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3D-Coat 3.5 updates thread


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I am happy to see Raul in our team. There is my short vision of future sculpting in 3DC:

- dynamic tesselation + topology independent multiresolution (that is already done) in 3DC are unbeatable pair.

- same set of booleans in surface mode as in voxel mode. It is actually not too hard, I made it once when I was in GSC Game World and making HOAE game.

With that features you will be able to get full frredom of voxels + overcam thaditional voxel problems:

- lack of sharp edges

- too uniform triangulation

Great news. So the Dynamic tessellation will operate in Surface mode? Would this technology not be ideal for a revamped Sculpt Room (as well)?
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ABN, I think if they perfect Surface mode and Voxel room sculpt room would become obsolete since you are going to be altering topology anyway using tesselation

Well there are some obvious advantages to transforming the Sculpt Room into a full-featured polygonal sculpting platform (by mirroring the Surface Mode toolset and engine). This way the user has a full range of options (Image-Based, Polygonal-Based, and Voxel-Based sculpting).
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Well there are some obvious advantages to transforming the Sculpt Room into a full-featured polygonal sculpting platform (by mirroring the Surface Mode toolset and engine). This way the user has a full range of options (Image-Based, Polygonal-Based, and Voxel-Based sculpting).

Correct me if I am wrong, I see surface sculpting as the step following voxel sculpting. There are obvious benefits of voxel sculpting (creating holes and cavities, intersections, rough mass distribution), but then you want to switch to surface mode and refine the look of the surface, get those crisp sharp edges and details, that would require too many voxels to define what is achievable with only a few polys.

Idealy that would allow some mechanics for non-destructively switching back and forth, but that's harder to achieve, I can imagine.

Anyways, I am really really really excited, can't wait to see feedback from Raul Fernandez, welcome aboard!

Regards,

Vlad

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Switching back and forth between poly's and voxels is what we do all the time in 3Dcoat I thought.

I hope the painting will be more integrated in the sculpting, so there's no waitingtimes like switching rooms and merging.

Using voxelparticles and "oil" paints of many colours and viscocities etc that flow into each other and have gravity and stuff, that's what tinkercode could add probably...

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Switching back and forth between poly's and voxels is what we do all the time in 3Dcoat I thought.

Of course we do, but I am talking about a non-uniformly sampled space, not about switching between the two per se.

But I do like your proposition concerning bringing closer and eventually merging the painting and sculpting contexts! I've been thinking about something like that just recently. That would be the moment when digital art will, for the first time in the officially known history :D, surpass traditional media, as that would allow by far un-matched freedom and flexibility of formal expression.

More boring read here (I warn you!):

...which leads to error accumulation, a detail loss. I am talking "ideal world scenario", where you edit voxel and polygonal fine details, and the algorithm strives for retaining maximum details of the previous iteration appropriately. And I mean non-uniform topology - uniformly retopologising the Voxel->Polygons mesh and switching back from Polygons->Voxels and uniformly resampling the space again and again, inevitably leads to non-uniform detail loss, unless your space samples approach zero, which requires your system memory approach infinity :D So... for the sake of keeping the Universe intact - the perfect balance of non-uniform polygonal topology and (oh that would be swell!) non-uniform voxel space and near-lossless switching between the two, somewhere in the near future... :D Oh somebody snap me!

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Af course we do, but I am talking about a non-uniformly sampled space, not about switching between the two per se.

More boring read here (I warn you!):

...which leads to error accumulation, a detail loss. I am talking "ideal world scenario", where you edit voxel and polygonal fine details, and the algorithm strives for retaining maximum details of the previous iteration appropriately. And I mean non-uniform topology - uniformly retopologising the Voxel->Polygons mesh and switching back from Polygons->Voxels and uniformly resampling the space again and again, inevitably leads to non-uniform detail loss, unless your space samples approach zero, which requires your system memory approach infinity :D So... for the sake of keeping the Universe intact - the perfect balance of non-uniform polygonal topology and (oh that would be swell!) non-uniform voxel space and near-lossless switching between the two, somewhere in the near future... :D Oh somebody snap me!

My head hurts after reading that... :blink: ..... :p:
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Of course we do, but I am talking about a non-uniformly sampled space, not about switching between the two per se.

But I do like your proposition concerning bringing closer and eventually merging the painting and sculpting contexts! I've been thinking about something like that just recently. That would be the moment when digital art will, for the first time in the officially known history :D, surpass traditional media, as that would allow by far un-matched freedom and flexibility of formal expression.

More boring read here (I warn you!):

...which leads to error accumulation, a detail loss. I am talking "ideal world scenario", where you edit voxel and polygonal fine details, and the algorithm strives for retaining maximum details of the previous iteration appropriately. And I mean non-uniform topology - uniformly retopologising the Voxel->Polygons mesh and switching back from Polygons->Voxels and uniformly resampling the space again and again, inevitably leads to non-uniform detail loss, unless your space samples approach zero, which requires your system memory approach infinity :D So... for the sake of keeping the Universe intact - the perfect balance of non-uniform polygonal topology and (oh that would be swell!) non-uniform voxel space and near-lossless switching between the two, somewhere in the near future... :D Oh somebody snap me!

