slow slow slow

[v_m]

Hi,

I've been using 3Dcoat for a while now, but only to sculpt very simple, low rez voxel things. that works great. I love the software and I'd like to be able to sculpt more than just very simple low rez objects... like... normal models, let's say a character. but as I try to model larger objects, even without refining/subdividing, voxel sculpting seems very slow. and I tried to only use the fastest tools, like I use the scrape tool or the smooth tool a lot. so my question is... how can you guys model detailed models in 3dcoat???

also, I read on the site that 3dcoat is supposed to work smoothly with 20mil poly (?? voxels maybe??..) models... that's crazy, I estimate that my models start being slow at 20k, not 20 million polys... or voxels... or whatever.

last thing, I have a new superbeefy i7 machine with 12 GB ram and an Nvidia 9800 with 1GB ram, with CUDA acceleration (although I'm not sure it works, simply because it makes no sense, I see no acceleration whatsoever, it's all slow slow slow).

so any ideas? any magic settings... things to tweak...?

[Psmith]

VM:

Voxels are definitely slower than the polygon equivalent - even on fast hardware, running the CUDA version.

The way of working that is efficient for making characters, for me, is to always work at the lowest resolution possible, only adding more if I can't get the fineness of detail I need. I tend to work with "uni-body" simple characters, so this works well.

Now, if you want to produce something more realistic, with detailed apparel or armour or what have you - working with layers and caching the ones you are not working on is the key. Working in Surface mode also makes things faster. (the caching icon is the one inside the voxel layer name, rectangular boundary area).

Don't try to add the very high frequency detail using voxels. Especially if you are making game assets. Paint these details, instead. The micro-vertex method of painting actually adds real displacement as you use the Paint Room tools. And these are becoming very fast to work with, (as Andrew improves them). The fine detail you produce, this way, can then be exported as displacement and normal map info - which is what you need if you will be taking your model elsewhere for rendering and animation.

Greg Smith

[AbnRanger]

Hi,

I've been using 3Dcoat for a while now, but only to sculpt very simple, low rez voxel things. that works great. I love the software and I'd like to be able to sculpt more than just very simple low rez objects... like... normal models, let's say a character. but as I try to model larger objects, even without refining/subdividing, voxel sculpting seems very slow. and I tried to only use the fastest tools, like I use the scrape tool or the smooth tool a lot. so my question is... how can you guys model detailed models in 3dcoat???

also, I read on the site that 3dcoat is supposed to work smoothly with 20mil poly (?? voxels maybe??..) models... that's crazy, I estimate that my models start being slow at 20k, not 20 million polys... or voxels... or whatever.

last thing, I have a new superbeefy i7 machine with 12 GB ram and an Nvidia 9800 with 1GB ram, with CUDA acceleration (although I'm not sure it works, simply because it makes no sense, I see no acceleration whatsoever, it's all slow slow slow).

so any ideas? any magic settings... things to tweak...?

Can you show us a video screen capture of this example? Til I see it with my own eyes, I won't believe it...with only one post and already trying to slam 3DC , it smells like a Troll to me.

But just in case you are sincere, you have to understand that there is a general workflow you need to adhere to in Voxels, not unlike ZBrush or Mudbox. You start out blocking in your forms at lower resolution levels and add resolution ONLY AS YOU NEED IT. So, in Volume mode, you want to get to a medium to medium high resolution level and switch to surface mode for higher levels of detail. Use Multi-Resolution for even greater speed, when making large edits.

You never mentioned what version/build of 3DC you were using, by the way. Also, with the 9800 you don't have a lot of cores on the card, and the Manual states that CUDA doesn't really start to make any difference until you're beyond 64 cores or better...and the performance scales with the # or GPU cores. I noticed a good difference just going from a GTS 250 to a 275 GTX.

[BeatKitano]

You sure have an hardware issue, or you're a troll (but that I won't judge yet).

