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Modeling Room - Next Steps


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Hi there everyone!
I am planning the release of a thorough video series on poly-modelling in 3D Coat. I am trying to get as much information as I can on all the aspects of workflow, shortcuts and issues that can appear in the process. Before publishing it, I would like to share here in the forum some of the material so that the more advanced users and developers can comment on them before release. I would be very thankful if you do. It will be free and on YouTube. 

Also, I would like to ask a few questions here in the forum just to be sure I am using the poly-modelling room in the best way. 

Thanks to all of your for your help. :good:

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The first questions I wanted to ask are:
Btw, I am using 3DC 2024.05 beta

1. Is it possible to rotate multiple face selections along their origins? There is a tool for individual scaling, however I haven't found one for individual selection rotation along own axis.

2. Is there a way of seeing/modifying all of the current key bindings in 3DC? By accident I discovered that pressing  X,Z moves a polygroup layer along the X,Z plane. Also, pressing H when hovering over an object in the viewport, selects that polygroup's layer. I ignore how many more functionalities are there in shortcuts. Is there a way of viewing them all?

 3. Is it possible to have more than 1 viewport in 3DC? 
 

Thank you all for your help! :good:

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Carlosan
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Gorbatovsky was awarded the badge 'Helpful'

On 2/15/2024 at 12:24 AM, Sal_GC said:

Is it possible to rotate multiple face selections along their origins?

Yes.
If you select multiple faces and then run the tool Select/Transform then the axis of the Gizmo will inited along the faces. 
The same thing happens when choosing edges

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Thank you for your response Mr. Gorbatovsky. I tried rotating the faces with  the Select/Transform tool, however I only got it working along a central axis of the selection, as a whole. Perhaps I am not seeing the right option. I managed to rotate the faces but one at a time, with the gizmo less transform + CTRL for 45 deg. increments. I attached some images for illustration. What am I missing? 

 

Q1-rotation-1.PNG

Q1-rotation-2.PNG

Q1-rotation-3.PNG

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21 hours ago, Sal_GC said:

I managed to rotate the faces but one at a time, with the gizmo less transform + CTRL for 45 deg.

 the Select/Transform tool using only one Gizmo.

Some tools allow you to scale relative to several local centers of mass. For selected regions faces.
This tool is Smart Extrude and Scale.

image.png

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selecting a vertex ,edge or face should use the same key that interacts with the gizmo ... 

 

should be right click or have to use an additional key like shift or ctrl something that stops the gizmo interfering with any selecting you may be doing

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2 hours ago, Gorbatovsky said:

relative to several local centers of mass

Yes, this precisely what I would like to achieve, but for rotation. I remember the tool for individual scaling, however I have not been able to rotate multiple face selections at once with the Select/Transform tool. I tried using the rotate only Gizmo (E) and then rotated, but both selections keep rotation relative to 1 center of mass, instead of each rotating relative their respective centers. I tried checking the "Auto fit in local space" box, but I saw no changes. I am still missing the point. 

 

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23 minutes ago, Elemeno said:

selecting a vertex ,edge or face should use the same key that interacts with the gizmo ... 

 

should be right click or have to use an additional key like shift or ctrl something that stops the gizmo interfering with any selecting you may be doing

I am sorry, I didn't get that. What do you mean about the selections?

 

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1 hour ago, Sal_GC said:

I am sorry, I didn't get that. What do you mean about the selections?

 

in the modelling room when you're selecting and transform the gizmo gets in the way (gizmo moves when you're selecting)

you can however hide gizmo and then select and unhide gizmo this is very slow, you can bind a key for this operation but thats still slow....

so a separate key that doesn't interfere with the gizmo but is used for selecting would work lovely ... however thats not something you can do without getting inside the code 

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Oh, I see, I understand now. Yes, this could a useful improvement. On the topic of keys, do you happen to know a way of seeing the current key bindings? I assume there could be some sort of .ini file where perhaps I could see it, but, is there a way inside of 3DC to see/modify these bindings?

 

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9 hours ago, Sal_GC said:

Oh, I see, I understand now. Yes, this could a useful improvement. On the topic of keys, do you happen to know a way of seeing the current key bindings? I assume there could be some sort of .ini file where perhaps I could see it, but, is there a way inside of 3DC to see/modify these bindings?

