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Since not all 3D-Coat users have fast and powerful machines to work with - I being one of them, have noticed some sluggish behaviour with the "voxel count" of the original sphere that appears on entering the voxel modeling section. I prefer to start modeling with a very "low resolution" object and subdivide, as needed, for adding progressively more and more detail. Sometimes I don't need a high resolution model at all, so starting with a really dense voxel sphere is counter-productive for me.

And, I think the behaviour of the new "move" tool illustrates the fact that it is moving very large numbers of small voxels, judging by the sluggishness and long times seen between movements. For instance, starting with a perfectly round sphere for producing something like a human head requires quick "stretching" of the sphere into something that more resembles the starting shape of the human head, (taller, skinnier, bulging at the back, etc.). This beginning part of modeling should move very quickly, so the artist can then progress to specific, much smaller details in short order, just as one would work with real clay to build up the shape of something like a human head.

If other tools are used to add volume and change the shape of the original sphere, (this takes a long time for my system to process - using a tool like the "carve" tool), there would need to be some kind of "melt" feature - (much stronger in action than the existing "smooth" functions), in order to get rid of the "joins" between the added voxel spheres. I can't help thinking of the way the "wax" tools function in EI Technologies' "Amorphium 3 Pro". The user of these wax tools starts with a low resolution blob and either adds, subtracts or melts additional wax blobs into the final shape. So the analogy of sculpting with wax versus sculpting with clay is, to me, a better comparison with sculpting with voxels.

Would it be possible, Andrew, to give the option of starting with a sphere composed of large voxels, and then subdividing this to higher resolutions only when more detail is needed? Things would move much more quickly for we low-powered, (hardware-wise) users. Once basic shapes are established, quick and large movements are not needed for adding things like wrinkles, etc., and, at that point, some slow down in workflow can be tolerated.

Thank you,

Psmith

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I had a thought while I was in the car just now. I can currently use the line tools to cut a shaped hole in my mesh. Like so:

2008-09-18_1629.png

The problem is that it's straight. What if I wanted a curve like so (I used Shift here):

2008-09-18_1639.png

This is just a thought. Perhaps if you could do something like the retopo tool where I draw an orange line to show the path my cut will follow, then a green line to draw the actual "cookie cutter" shape.

Now perhaps you could also use this tool to add geometry instead of just removing it, like in this image (done in LightWave)

2008-09-18_1648.png

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I second a request for "Clay" style brushes. It's pretty much become a standard in digital sculpt brushes. The newest mudbox videos have several variations of this(Foamy, Wax, Fill). It emulates traditional "clay strips" additive form process. I could model an entire sculpt using only this brush and some kind of "move" brush. The workflow allows the user to work at high density while refining form.

Zbrush also has this handy modifier to their brushes called "brush mods". For example, the "pinch" brush with a brushmod of 0 will pinch towards the center at a flat plane. Pinch with brushmod of -50 will not only pinch, but lower the crevice at the middle, while brushmod 50 will "raise" the pinched center point, forming a nice sharp "beveled" effect.

While these mods aren't totally necessary, they are a huge time saver because they eliminate a step. I think it's important to have variation modifiers of each brush. Like Flatten, mentioned in above post, the option to flatten according to "camera direction" or "averaged surface normal", etc. is very useful.

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Thanks for good explanation about flattern. It has given me idea how to do it :) Really thanks! It can be done as a simple subtraction in range from top details in pen (low pressure) to lower detainl (big pressure). It is absolutely easy to do (and quick in work).

Any talks (especially with pictures) are very useful to give me idea.

I am waiting for claybrush :)

Also, thanks for investing! :)

Your very welcome. Here is the picture i promised about fallof curves. Eventhough its in the small hours now and i have to work tomoro.. i mean today. :lol: Forgive the crappy look. I need sleep.

profile curve picture

General idea. At the top you can see the fallof curve. White border is just a border.

Below there you see what this does to the end of the tooltip. This is a bit like mesh on pen only better. I assume this is easier to optimize too.

At the bottom is the result on a stroke. In this example with radius not linked to pen pressure so its constant only the depth changes.

As you can imagine this takes some more control for the falloff curve then just a slider. If you need examples for that i can create them tomorrow but maybe you have ideas of your own for that. I think people are really opening a can of worms with the "special" brushes this early in the alpha but ill see if i can sketch out some examples on what i think their characteristics are. Unless someone else does of course.