I've a "superbeefy" machine almost like your (gtx 480 apart), and I've not yet encountered any crash or slowdown that made it unusable due to high polycount, I even went as far as 90 millions tris (just for lol i didn't need that much yet)

I suggest you to upgrade all your drivers (system and graphics card), that would be the only explaination for slow execution, because 3dc is capable to handle much higher polycount than zbrush on a cuda compatible card.

[Psmith]

Both of you guys:

Please refrain from using name calling as a question answering technique. Really, you have no idea where this person is coming from.

Simply lacking 3D-Coat experience and doing things out of order can give the impression of program unresponsiveness or slowness.

Take the Smooth tool, for instance: It really is only ideally effective, in voxel space, when working at low resolution. Move a sculpture past 74 megs or so and it has very little smoothing effect - and it definitely is less responsive. Similar slow downs can be observed with the other voxel tools at that resolution, as well.

And, about the insulting label "Troll": today it means almost nothing. People use it in every forum in place of saying to the person in question, "Hey buddy, you're an idiot". Or, "I really don't like what you're saying." The name, "Troll", was the wrong choice of metaphor, in the first place - so, I never want to see it used in these forums again.

Greg Smith

[Javis]

What CUDA toolkit version are you using? With some of the older video cards (GeForce 9 series and lower), I've gotten lots of reports of no CUDA acceleration with the CUDA toolkit versions higher than 2.3 (2.2 is the preferred one, although Andrew has updated it so you can use the newest... Most of the time the new toolkits don't work with these older video cards) and they all seem to point to little or no acceleration with older cards and new drivers.

[AbnRanger]

Both of you guys:

Please refrain from using name calling as a question answering technique. Really, you have no idea where this person is coming from.

Simply lacking 3D-Coat experience and doing things out of order can give the impression of program unresponsiveness or slowness.

Take the Smooth tool, for instance: It really is only ideally effective, in voxel space, when working at low resolution. Move a sculpture past 74 megs or so and it has very little smoothing effect - and it definitely is less responsive. Similar slow downs can be observed with the other voxel tools at that resolution, as well.

And, about the insulting label "Troll": today it means almost nothing. People use it in every forum in place of saying to the person in question, "Hey buddy, you're an idiot". Or, "I really don't like what you're saying." The name, "Troll", was the wrong choice of metaphor, in the first place - so, I never want to see it used in these forums again.

Greg Smith

Greg...it's very clear what a troll is:

http://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=troll

"One who posts a deliberately provocative message to a newsgroup or message board with the intention of causing maximum disruption and argument."

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Troll_%28Internet%29

"In Internet slang, a troll is someone who posts inflammatory, extraneous, or off-topic messages in an online community, such as an online discussion forum, chat room, or blog, with the primary intent of provoking other users into a desired emotional response[1] or of otherwise disrupting normal on-topic discussion."

In this case, it sounds like it very well could be the infamous Troll, Veehoy...who delights himself in trolling everywhere he goes. The one post and slamming a software is a dead give away. Nevertheless, I made allowances for the case that the OP may be sincere, and addressed what may be their problem.

[Psmith]

Yes, Don. I can read the history of the name, too. But, if this guy really had evil intent, it would come out, sooner or later - and we can deal with that, then. Not now, however. It is our custom, here in the U.S., that one is innocent until proven guilty - and that custom should hold true for this forum, as well. Suspicion is not grounds for conviction.

Courtesy is the rule of the day. Even to bad guys.

Plus, name calling is so . . . . unnecessary. So low. So unoriginal. I know you can do better than that, just with plain, descriptive English.

And, to complete my point about a bad metaphor: A Troll, in traditional English mythology, was a character that lived under a bridge and asked questions that you were required to answer before being allowed to cross the bridge.

What, in the world, does this have to do with a guy who is trying to stir up trouble on a forum?

