3DCoat 2024 development thread

[Gorbatovsky]

On 4/16/2024 at 9:04 PM, Elemeno said:

can you remove modelling room and retopo room and have all meshes inside sculpt room

No.
Each modeling technology has its own tools.
If you put everything in one room, there will be a lot of garbage.
When there are a lot of tools, it makes work difficult.

[Sorn]

Any news about the Linux build? It's been quiet for months now. Is everything fine?

[Elemeno]

any news about proper layer system in paint , the masks work really strange .... you cant paint on top of masked layers , you have to apply and then paint over etc ...

i use color id maps alot for masking off areas but i cant due to the current system ...

a complete rework an simplified ui would work alot better and i know you wouldnt want to copy others softwares and their workflows but painter uses a system that works really well and many other softwares have adopted that same system , so would be really nice if we could get something like that .. 

i dont see alot of realistic finishes inside 3dcoat alot of what i do is stylized and anything else seems alot of work

[Mighty Pea]

Any chance after all these years we could get the thumbnails embedded in the 3b file? It would make my folders a lot cleaner, and file versioning a lot less annoying

[Mighty Pea]

On 4/27/2024 at 10:33 PM, Elemeno said:

the masks work really strange .... you cant paint on top of masked layers , you have to apply and then paint over etc

Can you explain what you mean by this? It sounds like something's going wrong on your end, layer masks work well here. Can you record a small video to show this off?

[Elemeno]

7 hours ago, Mighty Pea said:

Can you explain what you mean by this? It sounds like something's going wrong on your end, layer masks work well here. Can you record a small video to show this off?

 

 

[Grakino]

Windows and Mac version both have 2024.17 version but Linux still doesn't have any update since 2024 release. I'm still working on 2024.06. Any news? Is everything ok?

[EdanP]

On 4/30/2024 at 10:27 AM, Elemeno said:

 

 

Seems to be working as expected? The mask uses grayscale input. The green you selected had a value (lightness) of .76, and partially revealed the albedo layer once you began applying it. If you want to completely unmask the albedo layer, the value needs to be 1. Just like any other software.

If you paint a white mask with a value of .76 in substance painter the result is exactly the same. Apologies if I misunderstood the issue at hand. Let me know if you need assistance.

[Mighty Pea]

Yeah, the only difference here is that Painter has a separate memory for brush colour, and in 3DCoat you're painting with red and green, whose rgb values get converted to a grayscale value.

[wilson66]

Please integrate a search function in the SPACE BAR menu in the sculpt room, so we can type the first letter of the name of a tool, and it will filter them (hide the other tools) based on that letter/ letters. E.g. begin to type letter "S", and only the tools "Soft", "Smooth", "Sphere" ect will be displayed while all other tools will be hidden/ greyed out. Type "So" and only tool "Soft" will be displayed.

And simply begin typing without having to put the cursor in a search field first.

It always takes me absolutely forever to find any basic tools in that menu, I need to scan them all one by one before I have found the one I am looking for, often more than once because I have overlooked it. Massive waste of time.

Another small bug I have just noticed: when in sculpt room (voxel mode), with radial symmetry active, and the "sphere" primitive selected, it doesn't respect radial symmetry when applied to the mesh. It only adds/ subtracts geometry where the original sphere is placed, and not to the other spheres in the radial array. With other primitives, e.g. the ellipse or the box, it works fine.

EDIT: come to think of it, it would probably be best to add those search menus in all kinds of places, also the sculpt tree, the Layers panel ect.

Edited Monday at 05:40 PM by wilson66

[philnolan3d]

That search function is a great idea. I also spend too long looking for tools in there.

[yoohasz]

On 4/30/2024 at 5:27 PM, Elemeno said:

 

 

@Elemeno I get your frustration, this should be more straightforward. Since masks rely on values, it's not intuitive to guess the value of a color (green in your example) it should be strictly a matter of restricted greyscale painting when you're ON the mask icon.

[Sui]

I've been using Flatten brush for Bevel in Sculpt room for a while. It's usable but still far from perfect. As far as I know, bevel remains an issue in both Coat and Zb when sculpting because the engine for sculpting can not perform bevel like other modelling software, but we all know Coat is extremely good at boolean, and we have live boolean and curve tools. So I wonder if by combining these functions we can get an alternative tool for bevel/chamfer?

