second attempt in 3dc

[michalis]

Its a new topic because AT LAST this is my first all 3DC model. By the book... what book? Texture by shader. Its a 1700 quads model, rendered in blender.

Question: how can I bake and export displacement maps from voxel model? What I get is a zero=grey map. I feel completely stupid

Final render in blender, pity I don't have displacement maps, normals only.

[Racush]

nice looking model there

I also would like to know about the displacement maps too from voxels as I have yet to get something to actually work

[3DArtist]

1. Export retopo mesh (make sure the retopo mesh has UVs!)

2. Open Textures -> Texture Baking Tool

3. Select the exported retopo mesh for "Mesh to receive projected textures" and select "Smooth mesh"

4. Set the file for "Displacement map" and set "Displacement type"

Press Ok

If you already did this or it doesn't work try exporting the voxel layer as an obj, create a new scene and import it as a "Reference Mesh". Then try steps 2-4.

Hope that helps.

[Racush]

thanks for the info that did the trick

[Dimsane]

Great sculpt and very good render. I would like to see more of anatomic work, something more complete maybe ?

About your low poly, I think some of your quads and strengh line are useless, not uniform as well, but its a detail.

[michalis]

@dimsana

thanks, about anatomic work you probably wont see from me. A lot of anatomy in my work but not of this kind. I don't believe in anatomy, renaissance believed because these were shy people, ancients were not, they were touching their models. Just lets visit museums and see that composition and feeling is the key. In our days, american comics have a lot of anatomy but its not my concern. I may say that I don't like them. I prefer the 'belgium' school from this kind of art. Its a matter of discussion all this, has some philosophical meaning too.

But about retopo model, some quad may be useless, you say, this supposed to be a study for this type of hair, have you tried to retopo such a model kind? No symmetry of course (there isn't). I also had in mind subdivision and displacement when doing this. Tell me what you think about these, I really like your comments here.

@3dArtist

wow thanks, its you again.

But this doesn't work so far, I maybe do something wrong. In the first case, I do receive a displacement map that has the low poly information only. In the second, just another zero grey map.

I want to talk about the poor performance of 3DC on my mac pro (16 threads 2 xeon). Voxels are fine, I sculpt smoothly here on a 5-6M single layer voxel mesh, can turn it to surface mode fast and back... all shaders work great too ... excellent so far. But when retopo, the limit is about 2000 poly, less than 4 frames per sec only ... and crash. Just for testing this, perform an auto quadra and UV, subdivide it and (you guessed) crash. After finished retopo, everything work fast again, except UV island, I cant move them. I mean its the wire frame that has poor performance not the full voxel preview or paint room etc. Wire frames... I think this has nothing to do with my machine, graphics card etc. This is a major bug Andrew, macs don't work like this, especially the pro. Do another mac build please and test it first. I already wrote it in bugs place and Andrew, really fast, gave me an answer, well he didn't understand what is the problem. Lets do another try.

[haikalle]

I'm not quite sure is this what you are looking for but here we go. One the most important thing with baking is to subdivide your mesh

3-5 times before baking. It helps to get grey = 0.5 results much better. Even if you don't want to make high mesh you need it to bake textures.

And use that texture with your low poly mesh if you want.

http://www.3d-coat.com/forum/index.php?showtopic=5482

There is a tutorial a made a while ago, it is meant to use with ptex but same principles work

with voxels too.

[michalis]

Thanks haikalle, I still get the low poly displacement, I subdivided it, tried to hide the paint model, the retopo model, I tried a lot, but I still don't understand it.

Can I have displacement as in per pixel painting? Do I have to be in ptex or something? Doesn't make sense.

But I bought this app... WHERE IS THE MANUAL? I don't want all of you writing and writing trying to help me. The videos of Javis Jones are fine but not enough for me. I'm stupid you see. I want the book.

BTW when subdivided the ropo mesh, frames came to 0. Even menus working slowly.

This makes clear that next time I'll retopo a low definition model, go to zbrush and sculpt UV paint etc. Or even better I'll export a fast voxel model and do topology in zbrush. It may not have all these fantastic tools but it works. I'll do the same workflow with blender (retopo sculpt textures) and I'll bring you the fine results just to show how applications work.

I'm older than you guys and I'll not spent my time trying to understand the 'unreasonable'.

It should be like this: 'bake voxel model as displacement map' to UV map n. Where is this menu?

AND once more: wireframes are not so heavy for graphics cards.

No I will not shell my 3DC, I gave Andrew my money, I had good reasons and some good time, and I 'demand' to fix this mess soon.

Or just 'sorry I can't fix it' . And still I don't regret for the money and time I spent.

This is the way things getting better.

[michalis]

1. When trying different displacement exports, you have to re assign - refresh everything in bake tex tool. Not so clever but ... works

2. Frames to 1 after 3 subdivisions, I had to re snap just in case (it didn't make any difference)

3. I tried the 3ds or maya exports (didn't make any difference either.

4. I get this displacement map, as you can see this is useless. This supposed to have smoothing, I checked this of course. So subdivision of retopo is not working as it should. Of corse I hided everything except voxel model. But this made no difference either.

[haikalle]

did you try to play with "preserve positions of vertices while smoothing" setting. I'm in the same boat with you. I think

there is two options for Andrew 1) Make these things easier to do 2)Make better documents that we can understand better how

to do it. Option 2 would be better because it dosen't take our freedom to take other path to create something cool away.

[michalis]

Hey haikalle, thanks man so much, I think I solved some of the problems here,

1. Subdivide BEFORE having a model in paint room. To hide doesn't help at all. You have to delete this mesh.

2. Now I can subdivide smoothly, bake normals and displacement. But I have to reopen the 3dc file without saving etc, if I want to paint tex, because a high poly retopo will crash 3dc!!!

