3D-Coat 3.5 updates thread

[philnolan3d]

You know, after comparing I'm thinking the new Smooth does a better job at flattening than the Flatten tool does. Using both on the same area does an eve better job.

[BeatKitano]

You know, after comparing I'm thinking the new Smooth does a better job at flattening than the Flatten tool does. Using both on the same area does an eve better job.

Yep, it can almost be called finish brush

And I'm glad geothefaust mentionned it, I would have called 3.5.16E stable, but was reluctant to say it fearing another flame in this topic from people not happy about it...

[Andrew Shpagin]

Hi!

Testing version: 3.5.17

System: Windows 7 64-bit SP1 / Intel Core i7 Extreme 980X / 12GB RAM / NVIDIA GeForce GTX 470 / Driver version 266.58

Voxel sculpting

Noisy blobs emerge when smoothing over certain area while moving brush across it

- Set smooth to values over 100%, for example 300 or 400 something

- Set object in voxel mode

- Set large brush size

- Smooth using shift while dragging cursor over surface in circles

- First smoothing goes OK, then when I encounter already smoothed deep cavity, smooth will plot noisy blobs, which will start piling up out of surface

Does not happen with surface mode.

Smoothing in voxel mode can't be more than 100%. It really will not work.

[motkoko]

Smoothing in voxel mode can't be more than 100%. It really will not work

Andrew the problem is when you want use smooth over 100 % for surface you must type in smoothing box (can't use rmb like other brush), and when you switch to voxel it make noise

you must down it < 100 --> surface mode type again . Hope you make it quick change like other brush

3.5.16 and 3.5.17 is really nice

OR could you make behavior of smooth brush in vox mode over 100 % like 100%

[Andrew Shpagin]

Andrew the problem is when you want use smooth over 100 % for surface you must type in smoothing box (can't use rmb like other brush), and when you switch to voxel it make noise

you must down it < 100 --> surface mode type again . Hope you make it quick change like other brush

3.5.16 and 3.5.17 is really nice

OR could you make behavior of smooth brush in vox mode over 100 % like 100%

Yes, that is point. Agree, I should do that (one of).

[ace63]

Here are the artifacts I am getting with any kind of cavity painting - the lines are equal to the wireframe of the object.

Win7 x64, 3D Coat 3.5.17 CUDA on the latest Nvidia Driver.

This did not happen a few versions ago.

[spacepainter]

Really good to have powersmooth and surfacefill is powerful too.

[BeatKitano]

Buildup is very nice, it's a great complement to the new smooth, this totally replace the clay/rapid 2 as my main brush in surface mode.

New fill is also very elegant, works as expected. Those few changes you made to the brushes are VERY welcomed Andrew.Same goes for allowing furthermore hotkeys customization ("e" panel).

If you are still inclined to some hotkey addition, can I suggest the "enter" merge ? It would be nice to be able to remap it to a key closeer to the ctrl/shift/alt for quick merges (this would allow working in full surface mode much more pleasant).

[philnolan3d]

I didn't even notice the new Fill. It works very nicely, but leaves artifacts behind on unaffected areas.

Video: http://screencast.com/t/PE01UKJM7A

[mill]

Hello.

In surface mode, brushes use only one CPU and smooth does not smooth if brush radius is very large.

In retopo room, tools are also use only one CPU.

In Paint room, sometimes the smudge tool does not come back almost like freezing.

Does anyone have the same problem?

V3.5.17 win cuda 64bit

Nvidia 259.57

I am not sure if this is related, but I am working on a multi-UV model.

4K texture * 1

2K texture * 3

[thedaemon]

Droplet brush mode, the mouse over text has some spelling error that should be "increasing". Mill, how do I check to see if my cpu's are being used?

[mill]

Hi.

I was just watching the windows task manager.

[spacepainter]

At high values, above 100 % the voxelsmooth gives noise.

[BeatKitano]

At high values, above 100 % the voxelsmooth gives noise.

From Andrew's twitter: "In CUDA mode smoothing >100% allowed"

[philnolan3d]

What bugs me about >100% is that you have to type it in. I seem to recall some parts of LightWave that did something I liked where mini-slider would stop at 100%, but then if you pushed it more it would keep going.

