47 replies to this topic

[polyxo]

I don't understand the Silo-comparisons at all. I've used both Silo and 3DC from pretty much the beginning but find the conceptual approaches taken extremely dissimilar.

[The Candy-floss Kid]

Whilst I agree with all here about improving many of the brushes behavior, mongering over a speculative and non invested audience's future dollar is beyond me. Were it so I'd be playing the stock market and not trifling with art.

I can only speak for myself at present - using 3DCoat has speeded my current creative output to finished result by about 35% when used in tandem with ZBrush. Production wise anything I can create faster in ZBrush I take to ZBrush - if I need it back in voxels - no problem. If starting a form is quicker to resolve initially in voxels then it's 3DCoat , back to retopo > 3DCoat , exporting vertex maps >3DCoat. Using photoshop Brushes > 3DCoat , creating spline assets >3DCoat , intuitive and fast uv adjustments > 3DCoat.

At the very least I would hope that this would be acknowledged even at the current state of development - as a little more than potential? Thus do forgive me if I suspect cloaked incentivisation via the vehicle of reverse psychologically and carefully chosen words. A worthy attempt nonetheless and anything with regard this matter of debate is worth a shot. Any attempt to scale this wall has my full support.

Just an observation about this thread - this improving the brushes stuff has been literally talked about since 2 years ago.

The present issues with the sculpting brushes - identified. We all hope such issues will be resolvable within the version 3 Beta cycle.
My suggestions for vastly improving default sculpting settings as the current brush engine stands with fully recordable parameters? Apparently falling on deaf ears , which ends my input here .

Andrew has a habit of delighting on a regular basis - we can but wait for him to offer some feedback or acknowledgment of these concerns and proceed with our lives until then in good faith.

To a degree the silence is deafening - now there's cloaked incentivisation if ever there was?!!

Which reminds me I must call my Mother - she's an expert at it.

btw with regard Silo - same deal as Hexagon - beware attempting something ZBrush does better else Ofer will kick your ass :-) Yep - pick a fight with an extra terrestrial and you'd better come tooled up.

[dirtrobot]

Whilst I agree with all here about improving many of the brushes behavior, mongering over a speculative and non invested audience's future dollar is beyond me. Were it so I'd be playing the stock market and not trifling with art.

I thought it was a valid point because a software developer who develops on feature A usually has a long term plan as to why time was spent developing feature A.

btw with regard Silo - same deal as Hexagon - beware attempting something ZBrush does better else Ofer will kick your ass :-) Yep - pick a fight with an extra terrestrial and you'd better come tooled up.

Well Silo and Hexagon were modelers (I own them both), yes there were forays into displacement brushes, but I don't think zbrush was ever their primary competition. It's funny you say that because for a time when 3dcoat's voxels were being implemented and improved 3dcoat had a leg up on zbrush. Then dynamesh came out and we got LiveClay, which is pretty sweet and as of right now is (in some ways) better than dynamesh. But the writing on the wall is zbrush 5, which will more than likely be the full sculptris merge or possibly their own voxel implementation.

I'm just waiting for the interface and feel overhaul - which will not happen for a while because it won't attract new users. I'd put a lot of money down that we'll see hair/fur implementation before polished brushes and better voxels/subcell. But I'm ready and willing to be surprised

[AbnRanger]

Well I was talking about the halted development after the release of very unstable software. From a usability standpoint silo is a true genius work, but the polishing wasn't there and now the software is (was) dead.

@The Candy-floss Kid:
"btw with regard Silo - same deal as Hexagon - beware attempting something ZBrush does better else Ofer will kick your ass :-) Yep - pick a fight with an extra terrestrial and you'd better come tooled up. "

That's not the point with Silo, don't worry something much more suited is coming (not from T.y.R.R)



[EDIT] I just saw that AbnRanger probably got banned after our little chat, I want him to know (if he can read this :/): I've no part in it, and I'm sorry for that. And that reminds me of my first real activity here (and issue with moderation), I'm starting to feel uneasy... because even if he had some intense debate in the past I don't think our little issue here (due to my lack of clarity !) needed such drastic measures.

Not banned. Just exasperated at this point, and am sticking with Mudbox from here on out, to save my sanity...what little is left. I've spent twice as much time fighting with the application and sending in bug reports as I have getting work done. This cannot continue. Will still use 3DC for some things, but I am now convinced it's direction is to continue picking the low hanging fruit while avoiding the tougher, more substantive matters. To continue to wait and advocate for that to change is a futile effort, and only adds more tension here.

