3D-Coat 3.0 ALPHA

[Mantis]

When working close up on fine details it's absolutely essential that the camera rotates around the surface area that you're working on. For example - imagine sculpting the finger nail of a large figure and then going to pan around to view the finger from another angle only to have the camera zoom off around the back of the subject. ugh!

But like in ZBrush, it could be made optional so that we can toggle the rotation point from last selected surface area to object's center. Although I personally always use the 'selected surface area' option in ZBrush. In fact it's bloody annoying because I'm always forgetting to enable it!.

In mudbox you can choose your rotation pivot, by pressing F the pivot become the point of the mesh who is under your cursor.

I don't know if I like or not the current navigation system, it's quite disturbing and sometimes can be annoying because you always have to stick your cursor on the point you want to turn around.

And for the discussion about 3Dcoat, I agreed that I prefer to see 3Dcoat as a specific tool than a Jack of all thread.

It seems that it is my proposition who start this debate.

Let me clarify my point, I see 3Dcoat as a Painting/Sculpting appz, and If I was refering to "bones" that was just because they use a hierarchy system that I think could help.

I was not thinking about a rigging solution, but jut be able to shrink a part without shrinking the children, like I illustrated it.

I see it as a quick posing tool, not as a rigging tool, and didn't even thought about creating a whole skeleton for just moving an arm.

I played with the current posing tool and it seems pretty good.

Seeing this tool be refined to become the ultimate posing tool don't bother me at all

And Psmith I can see your enthusiasm but I don't think that even for Andrew, 3Dcoat can grow as the Ultimate 3D appz, there so many field and mastering the sculpting and painting side will be a big Job.

Especially because Andrew is making something (almost) totally new.

[3dioot]

I love the current system. In zbrush you -have- to sculpt on something to rotate around it. Its cumbersome. In mudbox you -have- to press F to make it the focal point. In 3dcoat i just use the shortcut for rotating like i would in both mud, zb and every other package on the market and all i have to do to rotate around a specific feature is move my cursor a few inches to the right spot. I absolutely love it. In zbrush i would make a very light brush stroke (not visible) if i wanted to rotate around a specific feature. I dont have to do that in 3dcoat and i love it for it. It feels incredibly intuitive. Im not saying you have to like it but i suggest you try using it consciously (so no more having the rotation point snap on the surface from the empty screen but deliberately choosing a point to rotate around). You may like it (or not) :lol:

Im all for an option though. Especially with navigation controls im personally of the opinion that the more options there are the better. I dont mind having lots of options to tweak a program to my liking. You do it once and then your just happy and on your way. So im all for implementing this as an option. As long as the "perfect, fantastic, awesome, magnificient" current system also remains as one of the options.

The rotation control thats in the navbar doesnt work right atm but i also think thats because 3dcoat doesnt have a good sense of where the sculpt is yet. When scene management is in with the possibility to have multiple sculpts its probably very easy to have "general" rotation take the center of the active sculpt to rotate around.

Regarding the whole 3dcoat growing out of its bounds or not wanting it to have every tool from other packages included. Its not so black and white. Some people thought adding sculpting to 3dcoat was it growing out of its bounds and becoming a jack of all trade. I think all the enthusiastic people in this thread differ from that opinion. As for cloning all the tools from other packages; maybe not. But there is also the saying of "reinventing the wheel". The best thing is to learn from whats out there, what works, what doesnt and what can be improved. And when your inspired or think up something new try it out! Spray came into being because Andrew got inspired by the description of wax for the new mudbox. It turned out to be an awesome tool. Scrape is a variation of flatten i really wanted (and i love it). It became a wish because i was following a video on sculpting in clay and the instructor just scraped clay away to create rounded edges. The current flatten brush (both in 3dcoat and zbrush) was really lacking to do that. So scrape was created (thankyou Andrew!).