[BeatKitano]

As long as I don't have to continually retype 400% in surface mode when I switched back to vox and input 100, I'm happy

[gbball]

Hey everyone,

After seeing that smoothing above 100 created noise in Voxel mode, I decided to check it out.

I know it's since been fixed, but I found the effect very interesting. I needed to create random noisy bumps on one of my characters and it worked perfectly.

I don't know what you did Andrew, but maybe you could make a few brushes similar to that which will decay the form, or add rusty/barnacle type noise to the mesh.

I think sometimes, these happy accidents lead to interesting breakthroughs. So while I am glad that you fixed the smooth brush in Voxel mode.

I would really like to see some brushes that produce a similar result to the broken smooth brush...(ie build up of noise which was reminiscent of rust or barnacles (not sure how else to describe it))

Anyone else agree?

-Gavin

[BeatKitano]

I would agree if I wasn't running out of screen space vertically on my 28 inch display. No really of course I understand the need for such brush, of course I agree more the better. But the interface is alreay very crowded and in fact I sometime struggle to find the brush I need.

I always need a few secs to find the freeze brush in surface mode for instance.That screams preset support imho or at list some visual indications (icons to reduce button size with tooltip for beginners? ) for the moment ?

NOT joking:

[gbball]

I would agree if I wasn't running out of screen space vertically on my 28 inch display. No really of course I understand the need for such brush, of course I agree more the better. But the interface is alreay very crowded and in fact I sometime struggle to find the brush I need.

I always need a few secs to find the freeze brush in surface mode for instance.That screams preset support imho or at list some visual indications (icons to reduce button size with tooltip for beginners? ) for the moment ?

NOT joking:

Haha,

yeah, I know what you mean...you can collapse the ones you don't use though you know. And it's pretty convenient that the spacebar will bring the those selections.

On that note, I've been thinking for a while that Andrew, you guys might want to team up with a graphic designer to start making icons for all the different brushes and functions...It would be a lot more universal. I know that might be down the road, but it's something that I've been thinking more and more.

-G

[BeatKitano]

Haha,

yeah, I know what you mean...you can collapse the ones you don't use though you know. And it's pretty convenient that the spacebar will bring the those selections.

On that note, I've been thinking for a while that Andrew, you guys might want to team up with a graphic designer to start making icons for all the different brushes and functions...It would be a lot more universal. I know that might be down the road, but it's something that I've been thinking more and more.

-G

I know I can collapse, but lets say I want to use both voxels and surface, one brush more (or maybe two here), and I can't have smooth all without collapsing a section...

And space menu is cool, I would use it, if there was a hierarchy something, right now it's even messier that the left panel. I don't even know what I want to find when I look at it...

One way would be to be able to create a brush palette, to store all brushes, and drag&drop them in that bar at will. That would allow users to have their custom toolset and not neglecting anyone's wish.

But now that totally looks like a feature request and that's not the right place for that (sorry). Plus that would be another time consuming implementation when Andrew is actively bug fixing the app.. You know what I mean :x

[philnolan3d]

On that note, I've been thinking for a while that Andrew, you guys might want to team up with a graphic designer to start making icons for all the different brushes and functions...It would be a lot more universal. I know that might be down the road, but it's something that I've been thinking more and morae

Icons were purposely left out because many uses didn't want them.

[BeatKitano]

Icons were purposely left out because many uses didn't want them.

And that's just too bad, because the brain is waaaay better to recognize shapes colors and in a general sense "pictures" contrary to text that require a pre-assmiliation to be recognized. An option would have been a wise choice :/

Imho skymatter and pixologic have gone the icon way for a reason other than esthetics, they surely have done quite some testing to see what worked best...

[thedaemon]

Actually I think it's easier to recognize words than icons because you all ready know what the words represent. With icons you have to learn new connections of the icon to the word in your brain. I've always been a fan of text buttons; when icons are concerned in I have to mouse over frequnetly to determine what it represents. As you can see we can agree to disagree because really it's preference and some brains work differently than others.

