3DCoat 2024 development thread

[Oleksandr Maslov]

On 10/5/2024 at 7:27 PM, Britain said:

2024.27 issue. On first install I can open at end of install. Second time I try to open it hangs without opening. All drivers are up dated. I can install and run 2024.26.

Windows 11, Nvidia 5000.  Hangs here.

 

You need to delete the phyton-3.8.10 (C:\Users\oleks\Documents\3DCoat\python-3.8.10) folder, after that 3dcoat will open and you must immediately click on Updates manager and install the old version

[Britain]

5 hours ago, Oleksandr Maslov said:

You need to delete the phyton-3.8.10 (C:\Users\oleks\Documents\3DCoat\python-3.8.10) folder, after that 3dcoat will open and you must immediately click on Updates manager and install the old version

I've been running 2024 26. I do fresh installs deleting all 3dcoat files. Thanks.

[wendallhitherd]

11 hours ago, Oleg Shapov said:

Do you mean that presets are not selected when windows are hidden using tabs?

hey there, I can't post any more screenshots / videos because I am at posting data cap for now, but, I think yes. If the presets panel is hidden in any way, the shortcuts no longer work. This includes hiding the ui with "toggle popup windows". It would be nice if the presets would still be selected even if the window was hidden.

[Oleg Shapov]

16 hours ago, wendallhitherd said:

If the presets panel is hidden in any way, the shortcuts no longer work.

What do you mean by shortcuts? Hot keys?

[wendallhitherd]

2 hours ago, Oleg Shapov said:

What do you mean by shortcuts? Hot keys?

Yep

[Oleg Shapov]

14 hours ago, wendallhitherd said:

Yep

I assigned hotkeys to my three presets, then hid all windows using Tab and the hotkeys for the presets worked. What am I doing wrong?

 

 

[AbnRanger]

On 10/19/2024 at 10:39 PM, wendallhitherd said:

A few bugs / UX issues: 

- When you are in surface mode and use Symm Copy 3DC will create a new layer called "Layer 1" if there is no "Layer1"

- When you paint in surface or voxel mode, 3DCoat will make a new layer called "Layer1"

- There seems to be no way to paint colors on the model without spawning a sculpt layer.

- I prefer not to work with sculpt layers in surface mode because I find them quite buggy. Vertices will randomly merge to different parts of the mesh with enough sculpting. Is there a way to disable sculpt layers creation unless it is intentional and/or have color painting possible on Layer0?

The first video is an example of how mesh will be garbled when applying symmetry in surface mode.

The second video is an example of the layer auto-creation issue

 

 

 

The first video does seem problematic because you have the MOVE tool selected, but it appears to SMOOTH instead. I am puzzled as to why it is behaving that way, and yes, it could be a bug.

Regarding the creation of a new Layer, this is not a bug. It is actually a feature. In general, you never want to mess with Layer 0 because it stores a lot of mesh and transparency information, and is often locked like the bottom layer in Photoshop. If you want to paint or sculpt, it is good that 3DCoat automatically creates a new blank layer for you. As for Sculpt Layers, the merging of verts happens in Surface mode if you have "REMOVE STRETCHING" enabled in the Toolbar (directly above the viewport). Most brushes have this option and some tools do, also. If you don't want 3DCoat to essentially apply Dynamic Subdivision directly beneath your brush, as you sculpt, make sure this option is unchecked.

Sculpt Layers is an integral part of Paint Layers...because Paint Layers have a DEPTH component, which 3DCoat uses to store sculpt information/changes. If you are painting and you do not want Depth information to be stored, then you can click on the little purple sphere (depth) in the toolbar, which is next to the green (color) and grey (roughness/glossiness). That will temporarily disable depth from being painted, until you toggle it back on again.

[wendallhitherd]

On 10/22/2024 at 1:28 AM, Oleg Shapov said:

I assigned hotkeys to my three presets, then hid all windows using Tab and the hotkeys for the presets worked. What am I doing wrong?

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

This is actually working as I would expect, I'll double check my setup and record myself reproing the issue if it persists, though I can no longer attach videos because of forum data limit. thanks for looking into it

*Edit Edit* Just updated my 3DCoat to the beta and the issue is fixed now! Yey

On 10/22/2024 at 3:55 AM, AbnRanger said:

The first video does seem problematic because you have the MOVE tool selected, but it appears to SMOOTH instead. I am puzzled as to why it is behaving that way, and yes, it could be a bug.

