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Ah.. you mean it applies to the entire layer? I was referring to working on a single layer with a variable brush function such as the darken/lighten modes. Sometimes creating a new layer is an ok solution.. other times it simply isn't effective.. but good to know this works that way. Thanks :)

Thre is "colorize" tool - it allows saturate/desaturate, lighten/darken. Lighten works not absolutely properly, but it will be fixed in nearest update.

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Very nice work Juan. I see ive been completely outdone. :unsure:

Thankyou for the new upgrade andrew! Ive only had a couple of minutes to play with it so far. Mixed feelings about the voxel to mesh and back again philosophy. For flatten to be a mesh based brush for example is downright horrific. Unless mesh to voxels will becomes instant (not just fast; instant) it will be a big problem for me because i use flatten as much as i use smooth. I.e. i switch all the time. That said, while the conversion does take time, the final result to voxels after using draw with pen with a nice alpha for example looks very, very good. Same goes for pinch; works very well but i really cant wait for the conversion to happen. Is there no way to program true voxel equivalents for these tools?

Move atm feels like a bad equivalent to zbrush move tool. I had hoped move (in combination with masks) would be the standard for adding geometry to your mesh. When i look at how "easily" volume gets added when your brushing there has to be a way to make move do something similair in voxels. I want to grab a piece of my model, move it and have the space in between filled by voxels. No ugly mesh facetting, mesh errors and mesh braking up. This leads to crap when it gets converted back to voxels aswel. Its a very important tool and i hope there are alternatives to the current approach cause i dont think this makes use of voxels strength at all. While the spike tool is pretty much a toy atm (its not really controllable to the extend i need) i was (and am) hoping move will result in a similair smooth result.

In general all mesh based tools are prone to creating mesh errors which lead to spikes at the conversion to voxels. Flatten seems to work well (when you set falloff very low) but is particularly prone to creating mesh errors.

Falloff only seems to work for mesh based tools.

Radius disconnected from pen pressure still gives me a "blob" at the start of every stroke (please im begging you to fix that)

Depth still has no effect on the carve tool

Ill be silent now... (for a while) :lol:

3dioot

PS

I think my biggest gripe is simply that its horrible workflow to have wait times in between switching sculpting tools. Thats just.. :(

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Thre is "colorize" tool - it allows saturate/desaturate, lighten/darken. Lighten works not absolutely properly, but it will be fixed in nearest update.

Yes I use the colorize tool for lighten and darken. But it doesn't do "Multiply/Subtract/Overlay" I was suggesting these be added in addition. The Lighten and Darken tools are also nice and I used them in the making of the model above.

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Im extatic to hear you -are- working on pure voxel versions of the tools. Im honestly relieved. I know full well what alpha means but.. Well im happy. :) Do understand. I dont need all magic to work pure voxels but as stated before in this thread even if voxels dont match zbrush or mudbox in detail sculpting if overall sculpting of forms is smooth there is a huge demand for it. Main sculpting tools are:

Add/Subtract (with extensive curve control for fallof not just slider)

Flatten

Smooth

Pinch

Transforms (move rotate scale of subparts of the voxelsculpt)

(secondary tools like layer brush, inflate etc are nice but probably not "must haves")

So i dont neccesarily need alpha's to work in voxel. Or patterned strokes (like zippers or stitches). Eventhough i see no reason why they should not work if voxels allow the detail. :rolleyes:

What it comes down to is that voxel sculpting tools can be considered phase one; sculpting everything except the superfine details. While sculpting with alpha's and patterned strokes can be considered phase two. In theory phase two comes after phase one. Even IF you decide to do some touchup work to the overal shape while "in" phase2 its not a problem to convert and waith the second. However as long as you work in one phase you should be able to use the tools for that phase fluently without wait times in between. i hope im making sense here. Ofcourse getting all the tools to work in voxels would completely do away with this problem.

As for how i see the move tool. Its hard to explain. essentially how it works in zbrush but without the (for zbrush) unavoidable mesh stretching. Ill see if i can come up with a better explanation or movie in a little while.

Forgive me if i seem rude or impatient. Im just very excited. I honestly believe that you have gold in your hands (and i hope you see it). Voxel sculpting has in theory always been the better solution. It just lacked someone to bring it into practical reality. You are up against tough competitors so it will have to be very well implemented and truly using the power a voxel solution can offer (this means new tools and methods which i wont bother you with just yet). Zbrush pulled in traditional sculptors while in fact it still has many technical limitations. Your digital sculpting solution, when well executed, really doesnt. Its also in quite a few ways more efficient. I have allready sculpted stuff in 3dcoat which was on my system really hard to do in zbrush or plagued with technical phases inbetween the sculpting. In 3dcoat i never had to stop sculpting. I hope this puts my "critical attitude' in the right context. Really, your my hero. :lol:

3dioot

PS

Ill see wether i can give you a good example for move.