With that in mind, I won't be contributing here any longer, so if a moderator would be so kind, please remove my account from the forum.

[John Kearney]

@The Candy-floss Kid

I know that it appears reverse psychology is being used in an attempt to change Andrew's focus but I don't feel that's entirely accurate. I concede there's an element of that but the truth is that 3D Coat is currently suffering in a lot of areas and as Andrew adds more and more features, it feels like it's a powerful beast that's a little out of control. I'm hoping that Andrew will begin to polish/finish off some of the fantastic work he has started.

As for your suggestion falling on deaf ears - it really didn't, I think it's been mentioned that better default values and adjustments would be an awesome start. However, it may also go some way to partially hiding some of the inherent problems that ideally need fixed/improved.

[Javis]

Don,

Last time we did that for you, you came back extremely POd at us, and accused me of removing it unwarranted. I will not be removing any accounts off the forum, as it would not only be a problem of the person came back later deciding they wanted to post again *cough*, it would also ruin all threads on the forum that you have contributed to and leave them in a state of disarray. If you don't want to post that cool, but no accounts will be removed (save spammers and serious problem accounts).

I will remove you as contributor of course and put your status back to normal, as well as removing your private testing status. But, as I said, I cannot change your account status further. Sorry to see you go. This thread sure has a weird vibe to it. I leave, tainted. :p

[dirtrobot]

This thread sure has a weird vibe to it. I leave, tainted. :p

Just think of how exciting it will be when Andrew finally gets the basic functionality working properly and you won't have to see these 'tainted' threads anymore!

[Polygoon]

Not banned. Just exasperated at this point, and am sticking with Mudbox from here on out, to save my sanity...what little is left. I've spent twice as much time fighting with the application and sending in bug reports as I have getting work done. This cannot continue. Will still use 3DC for some things, but I am now convinced it's direction is to continue picking the low hanging fruit while avoiding the tougher, more substantive matters. To continue to wait and advocate for that to change is a futile effort, and only adds more tension here.

With that in mind, I won't be contributing here any longer, so if a moderator would be so kind, please remove my account from the forum.

Noooooooo! Please don't go, you have been so helpful to me and I am sure to many others. I can understand the way you feel to a certain degree and don't blame you for wanting to put more of your time into your work, but you don't have to cut off completely. You could still check things out occasionally, yes?

Hmm Why are people so emotional? Can't there just be difference's of opinion?

[carlosan]

[Tony Nemo]

Good one, Carlosa! However, the derailment may have signaled the vital importance of it's main thread, namely the necessary finishing of what has been started without chasing funtionality that can wait for version 4. The frustration's of what are obviously competant users must be addressed if 3D Coat is to achieve the respect (and monetary rewards) that come from reliable performance. Some of these problems may originate with 3DC's miniscule developement cadre (two, I think?) How many lines of code?

[Tony Nemo]

Be sure to checkout version 4.

[AbnRanger]

Don,

Last time we did that for you, you came back extremely POd at us, and accused me of removing it unwarranted. I will not be removing any accounts off the forum, as it would not only be a problem of the person came back later deciding they wanted to post again *cough*, it would also ruin all threads on the forum that you have contributed to and leave them in a state of disarray. If you don't want to post that cool, but no accounts will be removed (save spammers and serious problem accounts).

I will remove you as contributor of course and put your status back to normal, as well as removing your private testing status. But, as I said, I cannot change your account status further. Sorry to see you go. This thread sure has a weird vibe to it. I leave, tainted. :p

Who is this "us" you speak of? You first colluded with other members to try and ban me on one occasion (2-3yrs ago), simply because you didn't like my persistence over the issue of multi-threading. It was a horrendous problem. I had many occasions where it took overnight to simply switch from Surface mode to voxel. THIS WAS NOT A BUG! It was a gaping hole right in the center of the application. That didn't stop hordes of trivial requests from coming in. Attending to those was like trying to put makeup on a burn victim. Damn right I was going to be vocal and persistent about it. It took nothing less than a major fuss to get Andrew involved, and it made a HUGE difference in the ENTIRE application, once done.

