2.09 BETA1

[Andrew Shpagin]

I glad to tell that 2.09 BETA1 is done. It was a big piece of work (2 weeks!). It was not easy because I must operate with 2.08 sources for support and 2.09 to improve. The most time was spent on testing. I must warn that 3B files produced by 2.09 will not be loaded by 2.08 (of course back compartability forks fine). But don't worry, it should work fine, just backup important 3B files (or don't overwrite). So, the list of changes:

1) Merging new objects is possible now! You can add new sub objects like eyes on your WIP.

2) Different uv-sets are placed on different textures, it allows you to use display memory more efficiently and get better quality.

3) You can choose resolution of every uv-set during import and change it any time. Also, you can change resolution of mesh separately for every uv-set.

4) Now you can group several materials (surfaces) into single uv-set

5) Select and move now supports symmetry.

6) Gradient select in sculpt mode works better with symmetry and works much better now.

7) Image picker has got navigation controls to scale/move/fit image

Wacom pen has got better support: opacity jitter is add for pen and every jitter can depend on pressure if you want.

9) All textures (color/normals/specular) and all uv-sets could be viewed in single window

10) New option in fill tool using gradient - filling with opacity fading

11) ... and filling with spherical gradient

12) New menu item - View->Browse to understand the structure of 3DC folders better

13) Move along motion in pen settings now works with symmetry

14) Stability improvements

The link is below:

3d-Coat-209B1B-en.exe

*edit: I have updatd the link -

- most bugs was fixed

- auto-uv improved much (thanks to LW head mesh provided by geo_n)

- one symmetry issue fixed (thanks to Oliver)

- visual appearance improved (realtime padding algoritm was rewritten)

**edit: there was a problem with 3B files. Please re-download.

[SonK]

Andrew,

WOW, this is a huge release! navigation for image picker was one of my request, and you just implemented Now i can zoom into a image and pick color more precisely! bring in multiple OBJ, important also! new fill options are very useful for texturing. Plus independent control over mesh/image resolution on a per object basis is sweet

thanks alot,

SK

[digman]

I checked out symmetry using the pen tool under the select with pen or rectangle in sculpt mode. It works great!

Select with gradient in symmetry mode now selects the opposite polygons on the model .

[UGeO]

Well done! This promises lots of fun. Thx for being such a perfectionist

[rimasson]

I've got a bug :

i open the werewolf model.

unwrap, then apply the new uvmap :

the normal of the model seems screwed.

It dosen't comes from the textre resolution. It happend even with 1024 * 1024 maps

[choover]

When I import an existing head mesh the 3dconnexion interface becomes almost unusable due to an extreme lag (very slow response on all movements and menu actions). I had to reload 2.08 in order to use the software. Anyone else having this problem?

[lc8b105]

Good news!

If it is possible to rotate\move\scale every sub objects in 3d-coat in the future ?

[philnolan3d]

One thing I noticed as soon as I started loading a LW model in There needs to be a way to say "don't use this UV map" The only options are different sizes of texture, but a few of my UVs are attached to the same polygons so it would screw things up if I tried to use them all. I was trying to decide which one works best, but can't really do that if they're all active at the same time.

[DragonFist]

This is an awesome step in the right direction.

A few of suggestions.

1. Create a cache file on disk for the mesh data that is held in memory. Allow the user to set where it is and its max size.

2. By default hold the high (mid) poly data here and show only the carcuss in memory with a texture preview.

3. Have some sort of toggle on a list of the sections of a model that when set, moves that portion into memory so it can be worked in full res without the rest being in memory.

4. Allow further moving of data to disk via masking or "making invisisble" selections of polygons.

5. Have a way to automate the assigning of "millions of polygons" automatically based on the texture size so there is enough to handle the texture.

I'm kind of ambitious and want to do a highly detailed, high poly model. If, the majority of the the polygon data can be moved out of memory so I can get very detailed on one section at a time without worrying about my hitting my 2gb of ram limit, it would be great.

Thanks again for the amazing work and unbelievable development pace!

Shawn

[yukon_28]

Andrew, fantastic realise! It is unbelivable how much one single developer can do, many times we all can see as much larger dev teams taking much more time to implement 1\10 of your "New features list". Thanks for your great work!

This is an awesome step in the right direction.

