3D-Coat 3.3 updates thread

[lino]

My apologies for mistaking your words. It sounded like a wholesale rebuke of the effort Andrew has made here.

No problem, it happens!

I love 3D-Coat and I'm impressed by this new feature. I've tried it myself and i have to say it can produce very good results, especially now that symmetry works properly.

I'm sorry about what happened after my post. Didn't want to hurt anyone sensitivity, or "bush" anything...

What I still think is that Andrew's work deserves the best promotion possible. While here is a sort of "happy island" where criticism is very moderate (maybe too much sometimes), other forums are more demanding, so maybe would be better to be a little more careful about any attempt to "market" 3D-Coat. Of course that's my opinion. Anyone is free to do whatever he thinks is better, but should be ready to receive praises or (polite, but true)criticism.

[Taurus]

Too much hype over autoretopo with good retopo tools you can make it better and faster.I tried to autoretopo very simple objects and 3DC crashes 9 on 10 cases, it also takes quite a lot of time to calculate.I understand it's beta etc ... but this has been hyped over the head, what I see are meshes with hardly usable topology.You guys are right these aren't good examples - good example would be complete workflow from voxel sculpt to autoretopomesh and then to usable,cleaned mesh, you can retopo in 5 minutes but you may spend another 30 for cleaning up mesh, then it may happen you could better retopo from scratch.

You will confuse people, they will expect perfect topology from autoretopo when in fact it will need a lot of work to fix it.Show a complete workflow from vox to clean mesh with details( because with autoretopo you lose most of details) so it's more realistic.

Autoretopo won't make 3DC more successful but a solid base.Paint engine is buggy and painfully slow, I'm just waiting for Z4 link to check if their protection painting can replace 3DC.I would prefer fast and solid 3DC with less features than a 100000 feature application with all its problems and bugs.Object import to 3DC is slow.Voxels - until you own CUDA card - is slow.Now with Z4 shadobox I doubt anybody will take pain of learning 3DC voxels for hardsurface when you can make it faster and better in Z4 and for organic you have free, but also faster and easier to use Sculptris.

Where 3DC is brilliant is paint mode, features are there, Mudbox doesnt have them,Zbrush doesnt have them, but it doesn't matter if you can't make your job done because it's too slow or buggy.Make a fast and bugfree paint engine and it will bring more people to 3DC than autoretopo.Add more retopo tools and it will do same.Everytime I hear about 3DC it's because of paint mode or retopo mode not because of voxels.

Just my 0.02$

... or maybe 3DC should hire more programmers, one person is not enough to all this stuff.

[AbnRanger]

Too much hype over autoretopo with good retopo tools you can make it better and faster.I tried to autoretopo very simple objects and 3DC crashes 9 on 10 cases, it also takes quite a lot of time to calculate.I understand it's beta etc ... but this has been hyped over the head, what I see are meshes with hardly usable topology.You guys are right these aren't good examples - good example would be complete workflow from voxel sculpt to autoretopomesh and then to usable,cleaned mesh, you can retopo in 5 minutes but you may spend another 30 for cleaning up mesh, then it may happen you could better retopo from scratch.

You will confuse people, they will expect perfect topology from autoretopo when in fact it will need a lot of work to fix it.Show a complete workflow from vox to clean mesh with details( because with autoretopo you lose most of details) so it's more realistic.

Autoretopo won't make 3DC more successful but a solid base.Paint engine is buggy and painfully slow, I'm just waiting for Z4 link to check if their protection painting can replace 3DC.I would prefer fast and solid 3DC with less features than a 100000 feature application with all its problems and bugs.Object import to 3DC is slow.Voxels - until you own CUDA card - is slow.Now with Z4 shadobox I doubt anybody will take pain of learning 3DC voxels for hardsurface when you can make it faster and better in Z4 and for organic you have free, but also faster and easier to use Sculptris.

Where 3DC is brilliant is paint mode, features are there, Mudbox doesnt have them,Zbrush doesnt have them, but it doesn't matter if you can't make your job done because it's too slow or buggy.Make a fast and bugfree paint engine and it will bring more people to 3DC than autoretopo.Add more retopo tools and it will do same.Everytime I hear about 3DC it's because of paint mode or retopo mode not because of voxels.

