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A little bug with merging for per-pixel... A number of edges seem to be missing. I did a little quick sculpting on a vox sphere, then quadrangulated for per-pixel. The retopo looks fine, it's just the wireframe on the model in the painting room.

2009-07-03_0243.png

2009-07-03_0228.png

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A little bug with merging for per-pixel... A number of edges seem to be missing. I did a little quick sculpting on a vox sphere, then quadrangulated for per-pixel. The retopo looks fine, it's just the wireframe on the model in the painting room.

2009-07-03_0243.png

2009-07-03_0228.png

Hey Phil, I can confirm this bug. I haven't nailed down the exact cause, yet. But it's definitely something to do with quadrangulation.

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I would like to take this moment to request these once more.

Thread

Followup with explanatory movies

I dont think its unreasonable to ask that the basic toolset for voxelsculpting gets finished shortly after v3's release.

I also just found out you have broken the smooth that's under shift. Now the smooth strength is LOCAL under each brush! So if i tweak the smooth to a nice strength under extrude and i switch to carve (or any other brush) i will get different smooth settings with the switch of each tool! How can you possibly think this is a good idea? I dont mind the idea of a seperate smooth brush although it seems to me to only be useful for surface smooth since voxel smooth is tied to shift by default (which is good). But changing the smooth settings under any (voxel) brush should result in a global change for the (voxel) smooth brush. Pressing Shift while using extrude should NOT result in extrude-smooth. No, it should result in the use of global smooth. Please change this back asap.

3dioot

Just to Clarify when i asked for this functionality in my own Wip thread this is how i wished the seperate smooth brush to be implimented, 3Dioot was just better than myself at articulating this. Just in case any body thought my request then seconding 3Dioot's request was in fact contradictory.

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A little bug with merging for per-pixel... A number of edges seem to be missing. I did a little quick sculpting on a vox sphere, then quadrangulated for per-pixel. The retopo looks fine, it's just the wireframe on the model in the painting room.

2009-07-03_0243.png

2009-07-03_0228.png

It is just visual bug (z fighting while drawing wireframe), actually all quads are correct.

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I would like to take this moment to request these once more.

Thread

Followup with explanatory movies

I dont think its unreasonable to ask that the basic toolset for voxelsculpting gets finished shortly after v3's release.

I also just found out you have broken the smooth that's under shift. Now the smooth strength is LOCAL under each brush! So if i tweak the smooth to a nice strength under extrude and i switch to carve (or any other brush) i will get different smooth settings with the switch of each tool! How can you possibly think this is a good idea? I dont mind the idea of a seperate smooth brush although it seems to me to only be useful for surface smooth since voxel smooth is tied to shift by default (which is good). But changing the smooth settings under any (voxel) brush should result in a global change for the (voxel) smooth brush. Pressing Shift while using extrude should NOT result in extrude-smooth. No, it should result in the use of global smooth. Please change this back asap.

3dioot

Smooth worked in this way for really long time. Anyway, now I removed this issue, smooth will work globally.

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Andrew,can you do backside masking also for the smooth brush?

In general,affecting backface or not should be an user option selectable for every brush,if you can't do it for voxel mode at least for surface mode.

When you do thin surfaces you'll never want affecting the backside(the only useful brush in this case is an inflate brush,that push along the geometry normals,not the view normals)

now the flatten is great.

Is there any reason to smooth backsides? At least sometimes? It is easy to do that in surface mode, I just don't want to overwhelm with options. In voxel mode it is just impossible(?), smoothing is performed in volume.

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Smooth worked in this way for really long time. Anyway, now I removed this issue, smooth will work globally.

Actually as Kay_eva and Artman have asked, put this in as an option. I know you dont want to overwhelm users with options but this is an important one.

Also it did not work like this for a really long time.

Smooth has always been local for surface tools. For voxel tools it has been global right up to this update.

As ive uploaded my tutorial video's on your server i added a third part relating to brushes.

http://vimeo.com/5348710

In this video i talk specifically about the fact that smooth is global except for the clay brush when using voxel tools. This video was made on the previous release.

3dioot

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The good thing is you allready have all the functionality for a great hide function in the split tool. What this does is allow you to clip away a part of your sculpt and move it to another layer. The only thing you need to do is instead of putting it on another layer store it in memory (or on disk; whatever works). When the user unhides merge it back in on the same layer it was hidden from. A perfect hide function! Its precise, its fast and most importantly it allows you to work freely on the part that is still visible as a VOLUME (its still closed as it should be). So you can use hide to create a cavity. This may sound small but is really, really usefull. It will free up the trimming and cutting tools for a MUCH wider use! Currently there are often times where i want to trim away volume and i cant because i cannot hide the parts that are in the way! I think its very important you spend some time on this.