A few of suggestions.

1. Create a cache file on disk for the mesh data that is held in memory. Allow the user to set where it is and its max size.

2. By default hold the high (mid) poly data here and show only the carcuss in memory with a texture preview.

3. Have some sort of toggle on a list of the sections of a model that when set, moves that portion into memory so it can be worked in full res without the rest being in memory.

4. Allow further moving of data to disk via masking or "making invisisble" selections of polygons.

5. Have a way to automate the assigning of "millions of polygons" automatically based on the texture size so there is enough to handle the texture.

I'm kind of ambitious and want to do a highly detailed, high poly model. If, the majority of the the polygon data can be moved out of memory so I can get very detailed on one section at a time without worrying about my hitting my 2gb of ram limit, it would be great.

Thanks again for the amazing work and unbelievable development pace!

Shawn

I think that the most of your list already there. About what you call "moving mesh portion in\out of memory", it is handeled by either of 2 ways - use "hide" for hiding parts of your mesh, or, if you are working on very complex peace, its have to be breaken into several smaler peaces befoure you bring it to 3DC. Now, with option to merge objects into scene it would be a good idea, when working on complex peace on slow PC. You can quicly hide\unhide peaces by using material\objects palete.

[DragonFist]

Granted, I have not programmed this and don't know for sure, but it does seem that on import, 3DC is trying to load the entire object into memory.

If I have an object with 4 UV sets and set the textures to 4096 x 4096 and set the millions of polygons to the 18 that would be needed for that resolution, the mess will give each material a fourth of that mesh resolution. This results in a model that is not usable and the entire mesh is in memory.

I am talking about being able to have each individual material at the proper resolution, mesh-wise, for the texture size and individually move each into and out of memory as needed to work on the object.

Otherwise, you never even get to the point of hiding things.

Yes, I could divide the object into smaller pieces and working that way. I am just hoping to have a more out-of-the-box solution.

Also, please don't take this as criticism. The is a great tool at a great price. And with Andrew's obvious skill, I can see it really taking on z-brush down the road.

[Chuckpie]

Not to put the cart before the horse, but I thought I read someplace in the forums something about a hair/fur texture being added in 2.09. I could be wrong about this however. It would be a nice addition though. I would like to see the default wolf creature with fur.

[Andrew Shpagin]

Was away most time today, so the answers to questions:

- move/rotate/scale - I plane to add handlers soon. Now you can manipulate objects with select& move in sculpt tool

- uv-bug (mentioned by rimasson) - I have found and fixed, thanks!

- disable some uv-sets - it is possible but if they are attached to the same faces it can cause problems

- high res offline meshes - I will think about this request, it is not very easy, but possible.

- hairs & fur - no, it is not in 2.09 But ... not so long to wait.

I will update the link soon.

[Andrew Shpagin]

I have a question to Choover - does only space navigater navigation is slow, or navigation with keys also? Is it possible to run 2.09 again and send me (support@3d-coat.com) the file log.txt to understand problem better?

[DragonFist]

- high res offline meshes - I will think about this request, it is not very easy, but possible.

I do understand that it would not be easy.

I do think, though, that it would be the kind of feature that would put 3DC as a viable alternative to Zbrush, as the handling of high res meshes is where it excels.

Though, certainly, much can be done now and with planning, same results can be achieved I think.

Thanks for looking at it.

Best,

Shawn

[SonK]

Was away most time today, so the answers to questions:

- hairs & fur - no, it is not in 2.09 But ... not so long to wait.

I will update the link soon.

Andrew,

if you add hair ,please make it easy for game artist to produce/bake hair(typically a polygon plane with a texture alpha channel). Option to generate the plane, how many subdivision on the plane,etc. I don't need realistic film style hair creation.

[wailingmonkey]

Andrew,

if you add hair ,please make it easy for game artist to produce/bake hair(typically

a polygon plane with a texture alpha channel). Option to generate the plane, how

many subdivision on the plane,etc. I don't need realistic film style hair creation.

Much agreed! Something to ease the tediousness of arranging the polyplanes in the creation of the 'hairstyle'

would be incredibly helpful as well (and probably quite attractive to other potential buyers). And perhaps

a means of avoiding intersection of the polyplanes with other polyplanes?

