Member PhilW Posted February 6, 2011 Member Report Share Posted February 6, 2011 I have only been using 3D-Coat for a couple of days and am starting to find my way around, although it still does some unexpected things. I have produced a spaceship model with a fair degree of detail thanks to Tinker's wonderful greeble models. However when I use AUTOPO to produce a polygon model from this, a lot of the detail disappears - I went for 75,000 polys thinking this would be enough to capture a lot of the detail, but it seems to waste a lot of polys on flat surfaces and then not enough on detailed areas. I have selected the detailed areas in the AUTOPO dialogue. Is there anything else that I can do? It also took AGES to make the mesh and also to produce the UV maps, and the normal map that it produced seemed to be completely black. All help gratefully received! Thanks in advance, Phil Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
philnolan3d Posted February 6, 2011 Report Share Posted February 6, 2011 Hey another Phil. You're right it is a waste of polys to have that many on a large flat surface. For these kinds of models it really is best to retopo them by hand, it will take a little longer but you get the polys exactly where you want them. Another option could be to auto-retopo the whole thing and then delete everything except for the really complicated areas like those engine parts so that you have control over most of it but save yourself some time with those complicated areas. Either way is still faster than modeling by hand and personally I find 3DCs retopo tools kind of fun to wok with. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Member Dreamcube017 Posted February 8, 2011 Member Report Share Posted February 8, 2011 Hm I could never get retopo to work, but I'll try again. You could also autoretopo each part by clicking on the eyes of the parts you don't want to hide them. It'll only autoretop the things that are currently visible. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Member PhilW Posted February 8, 2011 Author Member Report Share Posted February 8, 2011 Hm I could never get retopo to work, but I'll try again. You could also autoretopo each part by clicking on the eyes of the parts you don't want to hide them. It'll only autoretop the things that are currently visible. Thanks for the advice. It seems a shame that 3DC is capable of easily producing some very very nice spaceship type models - especially with Tinker's models set - but then no easy way to use this in the outside world. Anyway, I thought that I would try a few tests of retopology, which is a relatively new concept for me, and to make sure that I can use models in my target 3D app, Carrara. I decided to try a simple chain loop, again very easily made in 3DC where it would be much more difficult to do with traditional modelling tools. Autopo worked fine to produce a 5k poly mesh of this - great so far! Now my problems: - in the tree on the right there are two objects produced although they are both called something like Volume11. Why are there two rather than one? Which one do I need? - when I come to export the mesh, it offers to reduce the number of polys from 1.4m polys to around 700,000 polys and produces an enormous .obj file! But the display says I onloy have around 5,000 polys - I can even see them! So why is it exporting so much. I have attache a screen dump. Sorry if this is really basic but unless I can crack this, I won't be using 3DC much longer if I can't export useful models to other apps. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Member PhilW Posted February 8, 2011 Author Member Report Share Posted February 8, 2011 Sorry the file didn't get attached... Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Advanced Member michalis Posted February 8, 2011 Advanced Member Report Share Posted February 8, 2011 I already posted this. I hope it helps. http://www.3d-coat.com/forum/index.php?showtopic=6634&view=findpost&p=56356 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Member Bob Morane Posted February 8, 2011 Member Report Share Posted February 8, 2011 ... make sure that I can use models in my target 3D app, Carrara. Hey, when i saw your name i was wondering if you were the same PhilW that created great Dynamic Hair for Carrara. I guess you are Been playing with hard surface in 3DCoat for just a little bit longer and came to the conclusion that manual retopo is the only way to go currently. Now i wish some of the retopo tools would help us make sharp edges more easily. - when I come to export the mesh, it offers to reduce the number of polys from 1.4m polys to around 700,000 polys and produces an enormous .obj file! But the display says I onloy have around 5,000 polys - I can even see them! So why is it exporting so much. I have attache a screen dump. You need to export the object from the retopo menu and not from the voxel room (or probably not from the file menu either). Export definitely works. I'm currently playing with a model made from a combination of 3DCoat retopology and Carrara modeling. Probably not the wisest idea because i've been very bad at welding parts together and my topology is really bad but it's possible. I think it takes more