3D-Coat 3.5 updates thread

[brook]

Thanks for deep description. But look this screenshot from ZB - it is how default clay tubes works on obstacles. It does not (and should not) capture hills because it is intended to cover cavities. This is how Mod & Rapid works in 3DC.

your welcome. I am very impressed with the work that 3DC team is doing and it is my hope that there will be a competitive sculpting tool in 3DC. so I can use my copy along side my other sculpting tools in daily work.

I do not get that as the default behavior for clay tubes brush see images below. when I dial up SD option in brush setting I get the result in your picture. clay tubes was not designed to fill cavities. clay tubes brush was designed to be clay tubes brush. people have found it a very nice brush to block out basic volume quickly. because clay tube has some artifacts the clay buildup brush was introduced. clay buildup has almost no bad effects on the mesh and is very nice blocking brush. after blocking you might use standard brush and clay brush along with other more subtle brushes to finish your sculpture.

Below I have posted some more tests where I have attempted to get very close to what exactly is bugging brushes in new 3dc brush engine. as before I see sampling problems as the main cause of bugs that cause the artifacts and bad behavior. I can eliminate or introduce most of this behavior by adjusting sampling options in other software. these artifacts and bad behavior are not local to one brush but spread over most of the brushes. each brush function produces slightly different behavior as you would expect. the samples below show simple tests to isolate and observe behavior. these behaviors will scale to real sculptures. it is much harder to try and isolate the brush problem on a real sculpture which has millions of strokes layered on top of each other with re meshing etc. the point is to observer underline problems which cause brush behavior that adversely effect real sculptures.

there is (1) comparison of brushes with wire frames (2) some sculpting bugs (3) a few surface mode mesh import problems I found while testing.

[Andrew Shpagin]

Agree, this demonstrates problem well.

Please send me basic reference mesh for easy reproducing and discovering.

But smoothing problem arises becaue of backfacing checking. I amay totally turn if off for smoothing.

Or you may turn it off manually in 'E' panel.

Probably backfacing should not be applied to smooth, it always leads to confusion.

[artman]

your welcome. I am very impressed with the work that 3DC team is doing and it is my hope that there will be a competitive sculpting tool in 3DC. so I can use my copy along side my other sculpting tools in daily work.

I do not get that as the default behavior for clay tubes brush see images below. when I dial up SD option in brush setting I get the result in your picture. clay tubes was not designed to fill cavities. clay tubes brush was designed to be clay tubes brush. people have found it a very nice brush to block out basic volume quickly. because clay tube has some artifacts the clay buildup brush was introduced. clay buildup has almost no bad effects on the mesh and is very nice blocking brush. after blocking you might use standard brush and clay brush along with other more subtle brushes to finish your sculpture.

Below I have posted some more tests where I have attempted to get very close to what exactly is bugging brushes in new 3dc brush engine. as before I see sampling problems as the main cause of bugs that cause the artifacts and bad behavior. I can eliminate or introduce most of this behavior by adjusting sampling options in other software. these artifacts and bad behavior are not local to one brush but spread over most of the brushes. each brush function produces slightly different behavior as you would expect. the samples below show simple tests to isolate and observe behavior. these behaviors will scale to real sculptures. it is much harder to try and isolate the brush problem on a real sculpture which has millions of strokes layered on top of each other with re meshing etc. the point is to observer underline problems which cause brush behavior that adversely effect real sculptures.

there is (1) comparison of brushes with wire frames (2) some sculpting bugs (3) a few surface mode mesh import problems I found while testing.

Thank you so much!!Phil made a video a few months ago showing the problem in SurfaceMode but I think Andrew will understand better with the various examples you used.Again,thank you for taking your time to do this.

[michalis]

@brook

thanks for this post.

Please try to test zbrush brushes on a triangulated mesh. Don't subdivide it. just export voxel as tri, under vox layers palette.

A different behavior probably but lot of artifacts. You won't like it.

An 'after topology and subdivision sculpting room" , Andrew, you wont avoid this in the end, LOL. I know that you don't like this approach

[artman]

Here is ancient Surface Mode Clay brush in 3.5.03.

Simply the best Clay brush around.

Just 13 strokes...you can do Hard Surface like Cedric Sault or Organic stuff like muscles,anything really..

All strokes overlap smoothly and give great effects.

Here is trying the same thing with 3.5.14 sf clay brush:

Pretty clear?

[Andrew Shpagin]

Here is ancient Surface Mode Clay brush in 3.5.03.

Simply the best Clay brush around.

Just 13 strokes...you can do Hard Surface like Cedric Sault or Organic stuff like muscles,anything really..

All strokes overlap smoothly and give great effects.

Here is trying the same thing with 3.5.14 sf clay brush:

Pretty clear?

Ok, ok, agree. I will post new build today and then work a bit again over brushes.

[Andrew Shpagin]

Updated to 3.5.15 (Win only), Mac + Linux - soon

3.5.15 [beta, not verified] :

- I made clone function in Retopo->Select [faces] to clone parts of mesh.

- You will be able to transform whole retopo mesh or it's selected part with new transform tool in retopo room.

