3D-Coat 3.5 updates thread

[BeatKitano]

Is the flatten pressure fix in this build ?

[EDIT]: yes and its awesome.

Is the viewport faster too ? I get more fluid camera movements.

Also about zbrush navigation scheme, it needs a Y axis constraint option (it exists for 3dx mouse : rotate around y Axis).

Export as dense quad is very welcome too, it avoids making a remesh and reproject in zbrush, can't wait to have an applin between those two

[JamesE]

Thanks for the shift snapping Andrew! Been wanting that one for such a looooong time!

[DragonFist]

I disagree with the anti-ATI sentiments. I'm currently using a 3800 and have owned primarily ATI cards in the past with two Nvidias in there. I had just as much trouble with the nvidias as I have had with the ATIs, which hasn't been much. Basically, if there was a problem with my system, it didn't matter which card I put in, both crashed under the same circumstances. Pretty much 100% of the time, problems were the result of the software in question or, usually on a newly built rig, with the configuration of the the rig (usually unstable memory). I can't think of a single time that I had a show stopping issue that turned out to be an "ATI Driver" issue in the end. I've had tons of issues with Nvidia's RAID drivers on their motherboards (I've had to pull the a specific storage driver and mix it with current MB drivers to not have crashes under high disk usage) and likely never buy a motherboard product from them again. But I've had little issue with their video cards.

Anyhow, I've said my peace. I think both companies have made great hardware and would put either into my machines anytime (though I tend to pair Nvidia with Intel set ups and ATI with AMD set ups).

[artman]

Ok Andrew,I deep tested Export Dense Quad for you.

Here are results,I splited in good/bad to identify clearly the problems I encountered.

1)EXPORTING

GOOD

I was able to export much bigger objects,objects that would cause out of memory issue when using other exports.

I exported a 29mil tris object using this option .

It took 7-15 minutes approx to export which is normal since i donmt have a crazy computer.

BAD

There are no progress bar.

At the end of process there was 4 3DCoat.exe simultaneously opened in task manager..

The first one was sucking up 2gig of ram, all 3 others were using 40mb of ram .

In first one was displaying wrongly scaled version of the mesh in red wireframe, all 3 others were displaying startup screen..

All were frozen I had to manually kill the 4 in task manager.

But even with this it seems export was successful.

2)INTERACTION with MB/ZB

GOOD

I exported a 29mil tris object using this option and it loaded perfectly in both ZB and MB.

Smoothing and sculpting on the topology works fine in both apps...its very even and nice to work with.

BAD

EDIT: No bad.

Conclusion:

For experimental addition it works very well.

Its big milestone I think because its the first time in 3DCoat development that users can really make base in voxels and directly keep sculpting in ZB/Mb.

Without using Unified skin,Project all or 3DCoat MV/Ptex hires exports.

IMHO its a very big selling point and I think it should be advertised on website.

[BeatKitano]

I completely agree with the above.

@artman: you can export specific volumes by hiding those unwanted (also make sure nothing is in surface mod or it crashes).

This is a game changer :>

Now i need to find the steps to make import export the same size/coordinates in zbrush and 3dcoat (i always get offset/off scale meshes). < Actualy the export as dense mesh solves that problem itself \o/ Love you Andrew !

[Mykyl]

Looking forward to trying out the mac version. Especially the snapping navigation and hopefully being able to retopo my models.

Cheers

Mike R

[artman]

@artman: you can export specific volumes by hiding those unwanted (also make sure nothing is in surface mod or it crashes).

Merci mec, it works!!

much better this way because we can export any combination of voxel layers at once!

(On my side,I dont have crashes if object are in SF mode,I even exported a proxy using this.)

Also it seems scale is respected !

Great work Andrew!

@BeatKitano :it seems now alt-click on eye icon leaves parents visible,another good surprise.

[BeatKitano]

Merci mec, it works!!

much better this way because we can export any combination of voxel layers at once!

(On my side,I dont have crashes if object are in SF mode,I even exported a proxy using this.)

Also it seems scale is respected !

Great work Andrew!

@BeatKitano :it seems now alt-click on eye icon leaves parents visible,another good surprise.

