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New Brush Engine, Thanks


digman
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3DC 2021

Thanks for improving and making more powerful the brush engine in the Sculpt Room.

The addition of the clay engine in Voxel Mode is great...

I am now working on making my own preset brushes for both voxel and surface mode.  Surface mode is divided into regular surface brushes and LiveClay type of brushes with dynamic tessellation.

The brush tool panel with all the settings to change per brush, Sweet...

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43 minutes ago, L'Ancien Regime said:

By "brush tool panel" and "brush engine" I take it you mean the Brush Options Panel?

 

Correct:  The Brush Tool Options Panel in 2021. 

panel.jpg

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Unfortunately it did not drastically improve on the feel and brush behavior. Maybe its just me, but it feels more or less the same as the old, just with the GUI cleaned up, better performance and the brush options updated.  I hope Andrew can continue to work on bringing it closer to Zbrush in terms of brush behavior and displacement. A lot of the stuff I can do quickly in Zbrush can only turn out kind of muddy looking and with surface "artifacts"  in 3D Coat. Would be interested to see if anyone can recreate the Damian Standard 2 brush behavior as well in 3DC -(found here: https://maddam.gumroad.com/l/QEmnC.)

With that said, the changes so far make it a far more enjoyable user experience, just they are not significant or rather, drastic enough, to warrant an immediate upgrade on my end. Still on the fence with that one. I like the direction things are going though.

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31 minutes ago, Carlosan said:

Clay draw > Pinch is very close to Dam Standard 2

I tried just about every combo, once more just now including that one with a similar alpha and could not even get close to the same results or behavior. Zbrush seems to displace the surface in such a way where its shifting and expanding out the areas around the cut, and when the cuts intersect they merge smoothly with one another. Depending on the direction you move the brush it creates a specialized pattern that mixes well with intersecting crevices. 3DC just gives me horrendous results trying to emulate the same thing, leaving me to think its just not possible in 3D Coat as it exist now. Keep in mind this is the Dam Standard 2 brush, not the more simplistic version that comes with Zbrush by default.

I hate to say this, but the developers might have to take time to use zbrush for awhile to kind of '"reverse engineer" what is going on with their brush engine, assuming they have not done it already. There is just something different going on with the brush behavior that is keeping it heads above the competition, and its not just performance.

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2 hours ago, RabenWulf said:

I tried just about every combo, once more just now including that one with a similar alpha and could not even get close to the same results or behavior. Zbrush seems to displace the surface in such a way where its shifting and expanding out the areas around the cut, and when the cuts intersect they merge smoothly with one another. Depending on the direction you move the brush it creates a specialized pattern that mixes well with intersecting crevices. 3DC just gives me horrendous results trying to emulate the same thing, leaving me to think its just not possible in 3D Coat as it exist now. Keep in mind this is the Dam Standard 2 brush, not the more simplistic version that comes with Zbrush by default.

I hate to say this, but the developers might have to take time to use zbrush for awhile to kind of '"reverse engineer" what is going on with their brush engine, assuming they have not done it already. There is just something different going on with the brush behavior that is keeping it heads above the competition, and its not just performance.

I think the best path towards what you're suggesting to is to create a more robust set of sculpting abilities in the paint room, which seems to be more a straight displacement style sculpting.  Of course, I don't know how it all works under the hood, but I think if you paint with displacement... i.e. a black and white pixel information to displace an underlying mesh you could do a lot of cool tricks since you're really just be working into a 2d texture essentially, so blending, masking and smoothing would all work really nicely and you'd have the same level of control as you would if you digitally painting something in Photoshop.

Not sure if that makes sense or not, but that's what I suspect zbrush and Mudbox do and I think 3D Coat does the same when you paint on a sculpt object with depth in the paint room...with the only difference being that the brushes there are extremely limited and the seem to just push out on the vertex normals.

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22 hours ago, digman said:

Another simple example...  I would not call that horrendous...

sphere.jpg

Picture: Less than 20 seconds of squiggling it around, broad strokes and close proximity ones.