Wow! great idea about hide!

I am thinking that freese could be done in similar way. And color in future.

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Is there any reason to smooth backsides? At least sometimes? It is easy to do that in surface mode, I just don't want to overwhelm with options. In voxel mode it is just impossible(?), smoothing is performed in volume.

I can't see a reason for smoothing backside,so if you want that surface smooth affects only front facing for me it can be good.

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Wow! great idea about hide!

I am thinking that freese could be done in similar way. And color in future.

I am happy you like this idea. :)

I have posted this idea before with a more elaborate explanation so just in case that got missed (which it seems to) here is how id love for it to work.

- It acts like the extrude or sphere brush (extrude would be nicer but sphere is probably faster) but instead of adding or removing it hides by default

- All the lasso tools hide chunks by default

- Holding ctrl UNHIDES what you are brushing or lassoing around.

So this means you can easily brush or lasso parts of your mesh IN and OUT of hiding without ever needing to go search for an unhide button. The button should exist but you should not be dependant on it.

-------------

I dont see how this is suitable for masking though? Masking should have "transitional areas". Area's that are in between 0 and 100% influence. Otherwise the masking will really be too crude to use effectively.

3dioot

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thanks guys, btw I had been wondering why the cursor was disappearing for months, and then as soon as I post about it I figured it out on my own literally 2 minutes later, AND I get 2 posts that answer the question for me

kind of funny just like the way I bought a pair of headphones off of Newegg and then as soon as I receive them the price is cut in half lol (I sent them back)

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Forgive my ignorance but what really is the purpose in the new Surface mode? Is it just that it's faster for making more general sculpting changes without messing up the details too much or is there something else?

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Forgive my ignorance but what really is the purpose in the new Surface mode? Is it just that it's faster for making more general sculpting changes without messing up the details too much or is there something else?

For one thing, it allows smoothing of thin surfaces without creating holes,which was really important.

Also I think it is much faster than previous work with surface tools because voxel-surface transfer is done prior and after sculpting instead of after each strokes.When I use surface tools with older way there always was a small delay after each strokes even if I got a pretty good machine.But now,in new surface mode,when I use sf.clay brush it is much faster and responsive.

Hope that helps. :)

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Yep what artman says.

I dont think it has a specific purpose at this point though. Its probably just an experiment on Andrew's side to explore whats possible.

What i would like to see (and again most of this technology is allready created by Andrew) is a "from voxel to mesh sculpting room" conversion.

This would be the workflow.

- First you create your voxel sculpt to the level you like or how far your workstation can get you in the voxel room

(using whatever tools you like, pure voxel or the hybrid sf ones in the voxel room)

- You choose autoretop (which would offer a target polycount in steps. See reason a bit further down)

- Your autoretoped quad base mesh is loaded into the mesh sculpting room

- Subdivision levels are automatically added to your quad mesh to reach a polygon count equal (or slightly above) your original voxel skin

(so its important that autoretop allows you to choose in steps compared to your voxel polygon count. In other words you should get the option to create a basemesh thats 1/4 1/16 and so on)

- All the detail from your voxel sculpt will be reprojected (the mesh will be literally displaced)

- You can now sculpt on this mesh in a similair way as you can in zbrush or mudbox

+ You will have subdiv levels to step up and down in (since autoretop created a low res quad base for you)

+ you will have the ability to add subdiv levels (this needs to be added)

+ You will be able to sculpt in your extreme hf details

While this results in a somewhat lineair workflow i think that by the time you are ready for pores there will not be form changes that are so big you would need voxels to support it. Since you will be able to step down in subdiv level there will be alot of freedom to make proportional changes anyway which usually dont require topology changes. Offcourse there always is the option of using this mesh to generate a voxel volume from if you feel you have to.

3dioot

PS

Offcourse this doesnt change my opinion that 3dcoat should really push voxel sculpting since its the holy grail of digital sculpting. For the time being however i think this can be a very usefull workflow which would open up the sculpting of 3dcoat to be used in production today.

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For one thing, it allows smoothing of thin surfaces without creating holes,which was really important.

Also I think it is much faster than previous work with surface tools because voxel-surface transfer is done prior and after sculpting instead of after each strokes.When I use surface tools with older way there always was a small delay after each strokes even if I got a pretty good machine.But now,in new surface mode,when I use sf.clay brush it is much faster and responsive.

OK I can see that. On an unrelated note... When merging voxels to DP now there's a Normal Map layer created. Painting on that layer makes a mess, so I assume we're no supposed to do it. If that's the case the layer should be automatically locked.