I also think Andrew is experimenting. Right now there are three tools for sculpting. Clay, carve and extrude. They all differ. I doubt they will all remain (or stay the same). Some people like the one, other people the other. This is also learning whats needed. What does a tool need to do? What can be done through settings? What cant be done through settings? Would it be usefull to have that hardcoded as a new tool? What to call it? Its all still very much a work in progress but i have no doubts it will become refined and streamlined. Im not too worried for bloat.

I personally believe as long as people are enthusiastic, use common sense, are clear in what they would like and open to discussion (very important) it will go just fine. Look at how rapidly progress has been up till now. I was quite nervous about this open developing but seeing what it has become allready i think it will work out just fine.

3dioot

[Monsoon]

I personally believe as long as people are enthusiastic, use common sense, are clear in what they would like and open to discussion (very important) it will go just fine. Look at how rapidly progress has been up till now. I was quite nervous about this open developing but seeing what it has become allready i think it will work out just fine.

Good points all.

Well one thing I see happening here in this forum for sure is good discussion and civility. Yay us! I must clarify my earlier statement in that I am totally for 'new and innovative' and a 'better way'. It's redundancy of function that I was referring to. And we've all seen that happen with tools. I think that by the proof of the pudding so far, if anyone could do new and better ways of doing things it would be this fellow Andrew.

But I guess the bottom line, in truth, being a 3dCoat enthusiast....I'll take whatever he throws our way!!

[rimasson]

Here is a picture that depicts two brushes from Zbrush : the flatten and the clay brushes.

The 3dc Carve brush acts almost like the Zbrush clay brush (that's why i love the carve : it's very useful to fill holes, while retaining spiles on a model, or cutting pikes. The elevation in 3d coat is controlled by the depth value.

The scrape brush is similar to the Zbrush flatten brush, with an elevation of 10.

So, maybe you could group a future voxel flatten brush and the scrape brush, and control the elevation using the depth value ?

The extrude brush should be renamed Layer brush, like in Zbrush and Mudbox.

I also vote for a basic posing tool, or a way to rotate, move and scale parts of a voxel sculpture. When you model wometing with a wrong pose, it's hard to change it, especially when it''s a voxel model, and not poly model that you can edit and pose in an external app.

[jaf]

I'm curious if someone else that has a 3d mouse or space navigator would like to comment on using it for rotation/pan/zooming. I find that I can rotate, pan and zoom at the same time so I don't run into the rotation problems mentioned in this thread. As I rotate with a twist I can keep an area centered with a little side pressure and zoom with a little up/down pressure.

Of course that's really what the device is for.

[Mantis]

@3dioot:

I agree that the current navigation is good, but it is not perfect and can cause some problem, you are right when you saying that you don't have to hit a key or do a stroke to rotate around the model, but sometime having to rely on the cursor to rotate cause some difficult to turn around your model.

For example you are sculpting the side of the ribs, when you are rotating around and the arm cross the camera your cursor is on the arm and you are rotating around the arm now, and you loose your focusing point.

But this example works only if the arm is visible, maybe being able to hide some part will help, but that was just to illustrate the fact that sometime it can cause trouble.

And like you said the more option you have the better it is.

For the posing tool, like François Rimasson said it, it is a tool that we really need because we work in voxel.

Sorry for repeating myself, but from what I saw from the previous tool Andrew can switch to surface base to move voxel, and he already has a surface base posing tool.

I played with it, and it is quite good but not perfect, so I encourage all of you to play with it to see if it can fit to our "problem".

At leat that was its goal so I think it can

And it works pretty much like bones, but the influence is quite difficult to manipulate.

@Jaf:

I'm really curious too, and especially what kind of model you are using. Because for me what the low-end navigator lack is the number of key. It can be an help to navigate but if you have to go back to your keyboard to switch tool and so on that kill the process.

So I think that the SpaceExplorer will fit better for my need, but I really don't know if I am wrong or right because I never tested such a mouse.