I'd say in comparison to the way the mesh displaces the surface, it is horrendous, at least to me.  There is definitely something Zbrush is doing behind the scenes that is giving the user a finer amount of control on their brush strokes, with a more natural surface displacement going on with the same kind of ease. This is one brush that is able to offer so much variety in result without making any adjustments to its properties. I really struggle to get the same kind of results with 3D Coat. The tool's behavior is definitely important, but I think there is something else driving this difference, namely how it interprets input and displaces the mesh, especially when it comes to overlapping/sharp cornered areas. The 3DC brush engine definitely needs whatever zbrush is doing that makes it work so well in this regard, unfortunately it does not appear to be present in 3DC's new one (at this point in time).


 

2021-07-27 17_44_57-Start.jpg

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16 hours ago, RabenWulf said:

Picture: Less than 20 seconds of squiggling it around, broad strokes and close proximity ones.

I'd say in comparison to the way the mesh displaces the surface, it is horrendous, at least to me.  There is definitely something Zbrush is doing behind the scenes that is giving the user a finer amount of control on their brush strokes, with a more natural surface displacement going on with the same kind of ease. This is one brush that is able to offer so much variety in result without making any adjustments to its properties. I really struggle to get the same kind of results with 3D Coat. The tool's behavior is definitely important, but I think there is something else driving this difference, namely how it interprets input and displaces the mesh, especially when it comes to overlapping/sharp cornered areas. The 3DC brush engine definitely needs whatever zbrush is doing that makes it work so well in this regard, unfortunately it does not appear to be present in 3DC's new one (at this point in time).


 

2021-07-27 17_44_57-Start.jpg

What brush is that?  I wonder if it has anything to do with the way falloff works.

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@gbball
It's the Dam Standard 2 brush. Basically a free upgraded version of the regular Dam Standard brush that comes with Zbrush as a default, one of the most used brushes in digital sculpting. The Dam_Standard_02 is simply the best brush I have ever used in any digital sculpting software. You can find it at either of the links below:

https://www.artstation.com/artwork/mbrnE
https://maddam.gumroad.com/l/QEmnC

@Carlosan
Its almost acting like there is a liquid underneath, which causes it to shift and expand up around the carved areas, as though the surface beyond just the center of the brush is affected. Its very hard to explain with words. The smudge aspect in 3DC might be a basic version of whats going on, or perhaps one of the components. If you can get access to Zbrush, even if just a demo, I'd certainly the tool a try just to see exactly what its doing.

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Thanks @RabenWulf

Excuse my ignorance...I have yet to do a deep dive into sculpt brush settings.  I mainly use pinch and one of the rapid or clay brushes. 

When I've used Zbrush a little bit here and there, the sculpting has felt in some ways a bit more predictable and the surface felt firmer...and the stroke details more localized... in the sense that what I expected and what I got were the same.  I think 3D coat has gotten better in this regard, but I only use a few brushes like I said and I don't use ZBrush that much, so I can't make a definitive statement one way or the other.  I'll definitely try out the Dam Standard 2 brush though and do some comparisons.

One thing about 3d-Coat is that the brushes have constantly been changing, which isn't a bad thing, but that makes it hard for me to say definitively what it feels like vs something else because previous versions have been different.   I think the changes have been for the better.  

I think the way falloff in 3d coat vs focal shift in Zbrush is a fundamental difference that should be overlooked.  As in my mind falloff should allow me to make strokes that provide a nice buffer within the border of the brush radius that doesn't affect the underlying sculpt geometry at all.

 

 

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@RabenWulf

Good constructive comparison without any fanboy ism  and without any agressive tone is very welcome to help improve any software whatever it is 3D Coat, Zbrush or anything else.

Let's wait for 3D Coat 4 to prepare and later add a new brush almost as good as Dam Standard 2 :)

Thanks for your input.

 

 

 

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