3DCoat 2024 development thread

[AbnRanger]

1 hour ago, Elemeno said:

surface mode noise tool, i dont ever use it as its quite limited , could we maybe get a slot we can use a tileable texture to create the noise? this would help so much in wrinkles, clothing hatches etc

+1. I have been asking for this for looooooooooong time. We need a procedural noise library similar to ZBrush's Noise Maker toolset. Bercon Maps is a free open source library for 3ds Max and any other software developer, who may want to use them.

https://www.ylilammi.com/posts/2013-09-30-berconmaps

[Ctc_nick]

Thank you for updating the Applink! The Getback/ "Export to" Button is working again!

-for the 'Export to' Button to work, you need to first send something from Blender, to wake the connection. After that it works.

 

There is one old path "addons/io_coat" in "tex.py" 

If you are interested I have prepared the file here:

All the Best.

Edited August 1 by Ctc_nick

[Vexod14]

Hello there !

A little question I have in mind for a few years now ; I feel like the paint room development has slowed down a lot compared to the modeling/sculpt of 3DCoat, if I'm right, I'm curious why. I personally stick with an old build, the 4.8.44, as this feels more stable for my texturing workflow (which relies a lot on handpainting), but I regularly test the diff with recent versions. I really feel like sticking with that old one makes not much difference, hence my thoughts about paint room development progress since all these years.

(But don't get me wrong, I still admire 3DCoat and love working with it, and at some point, since the paint room does the job there's probably no real need to update it)

[liok]

It still seems impossible to unfold anything like a half cylinder, with any of the 3 algoritms. It always fails to unfold the sides, it just overlaps whatever we do:

So at the moment it's hard to go further than UV seams in Coat, I just swap to blender after than, the unfold algo of blender manages to tackle a semi cylindrical shape like that perfectly, for any character arms, legs ect...:

One small bug actually, the retopo objects do not have their UV seams exported, if we do not unfold them first in Coat.
 

Edited August 13 by liok

[AbnRanger]

On 8/3/2024 at 9:54 AM, Vexod14 said:

Hello there !

A little question I have in mind for a few years now ; I feel like the paint room development has slowed down a lot compared to the modeling/sculpt of 3DCoat, if I'm right, I'm curious why. I personally stick with an old build, the 4.8.44, as this feels more stable for my texturing workflow (which relies a lot on handpainting), but I regularly test the diff with recent versions. I really feel like sticking with that old one makes not much difference, hence my thoughts about paint room development progress since all these years.

(But don't get me wrong, I still admire 3DCoat and love working with it, and at some point, since the paint room does the job there's probably no real need to update it)

Well, if you go back to that build you will be missing out on the Photoshop style Layer & Clipping Masks. They are fully compatible with Photoshop, too. There was some work done with Smart Materials in that Normal Maps imported into a SM layer, will get automatically converted to Depth (displacement) and there are a number of smaller house cleaning things done, such as the ability to move Materials from one folder to another, refreshing or converting (to another projection type, such as Cube or Camera)all the thumbnails in a folder. This might not sound like much, but the way it was prior to 3DC 2021, would make doing these things a big PITA.

There is a nodal system being developed for the materials and a GPU brush engine has been ongoing, so it may not seem like anything is being done, but behind the scenes there is actually a lot of development work underway. 

[AbnRanger]

6 hours ago, liok said:

It still seems impossible to unfold anything like a half cylinder, with any of the 3 algoritms. It always fails to unfold the sides, it just overlaps whatever we do:

So at the moment it's hard to go further than UV seams in Coat, I just swap to blender after than, the unfold algo of blender manages to tackle a semi cylindrical shape like that perfectly, for any character arms, legs ect...:

One small bug actually, the retopo objects do not have their UV seams exported, if we do not unfold them first in Coat.
 

I think it is because the mesh is rather dense for UV layout. Other apps may be able to handle/unfold dense meshes well, but in 3DCoat it is always best to unfold while the model is in a lower to mid poly state. In that situation, it works really well, but yes...with dense meshes, it struggles somewhat.

Could you make a quick screen recording in Blender unfolding this. I am super curious how Blender handles it, and if it works well, then I think Andrew would see that there is much improvement needed in 3DCoat.

[Vexod14]

50 minutes ago, AbnRanger said:

Well, if you go back to that build you will be missing out on the Photoshop style Layer & Clipping Masks. They are fully compatible with Photoshop, too. There was some work done with Smart Materials in that Normal Maps imported into a SM layer, will get automatically converted to Depth (displacement) and there are a number of smaller house cleaning things done, such as the ability to move Materials from one folder to another, refreshing or converting (to another projection type, such as Cube or Camera)all the thumbnails in a folder. This might not sound like much, but the way it was prior to 3DC 2021, would make doing these things a big PITA.

There is a nodal system being developed for the materials and a GPU brush engine has been ongoing, so it may not seem like anything is being done, but behind the scenes there is actually a lot of development work underway. 

