3D-Coat General Forum

Highlighted face could be stronger

Thu, 02 Sep 2010 22:07:58 +0000

About this picture. Sometimes it's hard to see the highlighted face. If it could be a little bit stronger that would be nice. Thanks.

3D-Coat 3.3 updates thread

Thu, 02 Sep 2010 21:10:17 +0000

I will post all 3.3.XX updates there.
Links to download:

With CUDA, 32 bit
With CUDA, 64 bit
Without CUDA, 32 bit
Without CUDA, 64 bit

OSX build Download link

Linux build download link

Changelist:

3.3.14

- I made possibility to upload turnables automatically, very easy- see example - http://bit.ly/d3H3rc
- non-connected objects will be supported for Auto-retopo.
- Falloff will work in eraser tool too
- I made nice models preview in Merge/spline tools instead of old ugly file tree. I made this maily because I am about to provide big library of models in merge/spline tool and it will be just impossible to use it without nice previews. This is how it looks now - http://bit.ly/ds5R2I
- I disabled possibility to transform volume in proxy mode from surface to voxels to prevent loses. It changes nothing in workflow but prevents random loses while working with proxy.
- It will be possible to smooth UV islands edges in UV room in brush mode.
- Incorrect work of Split and Cut&Clone on some objects fixed (dense objects with high Split Border value).
- There is new and useful item in VoxTree RMB menu - Merge visible
- VoxTree/Shaders will be accesible in render room too

3.3.13

- Long-standing request implemented - painting over disconnected objects. You may choose the style of picking - see http://bit.ly/99A93S http://bit.ly/aKLRNk http://bit.ly/9pJsxe
- Vox tree + shaders will be accesible from the retopo room for convenience.
- Clone & Clone with symmetry will clone child objects too.
- I improved vertex picking in retopo room so that it will be much easier to pick desired vertex to be tweaked. Now it picks closest vertex inside pen radius + picks vertices that are outside the reference mesh.
- I found and fixed major snapping/baking problem to voxel surafce in surface mode.
- Edit projection/layers in external editor instability fixed.
- Solved the applink issue mentioned there - http://bit.ly/bwWPho
- Desaturate/Darken/... etc in paint room will respect mask.
- EXR/32 bit TIFF padding problem fixd - http://bit.ly/aBNKEE

3.3.12
(Incremental update, should be installed overwrite of 3.3.08 or later)

- fixed major symmetry bug from previous version. Now after applying symmetry in retopo room you UV-coordinates will be copied too.
- clone will copy child objects too. I will do the same tor clone with symmetry in the next build.
- default values for auto-retopology are changed to better values
- Merge tool in "On pen" mode got very handy improvement - Depth value of pen will be treated as depth of penetration of merged object to the surface.
3.3.11:

- I improved following guides-strokes in auto-retopo. 3DC will follow guides much better.
- UV room got correct support of non-square UV maps
- Microvertex/ptex painting got several bugfixes -
- the problem with smoothed edges when mesh is loaded on lowest subd level solved. Also edges will not be distorted when resolution is low.
- Change resolution works correctly on open meshes
- painting with strokes will distort surface imediately (not when stroke ended)
- fixed bug in retopo room when it was impossible to drop invisible layer to the trash can.
- I improved ptex export/import because it starts to be used in other software more and more. Ptex export/import will work much faster, mipmaps are supported too. Also I made support of export/import ptex vector displacement. You may export absolute positions too. It opens good way to interoperate with Mudbox because it supports ptex vector displacement. I hope ZBrush will get ptex support too, then interoperation between MB & ZB & 3DC will be absolutely smooth and easy.

