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3D-Coat 3.7 updates thread


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Great job implementing paint Andrew! Just a couple problems: Cavity painting crashes Coat. (I sent report). When switching to render and moving screen, anomalies occur.(see image) Would be great to see specular painting. Windows 7 64 GL-64 cuda 64 amd phenom 4 core 8 gig ram geforce gtx 460

I wonder if it would still happen in the Direct X version. In the GL version I have problems in the render room with depth shaders with shadows turned on.

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I wonder if it would still happen in the Direct X version. In the GL version I have problems in the render room with depth shaders with shadows turned on.

You caught that one, it is the depth shaders causing the problem.

Ever since installing windows 7 I can't use DX version, I get 0x000007b error

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Thanks Andrew! So far so good with the poly painting, I can't believe how fast the brushes feel with it.

My only concern now, is that things are getting a bit complicated with the work flow. I know I mentioned it before, and it's in another thread but worth mentioning here... I think that having a general scene graph/outline panel is the best way to go, with tabs for preset tools, especially now with the ability to paint on meshes with polypaint.

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Tested some things on the new update. No change in microvertex merging. I'm not sure about the colored Export, Maybe I'm doing it wrong. I tried exporting from File > Export and loaded it into LW Modeler and I didn't have any color, just the solid white model. It doesn't even list a Vertex Color map. This is with both LWO and OBJ. One other weird thing is that every time I hit Undo in the Paint room the VoxTree pops up. I can make it go away either by closing it or switching to another room and back.

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I agree, 3dcoat is capable of so much, but the current interface is not doing a great job of presenting it all in a smooth workflow. I'd love to see a better organized interface for 3dcoat 4, with tools properly clustered, duplicate deprecated tools removed, etc. Perhaps rethink the rooms metaphor.

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I tried exporting from File > Export and loaded it into LW Modeler and I didn't have any color, just the solid white model. It doesn't even list a Vertex Color map. This is with both LWO and OBJ.

I'm using LW 9.61 and I can load a lwo with vertex painting, but I had to do 2 things before it worked.

1. Change my shading method to multitexture shading from glsl shading in the Display Options -> GL dialog.

2. Assign the vertex color map to the surface in Surface Editor -> Advanced -> Vertex Color Map.

Also, several times I almost exported my painted sculpt from the paint room instead of going back to the voxel room.

On another note, Andrew I would love to be able to assign shortcut keys to each room.

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Wow!! Congrats Andrew! Very efficient painting on hires,speed is very impressive and layer blending is awesome!!

Symm copy also work to resym polypainted volumes using their own symmetry plane keeping all painting...very good surprise. :)

Suggestions/requests:

-Baking shader to a polypaint layer with one click.(I mean really nice corespondence baking..using blended projected screen renders maybe?)

-User can paint using symmetry plane of current volume space instead of Paintroom plane.

-Possibility to use the "old" Occlusion tool..(I always liked that tool:))

-Possibility to use "Edit projection in External editor".

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I'm using LW 9.61 and I can load a lwo with vertex painting, but I had to do 2 things before it worked.

1. Change my shading method to multitexture shading from glsl shading in the Display Options -> GL dialog.

2. Assign the vertex color map to the surface in Surface Editor -> Advanced -> Vertex Color Map.

Also, several times I almost exported my painted sculpt from the paint room instead of going back to the voxel room.

On another note, Andrew I would love to be able to assign shortcut keys to each room.

Can't see it in modeller. I turned on glsl don't see any colors.

I exported from voxel room voxtree with obj and lwo still nothing.

edit. ah without glsl its ok. just have to turn on advance vertex map.

really cool Andrew! Here's a quick sculpt and quick export to lightwave.

3dcoattest.jpg

Btw obj does not work. No vertex colors.

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Another feature I like about polypainting is that you can continue sculpting in surface mode after applying some color and the current color in that area is added to the newly created polygon vertices. This will be great for when you want to do some fine tuning of your sculpting. Maybe a little clean up but that is a time saver for sure...

I can see how this would be great for working with clients. They want a liittle adjusting here and there. You could do all that without retopo, uv or baking first...

I'm not a professional employed in the industry but making a educated guess...

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Hi Andrew

First off great Job .Painted Zbrush models import in great.I ran some tests with Xnormal and couldn't get vertex colours to appear in the bake from either .obj or .lwo .Although I may be exporting in the wrong way as I notice that some of the guys have mentioned exporting from the voxel room .Ive tried exporting from the file menu and the right clicking the voxel layer and exporting both .OBJ and .LWO both work to extract normal info but no vertex colours coming through at all.

Ive also ran some tests with other formats that Xnormal supports .FBX unfortunately I cant get vertex colours coming through ,Collada I did manage to get vertex colours to show in the render from xnormal.

Import and export speed is dramatically faster with this build Andrew .Nice work.

vcimporttest.jpg

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What I like about it is the fact that you don't have to sacrifice polycount in order to start painting. I've never been a huge fan of stuff that looks like it's been normal mapped. It loses something for me. This way I can paint directly onto my hi-res sculpt. I'll have to figure out what my options are from this point on if I wanted to do some rigging and animation though. How do people get stuff out of Zbrush into Maya or other 3d programs while keeping the hi-res details? Can/will we be able to do that from 3d-Coat?