Some feedback will be really appreciated if that's not too much off subject.

[3dioot]

@ rimmason

I understand why you like carve now.

The trouble is that currently carve really is broken. The effect you mention is a side effect of it being flawed. (there is a movie in this thread which clearly shows how it craps out when its used near the edge of the sculpt) I think the best solution is to totally redo clay because as far as i can judge from your sketches that is essentially what you want clay to be able to do right? Fill the holes while at the same time being able to keep the extending surface detail and, if wanted, add to it.

The scrape brush is NOT similair to zbrush flatten with a value of -10. You even show it in your sketches. The -10 is just a fixed value. It doesnt take into account whats under the brush. Scrape takes the deepest point it can find under the brush as being equal to 100% pressure. This is what defines it and makes it so great.

Currently depth has no effect on scrape. But Id much rather have depth for the scrape tool be a general value for sensitivity. In other words if you set depth to .5 with the scrape tool a 100% pen pressure would only scrape half way towards the deepest point under the brush. This would allow you to work a bit "softer" without having to make the brush radius really small. Ive been wanting to ask Andrew this for a while now but keep forgetting. So here we go Andrew; official feature request; make depth influence the "sensitivity" of the scrape tool please.

If we are talking about a seperate "elevation" slider scrape could be merged with the "standard" (voxel) flatten (eventhough im against it). Id still want it to perform like a true scrape and NOT like the zbrush flatten which works with absolutes. Say elevation works from 0 to 1. I would expect a value of zero to have it behave like it does currently (scraping away), .5 would have it work like some sort of average flatten (both spikes and grooves are averaged towards the brush plane), and 1 would have it flatten towards the peaks of the surface.

Just for clarity. This is with scrapes TRUE principle which takes depth under the brush into account! Not zbrush's absolute system. If you want that i want scrape to stay a seperate tool.

As for renaming the extrude brush. Im ok with any other name really since the current one is really misleading/vague. But if i use the standard brush in zbrush it wont elevate the stroke if i make it turn and cross over itself. (i just checked) So if i keep drawing on the same area ill end up with a flat "layer" just like i do with the extrude brush in 3dcoat atm. Isnt that default behaviour for the standard brush in zbrush? I do remember being able to add volume by painting over the same spot so perhaps ive misadjusted a setting in zbrush?

There has been talk about an option to have that effect where you can keep sculpting to raise the surface by brushing over the same area (without starting a new stroke). I would be in favour of having that option on all of the volume adding brushes (carve, clay and extrude). It is needed.

3dioot

[rimasson]

3dioot : i'm happy that i made myself clearer with the clay/carve brush.

mantis: using the current select&move tool to pose a model is a good idea.

[3dioot]

@ rimmason

Just out of curiousity; how do you like the spray/thaw brush? I personally really like that for filling up holes/dents.

Here is a little trick. If you click on the value for depth you can enter a higher value then 1. Try it with a value of 10. This brush also keeps raising the surface if you paint over its own stroke. If you use it with a value of 10 its like clay on steroids.

3dioot

[nathan]

I'm not sure if it's possible, but what I would really love to see is all of these brush functions rolled into one master brush. there really isn't too much unique about a lot of the brushes, especially if Andrew ended up adding more options to each one.

there could just be one brush, with options like buildup, smooth, pinch, flatten, fill, even an airbrush option that keeps building up over time like the spray brush.

this is pretty much how photoshop's brush engine works and it's great. then what you would do is have a nice toolbar for a bunch of well thought out preset brushes like we have now like scrape, extrude, clay etc, but that you could add to or tweak at any time.

then everyone could be happy, if you like a brush to behave like this or that, you can build your own preset and there you go. I think if people had the control to make the brushes behave exactly how they wanted, everyone would probably end up with like 2 or 3 presets that they would switch between.

think of the power as well as the ease at which Andrew could add new brushes. if he simply added one new option that would compound the potential number of brushes we could make. and then if we could share the presets with each other on the forum...