3.3.10

- I brought auto-retopology to easily usable stage.It loors like wizard with several stages to draw guides, paint dense areas.
- Possibility to autoretopo external objects right from File->Import menu. It will automatically close holes, convert to voxels and perform autoretopology. On this stage I will make short pause (several days) to fix bugs and solve urgent issues from the forum.
- I have add new very important option to export setting "Perform coarsing". It is inverse to subdivision. If you will export low poly mesh with this option 3D-Coat will "sharpen" mesh in so way that in your 3D-package you will get same model as mid-poly in 3D-Coat after subdivision with Catmull-Clark. It is absolutely important if you want to get displacement and low poly mesh as result. If you will export displacement and low poly mesh, import in your package, subdivide mesh, apply displacement and get same result as in 3DC.
- New option in baking dialog - "Don't snap subdivided vertices" to get very smooth mesh on layer 0 and good displacement on other layers.
- New option in import dialog - "Don't center bounding box" to avoid loosing symmetry of imported object if it is only partially symmetrical.
- fixed: Curves in "E" panel will not be lost if you will try to edit them and drag parameters message box
- While resolving the issue http://bit.ly/c8FyEO I made 3DC to work correctly with Paint.net and other psd-painters.
- Fixed urgent problem mentioned by Tinker - http://bit.ly/9YOSsf (problem with incorrect merging to transformed volumes in some cases)
- fixed: Clear seams and Auto seams will act only on current UV set in UV room. Seams will be auto-set between faces in different UV sets.
- fixed laggy work of lines mode int "E" panel. Undo/redo will work correctly too.
- fixed bug in retopo room when it was impossible to drop invisible layer to the trash can.

3.3.09

- new Quadrangulation routine (still slightly raw)! Symmetry is supported, but not excellent. I already made is very god, but will upload it after getting back from SIGGRAPH. To use new feature go to retopo strokes, add strokes if beed, then VoxTree->RMB->Quadrangulate

3.3.08 [beta]:

- The problem with exporting 4K/8K textures in Ptex mode solved.
- The problem with image picker solved (including incorrect work of Paste button)
- There is new section in preferences to customize how pen looks in usual and CAPS modes - http://bit.ly/9zZzz8

3.3.07 [beta]:

- I made multithreaded merge. The merging procedure was rewritten almost from scratch to be scalable. It works much faster, consumes very low amount of memory and produces better quality of the mesh. Also I worked couple of days over making all surface-merging-based tools like move, pose, surface->voxels transition to work clean and I hope I succeed with it. It is most important part of all voxel sculpting.
- I made possibility to choose texture resolution if you want to export ptex as usual model+texture. Look it in change local res tool.
- There is new checker in Ptex export/import menu - "Flip ptex quads" for better compatibility with renderman.
- There was lags in voxel tools when something big was changed due to Undo info saving. I made saving much faster, it speeded up many tools.
- Retopo meshes will be automatically cleaned up to avoid non-manifold topology that caused hang-ups during unwrapping and many other problems
- I made that if you are trying to save file to write protected location you will be warned to prevent loss of data.
- CTRL+SHIFT in merge tool will lead to intersection.
- Smoth with SHIFT will work correctly in Move tool.
- I made possibility to change the color of wirefrime (preferences).
- Retopo mesh will be optionally shown in render room to help in making demo reels
- correctly working cavity in PP mode.

3.3.06 [beta]:

[28 June 2010 - 3.3.06 re-uploaded to solve GTX 470/480 issue]

- Caching of volumes with non-unique names is supported.
- he problem with camera shortcuts solved - http://bit.ly/acl0gB
- Retopo strokes tool improved to work better on very small sized objects
- Fixed the issue in retopo strokes tool: http://bit.ly/dy8tRj
- Several longstanding issues with retopo strokes (slices) solved - green circles (unclosed) instead of orange (closed), missed quads
- Fixed pose tool smoothing issue: http://bit.ly/boiqd5

3.3.05 [beta]

- Well known "faceting" problem while baking to MV/Ptex of higher resolutions solved in both - voxel and surface modes. All looks very smooth after baking. Also baking and snapping quality to voxels in surface mode improved essentially.
- Obsolete links to images in image picker will be removed because it can cause crash at startup.
- Edges highlighted in viewport will be highlighted in UV preview window too - http://bit.ly/9bNZze
- Several small improvements: SL import corrected, new buttons in UV tool - Restore UV and Auto Scale (read hints)
- I made SHIFT constraint to work well in retopo strokes mode
- I made support of picking color from clipboard. In so way you may pick color from Photoshop and Leigh's reference image app. If clipboard has 6 hexadecmail digits 3D-Coat treats it as color.

