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3DCoat From Scratch (Video Training)


Psmith
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Well I also own groboto and its a cheap and interesting app.

Parametric volumes are great and topology is almost excellent. The problem (a serious one) is that you can recognize the groboto style from miles away. Trying to edit these primitives and in most cases retopology is needed again.

Your work , psmith, on tutorials is excellent. :clapping: The missing tutorials.

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The missing tutorials are coming up, shortly. There have been a few technical issues I wanted to straighten out with Andrew about AUTOPO and painting functionality before leading anybody into it. But, these should be solved soon - and then we can go forward.

Michalis: Have you seen the new "smoothing" functions in Groboto 3 - plus all of the boolean functions? It is true, the Groboto "Bot" construction method is visible 10 miles away - but all this new stuff makes it much more generically functional - and allows total originality.

Groboto Smoothing

Greg Smith

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A small, but not unimportant tip for video tutors: If you have waiting times, f.e. when the app is calculating something and shows a progress bar, try to use this time to explain something, if needed. But if you have nothing to say, just delete this part of the video. The viewers are not forced to wait for the next tutorial step.

Don't show the same steps more then twice. Example: You are using Autopo for several objects by single, show the progress for one or two objects, and delete the video part for the rest, then just say: "Replay this steps for the rest of the scene". This is enough and will be understood by the user. :)

Additionally this makes your tutorial flow easy to follow and the video file size smaller, too.

Best wishes

Chris

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A small, but not unimportant tip for video tutors: If you have waiting times, f.e. when the app is calculating something and shows a progress bar, try to use this time to explain something, if needed. But if you have nothing to say, just delete this part of the video. The viewers are not forced to wait for the next tutorial step.

Don't show the same steps more then twice. Example: You are using Autopo for several objects by single, show the progress for one or two objects, and delete the video part for the rest, then just say: "Replay this steps for the rest of the scene". This is enough and will be understood by the user. :)

Additionally this makes your tutorial flow easy to follow and the video file size smaller, too.

Best wishes

Chris

IMO, Chris' remarks reflect his expert knowledge, but a real newbie will benefit from the leisurely pace of the narrative and the repetition. :good:

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I agree, to the extent that there are some things I don't particularly like, at times (n-gons and sometimes the loops spiral instead of the algorithm making closed loops). But then, once again, it's not intended to be a replacement for Manual Retopology. It's intended to be a tool to use when precise CONTROL (over topology) isn't completely necessary. The idea of adding guides and painting areas of density is an effort to meet somewhere in the middle...between Total control (manual) and No control (automation). I'm sure Andrew will continue to make some improvements over time. Adding the "Dot-Loop/Ring" feature I mentioned (many times) would help expedite the cleanup phase.

+1

I'm wondering though... loops rings and autopo is a fast method to have a more suitable base mesh for surface sculpting (zbrush)

What if: we could manually construct topology in some parts and ask autopo to do the rest? Just a thought. Its not similar to just autopo and edit after. Not always as easy as it looks like.

BTW abnranger, yes I can export a high density quad mesh but I really don't like it. Rather useless for me.

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I actually thought that would be perfect as well. Create topology where you know you can do better then autopo finish it off. However I would say this would be good in addition to the current way of doing it. No idea if its possible of course. :)

Cheers

Mike R

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This is a great tut. I personally like the delay, it gives me time to reflect in 3DC what was shown. Cant wait for the next session!

Thanks

V

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Hello,

I'm a very new user of 3D-Coat and I wanted to say thanks for posting these tutorials.

I just watched the first episode, and I already run into an issue. So I hope you don't mind asking for some advice in this thread (if this is not the appropriate forum section, please feel free to move it).

The issue I'm having is when I want to place the sphere for the rat's head. No matter what I do, I always end up with 2 spheres side by side, even when I zoom all the way to align the blue dots (which are red for me btw.) I actually had the same issue with the SNAKE tool for the neck, I did get "double necks" goin all over the place, but somehow managed to get a single one at some time.

Thanks in advance for any help on this.

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What if: we could manually construct topology in some parts and ask autopo to do the rest? Just a thought. Its not similar to just autopo and edit after. Not always as easy as it looks like.

You can do that already...Autopo first, then select poly's you want to redo manually, delete them, and rebuild. Also, the Strokes Tool is like a mini Auto Retopology tool on it's own (that's why early on I suggested Andrew make Autopo essentially the Strokes tool on steroids), as you can draw your guides/strokes and hit enter for it to construct the poly's for you.
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It is tricky to align those little dots. What I have found to work for placing, first the neck and then the sphere, is to right click, first, right on that line of symmetry, directly where you want the neck to begin, and immediately start brushing upward - it takes practice.

For the sphere, right click first, on the line of symmetry, move your cursor straight up - fairly high above the neck, aligning the 2 dots - then left click - this also takes some practice.

But, this is not the only way to place a sphere or paint a neck.

Try using the "Curves" tool - placing 3 nodes of the right diameter, right on the line of symmetry - pressing "Enter" when you have the shape you want.

Use the "Primitives" tool, set to "Transform" in the Tool Panel, and manually align the sphere by means of the widget. You can even turn off "Symmetry across the X axis" for this one action - turning it back on when you are done.