Just my 0.02$

Wow...Where do I start? First of all, you certainly take a lot of shots at the application with vague generalities like "Painting is buggy and slow"...."Voxels are slow"....

If you have a bug...freakin report it. Don't slam the application if you haven't done what you can to help. There is a direct e-mail to Andrew (support@3d-coat.com)....why lodge a complaint here if you haven't bothered using the help at your disposal? I found a number of bugs in the Retopo room a few months ago...reporting them to Andrew, with video captures of the problem and copies of the files got results pretty quick. It's now far more stable than it was. If everyone experiencing a bug would take those steps, this application would be and can be exceptionally stable.

What's more is, I bought 3DC to replace Deep Paint 3D and it has never let me down in that regard. I haven't experienced this "slowness" that you speak about and I use 4k maps pretty often. Care to show us a screen (video) capture of this "Slowness" you speak about? Could it use some multi-resolution goodness? Sure...but it isn't slow, either. Maybe you'll find Mudbox better with it's whopping five blending modes (finally got layer blending modes in version 2011).

Secondly, with all the recent work Andrew did in Voxel Sculpting, it is NOT slow! It may not yet be quite as fast as ZB or MB overall, but it is very fast nonetheless...if used correctly, and with a relatively new system. What do you want to do in voxels that is slow? Move tool or Pose tool? Use the tools then, that Andrew has put in your hands...some have been there for a while now. Use Surface mode and/or Multi-Resoltion. Use Cache to Disk on the layers you're not actively working on.

As for the Auto-retopology feature....it IS big. No hype needed. It does a LOT of retopo tasks AS IS that would take me hours doing them all manually. Is it perfect? Well...the better question is, "Is it a finished product?" There's your answer. Why not wait until Andrew has had a legitimate chance to iron all the the wrinkles out, before you start casting stones?

[splodge]

Too much hype over autoretopo with good retopo tools you can make it better and faster.

Better yes, but not faster.

Some objects can be so complex that you wouldn't even attempt to retopo them manually because of the amount of time it would take.

Believe it or not, but some people make things other than heads.

[AbnRanger]

Better yes, but not faster.

Some objects can be so complex that you wouldn't even attempt to retopo them manually because of the amount of time it would take.

Believe it or not, but some people make things other than heads.

Exactly...I forgot to mention in the previous post, that it sounds like you tried to go LOW poly on the output, and I found that to bog things down....but if you use the default settings or higher, you'd be surprised how fast it is...and no crashes. If you are having crashes, don't just throw it out there that the feature is useless, buggy and crash prone...unless you're willing to demonstrate it with a video capture of the steps you took to get all these problems. Please, show us....maybe Andrew will see it and try to fix the problem, if you haven't already sent your bug report in.

And as far as adding extra programmers...that's a goal, certainly. But how can the application grow sufficiently in order for that to be financially feasible if you have forum members making bogus complaints in front of prospective customers? How would you like it if former clients came in and started making fallacious statements about you in front of a key client? Think about it...

[Mykyl]

Mac version uploaded. It was not so easy to compile it this time because of Intel MKL library usage.

We are working on linux build too. I hope it will be done very soon.

hope you didn't think I was pushing but I am thankful its there to try.

Cheers

Mike R

[Andrew Shpagin]

Linux build uploaded too.

What about auto-retopo usefulness - it is defenitely useful for many peoples. We will make official tutorial soon to be able to achieve really good result with auto-retopo even on complex meshes. And btw, development in this area is continued. Now I have one math guy that researches this question and reports to me. And there was very interesting article in 2010 that solves density issues very well.

And what is important - potential barrier of complexity of coding was broken with this task. I was thinking for a year how to make inverse subdivision. But after solving the auto-retopo task it took only 1-2 days to solve it.

[michalis]

Sorry Andrew, guides for new auto quad method are not working. New auto retopo is good but no density no guides. Mac build still 32bit

Am I missing something here?

[Taurus]

What's more is, I bought 3DC to replace Deep Paint 3D and it has never let me down in that regard. I haven't experienced this "slowness" that you speak about and I use 4k maps pretty often. Care to show us a screen (video) capture of this "Slowness" you speak about? Could it use some multi-resolution goodness? Sure...but it isn't slow, either. Maybe you'll find Mudbox better with it's whopping five blending modes (finally got layer blending modes in version 2011).