Thanks,

Gavin

You can get high res zbrush models into max ,maya and especially with Softimage .Softimage is by far the most powerful of the three in terms of throwing polygons around,so much so that it can handle more polygons than zbrush can at one time ( single subtool ) due to its gigapolygon core.I ran a test a year ago and I was moving a scene around of 90+ million triangles.And if you import the model without displaying it in the viewport you can render out over a billion ...it was capable of doing that 3 years ago ,so probably double that with the 2012 version.Xnormal can handle a lot too and its very quick ,and bakes models very nicely with less normal map seams than other systems I have tried,also the ambient occlusion baking is a lot faster than other systems too.Although I havent tried 3Dcoat baking system yet so I cant compare.

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You can get high res zbrush models into max ,maya and especially with Softimage .Softimage is by far the most powerful of the three in terms of throwing polygons around,so much so that it can handle more polygons than zbrush can at one time ( single subtool ) due to its gigapolygon core.I ran a test a year ago and I was moving a scene around of 90+ million triangles.And if you import the model without displaying it in the viewport you can render out over a billion ...it was capable of doing that 3 years ago ,so probably double that with the 2012 version.Xnormal can handle a lot too and its very quick ,and bakes models very nicely with less normal map seams than other systems I have tried,also the ambient occlusion baking is a lot faster than other systems too.Although I havent tried 3Dcoat baking system yet so I cant compare.

Nice, I will see if I can bring my sculpts into Softimage. I actually have an old copy that I won when I was in school!

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Vertex painting is the equivalent of voxels-surf then retopo.

Do your artwork first, see if it's valid somehow, then find a way you like to transfer it.

So, what's the argument on this? There's some potential on this method. If there's an argument, it can be similar to, why hard surface sculpting when lot of apps are capable for this kind of modeling? Without the need of retopo etc.

Similarly, why to sculpt an animated figure (pixar like) and not just start box modeling, then, sculpt a bit, finish?

Because the concept counts and nothing else.

Lot of professionals around, but, what will be the future of all these engines, you can't be sure.

Games. What about cinema, illustrations...

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The paint room began to be a important element for voxel and surface sculpters and texture artists with the last beta updates. I love the new functionality too.

So I have a silent question:

Is there a chance to begin to hope for a bugfree paint room now? There are already 22 issues reported in mantis, all related to the paint area...

I don't ask about the other open issues.

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This is why I chose to buy 3D Coat, fantastic support and quick updates. This new "polypainting" feature works really great. Still having trouble exporting it though. The only real issue I've run into so far is when I undo. Sometimes the display doesn't update and still shows the paint I removed. Other than that, I'm really loving it. Retopo, painting, UV mapping, and boolean operations are superior to ZBrush IMHO. ZB still has the better brush system, though I've discovered through trial and error that 3DC can actually mimic ZB quite well in this area. It just takes more tweaking and patience. Masking is better in ZB too, but I've also noticed there are several things that are just easier in 3DC, like stencils, creating/tweaking custom brushes, and painting for example. Now if only 3DC could match the materials and render quality of ZB, that would be mind blowing. ;)

Speaking of undo, is anyone else having difficulty getting 3DC to see their 3dConnexion buttons whenever their mapped to undo and redo? All other mappings work fine, so it's not the physical buttons on the device that are the problem. I posted about this in the support area but haven't gotten a response. Since this thread is so hot right now, I felt it might be worth mentioning in case it's a bug.

And on the topic of my new 3d "mouse", all I can say is that I'm blown away. I had some trouble getting used to it in the beginning (yesterday lol), but never while in 3ds Max. After sitting down and changing some settings (turned roll off, rotate around Y axis turned on, and a speed increase for two of the six axis) it now matches Max perfectly. After that, the difference in speed and ease while sculpting was huge! Why anyone wouldn't want to support these things is beyond me because they're awesome. I don't usually use a tablet in Max, but gave it a try today anyways. I've never worked faster (and I mean a lot faster) despite my familiarity with Max's hotkeys and navigation. My SpaceMouse Pro was worth every penny, so thanks to all the other users who gave me the push I needed. :wub:

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Speaking of undo, is anyone else having difficulty getting 3DC to see their 3dConnexion buttons whenever their mapped to undo and redo?

I reported this a long time ago, it seems that no mapping with two buttons works with the 3D mouse buttons and 3DC, for example Z works, but Ctrl+Z doesmn't.

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ZB still has the better brush system, though I've discovered through trial and error that 3DC can actually mimic ZB quite well in this area. It just takes more tweaking and patience.

Can you be more specific? I'd like to know how to set up the brushes to feel better.

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Been giving Poly painting a whirl and can see that very nice results will be achievable. I am not sure if this is the right place to post this because it is a new feature. I know polypainting is still very much beta so a few bugs are to be expected.

Anyway I have experienced some areas where the edge of where you are painting becomes all jaggerdy whilst others remain a nice smooth defined edge. Now this, I thought could be because of the mesh as seems very much like the original (before voxelizing) mesh, but further painting suggest this is much more of a random effect as areas where it was becoming preasent before where no longer doing this and other areas where it wasn't preasant it was then becoming preasant. Has anyone else experienced this?

Also some areas where I painted, symmetry was not carried over to the other symmetrical side. This also seems to be a random thing.

PolyPainting%20issue.jpg

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Edit; Can 't seem to edit original post there is no edit button?

For the ubove statment ;- Regarding the symmetry not carrying over to the other side of the symmetry plane correctly, it is painting correctly but oddly when erasing it dosn't.

Note; also I am painting with numerous voxel layers, could the unselected ones be interfearing? I will try merging all layers and see if that helps.

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Can you be more specific? I'd like to know how to set up the brushes to feel better.

Id second that ,how do I tweak a brush and then save those settings as a preset for re-use later?.If it isn't available at the moment ,maybe andrew could make it available and then we could all create different brushes to be added into a library that could be included with later releases of 3DC.

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