Regarding the creation of a new Layer, this is not a bug. It is actually a feature. In general, you never want to mess with Layer 0 because it stores a lot of mesh and transparency information, and is often locked like the bottom layer in Photoshop. If you want to paint or sculpt, it is good that 3DCoat automatically creates a new blank layer for you. As for Sculpt Layers, the merging of verts happens in Surface mode if you have "REMOVE STRETCHING" enabled in the Toolbar (directly above the viewport). Most brushes have this option and some tools do, also. If you don't want 3DCoat to essentially apply Dynamic Subdivision directly beneath your brush, as you sculpt, make sure this option is unchecked.

Sculpt Layers is an integral part of Paint Layers...because Paint Layers have a DEPTH component, which 3DCoat uses to store sculpt information/changes. If you are painting and you do not want Depth information to be stored, then you can click on the little purple sphere (depth) in the toolbar, which is next to the green (color) and grey (roughness/glossiness). That will temporarily disable depth from being painted, until you toggle it back on again.

New layer might be a requirement, but the issues of the mesh vertices becoming merged to other distant parts of the model esp. when applying symmetry seems like a bug. Also specifically the issue of painting with paint tool automatically creating / switching to "Layer(no space)1" and other tools creating  "Layer (space) 1"  seems like just a string being inconsistent in the code. IF Layer1 has to be generated, I would want 3DC to make it a bit more obvious that was happening + consistent where possible -- as I mentioned, sculpt layers are a source of mesh bugs when working in sculpt mode historically and so I try to ensure I'm working with only one or two layers max, and I collapse them a lot. I have even taken to turning "Layer 1" depth opacity to zero so I can't sculpt on it even 3DC switches to it, as it does when executing many operations, for example, when decimating a mesh. (Repro: decimate a mesh. It will create a Layer 1 and switch to it without notifying the user. Trying to use "Paint" brush on Layer 0 results in Layer1 being created and switched to, even if Layer 1 exists.)

It also seems like "Layer(space)1" is explicitly referenced by different tools -- eg if you use certain tools it will either create or switch to Layer 1. At a high level, there's just some UX there I think could be improved. I find myself having to clean up & keep track of my layers a lot to ensure I'm not sculpting on the wrong one.

Edited October 23 by wendallhitherd
context

[wendallhitherd]

Another couple issues related to multi-resolution:

• You can add subdivision levels, but there is no way to remove subdivision levels. ("Delete higher / delete lower")
• Right now "add lowest from retopo room" uses the visible retopo room geometry. The most common use case for the button is after autopo-ing the mesh, which produces a name matched retopo mesh. Is there a reason we can't use name correspondence to match the mesh like baking does?
• Multi-resolution seems to be very memory intensive. Having multiresolution meshes quickly skyrockets the .3b files file size. Working on a model that was happily under 300mb for a long time, and then when I converted some parts to multiresolution it was ~1-2gb -- file size seems larger even if I do not subdivide further and simply take the lowrez from the retopo room & build the sub-D chain

And an issue with the Freeze tool, more a suggestion

• "Pick to Apply Freeze Selection" is a great way to approximate polygroups (I wish there was a one-keystroke way to select and mask or hide a piece of mesh) but right now the method seems to be freezing parts that are fairly dissimilar from the picked color. Instead of freezing your color exactly, it picks other colors that are nearby. Generally I would use this feature to pick the exact color, but one way to deal with it is to use a color similarity / tolerance slider for how much the resulting mask should include similar colors.

Edited October 24 by wendallhitherd
stale room was resulting in stuff being hidden.

[Oleg Shapov]

4 hours ago, wendallhitherd said:

Is there a reason we can't use name correspondence to match the mesh like baking does?

No. If I understood you correctly, the retopo layer after auto-retopology will have to be renamed manually. And the "Add the Lowest Level from Retopo room" function simply takes the current retopo mesh from the Retopology room and adds it as the lowest level of the multi-resolution, having previously triangulated it.

[wendallhitherd]

Sorry to spam, things are showing coming up as I try to use 3DC more 

In 2024.28-03 all surface booleans crash for me. When roll back to .27 it works fine

 

Edited October 25 by wendallhitherd

[Carlosan]

Have you sent the crash report ?

[wendallhitherd]

Yep, I sent some reports prior to making the video here

53 minutes ago, Carlosan said:

Did you send the crash report ?

 

[wendallhitherd]

 Aaand a consistent voxel based Live boolean crash without a prompt to submit a report sadly! I would send out the .3b but its like 1.5gb. Tried rolling back to the latest stable build, still oocurs. I: think it might have to do with phantom layer data. It delete the layers but it comes back when I remesh or decimate.

