3DCoat 2025 Development

[carrots]

10 hours ago, MJonathan said:

Hey, thanks! Since most of the users here are artists, could you explain what advantages we’ll get from rewriting the 3DCoat interface in Python? I can imagine that external developers will now be able to customize the interface, but what else can we expect?

Python is primarily an architectural solution and a standard for the CG industry

Good python support will allow you to write almost any plugins and integrate into working pipelines with other software

AngelScript does not work on Apple Silicon

The interface is just the beginning

[Mihu83]

On 4/13/2025 at 7:13 PM, Carlosan said:

Its me, or everything is working faster win the new UI ?

I hope so, because 3DC was a bit sluggish lately(changing tools, switching between rooms, etc.)

[Mihu83]

I have one small suggestion - let change the look of viewport with ghosted objects/layers, because right now the flickering is pretty crazy, which is distracting and probably not good for user eyes. 

[Elemeno]

sorry might have already gone over this but is there any sculpting news? little bit of sculpt room love?

[Sami Nouh]

14 minutes ago, Elemeno said:

sorry might have already gone over this but is there any sculpting news? little bit of sculpt room love?

I really hope so, regardless though, I will keep my best to upload whatever sculpt I make on it on Youtube, and definetly some tutorials (if that counts as love)

[Elemeno]

16 hours ago, Sami Nouh said:

I really hope so, regardless though, I will keep my best to upload whatever sculpt I make on it on Youtube, and definetly some tutorials (if that counts as love)

no , i mean the development ... 

this is a development forum... not tutorials

[Mihu83]

Quick question about fbx export - is high ram usage during fbx export normal or is this something 3DC specific? I mean, I've almost run out of memory while exporting my sculpt - I have 64GB and consumption during export was constantly over 50GB, 59 at peak... That's not a thing with obj, but then again, fbx is making some file compression if I remember corectly.

[Carlosan]

Depends of model polygon resolution.

[Elemeno]

 

 

some sort of strange resolution bug??

 

[GoG]

Rewritten UI in python sounds great, if it doesn't sacrifice performance (I personally don't think it will). When is the new UI rewrite rolling out? I have been sticking to 2024.27 because ever since 2024.32 the viewport gets laggy when I turn on VSync or limit 3dcoat's fps in any way (maybe something to do with the new shaders cuz I noticed some changes in unknownshaders.txt between versions)

[Mihu83]

Hey,

something is not right with update manager inside 3DC - I'm trying to "downgrade" to slightly older version, but whenever I'm clicking on update manager, either on start screen or top bar, 3DC is just closing and nothing happens.

[Carlosan]

You need to login to your account to download older versions

[Mihu83]

16 minutes ago, Carlosan said:

You need to login to your account to download older versions

That does not change the fact that 3DC is closing when I click update manager and auto update site doesn't show up. Also, I've been using auto update to jump between different versions without a problem.

[Carlosan]

yes, download manager it is not working.
with the release of version 2025 all the system is under revision.

[Elemeno]

2025 .01 is probably the most unstable release so far... lots of things not working as intended ... 

 

hopefully they release a stable version soon that hasnt had any new features and just allows the software to work as intended 

[Carlosan]

It is not a release, it is a BETA.

things not working as intended because we are migrating to Python (as you can read previously) to let the users create their own addons.

This is the function of the free beta release.

[Elemeno]

6 hours ago, Carlosan said:

It is not a release, it is a BETA.

things not working as intended because we are migrating to Python (as you can read previously) to let the users create their own addons.

This is the function of the free beta release.

oh ok, you means this? no worries i was just saying and nice! i didnt see the previous about python , other than allowing users to write their own addons , are there any other benefits of switching to python?

[wendallhitherd]

Hey there! Sorry if this is the wrong place, it is more of a general dev question: is it possible using the API to grab a render or screenshot, and the current view + camera data?
If it is possible I'd be happy to create a "grabdoc" like feature. I know there is grab depth along Z but I would like to grab a screen-space view of the current camera and use it as a stencil. Reasoning being: I am processing some scandata and I love how well 3DC handles the dense geometry with texture mapping baked into the voxels (yay!) but there is usually an empty side of the object. The easiest way to fill this empty side in is to switch to voxel mode, sculpt it a bit, and then stamp on a projection texture from a textured side of the model. I am also aware of the paint mode transform texture tool, which is very similar to what I'm wanting to do here, but it only works in paint mode and doesn't make a stencil. The functionality is less generically usable than a stencil because it's baked into the tool

as a sidebar, I love the effort being put into python lately because it allows me to smooth over my own art workflows from the difficulty of the UI similar to how toolkits like HOPSCutter for Blender are specific UI setups built around a specific thing you're doing. In that case, it's a scalpel for boolean hardsurface. I think exposing more python will allow the community to grow their own workflows that will take away a lot of the frustration.

