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3D-Coat 3.7 updates thread


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  • Advanced Member

+1 artman.

On the opposite side, we have 6-7 simple fixed tools in sculptris. But here's Dr Petters. He is a talented sculptor you see. That's the secret.

I still try to construct similar tools in zbrush editable brush system, almost there but not really. LOL

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  • Advanced Member

I agree with others.

There is not need to a brush that can do everything(changing 50 parameters).

IMO there is the need for some basic behaviour(flatten,pinch,smooth and so on)and,for every type of behaviour some specialized parameters(which makes sense only for the behaviour) and,important,a shared set of parameters for all brushes(like curves,alpha,modifiers,like zbrush more or less).

The users should be able to create presets,which as said by polyxo should take into account alpha an stroke type.

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Hi :)

Thanks for the feedback!, yes, as I was suspecting the main tools are hardcoded partially in ZB so only the makeup is the responsible for the 1001 variants of similar brushes , and yes, what distinguish the different flavors of brushes are the combination of Brush, Alpha, Stroke and Draw and some parameters inbetween. And that is something we already have in 3DCoat (except saving presets wich is relatively easy to add)

But if my mind doesn't betray me was the community that was asking for a UnifiedBrush system... I even remember someone told me that the only difference between all the brushes in ZB was "presets" and that's why I've choosen that path...but you know? ofcourse not everyone need all the options of a megabrush and a grown tweaked knob can lead to a useless brush, but more control is more power in the hand of pros, I still need to valorate few future choices but after all is not so wrong the path of a full unified Brush, I still think a balance between small hardcoded brushes and a Unified Brush where you (knowing what you do) can freely express yourself in brush combinations that was very difficult to achieve before, combined with a preset system can be a killer add to our toolbox...and yes, is an oportunity to diferentiate us from the rest of the digital sculpting universe.... is not everything about replicating each other and people need to expect surprises too :p:

Cheers

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  • Reputable Contributor

I like the idea of a advance mode for full freedom brush exploring for pro users. You could have a less complicated mode for creating variations of the hardcode brushes. I use a 2D Paint program call TwistedBrush where you have a advance brush control panel for creating 2D brushes. It takes awhile to get used to but once mastered you can create your own brushes that flow the paint in a way that helps you be creative or meet a particular need in your painting. There is also a easier control panel for making brushes for the less experienced. That is what I believe Raul is talking about in his above post.

Picture is of the Twistedbrush advanced brush creating control panels..

post-518-0-91534700-1324878290_thumb.jpg

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  • Advanced Member

Hi farsthary,the main point(MHO)is a good preset system(and some good presets to start with).

Having an unified brush system it's not a problem if you can start from some solid presets to do your own variation.

The more control means more power,but also more complexity,so a 2 layer approach sounds good to me(basic and advanced parameters,so customizing a bit is easier but if you want more control you can go far more in depth).

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  • Advanced Member

Farsthary,

the Zbrush Brushsystem allows for far more than just taking care of the final cosmetics of fundamentally identical Brushes.

Also this huge System is re-mixed in a way that creating entirely useless Brushes can not easily take place, if at all.

One certainly can not create Brushes which tear holes into a mesh or are terribly slow, show aweful stepping or do anything else which comes into the way or ruins your model.

One also can not end up with some unpredicable entirely new Behaviour when carelessly moving some Sliders (something which likely happens in Packages with many parameters to tweak like unbiased Renderers).

I'm just saying that I have rarely seen something that carefully developed and beautifully polished over many years in any of the many Software-Packages I have used over time.

It gives the User a great feeling of consistancy. Please let yourself time to really appreciate and understand what getting offered here.

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  • Advanced Member

One thing which also makes a hell of a difference is how Brush Inversion, Masking and Hiding work inside Zbrush.

Crtl always masks, Ctrl+Shift will always Hide (or Clip or Slice if one has turned that Behaviour on), Alt will always

Invert Tool Action in Zbrush.

