How to: hard surface voxel sculpting / carve out to set depth

[Gian-Reto]

Hi all

I have 2 questions concerning the 3D Coat Voxel room....

I'm trying to do some environment sculpts and ran into 2 problems with it...

1) when sculpting rock, I find it very hard to get hard edges. It seems to me that 3D Coat sculpting just is not up to the task, but then again, it might be my missing knowledge of the tool. Are there any special tools or a special workflow that make sculpting Rock / Hard Edges easier? Any good videos on the net on that (found a lot for zBrush, but none for 3D Coat)?

2) When I try to sculpt buildings I came across a different problem: I can get the general shape of the building in no time with the primitive objects... but, is there an easy way to carve out windows or doors to a set depth?

I would imagine that there needs to be a way one can set how deep a tool can carve into an Object, but I haven't found a way to achieve that yet. Any ideas?

Thanks for helping out in advance

Gian-Reto

[Gravin]

Hi all

I have 2 questions concerning the 3D Coat Voxel room....

I'm trying to do some environment sculpts and ran into 2 problems with it...

1) when sculpting rock, I find it very hard to get hard edges. It seems to me that 3D Coat sculpting just is not up to the task, but then again, it might be my missing knowledge of the tool. Are there any special tools or a special workflow that make sculpting Rock / Hard Edges easier? Any good videos on the net on that (found a lot for zBrush, but none for 3D Coat)?

2) When I try to sculpt buildings I came across a different problem: I can get the general shape of the building in no time with the primitive objects... but, is there an easy way to carve out windows or doors to a set depth?

I would imagine that there needs to be a way one can set how deep a tool can carve into an Object, but I haven't found a way to achieve that yet. Any ideas?

Thanks for helping out in advance

Gian-Reto

I'm still learning all the tricks and techniques in the voxel room myself. Voxels do seem to want to be kind of blob like and organic in 3dCoat but there are a few ways to get hard flat angles and edges. The plane, cut and any of the curve based brush modes combined with the ctrl modifier. You could also build up your forms using primitives. This is just what I've been able figure out on my own so far so someone more experienced may step in with better advice. I think the primitives might be a good solution for your window problem, just place a cube primitive sized to the desired opening shape so that it intersects with the building at the desired depth and hold cntl while pressing enter or apply and it should remove the primitives volume from the side of the building.

[tree321]

To expand on Gravins suggestions I have included link to video.

Sorry no audio.

http://www.screencast.com/t/S4BGvOEhXqj

[Gravin]

To expand on Gravins suggestions I have included link to video.

Sorry no audio.

http://www.screencast.com/t/S4BGvOEhXqj

Very interesting, what are you doing to create the duplicates around 3:20?

[Gian-Reto]

Good suggestions so far.... I think I will have to look into creating my own Window primitive with a negative Volume, that might just do the trick.

thanks

[AbnRanger]

Hi all

I have 2 questions concerning the 3D Coat Voxel room....

I'm trying to do some environment sculpts and ran into 2 problems with it...

1) when sculpting rock, I find it very hard to get hard edges. It seems to me that 3D Coat sculpting just is not up to the task, but then again, it might be my missing knowledge of the tool. Are there any special tools or a special workflow that make sculpting Rock / Hard Edges easier? Any good videos on the net on that (found a lot for zBrush, but none for 3D Coat)?

2) When I try to sculpt buildings I came across a different problem: I can get the general shape of the building in no time with the primitive objects... but, is there an easy way to carve out windows or doors to a set depth?

I would imagine that there needs to be a way one can set how deep a tool can carve into an Object, but I haven't found a way to achieve that yet. Any ideas?

Thanks for helping out in advance

Gian-Reto

There are plenty of tools for obtaining hard edges, especially in Surface mode (flatten, chisel etc.). There is the scrape tool and plane tool in Voxel mode..Not to mention using the Pinch tool.

Nevertheless, what will help the most is getting familiarized with the different stroke types (including splines) in the E-Panel (above the tools pallet and appears under your cursor with the E shortcut key). That opens sculpting in 3D Coat in a big way. And yes, you can use the spline tools to punch out whatever you draw and with depth (there is a depth checkbox and parameter control in the E-panel).

One thing that is often overlooked is that some of the best sculpting tools (for ultra high detail) aren't necessarily in the Voxel Workspace...but in the Paint Room (image-based sculpting). You can blend and mask your details there much the same way you do in ZB or MB. Many cast aspersions about the application without even being aware of this.

[Gian-Reto]

Okay, back to 3D Coat, trying out all these tools. From 5 minutes playing around with the pinch tool I already see that I might have overlooked this tool before for no reason, seems to work fine, giving me nice sharp edges.

Thanks for all the suggestions!

[AbnRanger]

I meant to say Flatten and chisel in Surface mode. There is also FlattenClay in the Live Clay tools (some newly developed tools in Beta Stage). To use LiveClay, you will need to check "Show Beta tools" in the Preference dialogue (from EDIT menu). It's toward the top. One thing you could do, to quickly carve out hard edges is to use the Cutoff tool in Volume mode. Just use something like the Lasso select in the E-Panel and just start dragging over pieces to trim them off, as you rotate about the model. Another trick is to use the Hide tool to select a an area you want to preserve (much like you would with the Freeze tool in ZBrush or Mudbox) and you can build around the edges. As soon as you unhide, you have a nice crisp seam on the border.

You have to switch to Surface mode to use the Freeze tool (you can assign it the same hotkey for freezing in ZB or MB if that is what you're used to). CTRL + SHIFT + I will invert the freeze selection and CTRL + D to drop the freeze selection (the same hotkeys as selections in Photoshop). The Pose tool let's you select with various modes, including using pens from the E-Panel splines. Crafty use of the Pose tool will also give you all kinds of hard edge and extrusion capability. Try to get comfortable with the B-Splines in the E-Panel and the Pose tool (including the new Freeform deformation cages). Both are very versatile, you'll find yourself using them on a regular basis.

[philnolan3d]

Another good choice sharp corners is to first use the LC Crease tool, then pinch that. Using Ctrl with Crease changes it to convex as opposed to concave without it.