Brushing improvements

[kay_Eva]

I'm astonished by how rapidly the brushes are improving!

Andrew once you're done, perhaps consider improving the shaders too?

Anyway the brushes extremely nice.

[digman]

This is a 2 part post:

First Part.

DX version.

Voxel Mode:

The Voxel Clay brush appears to suffer from some lag still compared to the airbrush and build brush on faster strokes.

First three strokes are with the Clay brush,

The second and third set of brush strokes are with the Airbrush and Build brushes.

500,000 tri sphere.

Now this might not be as noticeable on a powerfull computer.

Second Part is a polishing suggestion (picture inculded, voxel clay brush on the left, surface clay brush on the right)

The voxel clay brush lays down it's strokes in what I call a wormy fashion which makes it hard to build the voxel surface in a clean fashion

The surface clay brush does a good job of laying down it's strokes so they blend together as you build.

Polishing suggestion:

Make the voxel clay brush lay down it's strokes closer to how the surface clay brush lays down it's strokes.

Future Suggestions:

Once you are done fixing the current set of brushes plus polishing them including both voxel and surface mode, consider adding some more voxel brushes as they are falling behind the surface and LC brushes in having a wider range of different kinds of brushes.

If possible have a general voxel brush where we can make our own voxel brushes as you can with the LC general brush.

All these suggestions are based on the great quality of strokes we get now. Thank you!!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9R28nsqF7Jc&feature=youtu.be

[artman]

@Digman:Voxel clay brush rely heavily on Smoothing value,changing smoothing values will dramatically change effect you can get with it but of course it will never be as cool as SF clay brushes tough.Also activating Cuda smooth boost should give it a very noticable kick.

Absolute brush seems to be works correctly over Remove stretching stokes now.

I just found out "Remember pen shape" in preferences,thanx Andrew i didn't know we had this option,I guess I missed a few updates.

Invert on/off seems to be remembered correctly now.

Interpolate does not tough ,Remove strecthing and smoothing value is also not remembered when switching between brushes.

Also it seems only LC brushes can be duplicated and renamed,this should be applied to all brushes and we need also way to save/load those brushes externally for sharing.I have made some very cool hard surface brushes for 3dcoat users,much better than MahcutA and MahcutB Zbrush brushes..

[digman]

@ Artman, you are right,

The tool tip that pops up by the selection box saids that smoothing is enabled when you hold the shift key down. I thought it was just for smoothing out a stroke after you completed it or your smoothing amount when using the smooth brush.

Now, I see that if you increase it pass 100% that it directly effects the strokes too. Nice...

If it is a feature it is not clearly documented and I missed that one...

Yes, cuda enabled would boost the clay stroke but I just wanted to show Andrew without cuda there is still some lag...

Edit:

It looks like Andrew fixed the saving of created LC brushes settings when changing the general brush settiings in the lastest beta. I will post if I find it overwriting them again. 3.7.11B

[artman]

Off topic but useful infos: I remember one of you (Artman or Digman, sorry I can't remember) saying that he was using only a proven set of brush in liveclay to avoid tears and mesh explosion. Would you care to post a list here ?

I'm pretty sure the issue i've been having lately are related to the use of some bugged brushes (I suspect wrinkleclay since I added it as my default pinch before going back to normal pinch). Posting a list to narrow the field would help.

not me..

I hardly get tears and explosion unless I use resample,clean up memory or any of those weird new options,sometimes also if I use Symm copy in Sf mode but as far as brushes go I dont get any and I use mostly MUD2,Pinch,Absolute,Creaseclay,reduce +Tangentsmooth,

[digman]

That was me, BeatKitano...

I started using only a small set of brushes because of tears or possible tears in surface mode. It would happen the most often when switching between using LC brushes then using a surface mode brush. Sometimes there was no going back and fixing them unless you save the file every minute.

