Improving the Voxel Brushes: Help us Help you

[LJB]

This is definitely one of my favourite threads at the moment.

SO i use Mudbox and ZBrush alot and though mudbox is nice it has a much more digital feel brush wise to ZBrush. Its clear that Lots of work has gone into ZBrush Dynamic, with many of the brushes behaving in a more, Clay like manner. This is not for everyone (Anybody remember when they first changed the smooth brush??) I personally like it very much as it had a small amount of flatten added. Lke using a rubber kidney to smooth actaul clay. This is i Suposse what i would like to see thew brushes behave like. Actaul tools,, How bout somethong like the Angle of the stylus effecting the way the alpha of the brush is applied to the surface of the volume. We know Voxels behave more like real clay than Polysculpting. control of the angle of application in this way would enable afurther level of Dexterity when handling brushes.

[Javis]

Hey Oliver,

You are correct sir! It doesn't bother me that much. I guess I was a bit general there. I will edit accordingly. I took no offense BTW. I'm much to easy going for that. I happen to want all of the things you suggested anyway, lol.

[renderdemon]

How bout somethong like the Angle of the stylus effecting the way the alpha of the brush is applied to the surface of the volume. We know Voxels behave more like real clay than Polysculpting. control of the angle of application in this way would enable afurther level of Dexterity when handling brushes.

It's really a good idea.

About brush feeling,I think a great thing could be having 2 modes(that gives really different result)

1)Wet mode

2)Dry mode.

When you use real clay(depending of what kind of clay) you can use water to blend together the surface.

With water the surface is also less hard,with a soft feeling when you manipulate it.

In dry mode the surface is hard,more solid,mainpulation is different,give more precise result .

Thinking better to it,it could be cool if every brush(or much better the volume layer we sculpt) has a new property going from 0 to 1 called WET that affects how the brushes work making the volume more elastic ans soft when is 1 and not elastic and hard when wet is 0(default could be 0.5)

To be honest,I don't know technically how can be done,if someone has some ideas to share for helping Andrew it could be really cool(a thing like this could be a great killer application,even Zbrush doesn't have completely this kind of feeling)

bye

[vil]

another thing I forgot to add and miss very much is the behaviour of the ZBrush/blender Inflate tool. Current draw behaves somewhere between the normal draw(volume gets added after tablet-model-intersection normal)and the inflate - volume gets added along all normals. this would be probably easily done in surface mode...

[vil]

I noticed one thing with the brushes - if you set strength over 1(the brush curve steps out of the circle), the values above the limit don't count. This is logical with smooth(since you'd get distortion), but not logical with other brushes(increase...) allowing this could allow also better sculpting with volumes...

[Javis]

I noticed one thing with the brushes - if you set strength over 1(the brush curve steps out of the circle), the values above the limit don't count. This is logical with smooth(since you'd get distortion), but not logical with other brushes(increase...) allowing this could allow also better sculpting with volumes...

Hey there,

The values above 0 are applied. Of course, not with smoothing as you mentioned, but definitely for depth.

[vil]

Hey there,

The values above 0 are applied. Of course, not with smoothing as you mentioned, but definitely for depth.

well then maybe it's a linux specific thing. I am on Ubuntu, using a wacom tablet... And I am quite sure the effect of brushes like increase or draw over 1.0 just doesn't increase the effect.

[Paint Guy]

I noticed one thing with the brushes - if you set strength over 1(the brush curve steps out of the circle), the values above the limit don't count. This is logical with smooth(since you'd get distortion), but not logical with other brushes(increase...) allowing this could allow also better sculpting with volumes...

Absolutely! Please add an inflate tool like in ZBrush! This tool allows you to go over any type of surface and "inflates" whatever is underneath. For example if you create a rock texture then you simply use the "inflate" tool and go over rocks to enalarge them in certain places. Also a "Rake" tool and others. The brushes in Mudbox and ZBrush work like a charm and are so plentiful. Andrew really needs to try them out before he can see their usefulness.

I'm afraid it's impossible to explain, you just have to try it. Talking about the brushes just doesn't do them justice. I hope Andrew picks up a copy of ZBrush/Mudbox to try the brushes, A lot can be learned and time saved if he would just try it for himself.

[erklaerbar]

it would be great to have a voxel brush that does extrude and pinch at the same time.

[kay_Eva]

It'd be great to have a twist brush so you can make whirlpool like voxel designs

also a folding/tuck brush so you can make precision quality folding with voxels.

also voxel kneeding brush so you can kneed ur voxels like dough

and voxel scissors so you can cut away the edges and insides of things

[micro26]

-Layer selecting via mouse and key combination,

-Spliting object in many layer(closed objects)

-Mode that stops adding/removing voxels.(thin surfaces problem)

-Button that makes current selected obj brush(no export import).