I believe, the intent of the "coiners" of the term was to imply that such a disturbing person was "trolling" for fish - which is also the wrong term to describe the activity in question. What they really meant to imply was "chumming" - the act of lacing the waters with bait to attract fish to be caught. Trolling is the act of putting out numerous fishing lines, from a moving boat, every one baited, to catch the most fish with the least amount of effort.

Let's just keep our metaphors straight, shall we? And, no name calling, at all, will be tolerated on the forum. Regardless of the crime.

Greg Smith

[v_m]

Hi guys, for a second there I didn't understand why I was called a troll, but then someone pointed out the title of my post... Sorry! I guess I exaggerated with that

Anyway, thanks for explaining stuff about CUDA, yeah, on my 9800 it probably doesn't make a difference. But my drivers are up to date anyway, or at least... recent enough, I guess. I keep hearing this piece of advice in many situations, that you should update your drivers. In my experience, it never was the case that after an Nvidia driver update things would change in any noticeable way.

I do try to work from broad strokes to details... but if I use the Sphere tool for example and I set its radius to a bit too large, it gets slow and hard to paint with. I kind of noticed that if I work on smaller-sized objects and then 'Inc. res', the subdivision seems to behave better than an object at 4 times the size and lower rez... although I'm not so sure on this one... truth is, I haven't really dared to click the 'Inc. res' button too often, since things were already slow enough at the lowest level of subdivision.

I wonder if I can upload a simple scene, just so you guys can see the size of an object I would want to sculpt... but can't. It seems to me that it has to be a better way of working with 3dcoat, because I struggle with simple things like being able to have a sharp edge on an object... I don't have enough resolution to control something like that...

Anyway, it's great to know that hi rez detail is added through displacement painting. That was one of my dilemmas too. I was wondering how come I only do simple low rez objects and I have problems with that, and others sculpt skin pores in voxels... So I guess they don't.

Also, this is my first and probably only post because I don't have any other problem with 3Dcoat, it's got a simple interface and it's very intuitive, so I have no difficulties understanding it and therefore, no other questions. Thanks everyone for replying!

VM

[v_m]

OK, here is a scene file. I just grabbed the sphere tool and drew a round stroke. We are on the lowest level of subdiv. Even if I draw it slowly, the movement is still choppy and I get the result on the left. If I draw it faster I get the result on the right, and the image updates probably at something like 1 fps or so. If I draw it really quickly, I get something like a dot, the rest of the stroke doesn't register. Now, if I had a smaller sized brush, things wouldn't be a problem anymore, but I also want to be able to sculpt larger sized objects, so I have some control over details, as explained in the post above.

Thanks again for taking the time!

VM

2_strokes.zip

[Veehoy]

Greg...it's very clear what a troll is:

http://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=troll

"One who posts a deliberately provocative message to a newsgroup or message board with the intention of causing maximum disruption and argument."

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Troll_%28Internet%29

"In Internet slang, a troll is someone who posts inflammatory, extraneous, or off-topic messages in an online community, such as an online discussion forum, chat room, or blog, with the primary intent of provoking other users into a desired emotional response[1] or of otherwise disrupting normal on-topic discussion."

In this case, it sounds like it very well could be the infamous Troll, Veehoy...who delights himself in trolling everywhere he goes. The one post and slamming a software is a dead give away. Nevertheless, I made allowances for the case that the OP may be sincere, and addressed what may be their problem.

Hey, I´m famous. If you remember my name, despite me not making any posts in several months, then all that ruckus hasn´t been a complete waste of time. As far as you suspecting me of making slamming posts, I can ease your troubled mind by telling you that I usually go by Veehoy or Phungus so any thread or post that does not have either is not made by me. I´m not in the habit of disguising myself behind names like that, unlike someone in our midst here. And you´ll be hard pressed to find me slamming 3D-coat anywhere, I have contained my slamming to be about a named few, that has been making deliberate off-topic post in a very obvious plan to disrupt normal on-topic discussions. Sounds familiar? If you don´t make the connection (see quote), maybe this will help: Troll?