3.3.04 [beta]

- Solved problem of "Waves" in multiresolution
- The problem of slowdowns in retopo room reported by AbnRanger solved. See report there - http://bit.ly/9elK6K

3.3.03 [beta]

- Multiresolution for voxels is done. It is well multicore optimized. You will be able to degrade object, modify low poly mesh and combine together low and high frequency details. On my thought it is could be even better then usual multires because usually mesh could be degraded only to initial polycount but in our case any mesh can be degraded to any degree. This is for example scan data that has no lowpoly initial proxy.
- Corrected message in Retopo menu - Apply symmetry to all layers, new item is there - Apply symmetry to the current layer
- The problem with symmetry in voxels resolved - http://bit.ly/9diTKu
- Solved problem from the previous build - resizing texture clears layers contence.
- The bug with normalmap baking (voxels->ppp) fixed - http://bit.ly/ddLx5b

3.3.02 [beta]

- I made support of caching of voxel volumes. You may cache any vol to disk and leave only low poly proxy of the volume. In so way you can preserve memory and increase speed of sculpting.
- The problem with SpaceNavigator drifting on OSX finally solved. Some details about OSX & Space Navigator drifting problem - http://bit.ly/bi9Och
- Unwrapping of big meshes in UV tool improved - muh better stability and speed of unwrap.
- Solved problem from the previous build - resizing texture clears layers contence.
- The problem with edit projection in orthographic mode solved - http://bit.ly/b03gr8

3.3.01

- I made the same transform gizmo for retopo tool (on Import) as for Transform tool in Voxels. Undo works there too.
- I improved gizmo used in Transform and Retopo to avoid contradiction between moving gizmo in screen space and rotation of the scene.
- I made support of multiple UV sets management in UV room. You may change UV set of any face, add UV-set, remove unused UV-set. New UV stuff will work in both - per-pixel and microvert mode. Previously only per-pixel was supporting multiple uv sets in UV tool.
- Naming of objects merged from retopo to paint room improved - name of object will be combined from groups names instead of RetopoSurfaceXX
- "Update islands" crash fixed - http://bit.ly/bBt2lr

Auto Retopology Showcase and TIps

Thu, 02 Sep 2010 20:56:50 +0000

I thought it might be an idea to have a thread where people can post auto retopologys they've done to kind of show it off, and give tips, try and uncover the mysterys of it. It might help develop it and advertise it.

I know I could not manually get retopo as good as this(I'm liking it alot). Got it through increasing the density around the eyes/nose area and guiding the edgeflow around that area. I did have to move the edges by the nose, they were a bit further back(perhaps thats a bit too thin, angle to great?).

Futurist soldier :

Thu, 02 Sep 2010 18:52:45 +0000

Well some sort of futurist soldier done with some Killzone 2 inspiration.
I didn't gonna very far in detail or design study, i just kept the basic ideas and shapes mainly.

I used a lot the curve tool, to create volume or cavity along a path.
If i have free time , i will retopology it for real time and texture it ?
It was mainly for a game in the style of Shadow Complex on XBOX 360.

3D model from Photos

Thu, 02 Sep 2010 17:53:16 +0000

I was skeptical of this because I've tried many of these programs before and none worked very well. This one looks like it might do the trick. It makes a pretty high-res model too.

http://forums.cgsociety.org/showthread.php?p=6318967

retopo questions

Thu, 02 Sep 2010 17:09:44 +0000

Hello,
Been using the demo for awhile now. Still couldn't figured out one thing. How do you change the color or material of the retopo mesh and the reference mesh?
Also, how do you change from Y up to Z up? My work place use Z up, so when I retopo I would like to use 3d coat in Z up as well.

Thanks,

Twitter discussion: What Andrew is currently doing.

Thu, 02 Sep 2010 15:57:01 +0000

Andrew on twitter said:

I am working over big speed-up of surface tools. They have really great potential.

That's really interesting. "surface" is a generally word, so I hope he means the voxel surface.

By the way: You are invited to use this thread to discuss all running twitter posts from Andrew.

BeatKitano Sketchbook

Thu, 02 Sep 2010 12:49:37 +0000

Voxel is very nice for prototyping, but i have such an hard time to get strong sculpting :/

I need to pass the feeling of "its too soft to work with".

I'm still struggling with the autoquad feature to displacement sculpting (i always endup with an underdetailed autoquadrangulated mesh)

I beg you: Make paint functions multithreaded

Thu, 02 Sep 2010 12:45:38 +0000

Hello,

please please please! Optimise the paint functions to be multithreaded as soon as possible.
I am working with high detailed meshes and high res textures (4k) every day, since months. It needs very long time to fill objects or paint with extra large brushes.

I remember Andrew planned to optimise the brush engine overall for the next release. But I am not shure this will happen, because of the much work that needs to be done, beside the brush engine.

But I still hope...
Someone else who think like me?

Best wishes
Chris

Video Manual - New Additions

Thu, 02 Sep 2010 07:25:14 +0000