I would imagine he is probably coding in a similar fashion already, having at least some premade functions that he is calling in each brush. if he simply exposed all the parameters to us he wouldn't have to spend all his time tweaking the brushes in code trying to keep everyone happy, and trying to come up with names for the new brushes

[Monsoon]

Uh oh....lots of brush troubles for me this last build. XP,Nvidia8600GTw/512,virtual mem at 8gigs.

Brush freeze at start and it catches up later. Smooth freezes immediately and leaves circular marks when it does move, then the whole thing siezes up. Lots of staccato movement. I've been getting OM crashes as well.

[Scott]

Tried asking before, but is 3DC meant to be Multithreaded as it's only using 25% of my CPU..

Is Volumetric Multithreading planned at a later stage? ZBrush for example uses 100%

[splodge]

Tried asking before, but is 3DC meant to be Multithreaded as it's only using 25% of my CPU..

Is Volumetric Multithreading planned at a later stage? ZBrush for example uses 100%

Andrew has said that he plans on using CUDA in the near future. Basically he plans to make 3D Coat work as fast as possible. So I'm sure if CUDA doesn't give the speed boost he expects then he'll take the multithreading approach too.

But I suspect that right now he feels the multithreading of the GPU holds much more potential speed improvement.

[Scott]

Andrew has said that he plans on using CUDA in the near future. Basically he plans to make 3D Coat work as fast as possible. So I'm sure if CUDA doesn't give the speed boost he expects then he'll take the multithreading approach too.

But I suspect that right now he feels the multithreading of the GPU holds much more potential speed improvement.

Yeah i just mean Multithreading not anything CUDA enabled.

Multithreading gives me about 5x better performance in ZBrush, their is obviously options in 3DC for Multithreading, but it's not working in current builds.

I'm wondering if this is known by Andrew.... I.e perhaps he hasn't gotten around to multithreading volumetric, as it's always time consuming working on MT.

But it would be nice to know that speed can still be massively improved on via using 3 more of my CPU's like other sculpting software. Technically

MT should come well before CUDA enhancements. But being Alpha i just thought I'd check if it was known.

[splodge]

I'm not sure if it's possible, but what I would really love to see is all of these brush functions rolled into one master brush. there really isn't too much unique about a lot of the brushes, especially if Andrew ended up adding more options to each one.

I agree. It must be frustrating for Andrew to see everybody moaning about brush settings. So it may be best to allow people to make their own custom brushes and have a panel of obvious starter brushes.

But one issue with this is that user definable brushes can be slower because the program has to take lots of user defined parameters into account when deciding on what to do with the surface below.

Specialized brushes will always be faster. and as we've seen, many of the brushes are already struggling.

[splodge]

Yeah i just mean Multithreading not anything CUDA enabled.

Multithreading gives me about 5x better performance in ZBrush, their is obviously options in 3DC for Multithreading, but it's not working in current builds.

I'm wondering if this is known by Andrew.... I.e perhaps he hasn't gotten around to multithreading volumetric, as it's always time consuming working on MT.

But it would be nice to know that speed can still be massively improved on via using 3 more of my CPU's like other sculpting software. Technically

MT should come well before CUDA enhancements. But being Alpha i just thought I'd check if it was known.

Well ZBrush is unique in that it uses a software renderer and this is where the multithreading helps. 3D Coat uses the 3D card to display the model.

I think for the moment the video cards are still winning the render speed race.

[Scott]

Well ZBrush is unique in that it uses a software renderer and this is where the multithreading helps. 3D Coat uses the 3D card to display the model.

I think for the moment the video cards are still winning the render speed race.

Indeed, but all sculpting applications currently use the CPU for calcs and videocard for rendering, CPU is still a large reason why the speed of painting/sculpting with a large brush

will slow it down... Modo for example has Multithreaded painting/sculpting as does Mudbox, as did Andrew.... Obviously if my CPU is hitting 25% it could be faster using more CPU's..

