3D-Coat 3.3 updates thread

[Calabi]

What's unworkable in 3ds Max...or ZBrush?

I knew you'd ask that, so I prepared an exhaustive list.

Not really. I'm not going to argue with you or hunt around for evidence, because I know its as pointless as arguing with the moon.

[AbnRanger]

I knew you'd ask that, so I prepared an exhaustive list.

Not really. I'm not going to argue with you or hunt around for evidence, because I know its as pointless as arguing with the moon.

Seriously, I can generally work in Max most all year without having any kind of show-stopping issues like I've experienced with the Voxel and Retopo tools in the 3DC just this past month...

[Andrew Shpagin]

I discovered Don's problem. Short report:

I will fix the problem in program, but you can easily solve it manually.

- Retopo->Export

- Clear (in left panel)

- Retopo->Import mesh that was exported (no snap)

All will work quickly.

It looks like you deleted something around 75000 polygons in scene. There was around 75000 hidden (deleted) faces in scene!

Maybe you used delete all polygons from current layers from retopo layers palette. Use "Clear" from the left panel if you want to delete all retopo faces.

Anyway, it is bug that using "Delete all polygones from current layer" produces slowdown after multiple delete, it will be fixed.

[AbnRanger]

I discovered Don's problem. Short report:

I will fix the problem in program, but you can easily solve it manually.

- Retopo->Export

- Clear (in left panel)

- Retopo->Import mesh that was exported (no snap)

All will work quickly.

It looks like you deleted something around 75000 polygons in scene. There was around 75000 hidden (deleted) faces in scene!

Maybe you used delete all polygons from current layers from retopo layers palette. Use "Clear" from the left panel if you want to delete all retopo faces.

Anyway, it is bug that using "Delete all polygones from current layer" produces slowdown after multiple delete, it will be fixed.

I had a similar incident about a month ago, where I spent the better part of the day wrestling with the same issues...and finally found it was some Points and Faces dots hanging out in space not too far from the model. How they got there, I don't have a clue...but I cleared the layer they were on and everything went back to normal.

However, yesterday....I had no such luck. No dots hanging out in space and I even went so far as to delete EVERYTHING but the voxel model itself. I mean, I went into the Retopo room and went Nuclear on it. Then started with a fresh layer. From that fresh layer, you see the layer I was working on in those example videos, I linked to. I tried everything I could possible think of. Even installing multiple version of 3DC, going back to 3.2.01

EDIT:I posted some new video examples to show the results in the Retopo Bugs thread....Well heck, why not show just one for squirts and giggles?...In this video, it's just one example where I've tried 3 times to get the strokes tool to do it's job, and it decides it would rather fight me instead....waited 20 min the first time, and I exited the program...same thing for the next two tries. Is no one else having any issues? Just me?

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6fhZR28qJmY

[Andrew Shpagin]

Updated to 3.3.04

Changes:

- Solved problem of "Waves" in multiresolution

- The problem of slowdowns in retopo room reported by AbnRanger solved. See report there - http://bit.ly/9elK6K

OSX & Linux versions will be done in Monday because there is OS - specific problem that I was not able to solve quickly.

[splodge]

Very smooth!

[digman]

Smooth as silk....

[digman]

Win 32bit non-cuda 3.3.04

Default sphere used for testing:

Appox. voxel count 5.3 million

Coming back to voxel mode (the proxy has been restored to the high poly count model in surface mode before returning to voxel mode) is causing the problem described below:

In voxel mode after returning from surface mode.

When using the smooth tool, the green progress bar appears and then the whole screen starts to flash and I lose the menu bars and dialog boxes till I let got of my mouse button.

The other tools make the green bar just appear.

Picture is a screen cap of my entire 3DCoat window,as you can see no menus or dialog boxes.

[AbnRanger]

Win 32bit non-cuda 3.3.04

Default sphere used for testing:

Appox. voxel count 5.3 million

Coming back to voxel mode (the proxy has been restored to the high poly count model in surface mode before returning to voxel mode) is causing the problem described below:

In voxel mode after returning from surface mode.

When using the smooth tool, the green progress bar appears and then the whole screen starts to flash and I lose the menu bars and dialog boxes till I let got of my mouse button.

The other tools make the green bar just appear.

Picture is a screen cap of my entire 3DCoat window,as you can see no menus or dialog boxes.

I got the same thing, but I noticed it only happens when the brush size reaches a threshold in size...I thought it was some new mechanism to accelerate the brush speed working with extra large brush sizes. I think overall speed is up somehow...not to even mention the multi-res tools. My only gripe is with the inconsistency in the Retopo tools currently, as you can tell.

