3DCoat 2024 development thread

[Carlosan]

it is not easy task

Sculpt room use Loop Mesh Subdivision 

All the other rooms use Catmull-Clark Mesh Subdivision 

[Gorbatovsky]

9 minutes ago, Elemeno said:

"polygroups" are confusing..... they arent needed

You can think of polygroups as layers.

[Elemeno]

3 hours ago, Gorbatovsky said:

You can think of polygroups as layers.

... im just thinking about maybe it would free up ui , help with sorting items..

3 hours ago, Carlosan said:

it is not easy task

Sculpt room use Loop Mesh Subdivision 

All the other rooms use Catmull-Clark Mesh Subdivision 

be nice if the whole software was more universal ... theres alot of you cant use this because youre using that etc... im just thinking from my first experience .. till now and i still scratch my head wondering why...

only thing i can think of is its made from a programmers perspective and not an artists , me personally i like to whip together whatever i can fast , with no to little interruptions as possible, 

 

just wondering what could help , what would make this more popular ... more widely used , quad topology has be confirmed which is nice that will help majorly with hard surface etc...

 

what would be really nice is a roadmap... something where from users point of view we could upvote items that have a more important need .

[Elemeno]

 

15m tris... and mesh gives weird lines in mesh ...

[Elemeno]

could we add a feature to the trim adaptive tool.. where it takes away surfaces but not beyond certain certain angles above 15 degrees for example

[thinkinmonkey]

Hello,
3DCoat 2022.56, Modeling section.
Deleteing Edges leaves vertices behind if edges are "on corner".

Edges to delete:

Result:

Is that supposed to work in that way?
Thank you.

Edited January 14, 2023 by thinkinmonkey

[thinkinmonkey]

Hello again

in the name of universal love!

Could you please make the rectangle lasso the default for all those modeling tools where we need to select something?

Not sure if it's just me, but every time I use Select or Select/Transform I expect the rectangle behaviour as in other 3D software, sorry for the comparison, but what I have it's an abrupt move in the viewport, because those tools have the same selection mode enabled from previous tools, instead I would really love to have rectangle lasso.
Hoping it's clear.

Take care,

M

[Elemeno]

4 hours ago, thinkinmonkey said:

Hello,
3DCoat 2022.56, Modeling section.
Deleteing Edges leaves vertices behind if edges are "on corner".

Edges to delete:

Result:

Is that supposed to work in that way?
Thank you.

i think this is fixed in .57 deleting them edges cause the faces to be deleted too like normal

[AbnRanger]

On 1/12/2023 at 6:33 PM, Elemeno said:

can we have one layer system... so our mesh in sculpt room can instantly be changed in modelling room visa versa ... no polygroups ... just good old layers , you can find the wireframe for your sculpted mesh also .. and only then would you import from modelling or sculpting into painting room ... once its in painting room its remove from layers in sculpt... you can then bake to a selected mesh in the sculpt rooms and just choose the required name ...

"polygroups" are confusing..... they arent needed .. the only thing that cant be minipulated in modelling would be voxels... unless you can do that ... that would be nice

If they were one mesh, you could do this, but they are very different mesh types. I agree with you to the extent that low poly meshes ought to be the same. There should no longer be a Paint Mesh and a completely separate Retopo Mesh. In 3DCoat these mesh types should be merged, so that baking is just making Paint Layers for the very same mesh...and the same mesh can be painted in the Paint room or edited in the Retopo room. This would allow the elimination of the Tweak Room and removal of the UV tools in the Retopo Room...so there is no more confusion for new users. The UV room would apply to this unified mesh. Andrew said a few years ago, that he agreed this should be done, but it is probably a big undertaking and that is why it has been pushed back in the line of requests.

[AbnRanger]

6 hours ago, thinkinmonkey said:

Hello again

in the name of universal love!

Could you please make the rectangle lasso the default for all those modeling tools where we need to select something?

Not sure if it's just me, but every time I use Select or Select/Transform I expect the rectangle behaviour as in other 3D software, sorry for the comparison, but what I have it's an abrupt move in the viewport, because those tools have the same selection mode enabled from previous tools, instead I would really love to have rectangle lasso.
Hoping it's clear.