I posted a mantis bug report about the Rapid2 Brush a few months ago tearing the mesh but Raul left back to Cuba. The Rapid2 and Clay brush both tear the mesh in version 3.7.10A, not right away but you stroke over the same area and then ouch there is the tear.There were others but I can not remember now.

I would have to test each brush again to see if I can get it to tear the mesh with the new brush routine for version 3.7.11B

Which ones tear with you now?

The below I use 90% to 95% of the time.

A brush created with the LC general brush with custom alphas. The brush is duplicated each with it's own name and alpha for different types of sculpting.

Formbuilder, HeavyCrease and Smoother. I'm working on creating other brushes as Artman is doing as well...

Pinch brush (custom alpha) It works great with a large falloff (65%)

InflateClay, but it needs some fixing now in the current brush routine.

CreaseClay (custom alpha). I used the pinch brush to clean and tighten the edges, very similar to the video you posted.

I think Surface mode Flatten is ok too but I will test in the new version.

I'm with Artman using the clean memory and others are well, like rolling the dice. Sometimes LegacyFix will save a mesh in the current version, but as the label said use at your own risk...

I have been having some problems with mesh explosions as well, which will need to be documented. We all can test at times but know one wants to test all the time...

To Andrew, you are busy so the above is not a refection of your desire to have a clean running program, you are only one man handling a large complex program.

[digman]

GeneralBrush is creating errors in the mesh shown in the video.

Settings are in the included picture.

Using Dx version 3.7.11B

No falloff.

No focal shift.

Depth 50%

Brush (second brush in the e-panel)

Last Alpha on the top right

Radius 7, though I sure you could choose another size.

250,000 tri sphere

This error happens on parts of the mesh surface that are not very thick. Once the mesh reaches a certain thickness you no longer get the error. (see video)

In Linux version 3.7.10A 64 bit non-cuda there are no errors using this brush or created brushes.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ax3tho7v1YY&feature=youtu.be

[TimmyZDesign]

Finally downloaded and tested 3.7.11b Windows 64 DX Cuda sculpting! These improved brushes are a lot of fun to work with!

Mud2 brush with NoiseDegree at 0% is very similar to feel of Zbrush Claybuildup brush! Yay!

I did this quick test sculpt from a sphere in about 45 minutes. I did everything with "brush pressure only affects draw depth" activated.

I used:

Voxel: Grow, Smooth, Clay, Extrude, Move.

Surface: Draw, Smooth, Pinch, Extrude, Mud, Mud2, LiveClay, CreaseClay, SmudgeClay, WrinkleClay, Move.

All tested brushes worked very well except SmudgeClay which had a very big lag.

[artman]

It seems Reduce and Decimate brushes can creates some holes/spikes issues,can anyone reproduce?

[Taros]

I set that mode to be default - when only depth depends on pressure.

It is more suitable for sculpting, especially when someone do it first time.

Of course you may set other mode..

@Taros:

Please show screenshot.

Hi Andrew. Strange. I had the problem at my clients workstation at their office.

I tried to reproduce the dotting with the current DX version at my workstation here at home, but all worked very well in DX mode and also in GL mode.

Maybe it is an graphic card issue? I use an old GeForce 8800 GT at my clients pc and an GeForce GTX 460 at my homeoffice here.

I will try to reproduce the dotting on monday, when I am back in the client office.

Best wishes

Chris

[renderdemon]

First off,great work and improvements,brushes are really much better,only smooth brush in MHO needs more work.

I lost the latest development,so I don't know if somewhere you have improved this(in this case,sorry for asking),but here is my thoughts about the smooth brush.

Smooth shouldn't be so dependend on point density(few points,huge strength,a lot of points,really low strength)

And depth should be averaged better,I don't know how to explain in a clear way but for example if you do some strokes that add or remove depth on a sphere and later you use the smooth brush for a long time what you want to do is erasing the added and removed depth,so you should have again a sphere,currently the region where you worked with the smooth is never as perfect as before(the curvature change locally).