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Okay then! :)

http://screencast.com/t/rmNjX75w

Its really finely divided which is why you see almost no stretching. the start is how it looks normally with average falloff. Ofcourse if you change that it will make the brush grab a little more aggresive or more smooth. Last part is me making a mask, inverting it and then using move on the only "live" section of the mesh with a really big brush so i was certain i covered the complete area. You see the result is almost like an extrude with very good control. In zbrush changing your shape this drastically gives problems (it looks good but its really not smart to do this in zbrush). With voxels this should not be a problem (this is the greatest strength of voxels). I hope it helps. :)

3dioot

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Great update Andrew, the volumetric sculpting is getting better and better with each release.

There are still some issues with the move tool. With symmetry turn ON when you move one area, with a big brush, towards inside the mesh other area pops out. The move tool right now seems more appropriate for move very small areas, but that i think is because the initial resolution of the voxel mesh is still to much for big changes with the move brush in big size.....

As i said earlier i don`t know the programing tech behind voxel sculpting. But if it has some similarities with poly/sculpting in regards of how BIG size brushes get faster in the lowest subdivision levels and get sloweeeeer in the highest subdivisions, then i think it would be very necessary to have the option of lowest subdivision levels in order to make big changes just like it is done in poly/sculpting.

Thanks

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I see lotsa talk about the advantages of voxel based sculpting, but i'm curious.. what are the disadvantages of voxel based sculpting ?

I think the main disadvantage is that the voxel sculpting is in fact based on cubes. And cube isn't very organic shape so you need enormous number of cubes to keep "organic" shapes, transition etc. on every detail in every angle anywhere in 3D space an it is still hard (or impossible) to avoid some jaggedness (or how to say it) as you can see in the image above your post.

The second disadvantage is that ts impossible for current hardware to work in super-fine details (like lets say skin pores or fingerprints on model of whole body), cos the number of cubes you would need for that will be even bigger than enormous, not possible for our poor quad-core CPUs a gigabytes of RAM :)

Now I realise that, technically speaking, that's only one flaw but I thought it was such a big one it was worth mentioning twice. (line for Red Dwarf fans :) )

I hope I dont't get the whole technology wrong.

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Good explanation of it buga, thanks a bunch :) to be honest if it works like that it's a pretty big disadvantage to use this tech for sculpting. At best it will allow low to midpoly sculpting which is not all that useful.

/ Max

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Sorry no new sculpts from me tonight. Little distracted and tired. Lots of improvements though. Spikes seems gone! I cant replicate them anymore nomatter how ugly situation i create. I only get spikes when i use a meshbased tool, it goes bad and i convert back to voxels. Also (i maybe imagining this) smooth feels faster? I couldnt get move to behave though.

Bugs

Sometimes undo makes my model dissapear. I cant get it back. I cant load in other voxel models either. I have to restart 3dcoat before it functions again.

Cutting away with the lasso makes one random blop appear on the voxelsculpt. In the example it happens near where i work but in general it happens on random places on the sculpt. See movie.

http://screencast.com/t/NrXwQYRd

Unlinking radius to pen pressure starts every few strokes at full depth. Its more a rule then exception (movie is almost misleading).

http://screencast.com/t/FCnTMerpkZ3

Sometimes (i dont know how; i couldnt find it in the manual either) i will rotate the camera in such a way that i angle my horizon. Dont know what its called. I dont know why it happens (it may be user error but i couldnt find how to rotate the camera side to side in the manual). The problem is that the "set camera to default position" function doesnt reset this "camera tilt".

Ill be away tomorrow evening so i wont have time but ill make some nice stuff in the weekend for sure. :)

3dioot

PS

Juan, are you working with a different build? I cant make my move to behave even close to what you showed in this thread. It looked very close to how i would want it to behave though.

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I think the main disadvantage is that the voxel sculpting is in fact based on cubes. And cube isn't very organic shape so you need enormous number of cubes to keep "organic" shapes, transition etc. on every detail in every angle anywhere in 3D space an it is still hard (or impossible) to avoid some jaggedness (or how to say it) as you can see in the image above your post.