Take care,

M

That is a good idea, but in the mean time, just assign a hotkey to the rectangular or freeform lasso, so you can quickly switch to it when modeling.

[AbnRanger]

20 hours ago, Elemeno said:

 

15m tris... and mesh gives weird lines in mesh ...

That looks like there is some kind of polygonal stretching. Could you hit the W key to look at the wireframe? If there is, you can always "Dynamesh" (make the polygons all uniform) it by hitting the ENTER key.

[thinkinmonkey]

23 hours ago, Elemeno said:

i think this is fixed in .57 deleting them edges cause the faces to be deleted too like normal

Hi Elemeno,

in a first time I tried and I thought you were right, but I made some more tests and I found this funny thing devs should investigate.
If the polygons sharing edge loops are not at 90 degrees, 3DC deletes the edge loop and faces as expected.

If the polygons are 90 degrees, the edge loop is deleted, but not the faces!

See below.

Purple = 90 degrees (it's a cube where I moved the right edge loop for testing)

Blue > 90 degrees

 

90 degrees edge loop (red arrows) => funny result

Different angle edge loop (dotted green line) => expected result

 

Please fix this and try with angle also <90 degrees.

 

Edited January 15, 2023 by thinkinmonkey

[Elemeno]

you're right...

 

the edge deletes but the faces are still there.. which obviously cant happen..

hopefully they look into this

[Gorbatovsky]

Just now, Elemeno said:

which obviously cant happen..

Why obviously cant happen?

You yourself create a face that is not flat and has 6 vertices.

[Elemeno]

 

13 minutes ago, Gorbatovsky said:

Why obviously cant happen?

You yourself create a face that is not flat and has 6 vertices.

also doesnt have an edge to tell the face where to align.. face without an edge wont do a 90 degree face, it will try to align a flat face or convert to 4 vertices ...

thats just how every other software does it.. otherwise you get normal issues... when you import into another software the faces are deleted ... also sometimes ill delete an edge and use the whole created.

[Elemeno]

21 minutes ago, Gorbatovsky said:

Why obviously cant happen?

You yourself create a face that is not flat and has 6 vertice

 

Edited January 15, 2023 by Elemeno

[Elemeno]

23 minutes ago, Gorbatovsky said:

Why obviously cant happen?

You yourself create a face that is not flat and has 6 vertices.

 

 

[Silas Merlin]

Here are my notes from past few weeks/months.
I have not been reading this thread anymore, so, I am sorry if some of the following issues have been discussed/addressed already :

 

 

General issues :
Possible problem with "z-up coordinate system", sometimes a project will lose it. Not sure when it happens.

possible problem with "treat retopo objects as materials"
with "treat materials as separate textures" ticked off.
After painting the mesh, if you "update paint mesh with retopo mesh", the painting vanishes.

Issues in Sculpt room :
IMPORTANT :
Voxel mode : "Airbrush" tool, when you left click on voxel object, it causes 3d-coat to freeze for ever.
Windows 10 recent builds.

Vertex color vanishes when you decimate, and then comes back later (for example with clean surface).

Cut off tool in rectangle stroke mode will cut off geometry that is behind the camera, which is an issue because it means you can't use cut off tool in certain situations without first hiding what is going to be behind.

If you move a sculpt mesh with "conform retopo mesh" ticked on, and then you undo your action, only the sculpt mesh action is undone. the retopo remains in place.

retopo tools :
when you are generating the sculpt mesh from retopo room and you save your file, when you reopen the file the generate sculpt mesh box is unticked and the sculpt mesh is now unlinked, which is confusing.
ticking the box again does seem to restore the file to the state it was before saving.