Great job on this beta update, Andrew...still testing it out a bit, but working with multiple objects and their own

UV sets seems to be functioning nicely. I have crashed a bit due to running out of RAM though with the added

objects/textures. I wonder if there's a way to re-claim system RAM if, for instance, we merge layers down...as

of now, it seems that RAM continues to drop without getting free once the merging happens.

cheers.

wailingmonkey

[yukon_28]

I wonder if there's a way to re-claim system RAM if, for instance, we merge layers down...as

of now, it seems that RAM continues to drop without getting free once the merging happens.

cheers.

wailingmonkey

Really, it would be good addition. Some kind of "Purge", like in photoshop, to free up some RAM without restarting 3DC.

I am talking about being able to have each individual material at the proper resolution, mesh-wise, for the texture size and individually move each into and out of memory as needed to work on the object.

Something like zbrush's subtools palete ? Agree, it would be great.

[DragonFist]

Something like zbrush's subtools palete ? Agree, it would be great.

I have used zbrush but am not versed in it. So I am not sure if this is the same thing or similar.

While I am also not well versed in mudbox, I know that it allows you to move any mesh data or layers that you are not currently working on to a disk cache. This allows you to work on very high poly meshes without having all the data in physical memory and therefore, you can work. It isn't as clean as Zbrush's 2.5D trickery, but it gets the job done and you can get very, very detailed with your mapping.

This is the kind of thing I'm looking at. Seems to me that one could just cut up an object and do it piece by piece now, but the above I think would be more flexible.

[Sethren]

Yeah but some of us want near-film quality hair and fur. To be fair hair and fur should cover all the users needs wether it's game style simple hair/fur genertion or complex film-like hair/fur generation.

[Oliver Thornton]

Yeah but some of us want near-film quality hair and fur. To be fair hair and fur should cover all the users needs wether it's game style simple hair/fur genertion or complex film-like hair/fur generation.

I think most people would be happy with simple fiber flow and styling on a displacement map with simultaneous transparency/alpha support since this seems to be a challenge even with high end hair solutions (styling at least) but would probably be easier to build on the existing 3DC app. Or maybe the ability to grow poly-tufts/tubes of hair with auto-uv, clip, and weight maps, but I digress. I think if Andrew is planning on implementing some sort of fiber tool we would serve him best by being specific about our requests and needs. I would also point out that most 'film-quality' hair and fur is usually the result of a plug-in that is native to the 3D animating and rendering app and cannot be exported.

I love this app and I love how Andrew responds to every request, especially those supporting my beloved lwo format. That being said though I think most of us would agree that we would rather have a more stable and nimble app with no bugs than any crazy new features beyond what Andrew already has in the works. Call me crazy. I'm running with 2 gigs RAM and XP so count my vote for continued improved performance as well as better mesh, image, and RAM/disk management and maybe one day automatic updates *ahem*. This app already kicks ass, it can only do better with more cowbell.

-Oliver

[choover]

I have a question to Choover - does only space navigater navigation is slow, or navigation with keys also? Is it possible to run 2.09 again and send me (support@3d-coat.com) the file log.txt to understand problem better?

Andrew,

ALL functions are very slow, 3dconnexion, Nav keys and mouse, and all menu actions. Menus take 2-4 seconds to drop down, and 2-4 seconds to respond to selection. Panning and rotating are also this slow. When I open using your objects everything works ok. It only slows when I open my own objects. They are the same objects that I have used without problems for earlier testing of morphs, etc. The objects still work fine in Studio, ZBrush, and Hex. I am sending you the log file as you requested.

When I reload version 2.08 everything works correctly. I have gone back and forth several times and the results are the same each time, 2.08 works and 2.09 B1 dosen't.

[SonK]

I have used zbrush but am not versed in it. So I am not sure if this is the same thing or similar.

While I am also not well versed in mudbox, I know that it allows you to move any mesh data or layers that you are not currently working on to a disk cache. This allows you to work on very high poly meshes without having all the data in physical memory and therefore, you can work. It isn't as clean as Zbrush's 2.5D trickery, but it gets the job done and you can get very, very detailed with your mapping.

This is the kind of thing I'm looking at. Seems to me that one could just cut up an object and do it piece by piece now, but the above I think would be more flexible.

In Mudbox, its call harddrive streaming.