Here is a test object all done with live booleans I'll see if I can get a good high / lowpoly out of. I'm finding that live booleans are really nice for hardsurface because they give you that sharp holding edge that you don't get out of voxels, and they still work even with many many cuts because it's just voxels, so much more stable than successive booleans in surface mode. However, I am getting quite a lot of crashing when trying to cook out my booleans right now.

2024-10-25_ScifiCylinder_remesh.3b

Edited October 27 by wendallhitherd
Attached 3B file

[Oleg Shapov]

4 hours ago, wendallhitherd said:

I: think it might have to do with phantom layer data.

I created a similar structure in sculpt tree and made a Collapse Boolean tree. This made the program collapse once out of all the attempts. Therefore, it is advisable to show your scene to the developers.

[wendallhitherd]

7 hours ago, Oleg Shapov said:

I created a similar structure in sculpt tree and made a Collapse Boolean tree. This made the program collapse once out of all the attempts. Therefore, it is advisable to show your scene to the developers.

Attached the problematic .3b file to the previous post

[Elemeno]

i cant replicate this ... 

i even used double the amount of tris to see if it was performance issue .. but crash didnt happen 

 

however i did notice that voxel brushes utilize all the cores of my cpu ... however surface brushes (which is use all the time) only uses one cpu core ....

 

[thinkinmonkey]

21 hours ago, wendallhitherd said:

 Aaand a consistent voxel based Live boolean crash without a prompt to submit a report sadly! I would send out the .3b but its like 1.5gb. Tried rolling back to the latest stable build, still oocurs. I: think it might have to do with phantom layer data. It delete the layers but it comes back when I remesh or decimate.

Here is a test object all done with live booleans I'll see if I can get a good high / lowpoly out of. I'm finding that live booleans are really nice for hardsurface because they give you that sharp holding edge that you don't get out of voxels, and they still work even with many many cuts because it's just voxels, so much more stable than successive booleans in surface mode. However, I am getting quite a lot of crashing when trying to cook out my booleans right now.

2024-10-25_ScifiCylinder_remesh.3b 24.84 MB · 2 downloads

Hello,

I tried your file and the result on first try is attached in the zip file: sorry, but it's 145 Mb, so I had to zip it. Is that you're looking for?

What I did was "Clone and Collapse" instead of the "Collapse Boolean Tree": I tried the last one and I can confirm 3DC crashed!

With "Clone and Collapse" I have to report that 3DC didn't clone the voxel layers as I should expect, well, if that is the purpose of "Clone", but instead created only one Surface layer with a succesful boolean operation, as you can see below:

Wendallhitherd, could you please do the same "Clone and collapse" with your original file shown in the video? I can see you have the hierarchy there is different from the file you shared with us, so I'm curious to see if the "Clone and collapse" works also in your situation. Thank you

Anyway, I suggest a little investigation on the two ways of calculating a boolean operation should be done.

Ciao

 

2024-10-25_ScifiCylinder_remesh__MAYBE_done.zip

Edited October 28 by thinkinmonkey

[wendallhitherd]

Thanks for helping with testing everyone. Sorry for the confusion: The .3B I uploaded was my attempt to isolate the issue. That file would crash 3DC without a warning every time I used Live Booleans -> Collapse Boolean Tree. I have restarted my machine a few times, and re-downloaded the file. This time I am starting with a fresh runtime and updated graphics drivers. Honestly, the crash is very peculiar. Maybe it has something to do with my graphics driver, or Windows itself crashing the app because they are assuming it is crashing?
 

Here is another video with a fresh restart. Before I could get that file to consistently crash every time I tried collapsing the boolean. Now sometimes it works sometimes it crashes. Now that I watch the recording I notice it crash every time (and only when) I used "open recent". Same two files, but dragging the .3b into the window to open it did not crash, while open recent did.

 

Edited October 28 by wendallhitherd

[Oleg Shapov]

6 hours ago, wendallhitherd said:

The .3B I uploaded was my attempt to isolate the issue.

Crash confirmed. File sent to developer. Thanks!

[thinkinmonkey]

6 hours ago, wendallhitherd said:

Thanks for helping with testing everyone. Sorry for the confusion: The .3B I uploaded was my attempt to isolate the issue. That file would crash 3DC without a warning every time I used Live Booleans -> Collapse Boolean Tree. I have restarted my machine a few times, and re-downloaded the file. This time I am starting with a fresh runtime and updated graphics drivers. Honestly, the crash is very peculiar. Maybe it has something to do with my graphics driver, or Windows itself crashing the app because they are assuming it is crashing?
 