Goodnight all -_-

3dioot

PS

Psmith.. This functionality will be in. For now there is a simple workaround. Resolution is dependant on size. So all you have to do is merge in a sphere. Scale it so its like half the size of the original sphere. Then press enter and go back to the carve tool. Then select the lasso tool (by pressing on the brush stroke icon in the upper left) and choose the lasso tool. Lasso around the big sphere to remove it. Now you have a smaller voxel sphere with less resolution. Save it as you would any other *.3b file so you have a start file. All this information was already in this thread.

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I want to know what tools you are using for your development. This has got to be one of the most stable betas I've ever used! And I downloaded the 09 alpha, and it is a LOT faster!

I am truly impressed! The swinging back from mesh to voxel is pretty fast already, and it just keeps getting faster! Keep up the good work!

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I had a thought while I was in the car just now. I can currently use the line tools to cut a shaped hole in my mesh. Like so:

2008-09-18_1629.png

The problem is that it's straight. What if I wanted a curve like so (I used Shift here):

Couldn't you use Snake or Curve?.

When using Curve, if you hold Ctrl while hitting Enter then your curve will indent into the surface.

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Well OK sure if I want to make that shape it might be possible with Curve. But what if I wanted something more precise like this:

2008-09-19_0130.png

The "tube" shape I made cannot be made with snake as far as I know. Snake can only make a cylinder, not a precise shape like the one I posted.

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Great, that should do the trick nicely.

--

While playing tonight I keep getting this error. 3DC (DX version) goes all black, my monitor shuts off then comes right back on. 3DC is still black and frozen that way. I get the attached error message near my system tray. 3DC is so frozen it won't even shut down, I have to go into the Task Manager and "End Process".

post-466-1221809561_thumb.jpg

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Profile curves are the best starting point, because they pretty much give you everything you need. As for CLAY brush, you can see the example of it on one of my youtube timelapses:

I used only CLAY brush mostly and move brush with some slight pinch. It's a very powerful brush for building up volumes without things getting "bubble-like". Keeps things flat. Like I mentioned already, it's main appeal is changing mass at high density. Seeing that VOXEL sculpt is pretty much always high density, CLAY brush is pretty crucial. I probably wouldn't call it "Clay" brush, just in case Pixologic gets upset, maybe you can come up with some creative name. :)

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Hi Andrew, as Rodney Brett told, you can see similar "clay" tools in action in the first mudbox video, with the name of "wax" tool, and other variations as fill and foam.

3Dioot I know that there are a lot of things to do before, for example what I really want is performance above all, and only after thousand of tools, and brush strokes that act in a fluid and organic way, instead of the feeling of cg generated I have when I use Carve tool or when I use the draw tool with classic surfaces as you can see here

But I like too much the clay tool! :D

EDIT:

Whoops! sorry Rodney, you are faster than me. Thank you for your video!

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yes, I heard of Veoh being banned in several countries. It's too bad, cause its a great network. You can try VIMEO, it's similar.

Philnolan3d, that's probably how I would approach voxel sculpt in 3d-coat. I like to "sketch sculpt", then smooth and refine. It's a lot less rigid and allows me to stay loose and free in the early stages. I pick out areas that I like and refine them, similar to a 2d drawing.

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Here it is on Meta Cafe (still processing)

http://www.metacafe.com/watch/1765206/3d_c...voxel_sulpting/

I signed up for Vimeo but they're not sending me a confirmation email. Seems to be a common problem from what I see in their forum.

Edit: Got the email. Now it's on Vimeo too:

http://www.vimeo.com/1766143

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Hey not sure if anyone ended up posting a vid of ZB clay tools.

This is a quick screen cap showing off some of the brushes in ZB,standard, clay, clay tubes, and standard_DB which is a varient of standard that adds pinch to the stroke,and has a tiny dot with little falloff as its brush alpha.

Anyway here it is:) hope it can help.

http://screencast.com/t/iGgsvMsqpz

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Thats great to hear andrew, thanks alot! You rock! :) I hope we get to try it out soon.

I have to get something of my chest though. These sudden appearances of people asking for brush x y and z from zbrush/mudbox make me very nervous for volumetric sculpting development. :unsure: Really a lot of these brushes are settings (not all but the clay brush is). It would worry me a whole lot less if the only true brush that volumetric sculpting has at the moment (besides smoothing), carve, would work a full 100%. But there are many basic problems with it still. It must be getting old by now but:

Working fallof for carve (with profile curves).