If it's not slow for you are a very patient man then , simple test :

I loaded 15.000 poly sphere to 3DC ... Let's start with that obj import takes a lot of time, it took about 25 seconds to load this sphere.Then when it finally loaded the bigger the brush the slower it works,what should 1 minute to paint will take 5 or 10 minutes.It will be speedy if I will use some micro size brushes but it won't help you to do the job.Fill tool can takes ages to fill, same with fill undos.Layer on/off, blend mode change takes at least 1 second more it should.AO bake is half-baked solution, it takes ages and brings poor results.

Now ... the same sphere loaded to Mudbox loads instantly and projection painting speed is smooth as butter,AO bake works well and fast.

I want to use 3DC for painting not Mudbox because it has awesome paint features but painting in it it's a masochistic torture because of performance issues (and I do have fast quad core CPU).

[michalis]

guides don't seem to work, even so, what is this funny topology here?

[Andrew Shpagin]

If it's not slow for you are a very patient man then , simple test :

I loaded 15.000 poly sphere to 3DC ... Let's start with that obj import takes a lot of time, it took about 25 seconds to load this sphere.Then when it finally loaded the bigger the brush the slower it works,what should 1 minute to paint will take 5 or 10 minutes.It will be speedy if I will use some micro size brushes but it won't help you to do the job.Fill tool can takes ages to fill, same with fill undos.Layer on/off, blend mode change takes at least 1 second more it should.AO bake is half-baked solution, it takes ages and brings poor results.

Now ... the same sphere loaded to Mudbox loads instantly and projection painting speed is smooth as butter,AO bake works well and fast.

I want to use 3DC for painting not Mudbox because it has awesome paint features but painting in it it's a masochistic torture because of performance issues (and I do have fast quad core CPU).

Are you sure that you are using the same resolution of texture? This is most important parameter for speed.

There are many methods to open sphere (ppp, microverts, ptex). Which of them have you used?

[Andrew Shpagin]

guides don't seem to work, even so, what is this funny topology here?

Wait until getting guides to work. I hope it will be soon.

[AbnRanger]

If it's not slow for you are a very patient man then , simple test :

I loaded 15.000 poly sphere to 3DC ... Let's start with that obj import takes a lot of time, it took about 25 seconds to load this sphere.Then when it finally loaded the bigger the brush the slower it works,what should 1 minute to paint will take 5 or 10 minutes.It will be speedy if I will use some micro size brushes but it won't help you to do the job.Fill tool can takes ages to fill, same with fill undos.Layer on/off, blend mode change takes at least 1 second more it should.AO bake is half-baked solution, it takes ages and brings poor results.

Now ... the same sphere loaded to Mudbox loads instantly and projection painting speed is smooth as butter,AO bake works well and fast.

I want to use 3DC for painting not Mudbox because it has awesome paint features but painting in it it's a masochistic torture because of performance issues (and I do have fast quad core CPU).

Funny, I never considered loading of obj's an issue...obviously you do. Are you running a 32bit version? The fill tool does it's thing in a few seconds, and I can use fairly large brushes when painting, but a lot probably is dependent on your graphic card and video RAM. I'm using a GTX 275, and don't have any sort of angst with the performance the way you do....but then I don't try to paint with ridiculously large brush radius'....

[michalis]

Ok, but what about this funny topology? tris ngons etc.

[3dCoatWannabe]

a lot probably is dependent on your graphic card and video RAM.

I just had a thought. I run two monitors at 1920 x 1200.

On my MacPro, I can set it to mirror a single screen to both monitors in a second using the very top menu on OS X, and this frees up a whole lot of VRAM.

But, I run 3D Coat on a Win7-64 box with a GTX-285 2GB VRAM (not on OS X), and share the same two monitors with a KVM.

I'm curious if there would be an easy way to instantly go into mirroring mode (or some mode where only a single monitor was used), and whether that would free up VRAM on Win7 and make any difference in situations where a LOT of VRAM was needed?