And if you find the title of this thread and first post to be slamming you are way to sensitive....but that does not surprise me when it comes to you....

[AbnRanger]

Hey, I´m famous. If you remembers my name, despite me not making any posts in several months, then all that ruckus hasn´t been a complete waste of time. As far as you suspecting me of making slamming posts, I can ease your troubled mind by telling you that I usually go by Veehoy or Phungus so any thread or post that does not have either is not made by me. I´m not in the habit of disguising myself behind names like that, unlike someone in our midst here. And you´ll be hard pressed to find me slamming 3D-coat anywhere, I have contained my slamming to be about a named few, that has been making deliberate off-topic post in a very obvious plan to disrupt normal on-topic discussions. Sounds familiar? If you don´t make the connection, maybe this will help: Troll?

And if you find the title of this thread and first post to be slamming you are way to sensitive....but that does not surprise me when it comes to you....

Need I say more, Greg? Funny how he just magically appears (out of nowhere) when the word "troll" is used.

[Veehoy]

Well, calling someone troll is the same as attacking someone so what did you expect?

[michalis]

I do try to work from broad strokes to details...

Broad strokes is the wise way to get involved in real art. IMO of course.

I have the best performance at 1-2M. Behavior of tools is more natural there. (on the mac build of course). This 20k you mentioned is a little bit ... (but doesn't make you a troll of course LOL)

@pSmith

Take the Smooth tool, for instance

Yeah, the smooth tool loses its power at hi density meshes. But this is also happening in zbrush. The pixo guys introduced a new 'heavy' smooth tool for the case. Maybe Andrew could have a checker for this.

As for the troll thing,

AbnRanger, you'll probably have the last word here. So I read what 'troll' means. Please try not to become the troll here - Veehoy, you too - because what you're writing is really 'off topic'.

[AbnRanger]

...As for the troll thing,

AbnRanger, you'll probably have the last word here. So I read what 'troll' means. Please try not to become the troll here...

You know me...I'm only a one-trick pony. If someone comes here to bash the application and/or Andrew, I tend to speak up.

[Veehoy]

I am referring to your qouted post just to make that clear. And as I already said, I don´t hide behind false names/fake users.....that kind of scheming is your department.

[AbnRanger]

I am referring to your qouted post just to make that clear. And as I already said, I don´t hide behind false names/fake users.....that kind of scheming is your department.

So, for the record, then...explain how you come out of nowhere with your first post, once your name is mentioned in this thread. All within a 24hr period.

[Veehoy]

I was convinced I already had a user profile here, but must have been mistaken. Anyways, I registered a new one now. That isn´t synonomous with this being the first time I have been here though, quite the contrary in fact.

And for the record, no, we aren´t the same person. You probably could convince the moderators to do an IP check or something, just to satisfy your suspicious mind. But believe me, I am as straightforward and honest as they come about my opinions and myself and see no reason to hide, but I can see why this would appear strange to you, as it would take one to know one...

I haven´t seen you mentioning me anywhere here before, so if that has happened it must have passed me by, but I probably would have responded then if that was the case. After all, I am here now, right? Do you really believe you are so intimidating that i would have to resort to that kind of cavedweller behaviour? Get over yourself.

[Veehoy]

Like I said, I have been here on a regular basis. Previously, I had no reason to post, since I did not own 3D-Coat. That has changed, though I´m not as evangelic about it as you and your "brethren." (I guess they know who they are). 3D-Coat is a tool... and I am more interested in using the tool than being one. And I´m just not the kind of person to shoot my mouth off at every chance I get in the assumption that everything say is interesting......

