Voxel Sculpt v Surface Sculpt

[rsquires]

I am really keen on the surface sculpt tools as they are responsive and just feel better on my system than voxel sculpting. However I am not quite sure whether I am doing it right. Usually I work in surface sculpt mode and press the return key ever few strokes to bake the previous surface sculpts to voxels. I find if I forget to do this then when I do change back to voxels there is a wait of about 30 seconds and a spinning beach ball as 3d coat calculates the voxels. Is there a magic button somewhere that bakes the voxels as you go or do you always have to press the enter key? Or am I doing this completely wrong. When you watch some of the tutorials it seems like the enter key is never pressed to bake the voxels as you go. I'd just like some clarification on workflow as it confuses me slightly

all the best

Richard

[AbnRanger]

I am really keen on the surface sculpt tools as they are responsive and just feel better on my system than voxel sculpting. However I am not quite sure whether I am doing it right. Usually I work in surface sculpt mode and press the return key ever few strokes to bake the previous surface sculpts to voxels. I find if I forget to do this then when I do change back to voxels there is a wait of about 30 seconds and a spinning beach ball as 3d coat calculates the voxels. Is there a magic button somewhere that bakes the voxels as you go or do you always have to press the enter key? Or am I doing this completely wrong. When you watch some of the tutorials it seems like the enter key is never pressed to bake the voxels as you go. I'd just like some clarification on workflow as it confuses me slightly

all the best

Richard

No...there is no magic button. Although I too wish there was a way that merging calculations could be done as a background operation....sort of like some compositing applications have background rendering.

If there was a way to use something like the surface freeze tool, to paint parts of the mesh that will be excluded from having to calculate during the merge back to voxels...that would cut merge times down considerably.

[rsquires]

Well at least that put's my mind at rest. Perhaps there is a way for 3D coat to kick in the merge after a stroke or user defined time. I guess that might hold things up but by cutting up the merge operation into manageble smaller chunks it does help. I'd like to sculpt and 3D coat would know I am working and not merge automatically. Then inevitably you pause rotate the model, check what you have just done, etc. 3D coat would then kick in with the merge in the background. Also changing brushes might be a good time too.

I am sure there is a good reason for the current workflow, but I think it could be improved to save the long merge times at the end

[AbnRanger]

Well at least that put's my mind at rest. Perhaps there is a way for 3D coat to kick in the merge after a stroke or user defined time. I guess that might hold things up but by cutting up the merge operation into manageble smaller chunks it does help. I'd like to sculpt and 3D coat would know I am working and not merge automatically. Then inevitably you pause rotate the model, check what you have just done, etc. 3D coat would then kick in with the merge in the background. Also changing brushes might be a good time too.

I am sure there is a good reason for the current workflow, but I think it could be improved to save the long merge times at the end

I tried, on a model with quite a bit of detail, using the "Hit Enter Frequently" method, it was too much to have to brush a few strokes and then sit and wait before resuming. That's a busted workflow on a fairly detailed model. On a lighter model, that may work fine. However, with a little planning, the new Cache to disk feature, should make it easier to work on manageable chunks of a high-res model.

[rsquires]

I guess it comes down to how you go about modelling with voxels. I would like to use voxels all the way from large changes and structural sculpting, right down to pore details but I guess that's not quite how it works. It just seems that there are lot's of tools in the voxel area and many video explanations bear this out where you can pretty much do everything down to very fine detail. Maybe I need CUDA.

[philnolan3d]

Yes Cuda would be a big help, if you're getting a new video card the more GPU cores the better. Video memory also helps a lot in 3DC, particularly the painting room.