3DCoat has hiding and masking not available in all modes and exposed in several different GUI's (note also how smartly

Masking and Hiding can get inverted smoothed and sharpened in Zbrush!).

In 3DCoat not all Tools have proper Inversion and all Brushes or Stroke Outline-Types which allow creating Geomety in empty Space

interfere with the default Navigation Scheme and force additionally using Alt.That makes me Nuts...

In my understanding all these Behaviours really need a Masterplan.

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3D-Coat Voxel Paint industry advantage opportunity:

Currently the market-leader in texture painting is MARI from the company The Foundry because following industry advantages: I'm concentrating only on texture painting here

- allows zoom in on painted area so you are able to create 'unlimited' texture resolution

..Mudbox 2012 SAP1 can also do this with its GigaTexture feature = like google earth you can zoom in to see then paint in more details: For 3D-Coat I would like to see Photoshop-precise sub-pixel sharpness sampler code so projected photo parts retain 100% sharpness/detail!!

- allows the projection mesh for texture paint to be deformed manually by vertex (not by brush!), you can drag the projection mesh-vertices in any direction you want by fine vertex-drag control

If 3D-Coat 3.7..3.8 could make a voxel paint function set that has a fine resolution & pixel sampling that would be industry advantage. Because not Mudbox or Zbrush can do it only Photoshop has the super-precise/sharp "pixel engine" for brushing/cloning.

Getting back to 3D-Coat "GigaTexture" you could paint the voxels onto a 1024x1024 texture target then by choice zoom in / switch to higher res and paint onto a 2048x2048 texture target: paint in that resolution level. Then go to Photoshop and re-size the 2048x2048 texture onto the 1024x1024 target (assume iphone developer where always a lower texture resolution is needed) all this while cloning in 3D-Coat either from photo/project or from painted-mesh has to have super sharp FINE DETAIL.

Current cloning code in 3D-Coat has to be rewritten from scratch to allow sub-pixel precise cloning to make the cloned data look exactly like the photo original. This is a must have, because current 3D-Coat clone tool blurs the pixels and clones with data loss,

in 3D-Coat 3.7:

ORIGINAL_AREA_pixel_data != CLONED_AREA_pixel_data

you do not get the original photo-data, but a compressed/blurred copy of the original photo now.

You could argue that onto a model that has bad stretched UV-s - plus painting farther parts not directly under the camera - you cannot project a sharp texture, because it will be blurred, stretched. We need to be able however to save a super-sharp cloned texture (new 3D projection engine) within the UV boundary and see this sharp texture in Photoshop. Blurring, stetching, viewing angle differences (user painting the sides of the model) must be eliminated by always making the brush to "paint" (rather project brushed-pixels) perpendicular to the poly surface. Write this data to the texture- memory. Handle paint brushes when they touch the models surface farther from the camera like they are always directly under the camera. Create a "multiple view-angle paint engine" so if user also paints the models edges, 3D-Coat internally "turns the projection camera" to set its facing right over the brush and projects perfect perpendicular-to-poly surface pixels onto the texture map. The user does not see this, he only sees, he is painting far, the sides of the model. So there will be NO stretched/blurred/cloned pixels because of not ideal camera-toward-surface angle projection.

If 3D-Coat could:

1. do excellent projection painting delivering exact original pixel data, where original photo area and cloned area is 100% the same

2. At least would be able to allow voxel painting/photo_source texture cloning on two resolution levels, going higher TEXture res if user wants: this only because of MARI and Mudbox do it as well. :-/

3. have a per-vertex deformable - not like the current! per-brush deformable - projection paint mesh

I think if you could make this a reality, 3D-Coat could become a market leader in texture painting, voxel/LC sculpting and retopo.

A set of sharpness-regulator buttons for the render room would be really good, since a lot of 3D-Coat users maybe will want to save the voxel-painted, rendered surface to be used as 2D texture. So it can be used in Photoshop.

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what was the cause?