[AbnRanger]

OK, here is a scene file. I just grabbed the sphere tool and drew a round stroke. We are on the lowest level of subdiv. Even if I draw it slowly, the movement is still choppy and I get the result on the left. If I draw it faster I get the result on the right, and the image updates probably at something like 1 fps or so. If I draw it really quickly, I get something like a dot, the rest of the stroke doesn't register. Now, if I had a smaller sized brush, things wouldn't be a problem anymore, but I also want to be able to sculpt larger sized objects, so I have some control over details, as explained in the post above.

Thanks again for taking the time!

VM

Try going to your 3D Coat Directory in "My Documents (in Windows...assuming), and delete the "Options.XML" file. Once you open 3D Coat again, it will generate a new one. There is some funny behavior at times, related to that file...I'm not sure why. But it does help to fix some strange behaviors. Beyond that, you can also just try to keep your brush radius down a bit more when in Volume mode (indicated by the little square icon in the Vox Tree layer). If you want more speed, switch to Surface Mode or cache your layer and try to work on the proxy. The sculpt speed there is very fast and the changes will be applied to the original when you uncache. If you have some anomalies or stray artifacts, you can try right-clicking and select "Fill Voids"...sometimes there are hidden holes in the object and this helps clean things up.

Like I said, I have been here on a regular basis. Previously, I had no reason to post, since I did not own 3D-Coat. That has changed, though I´m not as evangelic about it as you and your "brethren." (I guess they know who they are). 3D-Coat is a tool... and I am more interested in using the tool than being one. And I´m just not the kind of person to shoot my mouth off at every chance I get in the assumption that everything say is interesting......

Oh, really? And just what are you doing with this post?

[BeatKitano]

AbnRanger, I will resume: don't care. If you really want to fight do it in private. There's no point in discussing this things in public.

v_m: I guess, I didn't download your file but judging by your description, is that you started with a really big object, which accumulate lots of points already, and since it wasn't enough you up resed a few times.

The problem is the object is so large you need a huge brush radius to use broad strokes. It's a beginner error, I know I've been there ^^

What you should do, is start kinda small, even if it's very low res and not really easy to sculpt, then up res. Because if you start big, you need big brushes, and brush size is the big bottleneck in 3dc so far.

Also sorry for "calling" you a troll (I wasn't saying you are a troll I added I won't judge that so quickly), I guess PSmith didn't see the nuance. nevermind I see now that you're sincere, and I hope this will help you a bit.

[Veehoy]

Oh, really? And just what are you doing with this post?

Thought you might give me some leverage there, especially since you have used up yours a looooong time ago

[v_m]

Try going to your 3D Coat Directory in "My Documents (in Windows...assuming), and delete the "Options.XML" file. Once you open 3D Coat again, it will generate a new one. There is some funny behavior at times, related to that file...I'm not sure why. But it does help to fix some strange behaviors. Beyond that, you can also just try to keep your brush radius down a bit more when in Volume mode (indicated by the little square icon in the Vox Tree layer). If you want more speed, switch to Surface Mode or cache your layer and try to work on the proxy. The sculpt speed there is very fast and the changes will be applied to the original when you uncache. If you have some anomalies or stray artifacts, you can try right-clicking and select "Fill Voids"...sometimes there are hidden holes in the object and this helps clean things up.

Thanks for the tips

Edit:

Wait... there is a Volume mode and a Surface mode? I didn't know that... Wow, Surface mode is fast!! I only worked in Volume mode before, damn...

[michalis]

Wait... there is a Volume mode and a Surface mode? I didn't know that... Wow, Surface mode is fast!! I only worked in Volume mode before, damn...

Hey, use the volume mode first. Watch some tutorial videos, you'll find your own workflow, I'm sure. You may start having a low density voxel room but if you start adding volumes (broad strokes) watch the counter. For adding geometry you better be in volume mode.

As a mac user I have to work on the 32 bit no cuda 3DC build. So its me who could have these problems. But I don't really, not with the recent builds. I'm using zbrush for the rest of the work, thats all. All the serious job is happening in 3DC, I use zb for details, for setting up poses and for constructing a multi-res model.