That sounds just like my Calculus teacher when I was totally lost on what he was trying to explain :D

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That sounds just like my Calculus teacher when I was totally lost on what he was trying to explain :D

Haha, most likely I am just choosing a very complex way of saying something as simple as: we are all going to be fine! And that 3D coat will benefit greatly from the addition of Blender/Sculptris-like polygonal engine. Who can disagree with that? :)

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What I see in this video is amazing:

I ve never used 3DCoat for sculpting because of the "- lack of sharp edges". And also, because importing a geometry to voxels makes you loose your topology and details; (many of us are always reusing topology in our pipeline!).

For a long time I was hoping to see a complete surface arsenal...

One of the most exiting features would be to use this "unlimited resolution" for vector displacements and normal maps...

By the way, its really similar to the PTEX approach in the sense that you can have more resolution in required areas, on the fly!!!

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There are definitely exciting times ahead for us!

Haven't been on in a while as I have been otherwise engaged in web work but I am currently working on a great project using 3D Coat and will post images soon if the client allows it.

Welcome Raul. I can't wait to see the awesomeness that you will inject into an already awesome program.

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Updated to 3.5.11[beta] - Win+Mac, Linux - very soon

- I made possibility [optional] to merge mesh into voxel scene without actual voxelization. It will appear in voxel surface mode and will be voxelized when you will turn it to voxel mode. It is important milestone for future implementation of dynamic tesselation and highpoly booleans that may change the face of digital sculpting. In it's current state it is convenient for instancing, but it's actual power is in possibilities that this new approach opens.

- I made much better algorithm for adding external normalmap + painted depth in ppp. No artifacts appear there - http://bit.ly/fCaC8m

- Leaks problem discovered and improved - http://bit.ly/i8hzgC

- I made primitives controls a bit more convenient - it will always be possible to rotate camera + arrows will never become too small.

- UV packing problem with overlapped UV islands resolved - http://bit.ly/dKI4zz

- The longstanding problem of rough normals [http://bit.ly/eJZCA2] in surafece mode finally solved.

- The smoothing issue fixed - http://bit.ly/fC9MvJ

- Export dense quads prblem fixed - http://bit.ly/icpG9K

- The spacing issue fixed - http://bit.ly/flnejA

- Fixed smoothing problem in voxel surface mode - http://bit.ly/euHNlU

- The problem related to ZB brushes importing from folder resolved - http://bit.ly/gIDUQT

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New import to SF mode is great.

I just imported a 8 million polys piece and it went very well(decimated it could mean a 50 million piece!!). :)

It could completely replace Reference mesh.

I havent tested export yet,will do tomorrow.

It opens great workflow for texture artists:

-Merge a decimated super hipoly mesh(from 3DC decimation tool or Zb decimation master).

-bake shaders.

Currently people in big studios like Epic Games use 3DS Max "Render to texture" to bake ex:metal shaders to use as start up for texturing.

There is no other way to do this currently in the industry.

With this new import to SF mode ,advantages over 3DS Max's "Render to texture" are numerous:

-Support Higher polycount than 3DS

-No need to set up lights (you need to set up lights to get good baking in 3DS).

-Possibility to bake Matcap,Picmat shaders...

(in 3DS only what is facing camera will be baked when using "shaderball" based shaders.)

To be perfect you just need to fix lighting from the bottom angle,its much too dark,and also find a way to send the shader's bump into a single depth layer in Paint room,now it is prisoner of main normal map so users cannot use clone brush on both color+depth .It would be cool!

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how do i import an object in this way?

Use Merge tool.

Be sure "merge without voxelizing" checkbox is checked.

Click "Select mesh" and browse to mesh.

Wait for loading and when you see the white "ghosted" representation of the mesh press "Enter".

Wait again until mesh appear....Loading a 8mil piece took me about 2-4 minutes on my puny computer.

(Dont worry about "estimated polycount",object will still have its original polycount)

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hm. won't load the mesh on my mac. it just has the default cube still sitting there and switches back to the "transform" button in the merge tool options. snow leopard 10.6.6 on macbook w/3 gigs of ram intel. not sure what i'm doing wrong.

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okay. got it working. beautiful! this is nice. i got confused though when i switched my mesh from surface mode to voxels because the merge tool was still my last selection from the voxel specific tools and it reloaded the mesh i had already chosen. the first time i clicked "apply" because i thought i had to use the merge tool again to get my model from surface to voxels the first time i switched and it replaced it. when really all i had to do was pick a different tool. just a little confusing at first, and possibly for first time users of this workflow. maybe the voxel tool selection could reset after merging?

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Thanks for the update, Andrew. :good:

There are definitely exciting times ahead for us!

Haven't been on in a while as I have been otherwise engaged in web work but I am currently working on a great project using 3D Coat and will post images soon if the client allows it.

Welcome Raul. I can't wait to see the awesomeness that you will inject into an already awesome program.

Good to see you back around these parts.
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So does this mean that autoretopo works on imported mesh in voxel room without voxelizing it?

Andrew pleas rename sculpting room to poly room. Too many sculpting terms being used. :)

Testing.... Nope, when you try to use Auto Retopo on an unvoxelized object the object disappears after the first step (painting density} and it switches to voxel mode. In fact I can't do any retopo, when I switch to the Retopo room the object disappears.

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