The bug was related to the Undo subsystem of 3D-Coat. When total size of all Undo-files exceeds 300MB, 3D-Coat removes the old Undo-files to keep total size of Undo-history below 300MB. But that function was buggy. It formed incorrect names of old Undo-files. So 3D-Coat didn’t remove old Undo-files on any platform. It just tried to delete every file from Undo-history without success. The lag was only under Linux because, every file operation in 3D-Coat under Linux calls a unique function: if the file name doesn’t exist the function performs recursive case-insensitive search. This is done to compensate the difference between case-sensitive file system of Linux vs. case-insensitive file systems of Windows and Mac OS X. So when the total size of Undo-history exceeds 300MB we already have about 500 of Undo-files. And every time 3D-Coat saved just another Undo-step, it performed recursive search 500 times in Undo-folder of 500 files. And that resulted in the annoying lag.

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  • Advanced Member
Thanks for the feedback!, yes, as I was suspecting the main tools are hardcoded partially in ZB so only the makeup is the responsible for the 1001 variants of similar brushes , and yes, what distinguish the different flavors of brushes are the combination of Brush, Alpha, Stroke and Draw and some parameters inbetween. And that is something we already have in 3DCoat (except saving presets wich is relatively easy to add)

I believe polyxo gave a clear reply to this. +1 polyxo.

Always this same issue of understanding with the developers of 3dc.

This... "that is something we already have in 3DCoat..." frightens me. No Raul, we don't have it. Blender has it. To have some inputs it doesn't mean that we have it. They never worked right.

BTW I love zbrush tools but I never saved a preset. I always change some parameters as I work. The existed presets are a lot and I just picked ~10 to have them on my palette. The closer to sculptris tools if I may. LOL

To all friends 3dc users, we don't have the basic tools for art, let's have them first and only then we may start asking for hard surface modeling tools and other goodies of less importance.

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When total size of all Undo-files exceeds 300MB, 3D-Coat removes the old Undo-files to keep total size of Undo-history below 300MB

Is that feature mac/linux specific? My computer doesn't remove the old undo files when I reach 300MB (on windows), there are some times when that folder reaches 80+ GBs on my system. Starting the program over wipes the folder, but it won't release the files until the program has been restarted for me.

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The bug was related to the Undo subsystem of 3D-Coat. When total size of all Undo-files exceeds 300MB, 3D-Coat removes the old Undo-files to keep total size of Undo-history below 300MB. But that function was buggy. It formed incorrect names of old Undo-files. So 3D-Coat didn’t remove old Undo-files on any platform. It just tried to delete every file from Undo-history without success. The lag was only under Linux because, every file operation in 3D-Coat under Linux calls a unique function: if the file name doesn’t exist the function performs recursive case-insensitive search. This is done to compensate the difference between case-sensitive file system of Linux vs. case-insensitive file systems of Windows and Mac OS X. So when the total size of Undo-history exceeds 300MB we already have about 500 of Undo-files. And every time 3D-Coat saved just another Undo-step, it performed recursive search 500 times in Undo-folder of 500 files. And that resulted in the annoying lag.

Thanks for that Sergyi, I have been living with that particular bug for so long, now that its squashed 3DCoat performs like a dream, I am so happy, best Xmas present ever, I wish you, Andrew and Farsthary all the very best for the new year.

T.

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Farsthary, i think what you want really is tools with the main functionality like the current tools but then with added options like what you were doing with the general brush but only ones that would work well. A Unified/General Brush with a good Preset system would be amazing also.

I like lots of options like you were doing but i think if you make it too general with basically everything in one sometimes it might not work well. However it's great to have the option for this and i have seen some 2D tools such as MyPaint and TwistedBrush have many options and a good user Preset system which work well, so maybe it is possible to do a complex general brush for 3D sculpting that still works well but that would definitely need a better Preset system to take good advantage of it.

One thing i notice ZB/other tools seems to have for tools that 3DC does not so much at the moment is curve controls, these would probably allow some great new options also so if not already in the works maybe another thing that would be good to add. Things like custom curve controls could also have there own presets also.