time to get comfortable with retopo than to be able to put some hard surface together, which can be frustrating (seeing how it's easy to create something with voxels) Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Member PhilW Posted February 8, 2011 Author Member Report Share Posted February 8, 2011 Sorry - I had a look but it doesn't help - to be honest I couldn't understand half of it. I've been doing 3D for over 20 years, but this was way over my head - perhaps I'm getting old. Just to restate my issue - Autopo has produced a mesh from my voxel object with 5044 faces - that's what it says at the bottom of the screen and that's what it looks like on screen. So why when I try to export it does it start talking about having over 1.4m. I must be missing a step or trying to export the wrong thing. I remember seeing a file menu option previously that said "export obj" or something like that. Now I am only getting File/Export and then sub-options to export model and three other options that say "high-poly mesh (0k poly). Previously I saw an option that was not a sub-menu item. Does this indicate that I need another step before my model is ready for export? Yours confused and frustrated, Phil Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Member Bob Morane Posted February 8, 2011 Member Report Share Posted February 8, 2011 Phil i think we cross posted. You need to export the object from the retopo menu and not from the voxel room (or probably not from the file menu either). Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Advanced Member michalis Posted February 8, 2011 Advanced Member Report Share Posted February 8, 2011 Sorry, I didn't understand your question. As I see on the dialog you posted, you choose to export the voxel model somehow, this is the decimator's dialog. Choose just export -after retopo and UVs, and merge for MV-. Now choose the density you like (low, medium, high) Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Member Bob Morane Posted February 8, 2011 Member Report Share Posted February 8, 2011 LOL We need to stop those cross posting. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Member PhilW Posted February 8, 2011 Author Member Report Share Posted February 8, 2011 Hi Bob, Yes we cross posted - and yes, I am that refugee from the Carrara world, so thanks for your comment. I knew it was possible, just frustrated that I couldn't work out how! Thanks for your advice - I have now successfully exported from the Retopo menu rather than the File menu in the Retopo room (you can see how people new to this can get confused!). And successfully imported into Carrara. Maybe I'll stick at it a bit longer now I'm over that hurdle! Many thanks for pointing me in the right direction. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
philnolan3d Posted February 8, 2011 Report Share Posted February 8, 2011 Thanks for the advice. It seems a shame that 3DC is capable of easily producing some very very nice spaceship type models - especially with Tinker's models set - but then no easy way to use this in the outside world. I just finished this model for a client, but with a tight deadline there wasn't time for retopo. Honestly for this sitution I didn 't even need to, I just exported the voxel model, reduced some in 3DC, then furthr in LightWave, and my client was happy with it. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Member PhilW Posted February 8, 2011 Author Member Report Share Posted February 8, 2011 You can tell I'm a Newbie at this - not at 3D generally but the capabilities of 3DC. I didn't know you could export the voxel model directly as an OBJ - just tried it and it looks great when loaded into Carrara! OK, I'm starting to like this a whole lot better... Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Member Dreamcube017 Posted February 9, 2011 Member Report Share Posted February 9, 2011 lol That's a good point. You CAN export things STRAIGHT from the voxel room and reduce them. You can further reduce them in other apps if you don't wanna retop. Then you can reimport to 3DC for painting... but just be warned, when importing back, painting may be slow unless the polycount is low enough. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Member PhilW Posted February 10, 2011 Author Member Report Share Posted February 10, 2011 Sorry I couldn't post anything yesterday - as a newbie I am limited to 5 posts a day so I couldn't post a reply. Anyway, I just wanted to say a huge "Thank You" for the help I have received. I'm feeling much more positive about using 3D-Coat and being able to export and use the models. I have done a "final" render of the spaceship that I did in 3DC and then exported to Carrara for rendering, with a little postwork in Photoshop. You can see it here: http://www.renderosity.com/mod/gallery/index.php?image_id=2167823 I was going to attach it here but that seems to have disappeared... Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Member Dreamcube017 Posted February 10, 2011 Member Report Share Posted February 10, 2011 Wow that's really nice work. Great job. Glad you got it figured out. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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