Sounds great ! I saw these new additions by the way but none of them really made me want to switch to a newer version. Don't get me wrong, I really find them cool. But tiling UVs still having artifacts when baking and still having unreachable pixels if UVs are too tight.
And now the colorwheel is reset at every start, well, that's the main problem to me and I'm still better using an old build at the moment.

That said as I was part of akeytsu dev team I understand that some design can take a lot of time to elaborate, test, and develop.
As well as a tool evolves after priorities that do not only depends on userbase wishes, but also industry needs, sometimes trends, and most importantly subjects that motivates developers the most.

About the new layer mask that mimics photoshop ones, I don't think the old way 3DCoat dealt with masks was an issue.
I use photoshop for channels packing only, rarely for pure texturing, and I prefer how 3Dcoat offers to mask any layer by any other in the stack, it's much more versatile (I'm aware of what's possible with 2D projection and all the in/out using Layers.psd, but I rarely need to use it, only for very specific and precise usecases like a complex tatoo/decal to reproduce)

Btw this new addition still needs some polish to support certain use cases as reported here : 

 

[Elemeno]

1 hour ago, Vexod14 said:

Sounds great ! I saw these new additions by the way but none of them really made me want to switch to a newer version. Don't get me wrong, I really find them cool. But tiling UVs still having artifacts when baking and still having unreachable pixels if UVs are too tight.
And now the colorwheel is reset at every start, well, that's the main problem to me and I'm still better using an old build at the moment.

That said as I was part of akeytsu dev team I understand that some design can take a lot of time to elaborate, test, and develop.
As well as a tool evolves after priorities that do not only depends on userbase wishes, but also industry needs, sometimes trends, and most importantly subjects that motivates developers the most.

About the new layer mask that mimics photoshop ones, I don't think the old way 3DCoat dealt with masks was an issue.
I use photoshop for channels packing only, rarely for pure texturing, and I prefer how 3Dcoat offers to mask any layer by any other in the stack, it's much more versatile (I'm aware of what's possible with 2D projection and all the in/out using Layers.psd, but I rarely need to use it, only for very specific and precise usecases like a complex tatoo/decal to reproduce)

Btw this new addition still needs some polish to support certain use cases as reported here : 

 

can you show a picture of the high poly and low poly youre baking to and from please?

[Vexod14]

Nothing special but you can reproduce the issue : 
- using any of the two default tile planes of 3DCoat (in "Paint UV mapped mesh" welcome menu)
- Paint a few strokes with some depth
- bake AO, bake curvature (using RGB curvature so you can spot where issues occurs more easily)
- To better see the problems, turn AO layer in standard blend mode and show the curvature layer (hidden by default, would be cool if user could choose to see it or not after the bake, as it can be used as a quick first pass or to get clean and neat textures for a simplified look)

The "look" of the issue may vary, if you stack UVs instead of making out of bounds UVs, but I guess the source of the problem remains the same 

Edited August 13 by Vexod14

[Elemeno]

1 hour ago, Vexod14 said:

Nothing special but you can reproduce the issue : 
- using any of the two default tile planes of 3DCoat (in "Paint UV mapped mesh" welcome menu)
- Paint a few strokes with some depth
- bake AO, bake curvature (using RGB curvature so you can spot where issues occurs more easily)
- To better see the problems, turn AO layer in standard blend mode and show the curvature layer (hidden by default, would be cool if user could choose to see it or not after the bake, as it can be used as a quick first pass or to get clean and neat textures for a simplified look)

The "look" of the issue may vary, if you stack UVs instead of making out of bounds UVs, but I guess the source of the problem remains the same 

curvature map is calculating the border of the mesh into the bake, its a bug , this shouldnt happen.

[Elemeno]

11 minutes ago, Elemeno said:

curvature map is calculating the border of the mesh into the bake, its a bug , this shouldnt happen.

 

works perfectly on closed meshes, not flat planes

[liok]

6 hours ago, AbnRanger said:

I think it is because the mesh is rather dense for UV layout. Other apps may be able to handle/unfold dense meshes well, but in 3DCoat it is always best to unfold while the model is in a lower to mid poly state. In that situation, it works really well, but yes...with dense meshes, it struggles somewhat.

Could you make a quick screen recording in Blender unfolding this. I am super curious how Blender handles it, and if it works well, then I think Andrew would see that there is much improvement needed in 3DCoat.

Hi and thanks, I've just recorded and edited a quick video showcasing the unwrap issue in Coat and how blender's unfold deal with it perfectly.
It is indeed probably the mesh density, but this is not a very dense low poly, it cannot be lower than that on this usecase, and it's still under the recomended 50K.
https://www.dropbox.com/scl/fi/c40b2po3blhrts2n4zn9s/COAT_unwrap_issue.mp4?rlkey=59740tyzjs331r0gcb83f0xtz&dl=0

Many thanks. Sending it to Andrew's email too.