Anyway Andrew did MT other parts of 3DC, just wondering if Volumetric will be done anytime soon...

Cheers,

[Christoph]

Uh oh....lots of brush troubles for me this last build.

Brush freeze at start and it catches up later.

I have the same issue with the carve brush.

[Crusoe]

Bugs:

Clay brush a LOT slower in latest build

Opengl version crashes on startup when freshly installed. Seems 3DCoat install has the fanciest possible shader selected, and on my weedy laptop, this makes the program crash. I have to start up in DX, select LambLight, exit, and then start the GL version. I do this because the DX version is about 2x slower.

[Andrew Shpagin]

Bugs:

Clay brush a LOT slower in latest build

Opengl version crashes on startup when freshly installed. Seems 3DCoat install has the fanciest possible shader selected, and on my weedy laptop, this makes the program crash. I have to start up in DX, select LambLight, exit, and then start the GL version. I do this because the DX version is about 2x slower.

It is because I have set RedWax_Shadow as a default shader. It is slow shader for not modern video cards.

Clay tool - I will look. But I almost sure that extrude brush with standart alpha can almost completely replace it.

[Andrew Shpagin]

Yeah i just mean Multithreading not anything CUDA enabled.

Multithreading gives me about 5x better performance in ZBrush, their is obviously options in 3DC for Multithreading, but it's not working in current builds.

I'm wondering if this is known by Andrew.... I.e perhaps he hasn't gotten around to multithreading volumetric, as it's always time consuming working on MT.

But it would be nice to know that speed can still be massively improved on via using 3 more of my CPU's like other sculpting software. Technically

MT should come well before CUDA enhancements. But being Alpha i just thought I'd check if it was known.

Of course I have tried MT, but no big success - it works 30% slower on 2 processor then on 1. Very strange... But anyway I will work over it.

[TOXE]

Hi all,

i have this bug in the latest alpha osx, it's strange that this cubic geometry appear only in that point, with every tool.

-TOXE

[Andrew Shpagin]

Hi all,

i have this bug in the latest alpha osx, it's strange that this cubic geometry appear only in that point, with every tool.

-TOXE

Can you archive and send me 3DB file to support@3d-coat.com. Tomorrow I will look it. Today will be near PC rarely.

[Andrew Shpagin]

Uh oh....lots of brush troubles for me this last build. XP,Nvidia8600GTw/512,virtual mem at 8gigs.

Brush freeze at start and it catches up later. Smooth freezes immediately and leaves circular marks when it does move, then the whole thing siezes up. Lots of staccato movement. I've been getting OM crashes as well.

Please send me bugreports.

[Scott]

Of course I have tried MT, but no big success - it works 30% slower on 2 processor then on 1. Very strange... But anyway I will work over it.

Thanks Andrew it's good to know you are aware of it...

I have noticed the later DX builds are slower than the OGL builds like others. So it's nice to know that possibly in late betas that MT code may help with speed.

As it is it's still quite fast with only 1 CPU, But i know MT all code can be quite nightmarish to code, but i would say it's important for final release of 3.0.

Thanks..

[Joat]

Magnificent work so far!

I have been playing and admiring the process in the background, but now I felt I need to comment. The newest alpha is slow (GL - version, DX works alright) beyond the point of usefulness. Andrew commented earlier that it is due to old displaycards. I don't consider mine as "old". The card is PNY QuadroFX 560, and the screen refresh rate is once in every 2 seconds with default shader, with more plain shaders it's slightly better.

Earlier it worked a lot smoother, even with more advanced types of shaders.

