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LiveClay is cool for sure, but there are quite a few things it can't do like Warp, Curves, painting geometry in thin air. Sure it could happen, but we just have to wait and see I suppose.

The SubCells concept Andrew once mentioned, sounded more promising for Voxels than LiveClay does for Surface Mode. I've always found Voxels to be more forgiving as you work, and for that reason, I hope it stays.
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@Taros

For me all this looks like someday there will be two modeling parts inside 3D Coat:

1. Basemeshes in voxels

2. Go in detail and finalising in LiveClay

You can do this today, using both sculptris and 3dcoat. Easy workflow and still forgiving. What you probably won't like is the problematic (more or less) decimator of 3dcoat. Easy to fix it in Sc (using reducer +-)

What I like to see in 3dcoat is the ability to increase voxels density when in surface - LC mode (Have I missed something?)

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I'm pretty happy so far with starting in voxels and refining in live clay. With the coming updates it will be that much sweeter. I'm seeing less need to send my meshes outside of 3dcoat for refinement, the more I use it. Did my first full character sculpt from start to finish this last week at work. Looking forward to the live clay refinements and reduction tools, etc.

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The SubCells concept Andrew once mentioned, sounded more promising for Voxels than LiveClay does for Surface Mode. I've always found Voxels to be more forgiving as you work, and for that reason, I hope it stays.

I do not understand what subcells are, can anyone explain it in layman terms? :P How will it change the way I interact with voxels?

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I do not understand what subcells are, can anyone explain it in layman terms? :P How will it change the way I interact with voxels?

Each voxel section composed of x*x marching cubes is divided into smaller chunks.

Those chunks are called subcells, they make possible to apply liveclay changes (local sbudivisions) to a located area of the voxel volume, retaining the liveclay finer details into voxel form without affecting the entire voxel volume. This is a way to add more detail to voxel volume without up resing the entire volume which tends to use huge amount of memory.

Think of it as a rubik's cube: the entire volume is a cube, but you've got smaller cube embeded, those smaller cubes can retain as much detail as the entire volume but in a more compact space=finer details. Of course that's only an example it's completely theoretical and can be very different in real application.

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That is very cool Raul!! I hope you enjoy it there. It seems like a pretty interesting place with a lot of very nice people. Hopefully when I visit the rest of the team in Kiev you will still be there so we can meet. :)

Cheers man, have fun there!! :drinks:

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I like your new blog theme and also thanks for great work on LiveClay :)

One thing i have been thinking recently is maybe reduce and increase could be options with smooth mode also. So you have regular, reduce and increase modes in a dropdown so you can also add or remove details while smoothing. Currently it's 2 steps but that would be a new way to work and maybe some other modes like relax could be added etc. Hopefully you and others will like this idea as i think it could be very useful way to work when sculpting. :)

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I agree with michalis.

My favourite tool in Sculptris is the CREASE brush.

I would love to see something similar in 3DCoat,after watching the Wrinkle Brush video,I'm

sure it would be possible.

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My favourite tool in Sculptris is the CREASE brush.

I would love to see something similar in 3DCoat,after watching the Wrinkle Brush video,I'm

sure it would be possible.

Sculptris crease tool ! Right. Something similar in surface mode could be nice. But... try build tool using a sharper mask in voxels mode. This is very close to the crease sc tool.

So, a build tool for surface mode please. A combination of a sharp simple brush and a little pinch-

Actually I very much don't love it

You're alone here phil.

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You both are alone. :D

OK not joking now:

Instead of not using sculptris,

As long Farsthary's tools are in pre alpha,

why don't you try to build a workflow between Sculptris and 3dcoat?

Start in 3dc, export tri decimated mesh, work more in Sc, drop it to voxels again or anything else...

Trying to understand how these two modes can work together.

This will help Andrew and Raul a lot.

There's an issue when trying to bake a dynamic tessellated mesh on the retopo cage.

Some areas with less density... a heavy triangulated artifact, on normal and displacement maps.

Similar when merging a low density mesh in voxels mode (the cylinder-sphere etc)

Dropping to hi density voxels could be a solution but it isn't as voxels will capture these tris as well.

I really like to hear you opinions on this, Raul's or Andrew's too.

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The benefit of sculptris (the way I understand what michalis meant, by calling it 'perfect') is that there are 2 or 3 brushes in total (I may be wrong there - correct me please) and with these few brushes you can do whole variety of things - it's so simple and at the same time so versatile - simplicity and versatility - that's something one could call 'perfect'.

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@ MADjestic

Yes, sculptris has the perfect UI, the tools aren't 2-3 they are a lot more, it's a clever UI.

But it's unfair to compare it with 3dcoat or zbrush, these last are huge massive apps not just a sculpting tool.

Still waiting for some opinions on my previews question... It isn't the first time I'm asking...

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@ MADjestic

Yes, sculptris has the perfect UI, the tools aren't 2-3 they are a lot more, it's a clever UI.

But it's unfair to compare it with 3dcoat or zbrush, these last are huge massive apps not just a sculpting tool.

Still waiting for some opinions on my previews question... It isn't the first time I'm asking...

What's the question?

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There's an issue when trying to bake a dynamic tessellated mesh on the retopo cage.

Some areas with less density... a heavy triangulated artifact, on normal and displacement maps.

Similar when merging a low density mesh in voxels mode (the cylinder-sphere etc)

Dropping to hi density voxels could be a solution but it isn't as voxels will capture these tris as well.

I really like to hear you opinions on this, Raul's or Andrew's too.

Does this capture helps?

Normally, a renderer can smooth these triangles. But when projecting a topo cage on it... or when just dropping it to hi density voxels... ??

testingDT1.jpg

I know, smoothed 3dcoat rendering when baking can stop it. Indeed, losing crispness. But when I used displacement map (MV baking), here again, just more blurred which is worst.

tt1.jpg

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@BeatKitano

Well in this test there're all degrees of density, only hi density areas are acceptable. How hi? Close to voxels ~6M or higher.

So, a surface has to be more or less evenly subdivided, this will provide a nice baked texture.

The other solution is to start resculpting in zbrush or in sculpt room (we don't have it yet). These tris don't really exist. Only captured on the cage topo mesh.

How much LC or dynamic tessellation helps... please tell me. Why not just voxels?

BTW a LC that will work on a 5-6 M mesh, I don't believe that we'll see it soon, if we ever see this. Not easy at all.

I noticed this when testing sculptris beta. Still no answer from dr petters though.

I believe that there isn't any real solution on this. Except smoothing.

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I used the smaller possible brush with higher as possible density in some areas. Even there a closer look will show you the problem.

The only overcomplicating thing I've done was to use projection method in zbrush. The second example from MV mode is smoother but I don't like it. Andrew is working on this issue (blurred disp-textures).

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Are you sure it's not just the shader you're using? here's the same thing with a depth shader I made, then with one of the older style shaders. The non-depth one is perfectly smooth.

2011-08-25_0914.png2011-08-25_0915.png

Edit: Oh OK I misunderstood, I do see a slight issue when baking to MV.

2011-08-25_1104.png

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OK guys, I just noticed this, some months ago (sculptris). Yeap, low density meshes will have the same problem when baked. But these may have an evenly subdivided surface and can be easily more subdivided. What is happening on dynamic tessellation is a little different. I could say that we may need to just subdivide by 2-4 only in more detailed areas. The remesh tool, only reducer for the moment, should work as smooth as possible and on larger areas. This could have an impact to the speed but it's OK for me.

The worse scenario is to drop the LC mesh to hi density voxels. This triangulated artifact will be more visible there. As it happens with some library low poly meshes when merged.

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