- EPS file format supported for importing shapes for E panel.

- Symmetry panel got "Lock symmetry plane" checkbox to lock symmetry plane and avoid unnecessary movement by TAB key. Also ALT-TAB will not conflict with TAB pressing to mave symmetry plane.

- I improved surace smooth tool a bit to avoid producing visible seams. Also I removed spikes appearing on noizy surface due to backfacing.

- I improbed a bit shape and cleanness of voxels strokes in CUDA mode, I found why BUILD tool was producing dirty results sometimes.

- I performed really big work over memory management. Found many leaks. It will improve stability and speed after hours of work in 3D-Coat.

- FBX export crash fixed in 3.5.14B but FBX export of big meshes is still too slow, we wil optimize it.

- Export big meshes/close holes got better stability on big meshes.

- Fixed possible instability in texture baking tool.

- Draw by lines issue fixed - http://bit.ly/fOkslE

- Freezing issue resilved - http://bit.ly/dFXFV5

- I made that 64 bit build will produce very useful bugreports [for me to discover crash reason] if crash will occur. 64-bit bugreport was almost useless before this change because of missing callstack. 90% of peoples are using 64 bit version, it was so pity that I was not able to analyse bugreprts deeply. Now it is solved. It is important step to make 3DC more stable. 3.5.15 contains multiple stability improvements based on bugreports that was sent me with this system.

[philnolan3d]

One placewhere I have trouble with the brushes is the Absolute tool in Surface mode. Especially if you use it in one area and then use it some more. In the spots where stroke 1 and stroke 2 meet it becomes very messy.

[Routb3d]

There seems to be something wrong with the Snake tool in Beta 15. The tool is producing line segments and not smoothing in the usual way. Also, the size of the snake the brush is producing seems to be a fraction of the brush size.

4 min later:

Actually, Never mind.. I found out that I had the "translate brush along curve" checked in the curve tool.. (which doesn't seem to be working BTW) I thought I would leave the comment above to show how this connection between the 2 tools could be confusing..

Thanks,

IC

[brook]

Agree, this demonstrates problem well.

Please send me basic reference mesh for easy reproducing and discovering.

But smoothing problem arises becaue of backfacing checking. I amay totally turn if off for smoothing.

Or you may turn it off manually in 'E' panel.

Probably backfacing should not be applied to smooth, it always leads to confusion.

as you have asked for I upload a test obj. this is a 300x300 grid. the grid I used in my test was 400x400 grid. but that file is over 16 megs. if you want that exact 400x400 grid file I can upload it to a server and send you a email link to the file.

the last picture with load bugs are from trying import and resample test meshes. 3DC is giving errors when you resample a flat plane. so I extruded the test grid into a closed volume and resampled that to do the resample brush test. that file of the closed volume 400x400 grid is over 35 megs. again I can upload and send you the link if you think it will be usefull to you.

keep in mind that these files are just a grid with sections of sine function applied with adjusted amplitude.

brush sampling issues and brush engine seem to be a constant pain in the butt, very tough to get things working in smooth fashion. very sensitive. mudbox totally rewrote there brush engine from v1 to v2. zbrush it seems is rewriting there brush engine every version with new options for smoothing, sampling etc. and silo sculpting brush engine had same problems.

@artman @michalis

you are welcome. I had fun doing these test so no big deal. ultimately bugs are engineering problems. as an artist trying to explain problems or features to engineer it is helpful to 'try' to explain in a way that can be understood logically in terms of engineering problem. this way solution to problem becomes obvious and implementation of solution can be achieved. if this is not done everyone gets frustrated and artists sound like crazy people complaining that the digital clay does not 'feel' right.

brushtest_plane_300x300.obj

[BeatKitano]

Andrew, I don't know the details of what have been done to vox brushes, but its like night and day in the sculpting feeling. You're more than encouraged to make changes like that

Btw, am I the only one thinking that's it's a shame that smooth (shift) +

doesn't actually smooth the surface but extrude it (in voxel mode) ? That's really annoying when laying basic shapes with carve/extrude tools.

[artman]

Btw, am I the only one thinking that's it's a shame that smooth (shift) +

doesn't actually smooth the surface but extrude it (in voxel mode) ? That's really annoying when laying basic shapes with carve/extrude tools.

If Andrew and Raul put out hypersmooth and they make it work with E-panel,this is what you are going to get.

That would be great.

[haikalle]

If Andrew and Raul put out hypersmooth and they make it work with E-panel,this is what you are going to get.

That would be great.

Sounds great, but before that it would be better to separate lasso tool from other brush tools. Having quick access to lasso tools would be great.

[Digital777]

I was just testing the latest version and found a bug and also a way to crash 3DC. If you go to the the brush settings (Top left) and click "Load shape" but then cancel it changes to the Draw by closed spline tool. This shouldn't happen if you cancel as it should just stay on the last used setting still.

There is another bug with the closed spline tool though as is if you do the same as above and then start drawing a spline and without pressing enter or esc directly go back to the settings again and select another like "Brush pressure effects radius" the floating arrow menu thing remains even though the new tool should not have it.

