Jump to content
3DCoat Forums

Recommended Posts

  • Advanced Member

Spend a couple of hours sculpting this yesterday evening/this morning. Its 100% voxels sculpted from an imported flattened cube. (plane with thickness essentially).

There is alot that has to be done for this to become really viable but ill first say how awesome it is. Its bloody awesome! :lol: Its amazing to sculpt the most intricate shapes out of thin air. No worries about stretching or folding. Want volume there? Go for it. Want hole? Click, done. Its freaking hilarious to close holes just by smoothing over them. Also very funny to see how stable the polycount remains as you sculpt. There is no need to subdivide just to support new forms. So no sudden jumps where you end up with four times the polycount just to support one smooth edge. Eventhough the resolution on this ear still is quite rough (its about 1.7 times the width of the starting sphere) it remains "stable" nomatter how much volume you add. Its a revelation! :)

sculpted ear

Ill see if i can make a list of my biggest gripes a bit later. For now its time for breakfeast and such. The forum was down yesterday and i really wanted to post this so there you go. ;)

GrtZ 3dioot

PS

Whats this :brush: thats all over me? Eeeewww... :lol:

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Whoa! I did the same thing today! :o Actually twice, the first one wasn't big enough to get all the details in. Only difference is I started by cutting a slab out of the default sphere. Of course as it usuaslly does my computer crashed and I didn't bother to save anything. Yours looks very nice though.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

  • Advanced Member

Bummer to hear you lost your ear. Thanks for the compliment though. Im thinking about sculpting a nose next but for some reason symmetry is not centered on my box. Its really annoying. If you have any idea why thats happening feel free to enlighten me. :lol: You do know you can increase the "resolution" by scaling your imported mesh up right? Its very easy with the universal transform gizmo.

right now the promised bugreport/suggestions:

Radius disconnected from pen pressure leads to a big blob drawn with maximum depth at the beginning of every stroke making this option unusable.

It is too easy to create enclosed cavities. They either need to be "filled" on the fly or there needs to be a button for it that you can occasionally press which checks for these and fixes them.

As renderdemon allready said this is a really big one: "I mean,with carve,the brush it's a sphere,even with pressure gives some problem controlling how depth you go. If the brush can be made elliptical,we can use big radius for surfacing big zone,but without changing too much depth."

Funny thing is that if you disconnect the radius from pen pressure and disregard the bug the result is alot like what renderdemon describes. (please fix the pen pressure radiusbug... please)

Which leads me to the next thing. Falloff doesnt seem to do anything. Id really like this one to work. Again this will make smooth sculpting alot easier.

And then there's depth. (i see a pattern here; am i even supposed to assume these things should work? The entire toolbar seems to not function correctly atm) This doesnt seem to work either. As you can imagine this makes it quite hard to sculpt even with a tablet because you are always working in the full range of depth.

Spikes and holes. Quite often you get spikes or holes. They shoot through your model and mess things up.They are a major pain to fix if you dont spot them right away. Ive made a small video where you can see how they most often occur. If you sculpt over something that has enough difference in depth your pretty much guaranteed to run into it. Even a harsh stroke on a surface which you sculpt over can be enough of a depth difference to give you a hole.

<a href="http://screencast.com/t/igGzavZG" target="_blank">http://screencast.com/t/igGzavZG</a>

The smooth brush. While i know this is an alpha i have to say this. Right now its smooth and flatten in one. This reminds me of what pixo did to their flawless smoothbrush from 3.0 to 3.1 They raped it. Smooth brush should smooth small irregularities on the surface. It should allow you to tweak a sharp ridge untill it is softened to the radius you want. It should not just erode your mesh away. This is what it does at the moment. This gave all kinds of trouble on my ear. In the end i can get better detail by making one perfect stroke along a ridge then with smoothing. This should not be. Smooth brush should be so controllable i could do the same thing with it.

Lastly i really do need a flatten brush. I know this is a feature request while voxel sculpting is in alpha but still.. Flatten brush + good smooth brush = all the surface control i need. :) Right now i could not even give the right volume to the outer ridge of the ear (which is a pretty big shape) just because using smooth on it "ate" away at it way too much. More subtle smooth + flatten brush would have done the job just fine.