[AbnRanger]

Thought you might give me some leverage there, especially since you have used up yours a looooong time ago

From here on out, if you have anything to say to me, do it via PM. I'll do the same. No sense in having a peeing contest here in public, and going way off topic.

[AbnRanger]

Thanks for the tips

Edit:

Wait... there is a Volume mode and a Surface mode? I didn't know that... Wow, Surface mode is fast!! I only worked in Volume mode before, damn...

What you want to do is use volume to build up to a medium resolution, and then Surface mode thereafter. If you need even more speed for things that make volume mode slow down, then cache the layer you're working on and make those changes to the lower res proxy. When you un-cache it will apply those changes to the original layer state.

It's how 3DC does Multi-Res. It's really fast and let's you use very large brush radius' without any real penalty. You'll probably want to use Multi- res on a frequent basis. I tried doing a demo video showing all of this, but it seemed to run too long, so I gave up on it.

[philnolan3d]

On my current model I didn't even need to stay in Surface mode for most of it. I think my full thing was 16 layers, 2 or 3 of them were in Surface mode when I was finished.

[Digital777]

Yeah if you use layers that helps things a lot. If it's just 1 object/part on a layer it also allows you to have very high resolution, even if things get slow then you can just switch to another layer after and it will be fast again.

[v_m]

Thanks again guys. All this talk about layers takes me to another little question... how do you guys model clothes... I tried using copy, on a separate layer, but I don't know how to do this properly, how to offset the cloth as much as I need and how to control its thickness. Is there a tutorial on modeling clothes with 3dcoat?

[AbnRanger]

Thanks again guys. All this talk about layers takes me to another little question... how do you guys model clothes... I tried using copy, on a separate layer, but I don't know how to do this properly, how to offset the cloth as much as I need and how to control its thickness. Is there a tutorial on modeling clothes with 3dcoat?

At the bottom of the Vox Tree panel, you have an icon to duplicate the layer, to which you could then right-click > "Extract Skin" > Make Hull (Surface or Voxel...your choice). You could then right click that layer again and select "Extrude"... 2-4 units may be enough. You could then use the Transform tool to scale it uniformly just a smidge, to offset it from the body. You'll just have to play with it a bit.

The other option, and this may be your preferred option is to go into the Retopo Room and build geometry where you want the clothes to be, and do them separately on different Retopo Layers (make sure to name them correctly, as you'll need to know which one to select later on). In the top portion of the UI, you will see a slider for offseting the layer, called "Additional Extrusion". This is perfect for clothes. Once you have this, you can now go back to the Voxel Room, make a new layer (click the little "New Layer" Icon at the bottom of the Vox Tree panel), double-click it and re-name it "clothes." Then click the little "+" on the clothes to create a child layer, and rename it whatever clothing layer you want (shirt, pants, Coat, etc.).

By making a master "Clothes" layer, you can use it like you would a "Group" layer in Photoshop. With one click, you can hide and unhide all the child layers by clicking on the visibilty (eye) icon. And you can expand/collapse all those layers, like you would a Group layer in PS, when you're done with them, to keep the layer panel nice and tidy.

Once you have your layer and you're ready to work with it in the Voxel Room ( to add further elements like buttons, pockets, seams, etc., or sculpt wrinkles and such), you can merge and select "Pick from Retopo Room" in the Tool Options panel. You could also choose the Cloth Tool, and do the same "Pick from Retopo Room"...subdivide it as much as you need to and run the Cloth Simulation on it. It actually works pretty well for shirts, robes, coat's, etc. But one thing I have found from experience is that if you have a folded collar, I would leave it out until after you've done the sim, and then construct it in Voxels or when you move it to your preferred 3D package.

I think Phil has a little demo of using the Cloth Tool on Vimeo and Youtube....you could search those sites with "3D Coat, Cloth" or something similar.