 

everything that has a menu or tab in the ui can be hot keyed but as for a list ... i can find one

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I see. Apparently there is no comprehensive list that resumes all of the key bindings. I find some pretty nice functions are "hidden" in keyboard shortcuts however I cannot change them as I do not know what is their name in any menu, like pressing H while hovering over objects in the Modelling Room, switching to that object's layer. 

Btw Elemeno, have you managed to rotate multiple face clusters at once, each relative to their own centers of mass like Mr. Gorbatovsky suggested above? I have not figured out a way to use the Select/Transform tool for this task, similar to Blender's "individual origins". 

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37 minutes ago, Sal_GC said:

Blender's "individual origins"

In 3D Coat this is impossible.

List Hotkeys can to seen only in XML file
..\Documents\3DCoat\UserPrefs\Preferences\Options_Hotkeys.xml

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Oh, I see Mr. Gorbatovsky. Than you. I am glad there is a way of seeing all of the hotkeys in one place. :) Now I know about the rotation.
I understand it is possible to customize tools in 3DC via code. It is done by new Python API or C++? 

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Ok, I see. Thank you! @Gorbatovsky So far I have never seen any 3DC video with multiple viewports, so I have assumed it is currently impossible to have multiple viewports at once. However there is a function for storing certain view positions for easy access. This is correct, yes?

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  • 1 month later...
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Posted (edited)

To start off: The things that I love -

  • Auto-welding of vertices dragged within close proximity. Please keep this functionality intact (but perhaps needs to be an option?)
  • Points to Polygons is my favorite for detailed hand retopology and any of the many tools that allow me to just tweak/move vertices in screen space with RMB.
  • UV tools are/always have been a pleasure to use... set seams, unfold, onto painting!
  • Modeling room blockout -> live smooth -> sculpt room worflow - It's so nice to be able to do this, IMO.


As someone who has used 3d-coat's poly-modeling functionality even before the 'modeling' room existed :) I have a few things that I would like to see:

  1. Transform Hierarchy in the Poly Groups - UI much like hierarchy in the sculpt tree, but only for transform so that poly groups can be parented and transformed relative to one another.
     
  2. Isolated selection - Selection tools should only allow me to select the components within the poly group that I have selected.
     
  3. A uniform way of setting the transform space of the gizmo. Perhaps a function to cycle through Local (Normal), World, Parent, Screen spaces for the Gizmo. Screen information to tell me so (perhaps this would be visible in tool options)
     
  4. Standard selection behavior - I think others have suggested this - to have the LMB drag a rectangular lasso when dragging the mouse - or at least have defaults set to be lasso.
     
  5. I feel like 3d-coat's modeling tool set has *many tools and could potentially consolidate some of the tools into functions of a modifier or middle mouse button. It could possibly use a portion of the screen - the bottom status bar - to relay contextual functionality - The Softimage UI had a very similar setup to this. It would always let you know what your LMB, RMB, MMB's could do in certain situations and was quite the quick point of reference when learning the software. While the tool mouse-overs are 'okay', you have to keep going back to it and it sort of breaks the flow. I think tooling like 'smart-extrude' could benefit from some functionality like this.
     
  6. A modeling room 'pose' tool would be handy. I find myself needing to do things like tapering a whole poly group once in a while and it would be nice to have better control that current soft-selection capabilities.
     
  7. A single, central menu ("Send to" perhaps) for sending models from one room to another, rather than have the options be in different menus/different parts of the UI per-room.

    I'll leave it at this for the suggestions for now... 
     
Edited by Jfredd
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  • 3 weeks later...
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Posted (edited)

A subtle, but slightly different approach to keyboard shortcuts would be a 'Hold' mode. The idea is that a quick press/release of a key would switch to a tool, but holding down a key would switch to a tool temporarily until the key is released, and then active tool would switch back to the previous tool. This definitely makes a workflow feel faster since it's less 'key hunting' to go back to the previous tool.  So say I'm using 'Select/Transform' and I want to quickly add some loops, I could hold down whichever key I have assigned for 'Split Rings', make my splits, then let go and I'm back to 'Select/Transform' again. If I like to use Hotkeys to constrain movement to XYZ axis, the movement would end as soon as I let go of the corresponding keys and switch back to the previous tool (probably Select.)