Also an option to smooth along the path of the stroke could be great.

[artman]

Smooth shouldn't be so dependend on point density(few points,huge strength,a lot of points,really low strength)

Its not that it is "dependant' on point density,its that smoothing higher polycount is just harder for cpu/gpu to work so of course it will always feel slower/weaker,there is option in Voxel menu made especially to adress this issue and increase smoothing strength at least 2x on denser objectx,its called "Cuda smooth boost" but you need a Cuda enabled card for it to work.

what you want to do is erasing the added and removed depth,so you should have again a sphere

Not everybody wants that,some people like the smooth brush to just have a smoothing action over details,like in real clay sculpting....

What you are asking for is a Restore brush or Eraser brush(in Mudbox) so you can bring your sculpt back to like it was

before strokes were done.

Andrew could probably do that but that would have to be a Surface mode brush because of the nature of voxels.

Edit:Ok,you can do that.But only if you are working in surface mode.

-Bring your sphere to surface mode

-Do some strokes with whatever surface brush you like

-Now pick absolute brush and set depth to -1%...now brush stokes restore the sphere to whatever state it was when entering surface mode.

(it does not work if you pick a LC brush tough because it will change vertex count and destroy the original morph target)

here is what i do . ..when removing "added" depth I use those brushes:Reduce+smooth( orTangent smooth)

and when removing "substracted" depth I use those brushes Fill(sf mode)+Reduce+smooth( orTangent smooth)

Reduce brush is cool because it allows you to bring point density back to a level where smoothing is fast.

[renderdemon]

Artman,you completely misunderstood my post(probably it's my fault ).

When I say that smooth is too dependent on point density I'm not asking stronger effect on high polycount,but mainly low effect on low polycount.

Currently I have always to put in on low values(10,20 percent)and of course when you go upper in res you have to increase it because it's doesn't give much effect(anyway this work the same in every application,the difference here is that with adaptive polygons like in surface mode you work with less polygons more often,so the so stronger effect on low res it's a bit annoying for me)

About smooth,I don't want an eraser,but a smooth not bumpy/noisy,like it happens with real clay(and zbrush),the smooth should help me to average the depth when I'm doing complex shapes,but currently it adds and removes some depth(I mean that at the end of the smooth strokes you haven't really a smooth region,but one with a slight bump,really hard to avoid)

If I do a stroke on a sphere with live clay or another brush with the new improvements recently done I have a constant depth added(or removed) across the surface(a delta factor),but If I use in that region the smooth brush the depth locally it's not more constant,it's noisy(a side view or the region where the stroke is shows it)

I have done the eraser example only to try to explaing my thought better,anyway thank you for trying to help about it .

Bye

[Andrew Shpagin]

That's basicaly what removeclay is doing, but it's broken currently, it eats the mesh with noise, and doesn't care for symmetry. It's a pity really, cause that brush could help tremendously to cleanup surface for hardsurface stuff (for instance).

Thant brush is ESSENTIALLY unfinished, Raul works over it. In theory it should remove piece from surface and fill it with ideally smooth surface.

[Andrew Shpagin]

First off,great work and improvements,brushes are really much better,only smooth brush in MHO needs more work.

I lost the latest development,so I don't know if somewhere you have improved this(in this case,sorry for asking),but here is my thoughts about the smooth brush.

Smooth shouldn't be so dependend on point density(few points,huge strength,a lot of points,really low strength)

And depth should be averaged better,I don't know how to explain in a clear way but for example if you do some strokes that add or remove depth on a sphere and later you use the smooth brush for a long time what you want to do is erasing the added and removed depth,so you should have again a sphere,currently the region where you worked with the smooth is never as perfect as before(the curvature change locally).

Also an option to smooth along the path of the stroke could be great.

When density is varied a lot, smoothing could not be uniform - it is smoothing between vertices. There is solution - reduce tool. It reduces dencity and then performs smoothing.