[kay_Eva]

Well just to chime in. I have to say that the auto retopo feature is brilliant. And it is working perfectly for me even in it's unfinished state right now. I was able to retopo a human body in about 30 seconds of drawing guides. I added a rig for it and it deforms almost perfectly without any extra reorganization.

[wailingmonkey]

Taurus,

I find loading a 25k polysphere (directly exported from Zbrush) to take less than 5 seconds. (as Microvertex with 4K textures and 4mil carcass)

I definitely get slowdown whenever I paint-fill a layer, then continue to paint using other tools on other layers. (editing layer blending can

be a workflow killer if you've filled a layer and are just switching blending modes and experimenting) This is something that has existed for

quite some time (ghib, in fact, has been vocal about requesting Andrew to focus on the paint engine side of things, but other areas of the 3DC

programming gameplan have taken precedence.)

If you are having specific issues, why not bring them up as identifiable threads in the bug-tracking sections? The more users that can target

specific issues in a unique thread (instead of buried in a release thread), the better.

Also, without your machine specs, there's really no point of reference as to why you may be having issues (maybe add them to you sig?)

Personally, I'm hoping Andrew can nail down auto-retopo to his satisfaction (this seems to be *almost* ready, with the bulk of the functionality

complete and only tweaks necessary) so he can move on towards refining areas that had a great start, but need more attention...namely:

- faster paint engine (a way to cache filled layers and deal with larger brush sizes such that 3DC responds to layer edits in seconds, not minutes)

- true ambient occlusion baking (having shadows on different parts of final meshes in the AO bake can defeat the entire bake itself)

- brush/pen editor based upon curve profiles and parameters (Zbrush style)

- voxel toolset integrated into the 'Sculpt' room such that logical tool candidates can be used on mesh objects as well (potential is there, it

just hasn't been touched in something like 2 years since voxels required the bulk of the focus)

I've been on the 3DC 'train' for quite a while and it would be nice to see these things above finally integrated such that 3DC becomes the

powerhouse it has the potential to become...

[LJB]

Personally, I'm hoping Andrew can nail down auto-retopo to his satisfaction (this seems to be *almost* ready, with the bulk of the functionality

complete and only tweaks necessary) so he can move on towards refining areas that had a great start, but need more attention...namely:

- faster paint engine (a way to cache filled layers and deal with larger brush sizes such that 3DC responds to layer edits in seconds, not minutes)

- true ambient occlusion baking (having shadows on different parts of final meshes in the AO bake can defeat the entire bake itself)

- brush/pen editor based upon curve profiles and parameters (Zbrush style)

- voxel toolset integrated into the 'Sculpt' room such that logical tool candidates can be used on mesh objects as well (potential is there, it

just hasn't been touched in something like 2 years since voxels required the bulk of the focus)

I've been on the 3DC 'train' for quite a while and it would be nice to see these things above finally integrated such that 3DC becomes the

powerhouse it has the potential to become...

100% agreement on every point. And might I add to this a Logical UI de-clutter to make it all fit together and logically flow.

[Taurus]

@wailingmonkey I completly agree what you posted I think paint mode after retopo is 3DC best feature.Only (very expensive) bodypaint can match it, if performance and bugs would be fixed it would be truly best 3D paint application available.

Looks like I figured out what makes 3DC slow, in paint mode paint the bigger the texture size the slower will 3DC work and the slower import will be.The sphere with small texture will load fast and paint will be fast(even with bigger brushes) but same sphere with big texture like 4096+ will make paint mode and import painfully slow.Bug or paint engine restriction ? I have Radeon 5850 with 1GB VRAM and 4GB RAM in Win 7 OS 64bit, quad intel 3,3 ghz

[Javis]

Personally, I'm hoping Andrew can nail down auto-retopo to his satisfaction (this seems to be *almost* ready, with the bulk of the functionality

complete and only tweaks necessary) so he can move on towards refining areas that had a great start, but need more attention...namely:

- faster paint engine (a way to cache filled layers and deal with larger brush sizes such that 3DC responds to layer edits in seconds, not minutes)

- true ambient occlusion baking (having shadows on different parts of final meshes in the AO bake can defeat the entire bake itself)

- brush/pen editor based upon curve profiles and parameters (Zbrush style)

- voxel toolset integrated into the 'Sculpt' room such that logical tool candidates can be used on mesh objects as well (potential is there, it

just hasn't been touched in something like 2 years since voxels required the bulk of the focus)

I've been on the 3DC 'train' for quite a while and it would be nice to see these things above finally integrated such that 3DC becomes the

powerhouse it has the potential to become...