Edited by Jfredd
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With Sticky Keys, if you activate tool via hotkey and press the assigned key again, it will re-activate the previously used tool. Sticky keys does not work with Stacked Keys

 

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  • 1 month later...
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After over 3 years away and leaving plenty of time for the issues to be addressed I'm finally back, ready to pay for a new license. 

I go straight to the modelling room in 2024.17 and..

-Deselecting edges does not work unless I click outside the 3d coat window and back in again

-I can not create faces in some areas because I get a non manifold mesh warning, but then if I create the face starting at a different point it works. 

-Rogue edges are impossible delete.

-I still have to click the select button before I can switch between face, vertex or edge selection

-There is now a slight delay between my interaction and the program doing anything. Deleting a face for example takes about half a seconds after I press the delete button

-Select mode auto keeps reverting back to edge mode.. why?

Basically I didn't go 30 seconds without encountering a bug or some kind of bad user experience so then I gave up. Unfortunately I don't want to waste more time on this, I've already wasted enough and clearly things aren't being addressed correctly. Its very sad as I used to use the program a lot but now it feels like its just completely broken.

Thanks

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1 hour ago, Grimmy said:

After over 3 years away and leaving plenty of time for the issues to be addressed I'm finally back, ready to pay for a new license. 

I go straight to the modelling room in 2024.17 and..

-Deselecting edges does not work unless I click outside the 3d coat window and back in again

-I can not create faces in some areas because I get a non manifold mesh warning, but then if I create the face starting at a different point it works. 

-Rogue edges are impossible delete.

-I still have to click the select button before I can switch between face, vertex or edge selection

-There is now a slight delay between my interaction and the program doing anything. Deleting a face for example takes about half a seconds after I press the delete button

-Select mode auto keeps reverting back to edge mode.. why?

Basically I didn't go 30 seconds without encountering a bug or some kind of bad user experience so then I gave up. Unfortunately I don't want to waste more time on this, I've already wasted enough and clearly things aren't being addressed correctly. Its very sad as I used to use the program a lot but now it feels like its just completely broken.

Thanks

i was complaining about this years ago. in depth. 

They clearly don't care about this product. they are obsessed about creating new features while the base UX is broken, and so many bugs.

I upgraded few days ago to support their effort but tbh i kinda regret it. cuz they dont give a damn what the users want. it will be my last upgrade for sure because ill start learning blender and abandoned this UX mess forever. once i get use to it i will never learn anything new again ofc.

instead of improving the modeling tools to a reasonable standard they are busy creating API, they think a software with such a small community is going to create meaningful tools on a broken UX.  

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5 hours ago, Grimmy said:

-I can not create faces in some areas because I get a non manifold mesh warning, but then if I create the face starting at a different point it works. 

Can you give an example of such a mesh to check?

 

5 hours ago, Grimmy said:

-Rogue edges are impossible delete.

What is "Rogue edges"?

 

5 hours ago, Grimmy said:

-Select mode auto keeps reverting back to edge mode.. why?

I don't understand what you mean.

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  • 5 weeks later...
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Posted (edited)

Hi Oleg, to clarify some things, i simply went to the modelling room and began extruding faces of a cube to see where it would take me. It took very little time until I ran into many issues. (Too many to list). Honestly if you cant see the issues yourselves then we have no hope. We cant be your QA for rudimentary issues.
If you guys think it all works great and is 'as designed' then good for you, but unfortunately I would have to say if that's the case, then that user experience is not for me.

Edited by Grimmy
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1 hour ago, Grimmy said:

Hi Oleg, to clarify some things, i simply went to the modelling room and began extruding faces of a cube to see where it would take me. It took very little time until I ran into many issues. (Too many to list). Honestly if you cant see the issues yourselves then we have no hope. We cant be your QA for rudimentary issues.
If you guys think it all works great and is 'as designed' then good for you, but unfortunately I would have to say if that's the case, then that user experience is not for me.

word of advice .. you probably already do ... but use a seperate software for modelling , honestly it will save you alot of time .. 

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  • 1 month later...
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There's items in the 3dcoat modeling room I like as well in Blender. Is it possible at this point to import a Blender file into the 3dcoat modeling room so that you can modify the mesh and then bring back to Blender?

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Thanks. I must of spent a day looking for this. Next question is can you make the vertices bigger? 

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