For now this is it. Dont misunderstand this is as bashing. It is not. I really hope you can make it all work because the concept and "toy" version is awesome allready. :)

GrtZ 3dioot

PS

I also really need masking. Right now its very hard to sculpt without undoing your previous work. It would also be awesome for creating new shapes and forms.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Spend a couple of hours sculpting this yesterday evening/this morning. Its 100% voxels sculpted from an imported flattened cube. (plane with thickness essentially).

There is alot that has to be done for this to become really viable but ill first say how awesome it is. Its bloody awesome! :lol: Its amazing to sculpt the most intricate shapes out of thin air. No worries about stretching or folding. Want volume there? Go for it. Want hole? Click, done. Its freaking hilarious to close holes just by smoothing over them. Also very funny to see how stable the polycount remains as you sculpt. There is no need to subdivide just to support new forms. So no sudden jumps where you end up with four times the polycount just to support one smooth edge. Eventhough the resolution on this ear still is quite rough (its about 1.7 times the width of the starting sphere) it remains "stable" nomatter how much volume you add. Its a revelation! :)

2008-09-14_0131.png

Ill see if i can make a list of my biggest gripes a bit later. For now its time for breakfeast and such. The forum was down yesterday and i really wanted to post this so there you go. ;)

GrtZ 3dioot

PS

Whats this :brush: thats all over me? Eeeewww... :lol:

Nice work!

I am back from trip and will force work soon. Need to solve several support questions, so tomorrow I should spent some time for thet. Also, I am making some experiments with vox sculpting, it also takes some time. I will make update soon.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

  • Advanced Member

Glad you like it. You can be certain ill keep an eye on this thread for any updates/news.

One question though. Im not an owner of 3dcoat just yet (ear was made with trial). Will these voxel sculpting "testbuilds" continue to be made available as trials or date bound? (date bound sounds like a slightly better idea to me but its not my software) Id really like to keep in touch with the development of the voxel sculpting and give feedback where possible. It has so many benefits its just crazy. :) (and its fun too)

GrtZ 3dioot

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Glad you like it. You can be certain ill keep an eye on this thread for any updates/news.

One question though. Im not an owner of 3dcoat just yet (ear was made with trial). Will these voxel sculpting "testbuilds" continue to be made available as trials or date bound? (date bound sounds like a slightly better idea to me but its not my software) Id really like to keep in touch with the development of the voxel sculpting and give feedback where possible. It has so many benefits its just crazy. :) (and its fun too)

GrtZ 3dioot

Voxel sculpting will work even after expiring trial. The only difference - export will be disabled after trial end. But even now voxel data could not be exported.

So, you will be able to be in touch even with demo.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

  • Member

Wow Andrew!

I just downloaded this new alpha build after purchasing the 2.10 build of 3D Brush as a convert from a prior version of Zbrush. I am in love with this voxel editing.

I have a design request for you if you can find time. My team is one of the growing hundreds of developer houses that are using the TGE game engine as a means to develop quality gaming experiences at an affordable level. Is it possible to work on an importer/exporter for the TGE and TGEA game engines offered by Garage Games?

It seems your price structure making your application accessible to Indy developers such as myself would be an ideal group to cater toward to give a power set of tools for game developers to compliment their existing world builder. They have full SDK for the DTS and DIF formats which are what are used. DTS are standard art/detail objects and DIF are special non-concave sufaced automatically physics & collision detection ready object formats used in the engine. The engine is based on the Tribes 2 engine and is an excellent solution for many starting companies like mine.

My current work flow looks like this:

Milkshape/Max-> (obj/lwo/3ds) 3DBrush (formerly Zbrush)->Milkshape/Max->(exporter to DTS) and then use another very limited app to design DIF objects (Suitable for static objects like a building DIF allow baked shadows DTS don't) then import into the world builder for placement as DTS/DIF. The devil is in the detail of keeping the texture coordinates and mapping consistent through all of this process..

Ideally it would go Milkshape/Max/3DBrush->(3D Brush)->(DTS/DIF) World Builder

Anyway thank you for your time and effort.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

  • Advanced Member

Only to 3dcoats own format which is .3b No real export options asfaik. Im just happy we can save at all ;)

Also just found out (after some panicking) that loading a voxel sculpt through file open doesnt immediately place it in your viewport. It looks like nothing happened but when you press the cube you WILL get the voxel sculpt you just opened instead of the sphere. Very weird way of working but appearantly thats how it works atm.