Yep it's all good, but I get lot of crash on exporting with dense quad option. Most often I need to sym copy and/or make a few strokes on the volume to export it without crashing. I hope it gets solved quickly.

Anyway very nice work Andrew, I must say all those bugfix feature completion toward useability is very engaging

[3dCoatWannabe]

I disagree with the anti-ATI sentiments. I'm currently using a 3800 and have owned primarily ATI cards in the past with two Nvidias in there. I had just as much trouble with the nvidias as I have had with the ATIs, which hasn't been much. Basically, if there was a problem with my system, it didn't matter which card I put in, both crashed under the same circumstances. Pretty much 100% of the time, problems were the result of the software in question or, usually on a newly built rig, with the configuration of the the rig (usually unstable memory). I can't think of a single time that I had a show stopping issue that turned out to be an "ATI Driver" issue in the end. I've had tons of issues with Nvidia's RAID drivers on their motherboards (I've had to pull the a specific storage driver and mix it with current MB drivers to not have crashes under high disk usage) and likely never buy a motherboard product from them again. But I've had little issue with their video cards.

Anyhow, I've said my peace. I think both companies have made great hardware and would put either into my machines anytime (though I tend to pair Nvidia with Intel set ups and ATI with AMD set ups).

With Adobe throwing their weight behind CUDA, the tide may have turned in favor of nVidia for 3D work (but not for games).

I've also had problems with Catalyst in the past, and have been very happy with nVidia GTX-285 2GB VRAM.

To be fair, you do have to be careful to research the latest drivers from nVidia, as I've had BSOD on Win7-64 due to nVidia drivers.

But GPU rendering seems to be favoring nVidia by a wide margin.

Here's a pretty cool product that uses nVidia only for rendering. Check out their GPU-X also! Very cool!

http://www.refractivesoftware.com/

[Tinker]

- SHIFT-axis-snapping while navigation done

Ееееее!!!!! Наконец то! Спасибо!

[DragonFist]

With Adobe throwing their weight behind CUDA, the tide may have turned in favor of nVidia for 3D work (but not for games).

I've also had problems with Catalyst in the past, and have been very happy with nVidia GTX-285 2GB VRAM.

To be fair, you do have to be careful to research the latest drivers from nVidia, as I've had BSOD on Win7-64 due to nVidia drivers.

But GPU rendering seems to be favoring nVidia by a wide margin.

Here's a pretty cool product that uses nVidia only for rendering. Check out their GPU-X also! Very cool!

http://www.refractivesoftware.com/

I don't argue your point. My problem is with blanket comments as to the usability of one product over an over based on "their drivers suck" when given information is likely not caused by said drivers (for example, catalyst control panel not opening shows problems well beyond a driver problem).

I don't argue that Nvidia has gained a strong step foward in the gpu rendering arena. I would not buy ATI if this was the application area I intended to use. For games, I would buy ATI at the moment. For 2D and 3D general applications, I've found no legitimate basis to prefer one over the other. I've had BSODs with either, for a while, Nvidia's drivers resulting fans shutting off(never had this issue with ATI). Most BSOD issues I've experienced when I traced them down actually had nothing to do with the video card but with either the system bus or the harddrive controller during access to the page file and were handled by upgraded (or downgraded) drivers for the motherboard. That's been my experience. Obviously, mileage may vary. I don't have the same system as others and can't base their experience on theirs. But it goes both ways.

In the end, buy what you want. I'm no ATI fanboy, I've own cards by both companies. And generally have been happy with all purchases, (one exception was the dual gpu cards ATI produced in the late 90's, they worked with almost nothing and crashed on nearly any game or app unless I disabled one gpu. Wasn't happy with that one at all.) But it bugs me a bit when I see these blanket statements made regarding one product over an other based on one bad experience that is likely a bad configuration, insufficient power supply, a bad ram stick, etc. When I installed the current card on my current system, I had crashes all the time when ever I the card was put use for 3d. Changing drivers did nothing. Returning to the old card did. Finally, I discovered that my 5 year old power supply was the problem and couldn't keep up with the new card. A new power supply handled it and I've had no issues since. And every time I've fixed someone's issues, it has been similar, the card didn't the case and was on an angle, the 3rd ram stick was bad. Old drivers from a card by the same company were never removed before installing the new one, etc., etc.