Impoved axial symmetry.

-Pie menu to save and store custom brushes/objects and palletes/categories(voxel brush drawing types and alphas together).Photoshop like

-Improved scrape for hardsurfaces.

Smooth brush ratio to make it bigger when shift selecting.

Maybe some of them are mentioned before, i havent read all posts.

[LypsiK]

it could be cool to have intensity with move tool like in zbrush/mudbox.

actually the move tool is always at 100%

[Taros]

To all posters:

It would help all, if you explain your "special ideas" in more detail. I mean that ones, which are not self explained. Thanx.

[Javis]

To all posters:

It would help all, if you explain your "special ideas" in more detail. I mean that ones, which are not self explained. Thanx.

Quoted for agreement.

[ShnitzelKiller]

An extrude tool of some sort, and not that one. I mean, you use one of your lasso tools (or a brush) to define a shape, and when you have chosen that shape, you can define how far out or in it gets extruded, by mouse movement.

[Taros]

An extrude tool of some sort, and not that one. I mean, you use one of your lasso tools (or a brush) to define a shape, and when you have chosen that shape, you can define how far out or in it gets extruded, by mouse movement.

You can already paint a shape with the curve tools and use it to extrude in or out of the object. It is not possible to change the extrusion depth interactively, but you can do this in a value field in the brush options in the top of the view.

[renderdemon]

At the end I think I have found the reasons for some problem I have with brushes.

It's the overlapping,when the volume overlap itself from some view(for example if you stroke on the head from a top view you have the overlapping for the chest,the leg,and so on.)

In all this case,brushing become:

A)slower

B)and it creates artifacts

The speed it's not really important here,I can understand that probably when the volume is overlapped in the view the code can't react differently,but IMHO the artifacts must be fixed

Bye

[ShnitzelKiller]

You can already paint a shape with the curve tools and use it to extrude in or out of the object. It is not possible to change the extrusion depth interactively, but you can do this in a value field in the brush options in the top of the view.

The filled surface doesn't follow non-flat voxel surface very well though.

[philnolan3d]

You can already paint a shape with the curve tools and use it to extrude in or out of the object. It is not possible to change the extrusion depth interactively, but you can do this in a value field in the brush options in the top of the view.

You can also paint a shape on with Pose and extrude it in or out that way.

[Digital777]

I haven't read the whole thread so sorry if any of these have been said already.

Brush Presets to save the used tool also because i notice that it saved only the settings but not the actual tool used at the time. Because of this as a workaround for now i rename the preset with the tool name so i know what it actually was. Right now they were not that helpful but it's good to be able to get previous settings back right away.

How about a smoothing on some brush types as you actually paint. So you have a tick box and the amount and when or very quickly after you have painted it applys the smoothing. When i paint i notice it's usually rough and then i have to use the smooth tool right after so rather than a 2 step process this might make it just 1 step if it worked well.

A tool to enhance details, it would detect large parts and ignore them and for finer detials it would do what you set it to so enlarge them in size or sharpen them etc to make them stand out more. With the detection this would not mess up the larger surface or give it unwanted artifacts this way.

Contour brush, it detects the area you just painted and if you paint again on it resizes it down automatically.

A good way to keep brush details at lower resos after increasing it so you can get it back rather than painting and increasing in steps as when you go up it gets much slower for me so it would be great if i could paint the details better on lower settings when the performance is much better. Maybe i just need a better pc though but i find it smooths it when i increase it so it's only worth doing them later but maybe somethings could be done like it saves a temp height map/2d data with the brushes to apply later and give more details.

[James Thornton]

Bigger brushes on higher res meshes are very slow, and the smoothing only causes changes on a small scale. Smoothing a big area could take all day! This slower interaction defeats the freedom and philosophy of voxels. It takes you right back to planning. Which I'm used to, so this isn't that big of a deal for me. However, to really unleash the value of voxels, I feel it's going to be a must at some point.

Right now the brushes are best suited for low to mid res sculpts at any brush size, or high res sculpting with much smaller brush sizes. Any improvements to the speed of bigger brushes (and the strength of smoothing) on denser meshes will be a major step in the right direction, as they are very important to the artistic process.

I know that computer evolution is the biggest factor here, I'm just viewing this from the artist's stand point, and expressing what I find limiting about the brushes when realizing an idea.

On another note, I would like a stronger pinch that creates a more noticeable sharpness.

Otherwise, I'm absolutely in love with this toolset! Seriously, good freakin' work!

[cakeller]

On another note, I would like a stronger pinch that creates a more noticeable sharpness.

Otherwise, I'm absolutely in love with this toolset! Seriously, good freakin' work!

yeah actually regarding the pinching, I think it would be helpful if you could control the 3D pinch point as an offset of the surface or something.