On the other subject: I don't know how it is planned, but would it be possible to have 3dcoat automatically convert voxel sculpt to a low(ish) resolution mesh and automatically generated displacementmap that would bring the sculpted detail also to the final mesh? When I picture the workflow with existing tools, it would seem very natural to have the sculpting and texturing integrated in this way. I am not into gamedesign, so I personally don't mind higher polygon meshes. Smaller meshes are just nicer to handle.

How have you tought of implementing the texturing part? Can we import first, sculpt then and convert to mesh & texture last or will it be possible to sculpt in passes? I mean to start with a sculpt, then texture, then sculpt again, then texture again etc?

[rimasson]

to 3dioot and andrew :

for me, the 3dc carve brush and zbrush clay brush works the same way

There's one more parameter in Zbrush : the number of samples.

If the samples = 0, the depth and orientation of the brush is determined only by the surface orientation and depth under the brush.

when the sample number increasze, the depth and the orientation is determined by a larger surface, and averaged.

I think that this parameter is important. I miss it

[BluEgo]

to 3dioot and andrew :

for me, the 3dc carve brush and zbrush clay brush works the same way

There's one more parameter in Zbrush : the number of samples.

If the samples = 0, the depth and orientation of the brush is determined only by the surface orientation and depth under the brush.

when the sample number increasze, the depth and the orientation is determined by a larger surface, and averaged.

I think that this parameter is important. I miss it

Great examples and research about clay tool !

I think that with your support tools will grow more and more , thank you rimasson.

[philnolan3d]

Hmm... It keeps crashing when I try to retopo my merged sculpture. once I was tweaking vertices, another time I drew out 4 polygons (2 with symmetry), then I wasn't doing anything when it crashed, just sitting there looking at it. Ironically I just said how great retopo on VS is on the CGtalk about 2 seconds before. lol I'm not mad though, I know it's an alpha.

Edit: It happens with both DX and Gl versions.

Edit 2: Non VS related bug found. I imported a model as a reference mesh which had textures applied to it. The textures appeared, but they are wrong. See attachment. The model does have a UV map, but none of the surfaces are using it.

[3dioot]

to 3dioot and andrew :

for me, the 3dc carve brush and zbrush clay brush works the same way

There's one more parameter in Zbrush : the number of samples.

If the samples = 0, the depth and orientation of the brush is determined only by the surface orientation and depth under the brush.

when the sample number increasze, the depth and the orientation is determined by a larger surface, and averaged.

I think that this parameter is important. I miss it

I had to fiddle with it a bit in zbrush to get the same result but you are right! Its very funny to see how a reversed action gives a perfect scrape (with the right settings). It makes sense now that i think about it.

Definately keep the carve brush. You love it, as you proved its really close to zbrush's clay tool and its probably a bit faster then extrude which is always a good thing especially when roughing things out. I was too soon with discarding it. We did need a proper projection brush, no doubt about that, but it seems this solid based method has its use too.

However it only "mimics" zbrush's one IF in zbrush you set the brush modifier to zero. Zbrush clay at its default value does not act like 3dcoats one. You forgot to mention that. I think this is what you meant by the "elevation slider" (which would equal the brush mod in zbrush) you mentioned previously. I understand now why it would need to be added.

As for the sampling. Currently its really crude in 3dcoat for carve. It just takes the deepest point and thats that. It looks like zbrush actually does this the other way around. It starts at the highest point and the sampling would bring it down towards the average surface. Just like you've drawn in fact. :lol: I also see why its so important. Perhaps Andrew could "just" implement this and well see whats missing from there? (if anything) I do think the sampling value should be a multiplier for the brush radius. In other words. A sampling value of 1.5 would result in an area 1.5 times your current brush size to be sampled. This makes it nice and predictable in relation to your brush size/size of your sculpt.

You've made me quite excited for carve. It may well turn out to be the clay brush. Awesome.

I hope Andrew gives it a good look with these suggestions soon.

3dioot

PS

Now that ive watched your sketch again i see that sampling is allready depicted as a multiplier for the brush radius. I guess we agree on that too.