I've just never seen frequent crashes be the result of drivers from either company, with some noted exceptions, like the fan issue mentioned earlier (which was caught and handled by Nvidia with recommendation to rollback until they found the cause). Not saying it can't happen but I haven't seen it, yet I see it claimed to be the reason often.

[Andrew Shpagin]

I forgot to mention one feature in that list:

- New tool in voxels - clone. It acts like cut&clone but skips cutting.

Atrman, it is strange that export took so long, I will look, it should be much faster.

[AbnRanger]

I don't argue your point. My problem is with blanket comments as to the usability of one product over an over based on "their drivers suck" when given information is likely not caused by said drivers (for example, catalyst control panel not opening shows problems well beyond a driver problem).

I don't argue that Nvidia has gained a strong step foward in the gpu rendering arena. I would not buy ATI if this was the application area I intended to use. For games, I would buy ATI at the moment. For 2D and 3D general applications, I've found no legitimate basis to prefer one over the other. I've had BSODs with either, for a while, Nvidia's drivers resulting fans shutting off(never had this issue with ATI). Most BSOD issues I've experienced when I traced them down actually had nothing to do with the video card but with either the system bus or the harddrive controller during access to the page file and were handled by upgraded (or downgraded) drivers for the motherboard. That's been my experience. Obviously, mileage may vary. I don't have the same system as others and can't base their experience on theirs. But it goes both ways.

In the end, buy what you want. I'm no ATI fanboy, I've own cards by both companies. And generally have been happy with all purchases, (one exception was the dual gpu cards ATI produced in the late 90's, they worked with almost nothing and crashed on nearly any game or app unless I disabled one gpu. Wasn't happy with that one at all.) But it bugs me a bit when I see these blanket statements made regarding one product over an other based on one bad experience that is likely a bad configuration, insufficient power supply, a bad ram stick, etc. When I installed the current card on my current system, I had crashes all the time when ever I the card was put use for 3d. Changing drivers did nothing. Returning to the old card did. Finally, I discovered that my 5 year old power supply was the problem and couldn't keep up with the new card. A new power supply handled it and I've had no issues since. And every time I've fixed someone's issues, it has been similar, the card didn't the case and was on an angle, the 3rd ram stick was bad. Old drivers from a card by the same company were never removed before installing the new one, etc., etc.

I've just never seen frequent crashes be the result of drivers from either company, with some noted exceptions, like the fan issue mentioned earlier (which was caught and handled by Nvidia with recommendation to rollback until they found the cause). Not saying it can't happen but I haven't seen it, yet I see it claimed to be the reason often.

I pointed out back to back problems with different cards...and each time it was simply the drivers. You don't have to like it, but that is the reality of it. When you update drivers and it tells you that you have to restart your PC for the drivers to take effect and then you immediately start getting error messages upon every bootup, you can't blame that on anything but the software/drivers.

[Andrew Shpagin]

OSX build uploaded.

Win build re-uploaded too, it is compiled with better speed options, it should work even faster.

[michalis]

Thanks Andrew.

The dense quads option worked really fast (mac build). Wrong scale though, not the scale of the re-topo mesh. The export from voxels palette (the tri mesh, export scene!) is the only with same scale.

Not very useful this way. I don't find it useful anyway as the tri mesh works fine for re projection in zb or and blender.

The only use of this IMO is to work at low density voxels >1M, export quads to zbrush, do sculpture, import for 3dc retopo or voxels again, export etc etc. A zbrush applink could be fun and 3DCoat starts to look like a nice zbrush plugin. Close to my workflow but not as good LOL. Talking about zbrush, the new navigation (click+drug) needs to work opposite. I already fixed this but I prefer my blender like navigation. Unfortunately I haven't find a way to customize the ZB navigation.

So many times I wrote that 3DC is more a helper app than a stand alone in the sculpturing game. So many attacks for this, and here you are now.

As long as 3DC wont have a zb or mb like after-retopo-surface-sculpture room.