3DCoat 2024 development thread

[Ctc_nick]

1 hour ago, Carlosan said:

I think the same.

The great challenge for this year must be to unify workflow.

The global view must be changed from separating tasks by workspaces (cad style) and grouping by the 3 large interaction groups: highpoly, lowpoly, paint. 

And this 3 data-blocks groups must be linked for easy interaction.

Sculpt, Retopo+Modeling, Paint+tweak+UV

 

I just read it again, thats it exactly !! 

[digman]

"""Just one little explanation. The Reason I use Microvertex Mode is that it supports Flat Subdivision, it even respects Hard Edges. And the Preview Display of the Mid Poly Mesh is just excellent! PPP on the other Hand is much newer and stable I think? But turns everything into a ball (Catmull-Clark) as soon as you turn on Subdivision. I cant add Loops to the Low Poly, because Nanites will take care of the Subdivision. I just import Meshes to Paint Room with "no bake option" to Edit Textures and Displacement."""

You can select auto-smoothing groups and set your max angle to prevent rounding.

Does that help some.

-----------------------------------------------------------------------------

Also, when testing, PPP and flat displacement, it respects hard edges when baking from the retopo room. No need then to use Auto Smoothing Groups then.

Does that help some...

[Ctc_nick]

12 hours ago, digman said:

"""Just one little explanation. The Reason I use Microvertex Mode is that it supports Flat Subdivision, it even respects Hard Edges. And the Preview Display of the Mid Poly Mesh is just excellent! PPP on the other Hand is much newer and stable I think? But turns everything into a ball (Catmull-Clark) as soon as you turn on Subdivision. I cant add Loops to the Low Poly, because Nanites will take care of the Subdivision. I just import Meshes to Paint Room with "no bake option" to Edit Textures and Displacement."""

You can select auto-smoothing groups and set your max angle to prevent rounding.

Does that help some.

-----------------------------------------------------------------------------

Also, when testing, PPP and flat displacement, it respects hard edges when baking from the retopo room. No need then to use Auto Smoothing Groups then.

Does that help some...

Thank you Digman! I will try that in a moment.

[Ctc_nick]

On 3/9/2024 at 10:01 PM, digman said:

"""Just one little explanation. The Reason I use Microvertex Mode is that it supports Flat Subdivision, it even respects Hard Edges. And the Preview Display of the Mid Poly Mesh is just excellent! PPP on the other Hand is much newer and stable I think? But turns everything into a ball (Catmull-Clark) as soon as you turn on Subdivision. I cant add Loops to the Low Poly, because Nanites will take care of the Subdivision. I just import Meshes to Paint Room with "no bake option" to Edit Textures and Displacement."""

You can select auto-smoothing groups and set your max angle to prevent rounding.

Does that help some.

-----------------------------------------------------------------------------

Also, when testing, PPP and flat displacement, it respects hard edges when baking from the retopo room. No need then to use Auto Smoothing Groups then.

Does that help some...

Hey @digman! Yes that helped a lot. And It does work for all modes in ppp, now that you say it.. (blush)

At some point I started using a Flat plane for testing, and that does not work.  Math guys maybe would say: there are no hard edges on a plane.

Would be nice if it works for Landscapes, Walls ,where a plane is enough. Probably i'm just overcomplicating.

Thank you very for the Tip, that brought me be on track!!

All the Best!

 

[L'Ancien Regime]

2024.14 Update;

"- The AI knowledge database is completely automated, updating whenever any text changes or a new tool appears, as soon as a valid hint is provided. Additionally, all new functions in the Python API automatically appear in the AI database."

 

Wow, that's beautiful. I've been the biggest nag for asking for a superior 3dCoat documentation, but even for me, this is beyond my dreams. Thank you thank you thank you.

[Ctc_nick]

Hi! Thanks for the cool Update 0.14. Updating the AI automatically is the best Way you can go!! That will make scripting and searching much easier.

I have a small but important Report, which will also make the work much better.

This is for workflows , which include editing and tuning existing Models. (Top Down) 

Starting in the Paint Room with Details ONLY existing in Displacement Maps.

Baking Commands in Paint Room(Menu,Edit,Calculate Curvature and Occlusion): While Curvature and AO Baking in PerPixelPaint Mode are incredibly fine, and I think this could work even better in Microvertex Mode.

->In Microvertex Mode: Curvature it is baked from Low Poly. Could this be baked from the generated high-res (black wireframe)?

It would be really cool, to have. 

For Comparison, the perfect PerPixelPaint Curvature Map:

 

Thank you,

and all the Best!