[Vexod14]

3 hours ago, Elemeno said:

curvature map is calculating the border of the mesh into the bake, its a bug , this shouldnt happen.

It's not just that. On some meshes, you can also see artefacts over the triangulated area. That's indeed a bug I've been reporting several times (since 2017 I guess), still waiting for a fix (I can generate curvatures with knald, but it's not practical (and honestly I prefer those from 3DCoat, especially with long/close range mixes))

About your second point, using a cylinder still can't fix it, only on U or V coords, other coord will always end up being opened with bake artefacts. Not to mention, a cylinder is not a shape that fits to all tiles needs (trees, pillars...but sand ? Roof ? Clothing ? etc)
No matter the shape, as long as UVs are perfectly stacked we should be able to get a clean bake from AO/Curvature/or any bake available in the paint room
 

Edited August 13 by Vexod14

[Elemeno]

can we get a default damian standard like brush please .. 

[Elemeno]

2024.26 move brush creates really weird artefacts

 

 

 

does anyone know the last stable build where everything worked? i want to use this on a project but 2024 has had some strange stuff

 

[Oleg Shapov]

13 hours ago, Elemeno said:

2024.26 move brush creates really weird artefacts

I don't see any artifacts in the operation of the Move tool.

[Elemeno]

3 hours ago, Oleg Shapov said:

I don't see any artifacts in the operation of the Move tool.

i had immediately voxelize and topology move set, my thought sorry

[Omni-Moulage]

Hi everybody,

Since starting to use 3DCoat 2024.26 yesterday, I’ve encountered a significant issue when exporting textures from the voxel chamber.

The same workflow worked perfectly in 3DCoat 2024.16.

I have created two comparative videos to show exactly what happens.

Here are the video links:

https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/1ggb6a-iB5erHFQXgGN5Li06sk8lIl0NQ?usp=sharing

[Elemeno]

adding a hotkey for clone instances , you cant do it

[Oleg Shapov]

On 8/26/2024 at 5:33 PM, Elemeno said:

adding a hotkey for clone instances , you cant do it

Please check in version 2024.26. It should work.

[Oleg Shapov]

On 8/25/2024 at 8:05 AM, Omni-Moulage said:

Since starting to use 3DCoat 2024.26 yesterday, I’ve encountered a significant issue when exporting textures from the voxel chamber.

Also confirmed.

[Elemeno]

7 hours ago, Oleg Shapov said:

Please check in version 2024.26. It should work.

strange ... its working

[Elemeno]

is there a smooth shader being added anytime soon? im finding weird shading when sculpting and its really off putting .

[tcwik]

Invert don't work in 'on brush mode'.

[Oleg Shapov]

2 hours ago, tcwik said:

Invert don't work in 'on brush mode'.

I can't repeat it. Write down your actions.

[DMG]

Evening,

I think I've come across a bug, relating to the Curve tools.

If I set up a couple of curves...

...and use Curves Operations: Boolean Operations, then the first thing I notice is that the operation carried out appears to be the one which was selected when the panel opened, regardless of clicking on a different option (Intersection, Union, Subtraction). If I wish to change the operation, I seem to have to select a different option, close the panel, and reopen it again.

Anyway, that's not the main issue I think I've found.

The above example works fine.

 

However, if the curves are placed in a group, then I am getting an error message:  "Choose at least two curves." It took me about an hour to figure out what was causing this error during a work project, and so far, it's the only way I can get the error message to show up.   Not being able to boolean curves if they're inside a group doesn't seem like it has been designed as a 'feature'.

 

Can others confirm?

Regards, Derek

[Elemeno]

42 minutes ago, DMG said:

Evening,

I think I've come across a bug, relating to the Curve tools.

If I set up a couple of curves...

...and use Curves Operations: Boolean Operations, then the first thing I notice is that the operation carried out appears to be the one which was selected when the panel opened, regardless of clicking on a different option (Intersection, Union, Subtraction). If I wish to change the operation, I seem to have to select a different option, close the panel, and reopen it again.

Anyway, that's not the main issue I think I've found.

The above example works fine.

 

However, if the curves are placed in a group, then I am getting an error message:  "Choose at least two curves." It took me about an hour to figure out what was causing this error during a work project, and so far, it's the only way I can get the error message to show up.   Not being able to boolean curves if they're inside a group doesn't seem like it has been designed as a 'feature'.

 

Can others confirm?

Regards, Derek

confirm , im getting the same result

 

[Elemeno]

fly away my pretties !!!

 

 

 

[Gorbatovsky]

4 hours ago, Elemeno said:

fly away my pretties !!!

Some designers should not be allowed near the control panel of a spaceship.
They will randomly twitch and press various buttons

[tcwik]

On 9/2/2024 at 12:59 PM, Oleg Shapov said:

I can't repeat it. Write down your actions.

I worked in voxel mode. :/