[artman]

Results are amazing!!No "waves" whatsoever on all my tests at 4x.

I cant believe just two weeks ago there was no Multires.

It happened so fast...

And I think its much better than your previous plan because now user can go down resolutions without any need for initial subd level.

It gives complete freedom as we can merge hipoly .obj to voxels with custom polycount and then downgrade for global tweakings.

Now,if you could please fix smoothing of Pose selections on Proxy so I we can efficiently pose our models it would be would have even more fun

[haikalle]

How did you do that? No waves. Excelent coding. Keep it up. Roger out

[Andrew Shpagin]

How did you do that? No waves. Excelent coding. Keep it up. Roger out

Yes, it was really interesting issue. More thinking and writing formulas on paper then programming.

I will try to write short article on this topic because this principle could be really useful in general CG tasks.

[polyxo]

Congratulations Andrew!

Do you now plan on implementing the same functionality for Voxel-Mode as well (as it

was available for short time in 3.3.2b?) This would be great.

While I see that Surface-Mode-Cahing makes the High-Resolution - Modelers happy I still find the

Voxel-Workspace the far more versatile and powerful Design-Playground...

I would like to have the option to work with different resolutions here - while the object

keeps the same size. Degrading is not useful when working with reference-images...

[haikalle]

Maybe some day you could write Andrew's cookbook where are those excelent 3d math formulas.

There would be quite many of us in the line to press "order" button.

[LJB]

So Seems there is still a problem I had, before when converting back to Voxels from Proxy. But It only appears if you dont take the extra step of first converting your volume to surface mode. Example convert to surface apply proxy, then modify proxy, then remove proxy and convert back to surface. works ok as far as i have tested it, however if you first apply proxy without applying surface mode the modifythe proxy, then remove it and convert back to voxel from surface. Everything is very confusing & broken when it comes to using the sculpting tools. So can we please have a bit mor control applied to the application of Proxy and multires. the complexcity required of making it work is a little to muddled and easy to break.

[AbnRanger]

Maybe some day you could write Andrew's cookbook where are those excelent 3d math formulas.

There would be quite many of us in the line to press "order" button.

Great work, Andrew...on the voxels and fixing some of the Retopo issues. I did some more experimenting/testing to see what I can do differently to avoid some of the issues, and I discovered a couple of helpful tips.

When I was working with the strokes tool, low density voxel models tended to have the strokes come out on the other end of the object, or just about anywhere it wanted. I was about to do another bug report on it, when I tried the same thing again with the higher density version, and the problem went away (for the most part).

Also, I was having very similar problems with the Points and faces tool...not working. Again, I was about ready to send a bug report, but strangely stumbled upon a remedy...that is to adjust the "Additional Extrusion" amount until the problem subsides. I don't why that is necessary, but it worked. Hope that saves somebody from some of the frustrations I had been experiencing.

Now, if only the merge times between Surface mode and Voxel volumes was minimized (so we could step between the modes without trepidation), we'd be set.

[polyxo]

But It only appears if you dont take the extra step of first converting your volume to surface mode. Example convert to surface apply proxy, then modify proxy, then remove proxy and convert back to surface.

Correct, that works also on my end. But all changes done to a proxy with Voxel-Tools are lost when converting back to the HiRes-Version.

Everything is very confusing & broken when it comes to using the sculpting tools. So can we please have a bit mor control applied to the application of Proxy and multires. the complexcity required of making it work is a little to muddled and easy to break.

I agree absolutely.

[philnolan3d]

So Seems there is still a problem I had, before when converting back to Voxels from Proxy. But It only appears if you dont take the extra step of first converting your volume to surface mode. Example convert to surface apply proxy, then modify proxy, then remove proxy and convert back to surface. works ok as far as i have tested it, however if you first apply proxy without applying surface mode the modifythe proxy, then remove it and convert back to voxel from surface. Everything is very confusing & broken when it comes to using the sculpting tools. So can we please have a bit mor control applied to the application of Proxy and multires. the complexcity required of making it work is a little to muddled and easy to break.

Hmm.. it works fine here. When caching it automatically switches to Surface mode, The Surface tools seem to work fine, then when Uncaching it switches back to voxels.

[splodge]

Hmm.. it works fine here. When caching it automatically switches to Surface mode, The Surface tools seem to work fine, then when Uncaching it switches back to voxels.

Well in my version of 3D Coat I get naked chicks dancing across the screen with pompoms.

But despite that, I still have to manually switch back to voxel mode, unlike in your magical version.

[LJB]

Please take a look. Sorry it took me so long to record a video on this.