For a feature like the grabdoc tool, I imagine I'd need api hooks to:

- get the viewport camera

- render out PBR maps from the viewport ( albedo, metallic, roughness ) to a textureset

- Reload those textures as a new stencil with full pbr maps

Edited April 27 by wendallhitherd

[Ctc_nick]

On 4/13/2025 at 7:38 AM, carrots said:

We haven't uploaded a version with these fixes yet.
Here is today's build, if you're interested, you can try it, but it could potentially have a lot of bugs since the interface has been completely rewritten in python
https://drive.google.com/file/d/1GyKa_GNaeN97igoWnI03ue8-MwRIPnhc/view?usp=sharing

Oh hey, I have overlooked that. That is great. I was surprised Maya uses an QT UI as well.

[Carlosan]

Please try this version

https://drive.google.com/file/d/10GmUvdth-CAJjhm2FuzWbt00Zw9KR7XV/view?usp=drivesdk

Remember to enable the Python Terminal extension in the Extensions window

[Elemeno]

BUG :

unlinking planes from retopo room into sculpt room, 

 

 

 

 

 

[carrots]

Version 2025.02
Latest build

https://drive.google.com/file/d/13OmytqD3C6xJ0mab0m1aHXtsPNVU6EUS/view?usp=sharing

- Fixed crash during automatic update
- Fixed problem of unnecessary ALT-rotation of the 3D-splines (used in pose/freeze)
- Automatically reload python modules when they change. You can enable this option in the extensions window for comfortable extension development without restarting 3DCoat
- Updated Python API
- Essential multiresolution improvement: Possibility to work with multiple objects simultaneously. All operations may apply to current object / selected / all visible objects. Also, retopo objects used as lowest multiresolution level should match the volume name to be able to manage multiple multiresolution objects in scene. It simplifies posing in big scenes very essentially.
- Faster rooms switching
- All scripts and commands converted to python
- Fixed Node Graph crash when shader debug mode is enabled
- Retopo/Modeling Room: Some tools ware polished.
- Retopo/Modeling Room: Smart Retopo - little Improvement.
- Fixed view modes for sculptured objects (smooth shade, relief only, flat shade, gloss only)
- Fixed node baking when using AO and curvature
- Once Ambient Occlusion is baked, it will automatically be assigned the Occlusion blend type.
- Fixed a bug where material previews were displayed black
- Automatic renaming of nodes with the same name.
- Fixed rendering of shader previews.

[Elemeno]

15 hours ago, carrots said:

Version 2025.02
Latest build

https://drive.google.com/file/d/13OmytqD3C6xJ0mab0m1aHXtsPNVU6EUS/view?usp=sharing

- Fixed crash during automatic update
- Fixed problem of unnecessary ALT-rotation of the 3D-splines (used in pose/freeze)
- Automatically reload python modules when they change. You can enable this option in the extensions window for comfortable extension development without restarting 3DCoat
- Updated Python API
- Essential multiresolution improvement: Possibility to work with multiple objects simultaneously. All operations may apply to current object / selected / all visible objects. Also, retopo objects used as lowest multiresolution level should match the volume name to be able to manage multiple multiresolution objects in scene. It simplifies posing in big scenes very essentially.
- Faster rooms switching
- All scripts and commands converted to python
- Fixed Node Graph crash when shader debug mode is enabled
- Retopo/Modeling Room: Some tools ware polished.
- Retopo/Modeling Room: Smart Retopo - little Improvement.
- Fixed view modes for sculptured objects (smooth shade, relief only, flat shade, gloss only)
- Fixed node baking when using AO and curvature
- Once Ambient Occlusion is baked, it will automatically be assigned the Occlusion blend type.
- Fixed a bug where material previews were displayed black
- Automatic renaming of nodes with the same name.
- Fixed rendering of shader previews.

is this how we update now or is auto updater being worked on?

[carrots]

22 minutes ago, Elemeno said:

is this how we update now or is auto updater being worked on?

It is planned that the auto updater will work.  

[Mihu83]

Version 2025.02 - something weird is going on with Retopo Room. At first, almost all tools were quite slow, with slight delay and now, when I switch to Retopo, it just freeze whole app.

[Dmitriy Nos]

15 hours ago, Mihu83 said:

something weird is going on with Retopo Room

Can you give more details about your workflow?

[Mihu83]

3 hours ago, Oleg Shapov said:

Can you give more details about your workflow?

Nothing special about my workflow, just switching to Retopo room and it either freeze immediately or when I choose Smart Retopo tool, etc... No idea what is going on.

EDIT:

Seems like one of the polygroups was messed up(don't know which one) - after deleting all groups, it started working normally.

2025-05-07 14-04-08.mkv

Edited May 7 by Mihu83

[GoG]

The new version is quite nice. Quite a few things run a lot faster than before, like switching between tools, multires, switching rooms, etc. It's nice to see python working well with 3DCoat.

I only had some problems:

- After multires operations (add levels, jumping between levels), the active object always switch back to the 1st layer in sculpt tree.

- Same viewport problem since 2024.32. If vsync is on or cpu/fps is limited some other way to make 3dcoat run at 60-80fps, the viewport feels like 30-40fps.

[Andrew Shpagin]

It will be today or tomorrow with auto - updater.

[GoG]

Does 3DCoat have launch parameters or something like a command line switch to specify data folder on startup?

It would be great for testing purpose, having multiple data folders for comparisons, or even using different data folders for each version.