Quoted for agreement. And, as Leigh said, a UI de-cluttering would be great. I mentioned it to Andrew during Siggraph actually, too. So I am hoping it hits very soon. Andrew also mentioned he would work on the brush engine after he finished up the auto-retopo tool.

Hopefully he's almost done with auto-retopo, as it feels like it's pretty close to being finished.

[Javis]

@wailingmonkey I completly agree what you posted I think paint mode after retopo is 3DC best feature.Only (very expensive) bodypaint can match it, if performance and bugs would be fixed it would be truly best 3D paint application available.

Looks like I figured out what makes 3DC slow, in paint mode paint the bigger the texture size the slower will 3DC work and the slower import will be.The sphere with small texture will load fast and paint will be fast(even with bigger brushes) but same sphere with big texture like 4096+ will make paint mode and import painfully slow.Bug or paint engine restriction ? I have Radeon 5850 with 1GB VRAM and 4GB RAM in Win 7 OS 64bit, quad intel 3,3 ghz

Personally I feel it a problem with the brush engine, myself. I experience the same thing on my machine (quad core, 2.8Ghz/core, 8GB DDR2 800, GTX 275 w/1.896GB GDDR3). As mentioned above, I'm hoping the brush engine changes will make a difference.

However, that said, still submit a bug report! If Andrew has content to work from, it shall be easier to spot a bug or improve the effected area.

[juanmanuel]

3dcoat already topologizes better than I did some 3 years ago

[Andrew Shpagin]

Mac build re-uploaded to resolve density and strokes problem.

But there is still space for improvements...

[b33nine]

auto-quadrangulation stroke guides aren't working? I'm not seeing a whole lot of change from one test to the other with wildly varying stroke guides. I can't get fingers to work at all and I'm trying to do the suggestions strokes like Leigh's video

pc cuda 64

[Andrew Shpagin]

auto-quadrangulation stroke guides aren't working? I'm not seeing a whole lot of change from one test to the other with wildly varying stroke guides. I can't get fingers to work at all and I'm trying to do the suggestions strokes like Leigh's video

pc cuda 64

They work but I discovered the in this build they work slightly randomly... I fixed it, wait next build.

[Digital777]

UI de-cluttering would be great. I mentioned it to Andrew during Siggraph actually, too. So I am hoping it hits very soon. Andrew also mentioned he would work on the brush engine after he finished up the auto-retopo tool.

Hopefully he's almost done with auto-retopo, as it feels like it's pretty close to being finished.

Yeah i agree with this, i like the GUI layout a lot but with a few adjustments it would be much nicer i think. As well as various bugs i just posted a suggestions list mainly for GUI things here -

http://www.3d-coat.com/forum/index.php?showtopic=6259&pid=47340&st=0entry47340

Updating the sculpt tools would also be great. One thing i find other tools do better is the hard edge sculpt stuff which would be great to have in 3DC. I know you can do various things for this now like use shapes and masking methods etc, some new tools for this would be great though and also stuff like more adjust effects and mesh reduction for flat/low detail areas etc.

[Maximus3D]

To clearly show the problem of black meshes upon autoretopology import i mentioned here recently i'm now including a screenshot of it. I hope i'm not the only one having this issue.

Besides this annoying issue there are a number of typos in the Autoretopolgy Wizard that should be corrected.

/ Magnus

[michalis]

This silhouette looks promising though, any chance to see it?

[Flipper]

In paint mode, I am getting streaks in latest build

OSX 10.6.4

2x3 GHz Quad-Core

16 GB

NVIDIA GeForce 8800 GT

[AbnRanger]

In paint mode, I am getting streaks in latest build

OSX 10.6.4

2x3 GHz Quad-Core

16 GB

NVIDIA GeForce 8800 GT

Looks as if the UV map is a mess.