GrtZ 3dioot

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Also just found out (after some panicking) that loading a voxel sculpt through file open doesnt immediately place it in your viewport. It looks like nothing happened but when you press the cube you WILL get the voxel sculpt you just opened instead of the sphere. Very weird way of working but appearantly thats how it works atm.

Yes because the voxel model only appears while you're in voxel mode. You can test this pretty easily by jumping between the cube on the left and anything else on the left.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

  • Member
Andrew said this is coming. What you describe is like ZBrush's Z-Spheres. The way I understood it his technique will be slightly different, but the same underlying concept.

Is everyone else seeing this bug? Every once it a while while I'm sculpting the brush stroke will shoot towards the camera sometimes straight through the camera so I can see inside of it. If using Ctrl to carve it does the oposite, shooting deep into the model or sometimes punching a hole all the way through.

Well since 3DC is using voxels, it can go way beyond Z-Spheres, using various sized metaballs you could model any base shape in a completely organic way. If 3DB kept the the metaballs cached and allowed editing them individually at any point then you have the basis for a skinned, flexible curved volume...

Link to comment
Share on other sites

  • Advanced Member
Wow Andrew!

I just downloaded this new alpha build after purchasing the 2.10 build of 3D Brush as a convert from a prior version of Zbrush. I am in love with this voxel editing.

I have a design request for you if you can find time. My team is one of the growing hundreds of developer houses that are using the TGE game engine as a means to develop quality gaming experiences at an affordable level. Is it possible to work on an importer/exporter for the TGE and TGEA game engines offered by Garage Games?

It seems your price structure making your application accessible to Indy developers such as myself would be an ideal group to cater toward to give a power set of tools for game developers to compliment their existing world builder. They have full SDK for the DTS and DIF formats which are what are used. DTS are standard art/detail objects and DIF are special non-concave sufaced automatically physics & collision detection ready object formats used in the engine. The engine is based on the Tribes 2 engine and is an excellent solution for many starting companies like mine.

My current work flow looks like this:

Milkshape/Max-> (obj/lwo/3ds) 3DBrush (formerly Zbrush)->Milkshape/Max->(exporter to DTS) and then use another very limited app to design DIF objects (Suitable for static objects like a building DIF allow baked shadows DTS don't) then import into the world builder for placement as DTS/DIF. The devil is in the detail of keeping the texture coordinates and mapping consistent through all of this process..

Ideally it would go Milkshape/Max/3DBrush->(3D Brush)->(DTS/DIF) World Builder

Anyway thank you for your time and effort.

Your not the first to ask for specific file format support for 3DC, the last request i remember was Silo file format. IMO, Andrew's time is very limited as it is, so IMO he should focus on 3.0 volumetric sculpting. Beside 3DC does have a Input/Output SDK , which you can use to create custom file format support.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

  • Member
Your not the first to ask for specific file format support for 3DC, the last request i remember was Silo file format. IMO, Andrew's time is very limited as it is, so IMO he should focus on 3.0 volumetric sculpting. Beside 3DC does have a Input/Output SDK , which you can use to create custom file format support.

Unfortunantly it is more complex than just a few options at export time. I had considered this idea but full support for this would have to be something Andrew decided to do or not to do as it would require a few custom tools and objects to be included in the GUI and used as helper objects in 3D Studio Max are in coop with preparations done to the scene in regards to setting up a logic tree of dependencies, which in max can be achieved with scripts. However, if he did decide to support this growing segment it would be to his advantage as at present the only tools available are sub-par or very pricey basically leaving the majority of actual Indy developers without a solid set of options for tools to work with their solid game engine.. which is a shame.

On my Vista notebook with 4gb of ram, and a ATI chipset, The GL version is noticably faster than the DX version. Just thought you might like to know.

I believe that this is true of every single OpenGL vs DirectX argument in any situation where both versions receive equal opportunity/development because OpenGL technology is still far superior in function just more complex in setup compared to Micro$oft options.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

  • Advanced Member
Unfortunantly it is more complex than just a few options at export time. I had considered this idea but full support for this would have to be something Andrew decided to do or not to do as it would require a few custom tools and objects to be included in the GUI and used as helper objects in 3D Studio Max are in coop with preparations done to the scene in regards to setting up a logic tree of dependencies, which in max can be achieved with scripts. However, if he did decide to support this growing segment it would be to his advantage as at present the only tools available are sub-par or very pricey basically leaving the majority of actual Indy developers without a solid set of options for tools to work with their solid game engine.. which is a shame.