"Performance: Innovative streaming technology lets modelers work quickly and efficiently with even the largest, most face-intensive 3D models and scenes"

needless to say it helps alot

[Sethren]

I think most people would be happy with simple fiber flow and styling on a displacement map with simultaneous transparency/alpha support since this seems to be a challenge even with high end hair solutions (styling at least) but would probably be easier to build on the existing 3DC app. Or maybe the ability to grow poly-tufts/tubes of hair with auto-uv, clip, and weight maps, but I digress. I think if Andrew is planning on implementing some sort of fiber tool we would serve him best by being specific about our requests and needs. I would also point out that most 'film-quality' hair and fur is usually the result of a plug-in that is native to the 3D animating and rendering app and cannot be exported.

I love this app and I love how Andrew responds to every request, especially those supporting my beloved lwo format. That being said though I think most of us would agree that we would rather have a more stable and nimble app with no bugs than any crazy new features beyond what Andrew already has in the works. Call me crazy. I'm running with 2 gigs RAM and XP so count my vote for continued improved performance as well as better mesh, image, and RAM/disk management and maybe one day automatic updates *ahem*. This app already kicks ass, it can only do better with more cowbell.

-Oliver

I am all for performance. I have a sinlge core and 1 gig of ram so i need all the performace i can get. I had already spoken with Andrew about these features and his proposals are very attractive. It was in an e-mail but i am sure some vital information was given here somewhere. I have not had much time to visit this forum as i have been to busy doing internal beta testing. I beleave though what he has in mind will serve all parties very well. I had said film-like as i do understand what you are saying about film-quality being attributed to expensive plug-ins. Just as an example Carrara's new hair feature is pretty decent in terms of features and quality but you can not export the hair as a mesh or even a texture with alpha transparency which irks me. At least we should have the option to save hair/fur to an external source for rendering. This is a part of the reason why i continue to be interested by this application due to the potential it continues to offer and a developer that truly listens to his user base.

[Frankie]

Yeah but some of us want near-film quality hair and fur. To be fair hair and fur should cover all the users needs wether it's game style simple hair/fur genertion or complex film-like hair/fur generation.

I think the real-time WYSIWYG nature of 3dcoat should be kept in mind when implementing hair/fur features. If you want to make hi-quality off-line hair/fur, there are plenty of existing solutions like Maya out there, no need to clutter the program with that kind of feature imo.

[Andrew Shpagin]

I think the real-time WYSIWYG nature of 3dcoat should be kept in mind when implementing hair/fur features. If you want to make hi-quality off-line hair/fur, there are plenty of existing solutions like Maya out there, no need to clutter the program with that kind of feature imo.

Of course, I mean something realtime

[yukon_28]

Yeah but some of us want near-film quality hair and fur. To be fair hair and fur should cover all the users needs wether it's game style simple hair/fur genertion or complex film-like hair/fur generation.

No, thats wrong. Photoreal hair solutions is very expensive (i mean both money and computing resources), those tools are for high-end apps, such as Max, Maya, XSI etc. Those tools involve many features that can be found only in complex 3d packages, but not in 3DC (nor in any texturing\sculpting app for this metter), such as dinamic simulations.

3DC is a detailing\texturing application, so its hair tools will be based on polygons with some type of special materials\texture, it is what 3DC needs. Lets be realistic in our requests, you cant ask for film quality dinamic hair system to be implemented in 3DC, just a plugins for max or maya that can make such hairs costs x10 or more then 3DC itself.

[geo_n]

why do people want hair in 3dc? does zbrush have hair?

Its better to implement hair in a full 3d package. Lightwave has one now with its own hair system.

3dsmax has very easy to use hair system as well since ver 9. I just don't see the 3dc to lightwave to 3dsmax to etc hair connection.

[Andrew Shpagin]

I have updatd the link -

- most bugs was fixed

- auto-uv improved much (thanks to LW head mesh provided by geo_n)

- one symmetry issue fixed (thanks to Oliver)

- visual appearance improved (realtime padding algoritm was rewritten, it leads to cleaner mesh look)

Thanks for great help in testing!

[SonK]

I have updatd the link -

- visual appearance improved (realtime padding algoritm was rewritten, it leads to cleaner mesh look)

Thanks for great help in testing!

woohooo, thank you!! :lol: