Simplified Export keeps deleting the polygroups and paint information so I can't paint-over

[wonderland78]

So I just discovered how awesome the simplified export is. I raved to my concept art friends about it - it exports all your objects, puts them into one, gathers all the texture maps and then you can go into the paint room and add textures over the whole object, even if it's comprised of several objects. What a game-changer.

Well, it achieved this result once and only once and now, even though when you click file > export > decimate, auto-map, export you see 3dCoat creating polygroups in real time. It then removes them so there's no baked texture info in the paint room, there's no UVs and no paint objects. When you hide the sculpt layers, there's nothing in the paint room. I can't get it to repeat my initial result at all where I could paint up and add dirt to my multi-layered object.

All it does is export the object and flattens/bakes the shader textures into files.

[Carlosan]

Using latest 2022.51 ?

[wonderland78]

2022.12

I don't suppose you're able to confirm if it's supposed to, by design, retain all the UV data, retopo data etc.? does it appear like I have a bug?

[wonderland78]

Update: I had two other artists do the same and they each said that the info disappears from each room.

[Carlosan]

source...

TwentyNinerFour

Hey sorry! have been away for a while, hope i can help, although im not very familiar with the export features. Also I may not fully understand the problem or your goals so let me know if im not understanding something correctly.

It looks like `[Sculpt Room] > "file" > "export" > "decimate, auto-map, export"` is for outputting an .obj file etc., with intent to import work into some other program.

As you mentioned, when you click it 3dcoat will perform decimation and auto-mapping before exporting a file by temporarily making poly groups, paint objects etc as it sees fit. It then "cleans up after itself" and removes these temporary entities after you specify the filename and complete the export.

Somehow im guessing it either encountered an error or you interrupted it one time and got it to "stop short" of the clean-up phase and were left with the temporary paint objects, which was ironically good because it let you: go right from the sculpt room and start doing per-pixel painting.

I tried a bunch of things to get it to "stop short" with no luck. So I'm not sure how you got that to happen it must have been a serious fluke.

That being said if your goal here is to use some "batch utility" to take everything from the sculpt room and just start per-pixel painting in as few steps as possible you could:

Just re-import the .obj file you exported earlier with the "decimate,automap,export" tool back into 3dcoat.

or if that seems like a hack you can:

1. in sculpt room go to "Sculpt Tree", right click on any object

2. select "Retopo via decimation, visible objects" from the menu and pick a decimation amount

3. this will take you to retopo room and you should see the new decimated polygroup

4. from the bake menu at the top choose whatever you are trying to do (likely "bake w/ normal map" or "Retopo->per-pixel painting (no baking)") and complete the baking dialogues that come up.

5. go to paint room and start painting.

(so sorry for the wall of text)

However, if your goal is to just start seeing your sculpt model with dirt in cracks etc as fast as possible and you dont actually care about the texture per-se at this point (assuming you are using 2022/beta) not to insult your intelligence, but you can just use vertex color/voxel color: in the sculpt room, build the layers needed by smart materials (go to "Edit" > "Calculate Occlusion" and again with "Edit" > "Calculate Curvature"). Then go to paint room, pick a dirt smart material, and start painting.

[Carlosan]

stayinwonderland

Thanks for the length response!

Yeah I figured that, actually, it's the same thing if I just retopo every item at once and then go into the paint room. I just wish 3dCoat would collapse all the paint layers into one UV texture so, when I'm in Blender, I can just control everything at the same time vs having to colour correct every sub-object. And yes that likely was a healthy glitch that I discovered!

[Carlosan]

if your goal here is to use some "batch utility" to take one mesh from the sculpt room and just start per-pixel painting in as few steps as possible you could:

RMB over the layer and select Autopo > for PPP