Advanced Member Henry Townshend Posted May 12, 2022 Advanced Member Report Share Posted May 12, 2022 Hello, I am trying to get conditions to work for vertex painting. However, whenever I calculate Curvature or AO, the maps don't come out as expected. The AO is way to weak and the Curvature just stays black. Does it rely on UVs even though jus wanna I vertex paint? I would really love to vertex paint in 3D Coat but it is a bit sobering without masking conditions. I guess it is supposed to work, as it asks me specifically to bake those maps when I select conditions (at the top , where it defaults to "Always") . I am trying to get similar painting feel to "Automask" by Cavity in ZBrush and I am a bit surprised that it says you need to bake those maps, as with vertex painting, there are of course no UVs. Would appreciate any help. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Advanced Member Henry Townshend Posted May 12, 2022 Author Advanced Member Report Share Posted May 12, 2022 Could this have to do with externally brought in meshes? It works with meshes created inside 3D Coat, but not with any I bring in, using FBX. If so, any idea why this happens and how I could make it work? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Carlosan Posted May 12, 2022 Report Share Posted May 12, 2022 Hello, I am testing 2022.25 but cant find any trouble baking AO or Curvature on vertex paint Could you please enumerate step by step your current workflow ? Or share the model to take a look ? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Contributor alexn007 Posted May 13, 2022 Contributor Report Share Posted May 13, 2022 (edited) Hi Carlosan, Yes it appears that the new update v25 seemed to work and fixed the occlusion and curvature problems, at least for the few models I've tested. Amazing work from the 3DCoat team! If I run into this on any models, I'll be sure to flag it here for awareness. Thanks for everything you guys do! -Alex Edited May 13, 2022 by alexn007 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Advanced Member Henry Townshend Posted May 13, 2022 Author Advanced Member Report Share Posted May 13, 2022 Thanks for the replies guys!@alexn007 Unfortunatley, updating to 2022.25 did not solve the problem for me. @Carlosan Of course: When using this model here that I exported via FBX export from ZBrush, when I bake AO its super gray'ish, not sure if it looks correct. When baking Curvature, the result is simply just black:https://www.dropbox.com/s/bevx3aox6abh4fe/BabyET_2022_001_forCoat.fbx?dl=0 Here are the steps: And this below is the result after the curvature baked, obviously not including any curvature data: The AO bake result also seems too subtle for me, not what I expect usually from Coat. I mean its always a bit grayish, but there seems to be missing punsh: Another idea: Could this have to do with scale discrepancies? I will maybe try to import into Blender first and then send via 3D Coat Appllink, will see if that makes any difference. Maybe this is some incompatibility when directly importing FBX from ZBrush'S FBX exporter plugin. I am supposed to bake via "Textures->Caclulate Curvature" and "Caclulate Occlusion", even for Vertex Paint, correct? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Advanced Member Henry Townshend Posted May 13, 2022 Author Advanced Member Report Share Posted May 13, 2022 Ah one thing I forgot to add: The model is already polypainted in ZBrush, so I bring those Vertex Colors in on import into Coat, which works great and it inserts it as new layer. Not sure if that could maybe have anything to do with the problem. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Advanced Member Henry Townshend Posted May 13, 2022 Author Advanced Member Report Share Posted May 13, 2022 And as mentioned, the problem is not existing when I use one of 3D Coats starter base meshes from the menu. It seems internal data does not have this problem. Until now, I could not get any externally created sculpt to work with baked AO and Curvature. Be it imported as FBX or OBJ. All behave the same for me. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Carlosan Posted May 13, 2022 Report Share Posted May 13, 2022 The model is very very tiny, - scaling up 1000% before import it to 3DC - give this curvature map result Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Contributor alexn007 Posted May 13, 2022 Contributor Report Share Posted May 13, 2022 I just opened the file and thought the same! Nice catch! Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Contributor alexn007 Posted May 13, 2022 Contributor Report Share Posted May 13, 2022 Cool Model though! Nice work. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Advanced Member Henry Townshend Posted May 13, 2022 Author Advanced Member Report Share Posted May 13, 2022 Wow! Thanks a lot you two for looking into it! Curvature map looks good. Thanks @alexn007! Glad you like it. I am a bit surprised though, as for me, when I import it over via "Startup Screen->Vertex Painting", the model scale relation to the grid is the exact same as in your second picture, where you scaled up by a 1000%. When I import over menu "File -> Import -> Import for Sculpt/Vertex Painting" , my mesh seems still the appropriate size, at least the grid looks the same as in your second shot @Carlosan: Same when imported via Applink from Blender. I vaguely remember that I had the situation that the model was so small a few times in between tries. Now I struggle to reproduce the model being so small on import. It seems that I may lack some basic understanding on how to appropriately import models? However, I now went to sculpting room, and set my scene scale, which was at some number like 2226 or something, to "1" , and now I am able to bake again. But I can not for the life of me figure out anymore how you get the model to be so small on import :P. I guess that might be similar top what you did @Carlosan. My Unit Scale in preferences is set to meter. I wonder why the scene scale gets off, though. P.S.: Would you guys know of any way to visualize these conditions? It seems you have to just try? Or can one preview them somehow inside the viewport prior to painting? The baked curvature does not get affected by it it seems: 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Advanced Member Henry Townshend Posted May 13, 2022 Author Advanced Member Report Share Posted May 13, 2022 @Carlosan I know it is recommended now to use the RGB Curvature, right? But I wonder how you got that crisp greyscale curvature. I tried the several options: "Local Curvature" and "Light Based" Curvature, but those are not so high frequency as yours. It looks like this for some reason with local curvature, which makes sense, as its the same as with local RGB jus without the colors. Looks completely different from yours though. Have you used some special settings, gamma correction maybe ? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Advanced Member Henry Townshend Posted May 13, 2022 Author Advanced Member Report Share Posted May 13, 2022 Any idea also maybe how I could use the conditions for fine grain masking? Like only painting the indents of pores? I have tried with various conditions and different "Degree", "Contrast" and "Cavity Width" settings. All giving me broader results without fine grain. Does this have to do with the above problem that my map is not fine grained enough? Or even the sculpt itself... I assume.... My Curvature Map seems to generally include these fine details though it seems, here is a screenshot from flat shaded view with active Cavity layer: I also noticed that everything I paint comes out with sharp pixelated edges. Also a result of the curvature map not being fine enough? Or would there be a way to get smoother results ? : Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Carlosan Posted May 13, 2022 Report Share Posted May 13, 2022 No, i use the default settings. Try this, hope it help Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Advanced Member Henry Townshend Posted May 15, 2022 Author Advanced Member Report Share Posted May 15, 2022 On 5/13/2022 at 11:12 PM, Carlosan said: No, i use the default settings. Try this, hope it help Thank you! Does not really help unfortunatley, as I already know how to bake Cav and AO for Smart Material usage. What I struggle with is getting decent results with them when Vertex Painting, using the "Conditions", to get something similar to what I have in ZBrush using various "Mask by" options. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Carlosan Posted May 15, 2022 Report Share Posted May 15, 2022 Equivalent to ZBrush mask is Freeze Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Advanced Member Henry Townshend Posted May 16, 2022 Author Advanced Member Report Share Posted May 16, 2022 Thx again @Carlosan I am aware of the freezing being equivalent to mask in ZBrush. But, can you also "freeze by Cavity" or "freeze by peaks and valleys" or "freeze by AO"? IYKWIM? For these, I thought I need to use the conditions menu "more an concave" and "more on convex", right? I thought 3D Coat works differently, by storing bakes into vertex color layers to drive that conditions, instead of using masking(freezing). How does freezing come into play with this in 3D Coat? I would also love to know if we could visuslize the condition tweaks (cavity width, contrast) in the viewport, jus as we can visualize our "mask by" mask intensity levels in ZBrush. I feel very comfi Polypainting in ZBrush, but the option to fully PBR paint on sculpts in 3D Coat is jus insane and tempting to work with it. I also like the renderer. The option to bake it down to several maps when done or transfer it to Blender nodes via applink is the sweet cherry on top. Sadly currently, for me, I am not really getting it to function as I expected, probably I am doing something wrong. I I think it sould be possible to have a similar experience to ZBrush painting, if you know how. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Carlosan Posted May 16, 2022 Report Share Posted May 16, 2022 With Conditions you can using Fill tool and selecting Fill w/Freeze Mode Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Advanced Member Henry Townshend Posted May 16, 2022 Author Advanced Member Report Share Posted May 16, 2022 1 hour ago, Carlosan said: With Conditions you can using Fill tool and selecting Fill w/Freeze Mode That's a great way to get the preview of the conditions!!! Great! thx ! Didn't think of that. You could also do it with a solid color instead of freeze and then simply undo, jus the way you do in ZBrush with settign up mask by options. Really like this system with the 3 parameters "Cavity width", "degree" and "contrast". I meanwhile imported a model via file menu instead of the starting dialogue, not sure why that would give you different results for the import, but it somewhat does I think. I would advice anyone who reads this against directly using FBX exported from ZBrush, as Carlosan said, their scale is super tiny. But this won't show when importing via start screen -> Vertex Paint. But only when you go over the menu it seems. I think that these are seemingly not delivering the same looks in regards of scaling, can potentially confuse users. For me it worked when I put my model to a reasonable scale in Blender first, which most of the time scaling from "0.01" which is the scale coming from ZBrush FBX, to "1" in Blender, which gave me the measurments in meters the model was build with in mind (1,4m). When then bringing it ouf of Blender to 3D Coat via FBX, baking generally seems to work as expected. The AO looks terrific now: Even though I have some problems when baking the head, which I don't know where it could come from right now: I think I will figure it out from here. Thanks much for the support! Eager and excited to do some full PBR vertex painting in 3D Coat in future! Amazing what this program offers 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Carlosan Posted May 16, 2022 Report Share Posted May 16, 2022 On top shadows looks as bug, issue was reported. Related: Mask paint layers //edit Bug solved on version 2022.26 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Carlosan Posted May 17, 2022 Report Share Posted May 17, 2022 Sorry i forgot to mention Setting up mask by options AO, cavity... all baked textures are stored in this location You can use this maps (copy it to another layer if need to use later) as condition mask creating a new Smart Material (or duplicate and edit any old one if needed) ----------------------------------------------------------------------------- Layer Blending let you to assign AO and CV as mask Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Advanced Member Henry Townshend Posted May 17, 2022 Author Advanced Member Report Share Posted May 17, 2022 7 hours ago, Carlosan said: Sorry i forgot to mention Setting up mask by options AO, cavity... all baked textures are stored in this location You can use this maps (copy it to another layer if need to use later) as condition mask creating a new Smart Material (or duplicate and edit any old one if needed) Ah thanks! Thats good to know. Makes sense for Smart Material usage. I mean an auto assignment of the maps, like in Substance Painter, which makes the maps available from within the project, would be even better. I was specifically looking for painting though, not necessaraly applying Smart Materials. But now as you say it... ok, that is also super poweful. You can basically procedurally texture your sculpt also during vertex painting. Another incredible opportunity, I just realize... 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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