Some time later, after nothing was done on the Multi-threading front, and no attempt to address it forthcoming, I finally had it with the direction things were going, tried to sell my 3DC license...and was ready to move on, much like now. Practically for the same reasons. Known major issues continue to remain ignored while a flood of low-priority requests keep coming. Requests for hood ornaments, nerf bars, fog lights, hub caps, seat covers, dash covers, fuzzy dice, cup-holders, tinted windows, Pin stripes, floor mats, locking lug nuts, (fake) chrome windshield wipers, window louvers...(get the picture here?) etc.........................................................not realizing it keeps Andrew occupied.....on the periphery instead of going under the hood and fixing the REAL issues with this ride. If the ENGINE isn't humming smoothly and running like a champ, not even a fresh (3D) Coat of (Voxel) Paint will matter.

What's more is that adding all these shiny new features at such a fast pace means they are not fully tested or well thought out = they are half-done and full of bugs. The Options.XML file continues to wreak havoc on the application. It all wears on a user's nerves to have to deal with these literally on a daily basis. Mine are just about shot, now. Loyalty has it's limits. As a solution, I asked Stas and Andrew about the same systematic approach someone else here mentioned. That is to go Room by room, one major tool to another, with a group of regular users, to refine and stabilize each tool.

Andrew said it wasn't practical. So, with that, I bid you all adieu. May your experience fare better than my own.

[Rhino]

Not banned. Just exasperated at this point, and am sticking with Mudbox from here on out, to save my sanity...what little is left.

Mudbox was the reason I came to 3D Coat :/ It wouldn't go five minutes without crashing on painting multiple objects for me

3DC may have its problems. but it's a shite sight better than Mudbox for painting.

Anyway, don't leave - you always offer helpful advice!

[Javis]

Colluding is far fetched. We are the moderators and we of course, work together with problematic users.


I wont be responding to this kind of stuff again, I've got much better things to do with my time. If you're "done" posting, why bother man?

[AbnRanger]

Mudbox was the reason I came to 3D Coat :/ It wouldn't go five minutes without crashing on painting multiple objects for me

3DC may have its problems. but it's a shite sight better than Mudbox for painting.

Anyway, don't leave - you always offer helpful advice!

Thanks...I'll try to keep an eye out for that. Haven't had any issues with MB apart from the Applink making it crash early on.

Colluding is far fetched. We are the moderators and we of course, work together with problematic users.

Problematic users, eh? Javis, let's keep this in perspective. You had/have no more position in the community inner circle than I did/do. So, you were/are in fact just an Indian trying to "pull rank" on another Indian

....If you're "done" posting, why bother man?

Because I try to watch (who..."cough"...is aiming knives at) my back on the way out the door....man.

[The Candy-floss Kid]

AbnRanger - you have been truly altruistic in the best spirit here at the forum, myself being one of the new users you have helped on numerous occasions here. Thank you. You have been shouldering a great responsibility of care in all your endeavors here. Finding more time for yourself is a great idea and I too hope you return back afresh .

The care factor has been taking a high toll on all those reporting issues with each update release.
It's care and empathy, belief in Andrew's work and dare I say it love for that work that's at the root of this toll of care.


History has become histrionics in the wearing thin and it should not spoil the pleasures we find in creating. Gentlemen be friends, your mutual altruism has been a testament to your kindness.

Andrew is a man who it appears will deliver in his own good time and I suspect if we all speak a little softer he might hear us a little louder. Imagine if you will our collectively shiny faces on hearing some good news over this matter?!! There are some of us that may even faint, fan ourselves - maybe be even tear up a little.


John I'm guessing you've realized by now that you've inadvertently stumbled in to a meeting of traumatized care-o-holics who are in no mood to speak right now coz Daddy won't pick up the phone these past two years?
I can but apologize if you've been frightened at any point since starting this thread :-)

The good news however is...... that we agree, we all agree,
and hope Daddy calls this Easter

Great to hear Silo will be carried forward. We all recognize when something shines.

[digman]

I just got back in town and I threw a few brush strokes on Frankenstein so kindy uploaded by John for our brush testing pleasure...
I hope to get some good testing done on old franky. He might go through a bunch of versions. Not enough testing give brush feedback yet...
Franky himself is about 650,000 polygons

My favorite brushes though are in Surface mode using regular surface brushes (remove stretching enabled] and LC brushes.
First picture is Franky2, Second picture is Frankenstein uploaded by John for our testing.
Had to throw just a little fun color on Franky2.