Depth; the slider should be a multiplier for the pen pressure when its linked to pen pressure and an absolute value for depth when its unlinked.

I also realized today what the BIG thing was that made the carve brush feel so awkard to me. I realised it after making the picture to explain fallof curves. Ill explain with a new picture. This will make a humongous difference in how the carve brush feels and bring it right up to par with brush behavior like its in zbrush and mudbox (yes; this is pretty much appliable to the correct feel for all volume adding/removing brushes). Its also the big reason why even if you unlink radius from pen pressure (which works now) you STILL get a different radius while you sculpt with the carve tool.

Brush radius bug

Percentages are pressure. On the left you see the current situation. You see that even with the brush radius being constant you STILL get differing stroke width. This makes the carve tool feel very aggresive even when you press lightly (the depth to width doesnt change much with diminishing pressure). On the right you will see how it works in zbrush and mudbox. This makes the brush feel very responsive and controllable. If you want to keep the carve tool with its current behavior as a seperate tool i could understand. But in that case we really do need an additional solid voxel sculpting brush that follows the principle shown on the right.

I know its weird for me to have a lapse in faith after you just told us you got voxel move working (which i seriously cant wait to try out) but.. its just because i care. :lol: I hope you are working on improving the basic voxel brush first till its up to scratch.

3dioot

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That's a really good explanation, 3dioot. I haven't been using a tablet to test out the ALPHA, so I never noticed that, but I agree that pen pressure should not change the "thickness" of the stroke. It's really difficult in the early development to really get a nice "feel" to the brushes. I remember the length of time I was testing the Silo 2 beta's, they went through dozens of revisions before they got it right. Blender's sculpt is still in it's early stages, so it has similar "brush feel" issues right now.

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I mentioned the "thickness" of the smoothing brush before for my ear lobe. Here's a case of the opposite. See the attachment. I've got this nice clean slit, but the inside all bumpy. There's no way to smooth it. A large brush like in the image won't fit in there. If it's made small enough to fit the smoothing won't work. A kind of catch-22 if you will. This is an extreme case, but I've already come across similar situations.

post-466-1221855266_thumb.jpg

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In Zbrush and Mudbox with pen pressure you control the "thickness" of the brush as well as how much it push in and out from the mesh....

I personally like to have the pen pressure to change the "thickness" of the stroke.... in conjunction of course with the strength of the add and subtract. So please in any case make the "pen pressure to change the thickness of the stroke" an optional turn ON and OFF switch so everybody is happy. ;)

Thanks

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@ Christoph

Its allready an option. Please do not misunderstand. That option is fine. However if you toggle it off (so the width doesnt change from pen pressure) it STILL changes. That is a bug and needs to be fixed. So im not saying width should not change with pen pressure. Im saying it should do that. But correctly when turned on and not at all when turned of.

@ Rodney Brett

Im glad you think the explanation is clear and understand the importance of getting it just right. Im certain if we put alot of effort into showing examples and theories on brush behavior Andrew has the skills to pull it of and make a killer sculpting app!

With that said. I had a little fun session tonight. Didnt put an exceptional amount of effort in (some restrictions begin to frustrate me) but i think it turned out ok.

shell sculpt

Took me 40 minutes.

Here is a 200% sped up version on VEOH: <a href="http://www.veoh.com/videos/v159393018qdNTsHq" target="_blank">http://www.veoh.com/videos/v159393018qdNTsHq</a>

Youtube: Refused it because it was too long. Sorry; only VEOH version.

Used the lasso tool alot to cut away because i just love doing that! Didnt use any of the mesh based tools since they can create mesh errors which give spikes when converted back to voxels. Since you cant undo mesh to voxel anymore (it would destroy the model in the previous alpha) it would leave me with a mess that i wouldnt want to clean up in a video thats put online. Its not a masterpiece but i had my fun.

Also in general. Its freaking amazing how fluid and fast this, admittedly basic, sculpting is. You can really hatch in or away volume. It feels like butter on my system which really isnt a fast system. I also tried it today at work on a slightly better pc (still nowhere near the specs i will upgrade to soon) and its just amazing. It feels like sketching. Also; the smooth brush is fantastic. I know i have complained about it before i realised the slider worked but i realise now it gives sooooo much control. I can use it to smooth big areas or make it so sensitive i can "clean" the edge of the shell without it eroding it. Its awesome (beats zbrush current smooth which i never liked after 3.0)

Goodnight all. :)

3dioot

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