[Javis]

When I hit the cache button, it goes to surface mode, but it doesn't go straight to voxel mode when I uncache, it stays in surface mode and must click the wavy line to go back to voxel mode.

[AbnRanger]

Well, if you guys remember, Andrew said it was probably more realistic to try the Multi-Res in Surface mode than Voxel Volume. If I have to make an extra click just to get back to Voxels mode (in order to get Multi-Res functionality), I'm good with that...as long as it doesn't make me wait all night or blow up my model.

By the way, it did go back to Voxel Volume after caching, before the Multi-Res feature was added, but I'm sure Andrew decided the trade off (having to switch into Surface Mode for the Cache and Multi-Res in order to get it to work properly/more efficiently) was well worth the inconvenience of an extra click.

[digman]

I think there a few gliches in returning to voxel mode,LJB. I and AbnRanger reported one a few post above yours. I'm sure they will be ironed out. Those bug video's do help to see the problem, I hope to make them in the future too.

Andrew could always add an automatic merge back to voxels after it applied the changes to the high polycount model in "surface mode".I'm not a programmer so Andrew would know if it is possible to add an automatic merger. There is room on the vox tree tab to add an auto icon. This would not replace the current way but just add the automatic for the user who does'nt want to stay in surface mode after converting his changes. I think we have seen just the begining of a exciting multi-resolution implementation and coming local sub-division in surface mode...

[ifxs]

I very eager to test the multires on OSX. Looking forward to 3.3.04x for OSX. looks like some of the bugs pointed out have already been worked on.

and as I side note, I'm getting MUCH better symmetrical quadrangulating in 3.3, thanks Andrew!

[splodge]

I think the most confusing part is that you can have a proxy object that is in voxel mode and yet any changes you make to it while in proxy mode will be lost the moment you switch it back to high res. So it seems that a proxy is really a surface model only. If this is the case then if the user switches the model into voxel mode then 3D Coat needs to restore the models high res voxel state. Because having a proxy in voxel mode is misleading and will frustrate a user when their changes are lost.

[geo_n]

I think the most confusing part is that you can have a proxy object that is in voxel mode and yet any changes you make to it while in proxy mode will be lost the moment you switch it back to high res. So it seems that a proxy is really a surface model only. If this is the case then if the user switches the model into voxel mode then 3D Coat needs to restore the models high res voxel state. Because having a proxy in voxel mode is misleading and will frustrate a user when their changes are lost.

This should be in the manual if its the case because a lot of people might miss this limitation to the proxy workflow.

[AbnRanger]

I think the most confusing part is that you can have a proxy object that is in voxel mode and yet any changes you make to it while in proxy mode will be lost the moment you switch it back to high res. So it seems that a proxy is really a surface model only. If this is the case then if the user switches the model into voxel mode then 3D Coat needs to restore the models high res voxel state. Because having a proxy in voxel mode is misleading and will frustrate a user when their changes are lost.

Can you show us a video where you are LOSING your changes when you uncache your model? Again, in order to give us the feature we asked for, it merely requires that the layer switch into Surface Mode to do it (most efficiently). Is it really a show stopping issue to click the little squiggly line and switch it back to volume (if that is what you want)?

It's neither complicated, nor confusing. Multi-Res and caching needs to switch to Surface mode to do it's thang'...I'll take it, and with a side order of fries, to go.

[haikalle]

I'm not quite sure but I think that splodge is talking about this issue. http://www.vimeo.com/12543932

LJB, very good find. Hope it will be taken care soon.

[splodge]

Can you show us a video where you are LOSING your changes when you uncache your model? Again, in order to give us the feature we asked for, it merely requires that the layer switch into Surface Mode to do it (most efficiently). Is it really a show stopping issue to click the little squiggly line and switch it back to volume (if that is what you want)?

It's neither complicated, nor confusing. Multi-Res and caching needs to switch to Surface mode to do it's thang'...I'll take it, and with a side order of fries, to go.

Hey! I wasn't complaining about it being confusing to hit a squiggle. I was talking about 3D Coat being as confused as its users about its handling of the proxy.

Steps to reproduce:

1. Cache a voxel object and it'll switch into Surface mode.

2. Switch the object back to voxel mode and make some changes to the voxel object while it's still in its proxy state.

3. Uncache the object and you should see that all the changes are lost.

After thinking about it a little more - I reckon Andrew just needs to make it so that 3D Coat can project any voxel changes back onto the cached object. Which just means 3D Coat switching into Surface mode and projecting the proxy's changes back onto the cached object.

[Taros]

....

Now,if you could please fix smoothing of Pose selections on Proxy so I we can efficiently pose our models it would be would have even more fun

+1