Attached Thumbnails

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[Javis]

Suck it up and drive on.

[digman]

Ouch, My Linux computer died this morning. I lost Franky2, Nooooooo...
So further testing will be on my old windows machine. Maybe the hammer trick will work on my linux computer to bring it back to life.

A few thoughts to consider...
I am not a Zbrush user so I can not compare the difference in brush behavior between the two. From that perspective I will make my comments.

3DCoat's voxel and surface mode digital clay is more in feel to clay that I would buy at the store to me. When doing organic sculpting I tend to slap on 3DCoat's clay, Next I start craving and then refine.
Voxel mode is for large to mediun masses and then I switch to surface mode.
This makes my use of brushes maybe somewhat different from a Zbrush user but I have no way of knowing. My default behavior of a brush could be different.
Voxel mode brushes are the most limited in their behavior at this time compared to LC brushes which give you more control of how the brush works.

Now, this thread was started to test the current default brush behavior, even if it is unoffical, the input by artist here can only help Andrew. We are all subjectuve in our views to a certain point. Andrew might not ever respond here, that is not a problem with me, but I know he will read it plus as John stated we all might pick up a few tips along the way...

P.S.
The hammer tricked worked. I got my Linux computer running again...

[The Candy-floss Kid]

Voxel mode is for large to medium masses and then I switch to surface mode.

Yes standard voxel mode is a largely additive or subtractive environment and many brushes can adhere and build from voxel layers beneath them such as grow , carve , sphere., curves, snake, spikes , muscle and toothpaste

Excluding the primitives there are 4 brushes that do not need voxel information beneath them to draw/ add clay in the empty work space : they are , sphere, curves, plane (with cntrl held down) and 2d-paint. This is quite different to surface mode analogy which is all about the manipulation and effect on an existing created surface.

The standard voxel brushes display the greater variation of behavior being working either to view or to the normals whereas the majority of the surface mode tools build to view and are more planar in their nature as well as assist in developing the planes of your forms. You can use this behavior of standard mode brushes to your advantage.

The LIveClay tools are slightly more erratic still in their behavior but can be used to build brushes more rounded in profile and effect than the majority of the surface mode tools. They also point the way in being able to save personal variations , yet unfortunately still without spacing and e-panel setting. The LiveClay tools offer many new tricks and techniques and using these brushes to hand decimate /poly reduce models by hand being just one of their advantages.

One of the greatest advantages of surface mode is the proxy mode for the increase in speed when working between resolutions as well as making large changes to form whilst keeping details.

NB: 3DCoat's virtual clay behaves to my mind more like real world clay and requires a finishing in more planned stages but with experience this is little more than habit. With 3DCoat I tend to think of it as real world clay and the resolutions representing the stages of the clay as it harden - lower resolutions being the wetter clay and higher resolutions being the harder clay. In one of my tutorials I show how the smudge tool in standard voxel mode for example can be used almost as a wet sponge to smooth your sculpt toward the end.


ZBrush clay response is more "hyper-real" and does not require the same building by resolution stages than was once true of it's performance , also it's brush suspension is more forgiving of your physical rhythm as well as the existing surface over which your brush travels.

3DCoats brushes can offer more rewards than many of ZBrush's tools but need to be adjusted more per resolution stage - be that in depth or focal shift etc. Many of the secrets and tricks buried within 3DCoats sculpting brushes do take longer to pick up than ZBrush's brushes.

NB: Size of brush is everything in 3DCoat and my advice to anyone new in 3DCoat is to observe each tools behavior at various sizes - you may be pleasantly surprised at the range of effects simply by changing your brush size to the form. My very important point is do not view this behavior as erratic - that would be misleading. With practice you will begin to utilize this to your advantage as well as understand and predict how brush size changes the focus of it's effect on the clay.

As I also said earlier one of the absolute delights in 3DCoat are the smooth modes of the brushes that offer such a fantastic and sophisticated range of polishing options .By habit a more regular smoothing through needs to be adopted after some stroke modes than may be the case in ZBrush.

NB: 3DCoat also requires a different physical rhythm than ZBrush - which allows for faster jerkier moves as well as cross hatch builds where as 3DCoat prefers a direction of travel stroke to the angle of the form.

My greatest irritation with 3DCoat is therefore not brush response once set but - having to reset them each time I start - be that e-panel or spacing.