The second disadvantage is that ts impossible for current hardware to work in super-fine details (like lets say skin pores or fingerprints on model of whole body), cos the number of cubes you would need for that will be even bigger than enormous, not possible for our poor quad-core CPUs a gigabytes of RAM :)

Now I realise that, technically speaking, that's only one flaw but I thought it was such a big one it was worth mentioning twice. (line for Red Dwarf fans :) )

I hope I dont't get the whole technology wrong.

Not quite.. To say that because of the "cubistic nature" voxelsculpting is bad for organics is absolutely wrong. Its extremely suited for that. Trust me; if you are talking about a resolution that is too low for "organics" then you can forget about hard surface modelling just as much. Once one is possible the other is as well. Because of the nature of the technology it even delivers more freedom to organic modelling then it does for hard surface modelling. The image you refer to is a work in progres. Probably one stroke with the smooth brush is enough to remove those jaggies or he will jump up in resolution and perform a smooth then. Really bad to refer to a wip as an example for lacking technology. If anything it shows what is possible allready.

The second disadvantage is a correct one. However the fact that we can do this with an alpha might mean the hardware is actually up for this. This alpha version is not optimized nor hardware accelerated through CUDA and look what can allready be achieved. Personally i wouldnt mind if some high frequency detail had to be done the old way. Voxels dont hold any advantages for sculpting pores. :)

Good explanation of it buga, thanks a bunch :) to be honest if it works like that it's a pretty big disadvantage to use this tech for sculpting. At best it will allow low to midpoly sculpting which is not all that useful.

/ Max

I wouldnt call it low to midpoly sculpting. We dont know where this will end performance wise just yet but if you'd take one good look in this thread you should be able to form your own opinion on wether you are looking at shapeless lowpoly sculpts or perhaps something a bit better. Or.. You could try it yourself. The big problem with this alpha is that people look at the works and compare it to zbrush and mudbox, a couple of pro artists using a highly polished package. The big difference is in how its created; the ease and freedom that this technology brings. And the only way to find out is to give it a spin. Use tools that are not even possible in zbrush and mudbox like punching holes. Or litterally trimming away parts of your sculpt. Im not talking about pushing it in or denting it long enough untill the profile fits. No.. Cutting it by drawing a line. :)

GrtZ 3dioot

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I was quite busy with a project today so I had very little time to test the new update. I basically threw a few lines at the default sphere and played with them. I found that the pinch tool works pretty much as it did before. It looks great, until you switch to another tool, then it pretty much reverts to being soft again. Flatten caused me some trouble because it follows the shape of the unflattened mesh, thus not really making the area flat. After hitting the Increase Resolution button (if that's the right name) twice. I found that I was able to use the carve tool to get nice finely detailed lines. But pretty much every other tool choked to a halt. The Smooth tool was almost unusable.

Edit: BTW today I used 3DC on a paid project for the first time. My client seemed pleased. He is also a LightWaver and had never heard of 3DC. He sounded interested, so who knows, maybe that's a new user in the making.

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Just been testing the new version. There's lots of new bugs introduced but they're pretty obvious and so I wont go into them.

But I just want to say that the new voxel smooth function is totally awesome. It's very strong and gives very fast feedback. I reckon it would be possible to create an entire model with just Carve and Smooth while in voxel mode. It's just like ice sculpting!

Nicely done, Andrew!

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3dioot> I have never said that voxel sculpting is inappropriate for organic modeling. Thats not true. In fact, there is no better way (known for me) of organic sculpting. I just said, that achievment of some "effects" (like super-smoothnes or super-sharpness) can be much more HW consumpting for voxel sculpting then for polygon modeling.

I think the difference between voxel sculpting and scuplting from polygons is quite similar to difference between bitmap and vector drawing (where bitmap represents voxels a vectors polygons). Both have some advantages and disadvantages and its not fair to supress disadvantages just because we are too excited :)

Its nothing against Andrew or 3DC, its just the nature of this technology.

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I'll have few time to test 3dc in the next few days. i'm getting married. :)

I've found 2 bugs : in Gl mode, after a conversion from a surface to voxels, the model disappear when i undo the operation.

If i redo the operation, only a tiny part of the model is visible.

if i sculpt the model again with the draw with pen mode, and switch to voxels again, the model 'explode'

From time to time, aslo, when i use the draw with pen mode, cracks appear on the surface, and the model explode when i switch to voxel mode.

You should also split the tools in 2 categories : voxel tools, and surface tools. the coversion takes a lot of time... i'd like to avoid that :)

Francois.

post-476-1221726236_thumb.jpg

post-476-1221726271_thumb.jpg

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I'll have few time to test 3dc in the next few days. i'm getting married. :)

I've found 2 bugs : in Gl mode, after a conversion from a surface to voxels, the model disappear when i undo the operation.