If tools have floating menus they should close when selecting other tools. There is a crash with the floating menu also as if you select apply when you have another tool selected but it is still visible then 3DC will then freeze/crash.

Edit - Not sure i like the hidden hover over menu to be honest either, i would rather just always have visible dialogs i could minimize as they are much nicer to use.

[Taros]

I was just testing the latest version and found a bug and also a way to crash 3DC. If you go to the the brush settings (Top left) and click "Load shape" but then cancel it changes to the Draw by closed spline tool. This shouldn't happen if you cancel as it should just stay on the last used setting still.

There is another bug with the closed spline tool though as is if you do the same as above and then start drawing a spline and without pressing enter or esc directly go back to the settings again and select another like "Brush pressure effects radius" the floating arrow menu thing remains even though the new tool should not have it.

If tools have floating menus they should close when selecting other tools. There is a crash with the floating menu also as if you select apply when you have another tool selected but it is still visible then 3DC will then freeze/crash.

Edit - Not sure i like the hidden hover over menu to be honest either, i would rather just always have visible dialogs i could minimize as they are much nicer to use.

Thank you. Please post such bug reports here: http://www.3d-coat.com/mantis/

[kay_Eva]

andrew calls us all his sweetie I feel the love

[JimB]

andrew calls us all his sweetie I feel the love

I dont understand that tweet

[artman]

I dont understand that tweet

Hes correcting the world "confette" in previous tweet ,but what he means is "candy" not "sweetie"....I think.

[JimB]

Hes correcting the world "confette" in previous tweet ,but what he means is "candy" not "sweetie"....I think.

Oh I see.

[Andrew Shpagin]

Hes correcting the world "confette" in previous tweet ,but what he means is "candy" not "sweetie"....I think.

Oh that language

[JimB]

Oh that language

He..he pretty good no?

[Eric Cosky]

Minor bug to report, installed 3.5.15A today and started the GL64 version. The symmetry plane did not render correctly. It works correctly on the DX64 build for me. This is with a GeForce GTX 560 ti and I believe current drivers. I don't know when this might have been introduced as I almost never try the GL version. I only gave it a shot because the installer suggested it would be faster with this card (although it wasn't entirely clear to me either). See the attached screenshot for an example; that should be showing the X symmetry plane.

It seems to occur for me in the voxel mode when I am placing a primitive.

Edit: I am actually seeing some symmetry plane rendering problems in DX also. Haven't seen a pattern yet though.

Thanks for the continued updates & improvements.

[BeatKitano]

I reverted back to dx version with 3.5.15. I don't know about previous version but dx version is actually faster on a gtx 480.

Oh and thank you Andrew for fixing the pose tool bug

[Andrew Shpagin]

I reverted back to dx version with 3.5.15. I don't know about previous version but dx version is actually faster on a gtx 480.

Oh and thank you Andrew for fixing the pose tool bug

I updated to 3.5.15A, there are some changes:

- better stability in exporting/filling holes over huge meshes

- new iten Voxels->Edit scene scale - there is description in menu

- some bugs related to gizmo in retopo tool fixed

- pose tool bug fixed

- floating license changes, but I will announce it a bit later

I hope mac & linux versins will be done today.

[Digital777]

Thank you. Please post such bug reports here: http://www.3d-coat.com/mantis/

Done now, sorry i did not have much time yesterday so i just posted here quickly. Anyway it's on Mantis now -

http://www.3d-coat.com/mantis/view.php?id=201

Also a bump for this GUI Suggestion -

http://www.3d-coat.com/mantis/view.php?id=161

[simmsimaging]

I updated to 3.5.15A, there are some changes:

- better stability in exporting/filling holes over huge meshes

- new iten Voxels->Edit scene scale - there is description in menu

- some bugs related to gizmo in retopo tool fixed

- pose tool bug fixed

- floating license changes, but I will announce it a bit later

I hope mac & linux versins will be done today.

I updated to this version and 3DC is crashing my computer totally when trying to import a mesh for per-pixel painting. Memory usage goes through the roof and the whole computer just bogs down to the point I have to just force-restart it. Tried it with two different .obj files - same result. Also happened when using the app-link script to send it from Max. I have not had time to look into the Mantis thing for bug reporting so I'm just noting it here.

/b

[philnolan3d]

Please also note your computer specs and which version of 3DC it is DX? GL? Cuda? mac/PC? 64 bit?

You can find Mantis at:

http://www.3d-coat.com/mantis

[jwiede]

Since Andrew noted that 90% of users are on 64-bit, any chance we can get some news on how soon Mac users will be able to bring that number much closer to 100%?

[Andrew Shpagin]

Linux build 3.5.15A uploaded

[Andrew Shpagin]

Since Andrew noted that 90% of users are on 64-bit, any chance we can get some news on how soon Mac users will be able to bring that number much closer to 100%?

SERGYI works hard over it and I am trying to speed up the process, I believe it will happen really soon. You may ask SERGYI via PM it will help to speed this up too

Edited March 20, 2011 by geothefaust
Changed the language slightly to reflect what Andrew meant. ;)