[philnolan3d]

In some isolated cases icons can be useful if they're sparse and easy to understand like most of them in the E panel, but in most cases it's more like trying to read hieroglyphics when words in plain English (or your own language) would actually make sense.

[gbball]

Well,

the main reason I thought icons would be better is because they take up less space...

So you could have all your brushes and tools take up a much smaller footprint in terms of screen space. I don't really have a preference one way or the other, but like Beatkitano, I find that the list of tools on the left gets pretty long.

Actually, now that I'm thinking about it...how about just have the headings on the left and when you mouse over it, the tools in that subheading pop up. That way you could just mouse over the section you want and select the tool you need.

Thoughts?

-G

[BeatKitano]

Actually I think it's easier to recognize words than icons because you all ready know what the words represent. With icons you have to learn new connections of the icon to the word in your brain. I've always been a fan of text buttons; when icons are concerned in I have to mouse over frequnetly to determine what it represents. As you can see we can agree to disagree because really it's preference and some brains work differently than others.

No no, I'm not trying to enforce my view on the question, while there's indeed some time to learn what the icons are (but then again with tooltips that should not be a problem), the brain is just faster. It's scientificaly proven. No I understand some prefer text, but that's a shame that there's no option for icons. They could be big enough to be perfectly easy to read and still maintain a fair amount of space for further addition in that bar.

[philnolan3d]

Yes it may be easier for a few that you use frequently, but then every time you need one that's not often used you have to take extra time to look at the tooltips for all of them until you find the one you want. There are two of them in the Paint room where I have to do that every time. Though for those that want to do that it is nice to have the option I suppose. That's why LightWave Core has the option to use icons, text, or both on the buttons.

[BeatKitano]

Yes, but the question is do you want to spend your time searching for those you use frequently, or spend some time to find those you use less frequently (or even rarely) ?

Let me elaborate on the icon thing. When you use tex buttons only, your brain must process a few letters to find the one you're searching for. This is fine if you have a few buttons that are evenly spaced with some breathing room between them.

Now lets take the 3dc panel:

Every button is on top the other: You have to discard every button in a general area by "picking" a few letter of each. There's quite a few and they are quite "squashed" on the vertical axis. You see the problem ?

Now lets take the icon approach:

For the brain (once you've the associations done in your head that is): an icon=1 letter. This seems far fetched but this is roughly how it works. Now if (and that is why the question of gbball is an important one) someone skilled enough combines color and different enough symbols (could be jsut the way a stroke is done on a sphere), the brain will very quickly discard the one that are not desired. You could even custom your icons images to be perfectly recognizable by you...

Of course I'm not saying Andrew needs to get rid of text button, I'm ALWAYS for options... and then again, more space this way and more tools available...

P.S: Even Microsoft who didn't dare change the taskbar for 6 (well not exactly but you get the idea) versions of windows did it to show icons only by default on the 7th iteration... That should be a good testimony of ui study results in a still conservative policy...

So did Apple for their dock for quite some time now.

[philnolan3d]

Let me elaborate on the icon thing. When you use tex buttons only, your brain must process a few letters to find the one you're searching for. This is fine if you have a few buttons that are evenly spaced with some breathing room between them.

Now lets take the 3dc panel:

Every button is on top the other: You have to discard every button in a general area by "picking" a few letter of each. There's quite a few and they are quite "squashed" on the vertical axis. You see the problem ?

This is why I like the space bar menu it's easy to just remember the locations of the ones you use frequently

P.S: Even Microsoft who didn't dare change the taskbar for 6 (well not exactly but you get the idea) versions of windows did it to show icons only by default on the 7th iteration... That should be a good testimony of ui study results in a still conservative policy...

So did Apple for their dock for quite some time now.

I wouldn't use apple as an example of good design personally. I'm not a fan of the new Windows 7 Task bar either.

[Drocket]

Yes, but the question is do you want to spend your time searching for those you use frequently, or spend some time to find those you use less frequently (or even rarely) ?

Maybe Andrew could implement some sort of user palette which the user can configure so it lists their most used tools? That way you can minimize the tools you use very little and access the main tools from your user palette.