If i redo the operation, only a tiny part of the model is visible.

if i sculpt the model again with the draw with pen mode, and switch to voxels again, the model 'explode'

From time to time, aslo, when i use the draw with pen mode, cracks appear on the surface, and the model explode when i switch to voxel mode.

You should also split the tools in 2 categories : voxel tools, and surface tools. the coversion takes a lot of time... i'd like to avoid that :)

Francois.

Wooowww !!! Congratulations Francois ! I just married too a week ago !

Welcome to the club :D

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Congrats to you both!

On a side note my complaint about the pinch tool from earlier seems to be mainly resolution related. I tried it again on a much larger corner with a bigger brush and it worked nicely, though it did make stretch marks around the area near the corner.

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My congratulations also! I am married for 6.5 years :)

Link updated to ALPHA-09. Only major bugfixes. Now I am working hard over voxel-based move. Now I understand how important is it.

Thank you Andrew and philnolan3d!

Emh, one question, can you add a tool similar to "clay" in ZBrush ?

I don't know how to describe its functioning, but it seems to feel concave areas and adding volume to flat areas. The better way to understanding it is to try it :)

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Thank you Andrew and philnolan3d!

Emh, one question, can you add a tool similar to "clay" in ZBrush ?

I don't know how to describe its functioning, but it seems to feel concave areas and adding volume to flat areas. The better way to understanding it is to try it :)

Please show video how it acts :)

One day Rimasson told it is like plane + extrude... but video is more obvious.

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Andrew.

One important thing to point out about the increasing subdivision option is that it smooth out the shapes in every increase and almost always it completely erase the strokes of the previous subdivision. Just take the default sphere that it appears when entering voxel sculpting make a few strokes, subdivide and all the strokes will completely disappear.

This happens only if you have used the surface tools, but if you enter the voxel/tools before subdivide the strokes get smoother but do not disappear....

Also in the highest subdivisions a boxy small squares appears in the whole mesh.

I haven`t download yet the latest alpha-09...but those subdivision issues appears in the alpha-07

Thanks and great to know that you are working in the voxel-based move tool. The move tool is really an essential and very important tool.

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@ buga

Ok perhaps i misinterpreted your explanation. :huh:

"because we get too exited" I disagree, so far ive only seen genuine excitement from people who seem to know their stuff. Besides great strides in any field arent made by looking at what isnt possible but what is possible. Ill focus on the good stuff if you dont mind. ;)

@ rimasson

Congratulations from me as well. Are you nervous for the wedding yet? :lol:

Also Andrew i think my bug where my mesh dissapears is the same one as he described. Cant replicate it in new version since it doesnt seem to allow you to undo the mesh to voxel translation.

@ Andrew

Many thanks for taking the request so seriously! Its a shame im pressed for time tonight. Perhaps i can put in some time after dinner before i have to leave. Looking forward to voxel versions of the other tools as well.

I have a request though (again). BluEgo asks for a clay brush. Im all for it (just like inflate, layer etc) however that brush is in reality a mix of a few different brush qualities and certain settings. Its quite an specific tool. Personally, i would really, really like basic brush settings like the one for the pen tool to work in voxel sculpting. With them working you can come really close to a clay brush allready just by changing settings. It will not be the same; im not saying that. I do want a clay brush (its a bread and butter brush in zbrush for me). But it sounds to me like forgetting about the foundations if your going to make a claybrush before you can simply tweak your normal brush.

I see you have fixed radius unlinking from pen pressure. Thanks alot!

But falloff still doesnt work (ill show you what i would like to see with pictures if i have time tonight)

Depth still doesnt work. 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.

These are pretty basic things to have any control over your brush stroke. I have no idea what's smart to do first and last (i cant code much) but it seems to me these are things that influence the feeling and work of all other tools so it would be handy if they work first? :mellow: Please?

Lastly something about the flatten brush. Perhaps this is handy to know while you work on the voxel version. If others think im wrong about flatten feel free to say im talking out of my #$@ but this is what i personally really like the flatten brush to do. See picture.

flatten picture

Right side shows how it currently is and left side shows how i would like it to be.

Im of for now. Hope i can squeeze in some playtime this evening. Thanks for everything so far! Ive ordered a creditcard specifically to purchase 3dcoat online. I doubt just one more buyer would make this a good investment for you but at least it shows im very happy where this is going. :) (besides i still plan to spend some quality time sculpting this weekend)

3dioot

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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! :)

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