 

Edited March 18 by Ctc_nick
more nicely ask

[Elemeno]

can the loft tools and surface tools get some love ... maybe make them automated so when you select them the drawing tools are already selected for you , i have no idea how they work ... and i cant find material that actually helps ..

[Elemeno]

might be a bug or a setting ive changed ...

but when you rotate your model to see the underneath the rotation is then inverted ... so its mesh rotation and not viewport rotation?!

[Elemeno]

nope its not but ive never realised how the mesh rotation works lol!

[Elemeno]

what happened to viewport rotation?

 

the current rotation uses mesh rotation and not the actual viewport camera rotating around the object ... , if you test with free rotation the camera rotates correctly but is axis rotation the rotation becomes mesh rotation and not viewport?

[Carlosan]

You can toggle rotation:

[Elemeno]

1 hour ago, Carlosan said:

You can toggle rotation:

yea thats what i thought i had done ... but if you look at the old versions the viewport rotates the object but now the object rotates instead

[Elemeno]

scrub that ... it works better .... dont worry don't change anything with viewport rotation 

[animk]

 

 

Is it a bug?  Linux 2024.06

Sculpt normal depth on a painting object, symmetry smoothing doesn't work when inverting the brush.

Edit: it works when inverting the brush using ctrl, it doesn't work when the invert tool box is checked.

Edited March 19 by animk

[Mighty Pea]

Love the fixes to ctrl-inversion on paint tools! In a similar area: Can you look into the Polygon stroke mode in the Texture Editor?

The Polygon Stroke mode does this:

So, those are three clicks, all of which just fill a few random blobs (those aren't the pixels, I should note) but not the entire polygon.

 

I also have a suggested addition to the Fill tool that I think will make it a lot easier to use: An interactive 'color tolerance', where dragging left and right (or using two hotkeys to go up and down) will increase or decrease the Tolerance, with immediate visual feedback of the effect. Right now it's often very labour-intensive to click, see that bits were missed (or too much painted), go back to the Tool Options, tweak it, try again, repeat.

Edited March 19 by Mighty Pea

[Elemeno]

i think height baking is broken ...

if you take a normal sphere , use an alpha with drag stroke and give it some height or any height .. 3dcoats baker has issues with it... 

[Elemeno]

8 minutes ago, Elemeno said:

i think height baking is broken ...

if you take a normal sphere , use an alpha with drag stroke and give it some height or any height .. 3dcoats baker has issues with it... 

 

its like the baking cage isn't influencing the baking height and giving off weird readings ..  

[Elemeno]

getting same result with 2023.27 too... 

this hasnt happened previously

[digman]

Windows version 2024.14 Working on my end.

You mean, take a vovel sphere, use an alpha with drag stroke and then Retopo and bake to the paint room for a normal map? 

If I am mis-reading your post, sorry and please correct me.

 

[Mighty Pea]

Oh, another painting thing that hasn't been fixed yet:

This setting doesn't get saved with Presets, so it makes for some awkward situations where you've left on Random Color

[Elemeno]

15 hours ago, digman said:

Windows version 2024.14 Working on my end.

You mean, take a vovel sphere, use an alpha with drag stroke and then Retopo and bake to the paint room for a normal map? 

If I am mis-reading your post, sorry and please correct me.

 

is that depth or height? anything with depth bakes perfect on my pc but height wont work correctly

[Elemeno]

16 hours ago, digman said:

Windows version 2024.14 Working on my end.

You mean, take a vovel sphere, use an alpha with drag stroke and then Retopo and bake to the paint room for a normal map? 

If I am mis-reading your post, sorry and please correct me.

 

 

i cant work out whats going wrong?

[Elemeno]

 

this is recently inside 3dcoat

 

 

and this is inside SP

[digman]

Boy, a strange one you are experiencing. I know you are an experienced 3DC user so I will not ask the normal questions I do.

Still working on my end with both height and depth. 

Can you send me the bad 3DC file, I can look at it too. 

Windows version 2024.14

 

[Elemeno]

i fixed it ... for some reason it was holding two uv sets? i deleted 3dcoat reinstalled and all works perfect ,

however , baking curvature is very low detail , has a blurry effect to it , on round surfaces etc

[Ctc_nick]

Heyyy 0.15 here i come!!! Happy that the Servers are working again. Thank You for all the new and recoded Stuff! 

[Elemeno]

2024.15 coming today?

[Ctc_nick]

5 minutes ago, Elemeno said:

2024.15 coming today?

Yes Its out already! check the "AutoUpdater" under docs\3dCoat\data

[Elemeno]

the problem with the baking is , it doesn't bake on top of triangles... has to be pure quads

[Jones C]

Stable official release?