In any case, "generate sculpt mesh" does work well as it is, however, there is one conflict :
Let us say you have in your voxtree an object of the same name as the retopo object you are going to work on. That vox layer contains your high poly or reference. You do not want to lose it.
Yet, when you tick "generate sculpt mesh", the mesh in that layer is instantly deleted to be replaced by the generated mesh.
I think there are two solutions :
-When ticking the generate sculpt mesh box, issue a warning that the original mesh is about to be deleted.
-When ticking the generate sculpt mesh box, rename the original layer and create a new one.

sometimes when you undo the generated sculpt mesh vanishes

When moving vertices with Add/split tool, the generated mesh is not updated on immediately. You have to left click somewhere or switch tools and back for the mesh to update.
This is annoying.

after using select/transform tool two or three times, it suddenly becomes impossible to select a new vertex. You have to switch tools to make it work again.

It is annoying that select/transform tool does not remember stroke mode, it always reverts to rectangle stroke mode.

Select tool does not remember stroke mode either, instead, it picks up the stroke mode of the tool you used just before.

with edge loops tool it is no longer possible to drag select islands in the uv preview panel, you have to hold SHIFT and click to select more than one island.
rectangle mode no longer works on the uv preview panel.

 

Minor issue :
Object transform mode does not move the gizmo, only the selection.

Feature requests :
"Act as vox hide" for Plane tool

the ability to unwrap/repack selected islands while leaving in place and respecting existing islands.

A second version of "clean surface" which tries to respect straight edges.

the ability to move a vertex by world coordinates in the scene

the ability to make islands in the uv preview be more transparent, so as to be able to see through when using an actual texture as "custom checker"

make the unwrap method automap uses available along with the regular unwrap methods in the left tool bar.
(automap is able to unwrap crazy islands which available methods will not be able to unwrap properly, resulting in self intersection)

when you save a .3b file that does not have a paint object and you reopen it, an empty object and an empty surface material are created.
Once an actual object is baked or imported into the paint room, could this empty object and surface material be automatically deleted, please ?

Edited January 17, 2023 by Silas Merlin
corrected one typo

[Koray]

Can you guys please add something like "Press and/or Hold Esc to stop the process" ?

I am trying to learn and understand the other rooms and workflows. I pressed the PackUV for example and its doing something that takes long which I dont really care or want and I cant stop it  

Edit: well it crashed doesnt matter just trying out, but uvpack 2 took long and I couldnt stop it too. Would be nice to be able to stop stuff before they complete.

Edited January 20, 2023 by Koray

[Koray]

It also seems like a good idea to have a dedicated "Reset" button for brushes with tool options, instead of resetting everything to default. 

I spend most of my time in the sculpt room and sometimes get confused if I made a brush like that, was it always like that or is it bugging out   

[Koray]

Cut-Off tool takes two ctrl-z's to undo. normal?

Edit: Tested with one of the spheres, seems fine. Sorry

Edited January 20, 2023 by Koray
False alarm...

[ebitz]

@SERGYINew Linux Build .57 crash on startup. Something to do with Python.

Could not find platform independent libraries <prefix>
Could not find platform dependent libraries <exec_prefix>
Consider setting $PYTHONHOME to <prefix>[:<exec_prefix>]
Python path configuration:
  PYTHONHOME = (not set)
  PYTHONPATH = (not set)
  program name = 'python3'
  isolated = 0
  environment = 1
  user site = 1
  import site = 1
  sys._base_executable = '/usr/bin/python3'
  sys.base_prefix = '/usr'
  sys.base_exec_prefix = '/usr'
  sys.executable = '/usr/bin/python3'
  sys.prefix = '/usr'
  sys.exec_prefix = '/usr'
  sys.path = [
    '/usr/lib/python38.zip',
    '/usr/lib/python3.8',
    '/usr/lib/lib-dynload',
  ]
Fatal Python error: init_fs_encoding: failed to get the Python codec of the filesystem encoding
Python runtime state: core initialized
ModuleNotFoundError: No module named 'encodings'

Current thread 0x00007f586f6f5000 (most recent call first):
<no Python frame>

 

[ebitz]

@SERGYIThis is probably something to do on my end.

[ebitz]

On a fresh OS, still getting the same error. Dont think this error is from the user end. Version .55 opens and runs fine.

