. I always assumed that 3DC creates an auto UV map and that otherwise it would not be even possible to paint on the model, but I was wrong and no one ever informed me. But I am saving you the trouble now of being confused and angry for weeks if you're in the same spot like I was. In this case you are just painting on vertices(vertex-paint) and not on any texture maps( UV maps). If you want to move it successfully to Blender, you need to retopo the model, UV unwrap it, bake the colors on textures(in case you are dealing with an already painted model) and then move to the paint room. Only after this will your paint be actually placed on a texture map, which can later be exported to Blender properly. You have a lot of tutorials on retopo and unwrapping so make sure to go through that before using this addon.

 

Edited by Mack
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Right click on your model in the sculpt room, choose Autopo, then your selection or Just use the Autopo function and work through the process. Both will take you though the process but one is a little more automatic.

The model needs a retopo mesh created for it, uv seams and unwrapping plus baking.

The vertex colors will be baked for the model.

Watch the videos from 14---18 to understand how these functions work, this will save you frustration.

 

 

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39 minutes ago, Mack said:

So essentially I just vertex painted instead of UV Mapping, and retopoing?

 

Anyway to get vertex paint into Blender?

From the sculpt "room" Export your scene as an FBX. In Blender , import FBX. Add "vertex colour node" to colour input on the principled shader. Done...

( Be wary of your size  of objects ...check in 3dcoat Preferences"in/out"  , I use cms. This is because Blender sometimes imports HUGE objects. So some experiments required to suit you.)

Vertex paint.jpg

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12 minutes ago, stusutcliffe said:

From the sculpt "room" Export your scene as an FBX. In Blender , import FBX. Add "vertex colour node" to colour input on the principled shader. Done...

( Be wary of your size  of objects ...check in 3dcoat Preferences"in/out"  , I use cms. This is because Blender sometimes imports HUGE objects. So some experiments required to suit you.)

Vertex paint.jpg

Hey Stuart, this exports vertex paint from 3DCoat into Blender?

Thanks for your help.

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44 minutes ago, Carlosan said:

Right click on your model in the sculpt room, choose Autopo, then your selection or Just use the Autopo function and work through the process. Both will take you though the process but one is a little more automatic.

The model needs a retopo mesh created for it, uv seams and unwrapping plus baking.

The vertex colors will be baked for the model.

Watch the videos from 14---18 to understand how these functions work, this will save you frustration.

 

 

Thanks Carlosan. My models have multiple parts, do I have to Autopo each part?

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14 minutes ago, Mack said:

Hey Stuart, this exports vertex paint from 3DCoat into Blender?

Yup... If you are not making a game or animating and you just want a nice render do this. It saves a lot of time . Though Blender will be a bit sluggish the more polys you have in your scene. I try to keep below 20 million! Also what I do is in 3dcoat , I vertex paint at a big resolution. Then decimate the bits until  they just start to look a bit dodgy. Sometimes if an scene has got a miriad of parts retoping/baking etc can take longer than doing the actual sculpt. And really thin stuff like clothing can be impossible to retopo. Though a quick way is to "retopo via decimation"  Its all swings and roundabouts and what you can get away with. Nobodies workflow is the same. 

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1 hour ago, stusutcliffe said:

Yup... If you are not making a game or animating and you just want a nice render do this. It saves a lot of time . Though Blender will be a bit sluggish the more polys you have in your scene. I try to keep below 20 million! Also what I do is in 3dcoat , I vertex paint at a big resolution. Then decimate the bits until  they just start to look a bit dodgy. Sometimes if an scene has got a miriad of parts retoping/baking etc can take longer than doing the actual sculpt. And really thin stuff like clothing can be impossible to retopo. Though a quick way is to "retopo via decimation"  Its all swings and roundabouts and what you can get away with. Nobodies workflow is the same. 

Hey Stuart, do you have video of this process from beginning to end? 

Edited by Mack
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40 minutes ago, stusutcliffe said:

Yup... If you are not making a game or animating and you just want a nice render do this. It saves a lot of time . Though Blender will be a bit sluggish the more polys you have in your scene. I try to keep below 20 million! Also what I do is in 3dcoat , I vertex paint at a big resolution. Then decimate the bits until  they just start to look a bit dodgy. Sometimes if an scene has got a miriad of parts retoping/baking etc can take longer than doing the actual sculpt. And really thin stuff like clothing can be impossible to retopo. Though a quick way is to "retopo via decimation"  Its all swings and roundabouts and what you can get away with. Nobodies workflow is the same. 

Got it work, kind of. It does not work to export from the sculpt room. It kind of works to export from the Paint room.

 It's awesome that this works but it's very messy. The first pic is from 3DCoat and the second pic is from Blender.

Capture.JPG

Capture2.JPG

Edited by Mack
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25 minutes ago, stusutcliffe said:

If you are happy to share the  3dcoat scene, I can give it the once over. It usually works perfect for me. I suspect something is amiss that is being overlooked. ( I dont proclaim myself an expert in this by the way)

Yeah I can send it your way. The file is big, can I have your email for a WeTransfer?

I am surely making some mistake somewhere along the way.:)

Thanks

Edited by Mack
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I got what you got. All those black splodges. I think what it is, 3dcoat shaders are sort of only for 3dcoat, did you use "metal" shaders. they dont really export as anything. So that maybe  a limitation to vertex paint to Blender. They look nice in 3dcoat but you cant export them because the use the "effect" of a bump and specularity. When I do metal I usually do it in Blender rather than 3dcoat first, but I just do simple stuff like gold earings and buttons.

I think you should experiment a bit more. Just make a sphere and experiment with that. Vertex paint it, export it. Then retopo it , and export the maps that way you can see how it all works. FBX to Blender works just fine and stores the colour infomation. All these effects are probably easier in Blender if you retopo and bake various maps that  you can adjust with alphas and all the stuff, but they are a pain to make. Vertex paint is easier but then you have  the limitations....there is always a catch  isnt there.

Im sorry I cant explain whats taken me  years to learn in a couple of paragraphs. Ha Ha .

It took me ages to figure out the Vertex paint to Blender thing, there didnt seem to me any info anywhere. But since I figured it out I mix and match depending on my needs. 

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3 minutes ago, stusutcliffe said:

I got what you got. All those black splodges. I think what it is, 3dcoat shaders are sort of only for 3dcoat, did you use "metal" shaders. they dont really export as anything. So that maybe  a limitation to vertex paint to Blender. They look nice in 3dcoat but you cant export them because the use the "effect" of a bump and specularity. When I do metal I usually do it in Blender rather than 3dcoat first, but I just do simple stuff like gold earings and buttons.

I think you should experiment a bit more. Just make a sphere and experiment with that. Vertex paint it, export it. Then retopo it , and export the maps that way you can see how it all works. FBX to Blender works just fine and stores the colour infomation. All these effects are probably easier in Blender if you retopo and bake various maps that  you can adjust with alphas and all the stuff, but they are a pain to make. Vertex paint is easier but then you have  the limitations....there is always a catch  isnt there.

Im sorry I cant explain whats taken me  years to learn in a couple of paragraphs. Ha Ha .

It took me ages to figure out the Vertex paint to Blender thing, there didnt seem to me any info anywhere. But since I figured it out I mix and match depending on my needs. 

Thanks for trying. I appreciate it.

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