3. Even so displacement maps are not so great, I have seen better days (blender, zbrush). The 3DC dis. look more like bumps to me as they should be. I used the tif export. I'll try some other possibilities.

The right way is to subdivide 3-4 levels and bake displacement and normals from this model. But these disp maps are so thin (bump style). The same workflow works perfectly in zbrush, blender.

I may write a good tutorial. FOR NEWBIES AND STUPID persons like me. I'll post it here and you or anyone else do the edit. My way to learn lol

Here's the same scene with some displacement.

[haikalle]

Writing a tutorial would be a good idea. Baking a good texture is one of the most important thing in 3d-coat.

So you deleted your model from paint room because if you only hide it, it would affect into your mesh in retopo room when you subdivide

your mesh. This is a bug then. It should not work like that. In windows it works fine. One more question when you subdivide your

mesh in retopo room is your voxel model visible or hidden? I ask this because if you hide both voxel and paint room models and subdivide

your model in retopo room, it will give a wrong result. It's important that when you subdivide in retopo room that you see voxel sculpt or paint model.

[michalis]

Yeah I know. See how I lost my temper? Whats happening here doesn't make sense sometimes. I'll write the tutorial just to help me learn 3DC, not a bad idea. The quality of disp. maps is my concern now. Looks heavy contrast and crisp, shouldn't be like this.

[tildee]

That would be very nice with a tutorial michalis, because it's all new to me with UV-Map, normal - and displacement map and so on. Like a new language for me!

[haikalle]

okey I have found something very interesting and I think it is a bug and a part of reason why your displacement maps are not so good.

To see this bug you can create the biggest default sphere and auto retopoly it with default settings. Then scale down your voxel sphere

a little bit because then you can see the bug better. Now you should have situation like this

Now. Try to subdivide this object. What happens that the new points that are created in subdividing will snap on your surface(that's good), but

your orginal points dosen't snap.(that's bad). So everytime when your subdivide it actually creates lightly different model from the one you already

have.

EDIT: This happens also with models in paint room. It should solve many problems if Andrew could change it from "snap only created point" into

"snap all points into surface" when subdividing your model.

[michalis]

'Relax' topology, fixes this.

But I don't have wrong topology. The High poly model I used to capture the map looks ok, I imported it to blender. Actually it looks great. At ~400 k. Its the quality of the map I don't like.

[haikalle]

I always forget Relax tool. Thanks michalis. Works quite nicely.

[michalis]

Lets see how this will come to 3d. The emperor. Still in symmetry, still at 200k voxels. Just an overlay to test some texture ideas.

[michalis]

Some progress, now at 1M. Still in symmetry. My question: Sooner or later I have to stop symmetry and fix the pose. How can I retopo then? Easily? Can I have topology and then set the pose in 3DC?

Can't go for serious sculpture with symmetry on. Any ideas?

[artman]

Some progress, now at 1M. Still in symmetry. My question: Sooner or later I have to stop symmetry and fix the pose. How can I retopo then? Easily? Can I have topology and then set the pose in 3DC?

Can't go for serious sculpture with symmetry on. Any ideas?

Quadrangulate For a headbust the result should be fine.

[michalis]

Quadrangulate For a headbust the result should be fine.

LOL, I wont artman, I'll go for retopo.

Auto quadrangulation results to cross guads to diagonal lines (sorry for my english), a simple decimated tri export from voxels its more handy for surface sculpting (zbrush). Even some expected artifacts are not so bad, UV master works fine too. No, retopo is the next step here. Even without symmetry. Here's some new progress. Move tool is killing me. lol

Eyes modeling now.

[michalis]

Now at 4M, a better move tool (wishlist).

[michalis]

Another update, working using scrape and pinch mostly. I think I'll transform this to a russell crowe portrait. lol When speaking of Rome, well...

[michalis]

Took a weekend, almost finished, retopo now.

The second image is a 'sketch' via PP for a scene I have in mind. This background is from new full 3d Athens center (google earth). Final scene will be different of course

[digman]

I enjoy viewing your wip's in progress, it adds interest and helps one understand how another artist works...

[michalis]

Thanks digman, if this helps then it makes me happy. This scene I have in mind, has to do with the recent news about economy of Greece.

A question: what is a 'cavity ' map? its a displacement map? or a bump map? Or this well known trick in ZB, when adopting a relief kind of a displacement map?

[michalis]

So, retopo. Symmetry is on, works fine for sculpt but DOES NOT seem to work for retopology. What am I doing wrong now?

[Taros]

So, retopo. Symmetry is on, works fine for sculpt but DOES NOT seem to work for retopology. What am I doing wrong now?

Version No?

[michalis]

3.2.10 (GL)

1. the first kernel panic on this machine in one year (macPro 2 xeon 16 threads)

2. After restarting the app symmetry worked, so i retopoed it.

3. Trying to bake textures I get these trashes.

4. Most important: Lost all the crispness of the model. Now I have to do it again.

Can I go back to previous version? This 3.2.10(GL) is not stable and doesn't work for me. Can I have two or three versions?

[michalis]

I re installed 3.2.8. Same disaster here. Every time I open this model, 3-4 volumes appear in voxel layers. ???

Didn't retopo this time, just quadrangulate and paint, auto mode. But again the same error.

Its a ~5M voxel, as the one I posted before in this thread.

Exporting decimated tri model from voxels works fine.

Exporting the retopo low poly model works too, so this has imported to Zbrush, here we are, sculpting again, texturing again, but I really dont need 3dCoat for this. This 3d coat.