Here is another video with a fresh restart. Before I could get that file to consistently crash every time I tried collapsing the boolean. Now sometimes it works sometimes it crashes. Now that I watch the recording I notice it crash every time (and only when) I used "open recent". Same two files, but dragging the .3b into the window to open it did not crash, while open recent did.

 

No problem at all and don't worry, there was no confusion, actually you did what it had to be done in order to share and, mainly, to isolate the issue as you said.

That's the reason I asked you to try the "Clone and collapse": to check if "Clone and collapse" works also with that hierarchy you have in your original file, while "Collapse Boolean tree" fails as you are still saying.

But, anyway, file is in the Devs team, so let's go back to work! ^__^

[omniripple]

The Cutoff tool crashes surface sculpting every time you try to use it, but not voxel sculpting.

[AbnRanger]

1 hour ago, omniripple said:

The Cutoff tool crashes surface sculpting every time you try to use it, but not voxel sculpting.

Can you test it on a sample object from the splash screen, so it's clear whether it is happening to just the model you are currently working on, or if it happens all the time?

EDIT: Nevermind. I just did a quick test on my end and I can confirm this is a bug. I will report it now.

[Elemeno]

10 hours ago, omniripple said:

The Cutoff tool crashes surface sculpting every time you try to use it, but not voxel sculpting.

can confirm , happens to me too

Edited November 1 by Elemeno

[Britain]

On 10/20/2024 at 4:28 AM, Oleksandr Maslov said:

You need to delete the phyton-3.8.10 (C:\Users\oleks\Documents\3DCoat\python-3.8.10) folder, after that 3dcoat will open and you must immediately click on Updates manager and install the old version

Worked with Andrew on this. It fixed, waiting on the release.

[kritskiy]

@Andrew Shpagin Thank you for the API update! Some questions:
- I'm not sure I understand how to use scene.stackUndo(i), where do I take this i from? The description says "i is the amount of operations to unify" but... how do I know it, do I add a +1 to a counter each time I do something, wouldn't that be a chore for larger functions? What is considered an operation? I wonder if it would be possible to make some function like coat.undo() and pass the main function as an argument in there to undo everything it does... basically

def main:
  # do things

coat.undo(main)

- thanks for updating .moveTo(). It uses indices to operate, I think would be helpful if there was an easy way of getting an element index, sceneElement.index() maybe?

- and for stencils/materials transformations, I think it would be useful to have setters and getters instead of a function that adds a value to the current transform. Because yes now I can add 15° to a stencil rotation but what if it's currently rotated by 2.73° ? with getters/setters I could do something like

tex_rotation = scene.getRotateTex(0) # 0 for stencils
scene.setRotateTex(0, tex_rotation + 15) # add to current value
scene.setRotateTex(0, 45) # set absolute value

- and I'm not sure how pivot is used, when I tested the function I expected it will use the 3DC green pivot gizmo but it was using some random point outside of the screen? I think it's that pivot that should be used. And similarly with the previous point, a getter/setter for the pivot position would be nice, currently pivot asks for a coordinate on the screen but how do I even know it..

[Britain]

@Andrew Shpagin Thanks for the fix on 29 and for fixing the smart materials default. That awesome!

[jene]

hello.  I have a question.

I want to use Photogrammetry. but, I can't find "Video to 3D" or "shot to 3D" like a tutorial video.

I only see "Auto Reconstruction".

is this an error ? or my mistake?

 

I think it is a great feature because 3D-coat and photogrammetry work very well together. 　Development thank you.

 

I can't find "video to 3D", "shot to 3D".

 

 

I have already installed Reality Capture to Epic launcher.

[Elemeno]

12 hours ago, jene said:

hello.  I have a question.

I want to use Photogrammetry. but, I can't find "Video to 3D" or "shot to 3D" like a tutorial video.

I only see "Auto Reconstruction".

is this an error ? or my mistake?

 

I think it is a great feature because 3D-coat and photogrammetry work very well together. 　Development thank you.

 

I can't find "video to 3D", "shot to 3D".

 

 

I have already installed Reality Capture to Epic launcher.

also if youre using video , it takes a long time and ive yet to get a result thats even worth using i have 4k 60 fps an i left it a night running the full 60fps of the timelength video and still the results were not good

[jene]

2 hours ago, Elemeno said:

also if youre using video , it takes a long time and ive yet to get a result thats even worth using i have 4k 60 fps an i left it a night running the full 60fps of the timelength video and still the results were not good

Reality capture has a function to convert a video into images at regular intervals, so if that function is implemented in 3Dcoat, it may save time.

Edited November 8 by jene