I think what's happening is that the surface is pinching inward and, essentially smoothing itself out, rather than creating a peak... because the center point that is being pinched toward seems to be an average of all the surface points beneath the cursor (which would get closer and closer to the smooth surface as you pinch)

so... if we could offset the pinch tool by some amount, maybe that would increase it's effectiveness.

Also, I have noticed that if you turn down / off smoothing while using voxel pinch it is MUCH sharper.

Also, I have additionally noticed that the surface tool pinch works stronger and more like expected from other programs, like zBrush.

voxel pinch seems a bit less "active"

[James Thornton]

Thanks for the tips, I'll try them out asap. I agree with your diagnosis, it doesn't peak enough. That sharp crease is what I'm after.

Pretty sure the main reason polygons pinch better is the topology actually crowds around the crease, while voxels remain even. However, it can badly distort topology. So voxel pinching could be much more useful. Especially once hi res voxels are more speedy to work with.

[philnolan3d]

I think what's happening is that the surface is pinching inward and, essentially smoothing itself out, rather than creating a peak... because the center point that is being pinched toward seems to be an average of all the surface points beneath the cursor (which would get closer and closer to the smooth surface as you pinch)

Yeah I made a graphic of this a while back:

[cakeller]

Yeah I made a graphic of this a while back:

right... except, phi, I think it's worse than you think (maybe I could be wrong) I think the point where the pinch happens is the average, because you can easily slip left or right on that peak as you've drawn, which drags the peak away from the original surface, thereby causing an actual smoothing effect.

but it's a very useful graphic!

[LG2]

Not sure if it's available in the program but I like to see a paint can fill button in the voxel panel, I using simple PNG's images in the background that I like to flood fill or quickly convert into a voxel. I also would like to see if not in the software the use of gray-scale background images to make 3D shapes using black as depth 0 and white as 256 hight then flood fill for a 3D voxel base.

Edit: looks like the altitude map is working as a background image I will just need to invert the map.

I like to see a invert and contrast control for background images.

[LJB]

Not sure if it's available in the program but I like to see a paint can fill button in the voxel panel, I using simple PNG's images in the background that I like to flood fill or quickly convert into a voxel. I also would like to see if not in the software the use of gray-scale background images to make 3D shapes using black as depth 0 and white as 256 hight then flood fill for a 3D voxel base.

Edit: looks like the altitude map is working as a background image I will just need to invert the map.

I like to see a invert and contrast control for background images.

Kind of Off topic would you mind reposting in feature requests. Thanks.

[LJB]

right... except, phi, I think it's worse than you think (maybe I could be wrong) I think the point where the pinch happens is the average, because you can easily slip left or right on that peak as you've drawn, which drags the peak away from the original surface, thereby causing an actual smoothing effect.

but it's a very useful graphic!

The pinch brush actually does what it is supposed to if you think about it it pinches what its dirtected too. What i beleive we are talking about is a brush that not only pinches but creases also, concave/convex dependant on the alt stroke. Just like the displacemnt brush can work in ZBrush.

[ifxs]

+1 James Thornton

multithread 3DC so I can use a brush at the size I need to on a medium/high-res sculpt in the vox room. Currently, the size of the brush needs to be turned soooo low while to get it not to stutter horribly, that it makes it almost useless... I have to make the brush size so small it barely achieves the width of a wrinkle on the face of a figure I'm sculpting before it begins to stutter and lag... on 1 core of course, leaving my other 7 cores doing nothing.

Even ZBrush needs multithreading enabled to get smooth sculpts on a high-poly model, there is a VERY noticeable speed difference with multithreading disabled in ZB; Its what a professional app just has to implement today with most artist's systems being multi-core(2-8+ cores). And a little OpenCL love would be good too, there are a number of 3D external render engines implementing OpenCL now, and there are tools out there to AUTOMATICALLY convert CUDA code to OpenCL.... Who here wants to upgrade their power supply to power the new 600w nvidia cards, anyone?..likely not many

and of course, implement multithread the MERGING so that when I change from surface to volume mode I dont have to wait 30+ minutes to get back to work while 3DC uses just 1 of my 8 cores to merge the model back into volume/surface mode... this has forced me to abandon 3DC for EVERY project I have timelines/deadlines on... during a work-week nearly 50% of my sculpting time on a medium/high res vox sculpt is spent watching the merge bar process on only 1 CORE, leaving all the other cores doing nothing while I am forced to take a lunch break between a mode switch or a pose tool process(I am not exaggerating in the least sadly). For me, this is completely unusable on a pipeline with timelines. I have had to move my 3DC sculpts back to ZB again, which I would rather not do for many of these projects. I enjoy using 3DC, it's my favorite 3D sculpting tool, hopefully I can come back to using it for non-hobby sculpting one day soon.

[The Candy-floss Kid]

I would definitely wish to see a repeat last stroke for the brushes.