Greg Smith

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  • 1 month later...
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Greg - VERY cool tutorials!! You have a great voice and a lot of talent for teaching. Really helped me with some basic concepts and brought up features I didn't know existed.

I've downloaded all 7 and have one question, that is probably obvious to everyone except for me.

How does one get the teeth into the mouth, to use in a program like Lightwave?

I didn't see any precise measurements being made, so I'm very curious about how they will fit and work in the final step to get the teeth into the mouth and then setup some morphs or animation to be able to use the teeth?

It would be great to see the mouse actually use the animated teeth.

Thanks!!

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Sorry for the late reply.

I've been in San Francisco demonstrating 3D-Coat to the Game Developer's Conference crowd. About 30 from the 9 biggest game studios. It went well.

So, I am just now reading the forum again. The teeth are just a voxel object like the Rat is a voxel object. In the Voxel Room, use the "Merge" command to add the teeth to their own layer, (Merge works with .3b files - which is what the Teeth are.) While merging, use the Transform widget to position and size the Teeth inside the mouth.

Since the Rat and the Teeth are on their own layers, and the Rat already has mesh topology, (through AUTOPO), run the AUTOPO routine on the teeth layer. When finished, they will end up on their own layer in the Retopo Room.

From there, use "Merge for per-pixel with NM" from the Retopo menu, (or any other "Merge" command) - and you end up with both the Rat and the Teeth on their own layers in both the Sculpt Room and the Paint Room.

Since everything now fits, you can just export both meshes and their corresponding textures in the format of your choice for use in an app that has animation. I'll be getting to that in some future videos.

Think about these things - the process is very linear, and applicable to most everything you'll be making in 3D-Coat - for use elsewhere.

Hang in there - good things are coming.

Greg Smith

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So Ive been learning a lot from all the videos u post and this is what i came up with. and i was wondering when would be the right time to dress the model and how would i go about doing that. right now all i have is the voxel shape and im a little rusty at retopology right now but im currently watching the pirate tutorial. Any resource the shows how to retop a whole body? or should i go with my gut? Sorry i have so many questions, im a mega noob at this, just trying to get some help. well if i can figure out how to post the picture i will show u135336424768.jpg

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You can use AUTOPO as a starting point for adding topology to this model of yours. I believe you could use the same kinds of guides that I demonstrate when using AUTOPO for the Rat model. That part of the tutorial is worth watching a few times to see how to progress from using no guides to using a lot of them - and what kind of result to expect.

The face will be the hardest to get right - and you might refer to the Pirate tutorial for an example of placing guides and density shading to get an acceptable result.

Greg Smith

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well i was able to retopologize with auto top but there's a huge gash in the eye so i kinda have to do the eyes myself. Not that big of a deal but im getting there. I was wondering if it was a good idea to raise the approximate polycount to a higher amount sense the object was a whole body. you weren't kidding about the face its really hard to get that right but im still practicing. the eye on your left is the one with the huge gash in it and the one on the right im still working on. How could i have avoided this problem from happening if u know? thank you sir 135353211592.jpg

135353298027.jpg thanks for your help with all of this. If im bothering you just let me know I dont really mean too.

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One thing that helps before you run AUTOPO - increase the resolution of your sculpt using "Res+" till you are using 71mb of memory - or larger.

Also, using the default "3000" is probably far too small a number for overall polygons, since your sculpture includes the whole body. Try 12,000 and see what you get.

Trial and error is the key.

Greg Smith

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  • 7 months later...
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Mike:

The closest I've gotten to "success" with hard surface, rectilinear objects, is to place guide strokes very close to the hard surface edge, (on both sides), which produces a rectangular grid of quadrangles, fairly close to these edges and, also, across all surfaces.

Spherical objects are best "guided" by placing "all the way through" guides, in a rectilinear fashion - the sphere is then treated like a "spherized" cube, (ala Blender).

But, AUTOPO has not really been engineered with hard surfaces in mind.

There is an interesting development in this kind of auto topology, though, that's happening with the guys from Groboto. Their routines are excellent, and now nearly anything can be modeled by means of boolean functions, inside Groboto, (very cheap and intuitive to use). Using this pipeline, it now becomes possible to make hard surfaced objects over there and import them for texturing inside 3D-Coat.

Check it out: (make sure to read the "Mesh Structure" section).

Groboto 3 Auto meshing

Greg Smith

I have groboto, but I'm on windows , so it's missing features, and judging by their lack of any responses on their forum for some time now... I'm afraid I may never get that upgrade I already paid for... It's fun to play with, but without equal features to the Mac version.... it feels like I bought crippleware.... It does make nice meshes, but with the way its' interface works now, I can make similar looking models in 3D-coat or Z-brush more quickly even if it takes more planning. I also have issues trying to use Groboto with my Wacom tablet.

Nice vids by the way... I watched most of them some time ago before ever purchasing 3D-coat.

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  • 7 months later...
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I'm watching the "Rat From Scratch" video tutorial which appears to be made with an older version on 3D Coat. I've been able to translate everything to V4 just fine until the 4rth video.

 

I can't get a Sphere and a Cylinder in the scene at the same time. When I click sphere in the Tool Option (which is in a free floating window and not on the right side of the screen like it shows in the video) the cylinder disappears. If I click cylinder it reappears but now the sphere disappears.

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