I believe that this is true of every single OpenGL vs DirectX argument in any situation where both versions receive equal opportunity/development because OpenGL technology is still far superior in function just more complex in setup compared to Micro$oft options.

:) i'm glad you didn't fine my reply rude. It sounds like alot of work(seriously) and here i was thinking it was going to be simple import/export. There is also C4 engine, it cheap, but it support Collada file format..meh i don't want to bother Andrew with Collada request, i think he already has a full plate with volumetric sculpting(maybe after 3.X is done..down the road). For Andrew to support any feature, it'll have to be back by many user request, that's how the whole volumetric sculpting kinda got started.

BTW,i'll probably be buying a license of C4 engine later this year. I looked around and its the better choice.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

  • Member
:) i'm glad you didn't fine my reply rude. It sounds like alot of work(seriously) and here i was thinking it was going to be simple import/export. There is also C4 engine, it cheap, but it support Collada file format..meh i don't want to bother Andrew with Collada request, i think he already has a full plate with volumetric sculpting(maybe after 3.X is done..down the road). For Andrew to support any feature, it'll have to be back by many user request, that's how the whole volumetric sculpting kinda got started.

BTW,i'll probably be buying a license of C4 engine later this year. I looked around and its the better choice.

Depends on what your requirements are for choice. The TGE engine is actually a better choice than TGEA for us. Even tho TGEA is considered the "Advanced" option.. which means it out of the box supports things such as pixel shader 3.0.. however the trade off is TGE is cross platform and supports both OpenGL and Direct X. As a developing house we have 0 intentions of pigeon holing ourselves in to a Direct X only engine as we actually care about performance at render time and direct X is sluggish at best. Anyway good luck to you and I figured this tool is a diamond in the rough and as a developer it both fits my price point and feature point list and I believe with a few additions Andrew could market this to whole base of users who are currently using the TGE / TGEA engines..

Link to comment
Share on other sites

  • New Member
as we actually care about performance at render time and direct X is sluggish at best.

Then you're probably not using it correctly (perhaps you're trying to read from video memory? or anything like that?), because rendertimes shouldn't really differ between D3D and OGL at all.

(it used to be like that in the old days, but not anymore)

Link to comment
Share on other sites

  • Advanced Member

If Andrew should decide to support another file format, then I think it shouldn't be too specific. A lot of game engines support fbx or collada, one of those is far more interesting than a format that only supports a single app, don't you agree? I use dxstudio and tho it has a specific fileformat it can deal with a lot of generic formats too, I think that's the case with most dev kits.

mike

Link to comment
Share on other sites

  • Member

Hi Aethyr,

I think the responsibility would fall to garage game to offer file support for a more universal file format. my reasoning is that obj is generally regarded as a good interchange format for static meshes, and while there really is no definitive standard for an animated interchange format (collada, crosswalk xsi, and fbx and .x all stuggling for that title) 3d coat doesn't support any animation anyway. It would be a massive waste of programming resources to have 3d coat preserve skin weightings, morph targets etc, just to support one companies commercial game engine. Also, Seeing as 3d coat is a very versatile program, such a feature would really only be of any use to a tiny fraction of users. As an example, there have been requests for more solid modeling tools as part of the volumetric feature set, showing that 3dcoat is being used not just by game artists, but also has at least some interest from the visualisation community not to mention people like myself who use it for detailing models for broadcast and film. Just my two cents :)

Link to comment
Share on other sites

  • Advanced Member
Hi Aethyr,

I think the responsibility would fall to garage game to offer file support for a more universal file format. my reasoning is that obj is generally regarded as a good interchange format for static meshes, and while there really is no definitive standard for an animated interchange format (collada, crosswalk xsi, and fbx and .x all stuggling for that title) 3d coat doesn't support any animation anyway. It would be a massive waste of programming resources to have 3d coat preserve skin weightings, morph targets etc, just to support one companies commercial game engine. Also, Seeing as 3d coat is a very versatile program, such a feature would really only be of any use to a tiny fraction of users. As an example, there have been requests for more solid modeling tools as part of the volumetric feature set, showing that 3dcoat is being used not just by game artists, but also has at least some interest from the visualisation community not to mention people like myself who use it for detailing models for broadcast and film. Just my two cents :)

Actually that would benefit game artist also..i can see myself using those kind of tools for detailing, creating vehicles for games, with the added advantage of it being voxel..i won't have to worry about topology during the design phase, this opens up potential to designer. You probably wont be able to do anything with this much freedom in Mbx/ZB(because they are pure polygonal approach). One thing both hard surface design and organic sculpting needs is really tiny triangles so you can add small things,without it looking blocky.