For example, we can create a curve like we do with Curve tool, but use the brush normal sampling for proper angle(I changed the default value of my Flatten tool to a much higher value for it to match the edge correctly). Then we assign it a cutter model, better if we can modify it lively(extend, tilt, rotate) for cutting area and bevel profile. Let user view the result just like live boolean before the actual cut. And we get a bevel/chamfer alternative.

I tested this thought with curve tool to create chamfer and it worked much better than using Flatten brushes(it left a sharp turning edge like usual chamfers should be). Also, by rotate the curve I can easily change the angle. You can see the difference in the following screenshots. I believe a round bevel can archived using a curve model with a round groove.

[Henry Townshend]

Congratz to whoever finally implemented dragging and dropping multiple sculpt layers at a time from .18 on. This was a big (and much needed) UX improvement. Thanks a lot, it's such a joy.

[AbnRanger]

On 4/30/2024 at 10:27 AM, Elemeno said:

 

 

I can understand the frustration, but people tend to use things in ways no one, including Andrew would expect. They/we asked for Photoshop style layer masking and it pretty much works that way. I would never try to paint a mask in Photoshop (knowing it uses greyscale values) with various colors. I would always pick white or black or something in between. I shouldn't complain to Adobe if Photoshop masks don't work as expected if I choose a nice bright RGB color to paint it with. I am using it in a way it is not designed to work.

So, even if Andrew may have omitted the restriction of mask painting to just greyscale colors, the question should also be asked of the user....why would you even "try" to paint a mask with a non-greyscale color...knowing it is designed to use greyscale values? In the mean time, you can very quickly select black or white by hitting the SPACE bar in the Paint Workspace. The Color Wheel and Tools come right to your cursor and in fact, the black or white color is directly under your cursor. So, it's basically SPACEBAR > LMB click, when painting masks, or have your color swatch pallet assigned to a hotkey and pick your greyscale values from it each time you are painting layer masks.

[Mighty Pea]

I do still want alt-clicking on a mask to display _only_ the mask.

[tomas aceytuno]

In version 2024.18, when I use Export Selected Objects (File-Export or Sculpt_Tree-Export).
It exports all visible objects in the Sculpt Tree, does not export the selected object.
For me 2024.17 it works well.

THX

[Elemeno]

20 hours ago, AbnRanger said:

I can understand the frustration, but people tend to use things in ways no one, including Andrew would expect. They/we asked for Photoshop style layer masking and it pretty much works that way. I would never try to paint a mask in Photoshop (knowing it uses greyscale values) with various colors. I would always pick white or black or something in between. I shouldn't complain to Adobe if Photoshop masks don't work as expected if I choose a nice bright RGB color to paint it with. I am using it in a way it is not designed to work.

So, even if Andrew may have omitted the restriction of mask painting to just greyscale colors, the question should also be asked of the user....why would you even "try" to paint a mask with a non-greyscale color...knowing it is designed to use greyscale values? In the mean time, you can very quickly select black or white by hitting the SPACE bar in the Paint Workspace. The Color Wheel and Tools come right to your cursor and in fact, the black or white color is directly under your cursor. So, it's basically SPACEBAR > LMB click, when painting masks, or have your color swatch pallet assigned to a hotkey and pick your greyscale values from it each time you are painting layer masks.

its not that i or you know that masks are affect by greyscale values ..

its new and learning users , you search through this forums and you'll find many questions on how this works , how that works and thats why substance painter is so popular , when you use a feature it allows you to use that feature and its limits.

alot of things i point out on here isn't to help current experienced users but also see it from a point of beginning 3d , when i first purchased 3dcoat i didn't even touch it for a good few months just due to the ui set up and it took me a while to learn it too .

so thats why i point a few things out , like where things are located in menus and how it would be easier it different areas etc ... its not ease of use for me , its ease of use for others and new

[AbnRanger]

2 hours ago, Elemeno said:

its not that i or you know that masks are affect by greyscale values ..

its new and learning users , you search through this forums and you'll find many questions on how this works , how that works and thats why substance painter is so popular , when you use a feature it allows you to use that feature and its limits.

alot of things i point out on here isn't to help current experienced users but also see it from a point of beginning 3d , when i first purchased 3dcoat i didn't even touch it for a good few months just due to the ui set up and it took me a while to learn it too .

so thats why i point a few things out , like where things are located in menus and how it would be easier it different areas etc ... its not ease of use for me , its ease of use for others and new

Understood, however, most new users will have experience in Photoshop, so the way they use it in Photoshop will be pretty much the way it works in 3DCoat. That was my point. Substance may choose to do it differently, but 3DCoat's UI/UX design for texture painting was always to be similar to PS.