Edited January 21, 2023 by ebitz

[AbnRanger]

On 1/15/2023 at 8:41 PM, Elemeno said:

 

 

It happens in 3ds Max, too, where you sometime delete edges and it leaves a big N-Gon. I am not sure what conditions are required for it to leave an Ngon or auto delete the faces.

[AbnRanger]

On 1/20/2023 at 9:33 AM, Koray said:

It also seems like a good idea to have a dedicated "Reset" button for brushes with tool options, instead of resetting everything to default. 

I spend most of my time in the sculpt room and sometimes get confused if I made a brush like that, was it always like that or is it bugging out   

It does have a RESTORE TO DEFAULT option when the user RMB over the tool button, but I too have asked Andrew to add a RESET (to default) on every tool that has tool options.

[Sorn]

10 hours ago, ebitz said:

@SERGYINew Linux Build .57 crash on startup. Something to do with Python.

Could not find platform independent libraries <prefix>
Could not find platform dependent libraries <exec_prefix>
Consider setting $PYTHONHOME to <prefix>[:<exec_prefix>]
Python path configuration:
  PYTHONHOME = (not set)
  PYTHONPATH = (not set)
  program name = 'python3'
  isolated = 0
  environment = 1
  user site = 1
  import site = 1
  sys._base_executable = '/usr/bin/python3'
  sys.base_prefix = '/usr'
  sys.base_exec_prefix = '/usr'
  sys.executable = '/usr/bin/python3'
  sys.prefix = '/usr'
  sys.exec_prefix = '/usr'
  sys.path = [
    '/usr/lib/python38.zip',
    '/usr/lib/python3.8',
    '/usr/lib/lib-dynload',
  ]
Fatal Python error: init_fs_encoding: failed to get the Python codec of the filesystem encoding
Python runtime state: core initialized
ModuleNotFoundError: No module named 'encodings'

Current thread 0x00007f586f6f5000 (most recent call first):
<no Python frame>

 

Same here.

3DCoat 2022.55 works fine too.

[soru]

4 hours ago, Allabulle said:

Same here.

3DCoat 2022.55 works fine too.

Installing python3.8 will fix it.

[Elemeno]

7 hours ago, AbnRanger said:

It happens in 3ds Max, too, where you sometime delete edges and it leaves a big N-Gon. I am not sure what conditions are required for it to leave an Ngon or auto delete the faces.

to leave an ngon ,flat face tri must be possible ,
an edge will try to flatten , happens everywhere except 3dc

[ajz3d]

19 hours ago, ebitz said:

@SERGYINew Linux Build .57 crash on startup. Something to do with Python.

(...)
Fatal Python error: init_fs_encoding: failed to get the Python codec of the filesystem encoding
(...)

I just installed trial version of 3DC 2022.57, and I'm getting the same error:

▶ ./3dcoat          
Could not find platform independent libraries <prefix>
Could not find platform dependent libraries <exec_prefix>
Consider setting $PYTHONHOME to <prefix>[:<exec_prefix>]
Python path configuration:
  PYTHONHOME = (not set)
  PYTHONPATH = (not set)
  program name = 'python3'
  isolated = 0
  environment = 1
  user site = 1
  import site = 1
  sys._base_executable = '/usr/bin/python3'
  sys.base_prefix = '/usr'
  sys.base_exec_prefix = '/usr'
  sys.executable = '/usr/bin/python3'
  sys.prefix = '/usr'
  sys.exec_prefix = '/usr'
  sys.path = [
    '/usr/lib/python38.zip',
    '/usr/lib/python3.8',
    '/usr/lib/lib-dynload',
  ]
Fatal Python error: init_fs_encoding: failed to get the Python codec of the filesystem encoding
Python runtime state: core initialized
ModuleNotFoundError: No module named 'encodings'

Current thread 0x00007f8995d83200 (most recent call first):
<no Python frame>

The program does not start at all. I'm using Python 3.10.6-3+b1.

4 hours ago, soru said:

Installing python3.8 will fix it.

It's not possible for me to install Python 3.8.

Edited January 21, 2023 by ajz3d