If the tools for hard surface sculpting/modeling is there..i can see alot of industrial designer using 3DC.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

  • Advanced Member

I want to model a mobile phone with sharp and round corners and seams and rivets and punch holes and extrude areas without worrying about topology. Here's hoping 3dc can offer more accurate modelling tools to do those kinds of semi organic mechanical models.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

  • Advanced Member

I actually hope there wont be too much focus (at least initial focus) on these cad/cam like requests. Sure id like it to be that good (in the end) but as for geo_n's example. Thats what surface modelling, i.e. nurbs, excels in. Trim and fillet with infinite precision. There are specialist packages that excel in those allready (like rhino3d and formz). Assuming you dont like nurbs modelling i think currently zbrush would be more up your ally. It is so efficient with polysculpting that with the right hardware you can divide to insanity and use alpha's to pretty much stamp out or in any form you like in supercrisp detail.

Voxels wont ever give you that detail (id love to be proven wrong by andrew). As Andrew has said before though a pure voxel solution will not really be able to mimic the pore and wrinkles sculpting that you can get nowadays in zbrush. Perhaps a hybrid form, where big transformations are applied to the voxel structure that forms the base of the sculpt and small detail work gets applied to the polygonal skin or to a normal map or something to that extent could offer a "complete" freeform sculpting solution. But i have no idea wether thats even possible. :lol:

The big(gest) difference between voxels and polysculpting is this. With the -right- hardware you can sculpt freaking statues out of a box with zbrush just by dividing indefinitely. With voxels; you can always sculpt a statue out of a box since the resolution of the sculpt works in a completely different way. Voxels are, in a way, more form efficient. In zbrush you would have to constantly retopo to get what 3dcoats voxel sculpting offers you now.

I do hope the resolution will be good enough to shape stuff like folds in clothing, well defined facial features (like nose ears lips and eyes) and stuff like that. If it is you can really rough out your sculpt, tweak the surfaces till they look nice and clean and use retopology tools to get a good mesh for final detailing in zbrush (or perhaps 3dcoat). What worries me the most at the moment is just one thing. I expect the performance to increase with new releases and with that the detail/resolution of the voxel sculpts. The brush(es) really need to shape up though. Smooth strokes, working falloff, working alpha's, depth sampling. It has to feel right and give enough control to really make the most of the resolution that you have. The fact that you cant sculpt in wrinkle detail (which would probably dissapear over time as hardware improves) would not be a big deal since when you get to that state the overal form (and a bit more i hope) will be well established through your voxel sculpt.

Im glad were talking about volumetric sculpting again though. The exporter request for game engine "X" really doesnt belong in this thread imho. :huh:

Hopefully ill have a new picture to add to this thread at hte end of the evening. :)

GrtZ 3dioot

Link to comment
Share on other sites

  • Member
Then you're probably not using it correctly (perhaps you're trying to read from video memory? or anything like that?), because rendertimes shouldn't really differ between D3D and OGL at all.

(it used to be like that in the old days, but not anymore)

I said performance at render time not render times. Open GL is less bloated from top to bottom than DirectX.. Most important differences is mouse lag. DirectX games have notoriously terrible response times between user interaction and screen draw refreshes. Most developers I believe are more concerned in fiscal pressure than quality experience and so DirectX's superior toolbox compared to Open GL (user friendly wise) wins over quality of solution.

I figured regardless of the outcome I would let Andrew know that there is quite a place for his program in the game developer corner as much as any other side to this market. Programs that allow for texture mapping detail like this is a game developers best friend.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

  • Member

A bit of topic but there was a funny predictions on Voxels and CPU power made in 1999: http://forums.cgsociety.org/showthread.php?f=59&t=675057

Is this implementation of voxels based on Level Sets?

I'll try to get some testing done on this beta, but I have just got my first evening one on one with the 2.x so I will get back to this on a later time.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Guest
This topic is now closed to further replies.
 Share

×
×
  • Create New...