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  • Applink Developer

When I use Sketch tool in voxel mode. Rotation is very weird. Could it be changed that it will rotate accordingly the center of sketch planes.

Other feature request is when using ellipses lasso mode it would be nice to create perfect circles too. Not only ellipses. Thanks a lot.

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I think, personally, having a preset system with every single variable saved to the preset and having lots of options is the way to go. Of course, it would be cool to have some of those functions hidden, to make it easier for someone that isn't a power user. So if that power user decided to make a super-customized brush, they can do so.

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Farsthary, i think what you want really is tools with the main functionality like the current tools but then with added options like what you were doing with the general brush but only ones that would work well. A Unified/General Brush with a good Preset system would be amazing also.

I like lots of options like you were doing but i think if you make it too general with basically everything in one sometimes it might not work well. However it's great to have the option for this and i have seen some 2D tools such as MyPaint and TwistedBrush have many options and a good user Preset system which work well, so maybe it is possible to do a complex general brush for 3D sculpting that still works well but that would definitely need a better Preset system to take good advantage of it.

One thing i notice ZB/other tools seems to have for tools that 3DC does not so much at the moment is curve controls, these would probably allow some great new options also so if not already in the works maybe another thing that would be good to add. Things like custom curve controls could also have there own presets also.

Yep, pretty much what you say here. :)

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allows zoom in on painted area so you are able to create 'unlimited' texture resolution ..Mudbox 2012 SAP1 can also do this with its GigaTexture feature = like google earth you can zoom in to see then paint in more details

Isn't this essentially Ptex? Which 3DC had before anyone else outside of Disney?

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  • Advanced Member

Yeah, do some anatomy study or something and see how these tools are helpful.

I"m waiting for the basic tools! Where are they?

As for swirl tool, there's another excellent in zbrush. But the more interesting of all these is the rotate tool in sculptris. Far better... have you tried it?

It's that when zooming, tool becomes sharper. Interesting that this still not working in 3dcoat as it should.

You're loosing the forest behind the tree. IMO

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Hi :)

I"m waiting for the basic tools! Where are they?

Please can you explain what are exactly the basic tools? honestly I don't see how much more basic tools we are missing... clay, flatten, inflate/deflate, snake, move, rotate( new swirl), crease (pintch), smooth, TSmooth , smudge

I will put it in Sculptris equivalent: clay, draw (Draw) , crease (Crease) , Rotate (Swirl, the new, not the one you have now) , flatten (flatten) , snake (grab) , inflate (inflate) , and so on.... we may miss a specific behaviour but no basic tools...

,

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Hi, I ve just got 3dCoat( EDU version) So I am just finding my feet with it so to speak. What I am curious about at the moment ,is upgrades . According to the Help tab in the software you can check for updates...it says I am up to date (3.701b) which is fine. When I hover my cursor over the downloads at the head of this thread it says 3.702C, but I believe this is a beta and that I am running the "stable" version? What do folks do about this....do you download the latest betas? And does this just replace the version you are running or do you have then 2 versions running? And how often are the betas updated, should I come back often to check or would I be on some sort of Email list informing me.

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Hi, I ve just got 3dCoat( EDU version) So I am just finding my feet with it so to speak. What I am curious about at the moment ,is upgrades . According to the Help tab in the software you can check for updates...it says I am up to date (3.701b) which is fine. When I hover my cursor over the downloads at the head of this thread it says 3.702C, but I believe this is a beta and that I am running the "stable" version? What do folks do about this....do you download the latest betas? And does this just replace the version you are running or do you have then 2 versions running? And how often are the betas updated, should I come back often to check or would I be on some sort of Email list informing me.

Hey,

You can go to the first page of this thread to find the most recent updates...it will install over top of your previous install. You can always re-install a previous version if you find it too unstable. I would come back fairly often. There is usually an update around every week or so. Sometimes more frequently, sometimes a little slower.

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