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OK I can see that. On an unrelated note... When merging voxels to DP now there's a Normal Map layer created. Painting on that layer makes a mess, so I assume we're no supposed to do it. If that's the case the layer should be automatically locked.

what do you mean locked? and why? obviously you wouldn't want to paint specular/diffuse on your normal map image? But you might want to merge it to another normal map image, or manipulate it in some other manner (idk I'm no expert)

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Small bug in 3.00.08c cuda dx64 : if you hide the brush tray, you can't use shortcuts for brushes.

(surface mode is really nice, with a multi res voxel sculpting it would beat zbrush and mudbox. This mode is really close to the "natural feel" sculpting of those apps)

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what do you mean locked? and why? obviously you wouldn't want to paint specular/diffuse on your normal map image? But you might want to merge it to another normal map image, or manipulate it in some other manner (idk I'm no expert)

Here's a quick video. If you try to paint on that NormalMap layer the spec does nothing, the normal painting does nothing, but if you try color it makes a weird mess. If I click "Quadrangulate and paint" the first thing I will want to do after the process finishes, is paint. So therefore it should be at least hidden, along with layer 0, so I can't accidentally mess it up.

http://screencast.com/t/oCO0pCTn

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New surface smooth is really a sculpting tool in itself,like a sort of microscrape.

The more I use it the more I find uses to it. :yahoo: .

Thanx for implementing this, it is a very welcomed addition.Especialy for hardsurface work.

EDIT: :D

also,I think I found out how you could make voxel based multiresolution.It is very funny. :)

The principle is based on the idea that going into a lower resolution would only be used as a simulation to record brush actions and that would after be reproduced to the hires voxel level through an operation without display onscreen .

example:

let's say I have a voxel sphere hitting 60000 polys ,I sculpt a little then...I increase resolution using actual "increase res" function to make some finner details .Now I'm at level 2(let's call it level2) and I make some finer details.I do my thing,I'm happy then...I decide to go back to previous level to use the MOVE brush with a big radius and all.

Here is how it works: As soon as I press the degrade button 3DCoat make an usual degrade function

(But it automatically save the file to a temp .3b file before).

At this point when the user is now working on the degraded model ,3DCoat automatically starts recording the camera moves and the brush strokes.The user make changes with the move brush and when he's done and press the "increase res" button again,3DCoat close the file,reopen the temp .3b and replays all the brushes actions on the higher resolution model.Of course the replays of the brushes actions are done without display on screen ,as an invisible process.Of course this operation will create a delay ,but there is also a delay when you skip resolutions in ZB.And since no display on screen is involved you can probably make this a fast operation.At least, I think :blink: .Anyway,I hope it dont sound too stupid,it was very funny to think of.

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IMPORTANT!

I found the reason of constant slowdowns in some cases that was previously reported.

I will make update but for now turn off bottom hints using close icon to avoid problem.

I just tested it and indeed it works fine now ! wonderful news, thanks Andrew. :yahoo:

A few minor things I think should be addressed in one of the next versions:

.Pen presets should each remember size, depth and pressure mode settings (size/opacity depends on presure...etc)

.Brush, airbrush and eraser should remember the associated pen preset (seems to work sometimes, heratically, not sure about this actually working)

.When opening 3dc, it should remember the last tool configurations (brush mode, pen preset for Brush, airbrush and eraser)

.When opening a project, it should remember the last camera position in that project

Also I remember at some point you mentionned there would be a way to use the clone brush with a background picture (to clone from the pictude onto an object). Is this implemented ? I cannot find it.

Thanks alot for everything,

Franck.

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It already is... I'm using .08C right now.

Oops, I was trying to download it from the downloads section. Now I have it Thanks! :)

SMOOTH BUTTON

Where did the default go to allow me to hold the "Shift" key down to smooth out my sculpt??

Somebody mentioned allowing the smooth to be separate for each brush so for example if you were sculpting fine wrinkles for example using a small # 1 brush, then the smooth would use the same #1 size of brush, but if you were using a large #6 brush, then the smoothing would use the large #6 brush and be more pronounced. This sounded like a great idea.

INCREASING/DECREASING SUBDIVISION LEVELS in PER-PIXEL and VOXEL SCULPTING

Any progress Andrew on adding the ability to increase/decrease subdivisions in Voxels and Per Pixel?

Thanks

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The smooth button is just added - You can still hold shift to smooth.

I wouldn't key voxel resolution as subdivisions - That is strictly for polygons. I would key it more as density of voxels. :)

I spoke to Andrew a week or so ago, he told me about a number of things on his to-do list, and luckily, this is one of them! I'm sure we'll see it soon.

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