[Rodney Brett]

Profile curves are the best starting point, because they pretty much give you everything you need. As for CLAY brush, you can see the example of it on one of my youtube timelapses:

http://www.youtube.c...h?v=3lWhPgRFWLI

I used only CLAY brush mostly and move brush with some slight pinch. It's a very powerful brush for building up volumes without things getting "bubble-like". Keeps things flat. Like I mentioned already, it's main appeal is changing mass at high density. Seeing that VOXEL sculpt is pretty much always high density, CLAY brush is pretty crucial. I probably wouldn't call it "Clay" brush, just in case Pixologic gets upset, maybe you can come up with some creative name.

[BluEgo]

Hi Andrew, as Rodney Brett told, you can see similar "clay" tools in action in the first mudbox video, with the name of "wax" tool, and other variations as fill and foam.

3Dioot I know that there are a lot of things to do before, for example what I really want is performance above all, and only after thousand of tools, and brush strokes that act in a fluid and organic way, instead of the feeling of cg generated I have when I use Carve tool or when I use the draw tool with classic surfaces as you can see here

But I like too much the clay tool!

EDIT:
Whoops! sorry Rodney, you are faster than me. Thank you for your video!

[philnolan3d]

Rodney your video inspired me. I made another ear. Just sloppy this time, but it shows some of the tools.

(video is processing right now, it should be available by the time you read this.)
http://www.veoh.com/...5928452ZWCtkNN2

[Andrew Shpagin]

Veoh is no longer available in UKRAINE.
If you are not in UKRAINE or you think you have received this message in error, please report the issue below.


This is what I see on the link..

[philnolan3d]

Oh no! Do you know if you get Meta Cafe? Here's a video I put up there a while back to test:
http://www.metacafe....n_lightwave_3d/

[Andrew Shpagin]

philnolan3d, on Sep 19 2008, 03:06 PM, said:

Oh no! Do you know if you get Meta Cafe? Here's a video I put up there a while back to test:
http://www.metacafe....n_lightwave_3d/

That works!

[Rodney Brett]

yes, I heard of Veoh being banned in several countries. It's too bad, cause its a great network. You can try VIMEO, it's similar.

Philnolan3d, that's probably how I would approach voxel sculpt in 3d-coat. I like to "sketch sculpt", then smooth and refine. It's a lot less rigid and allows me to stay loose and free in the early stages. I pick out areas that I like and refine them, similar to a 2d drawing.

[philnolan3d]

Here it is on Meta Cafe (still processing)
http://www.metacafe....voxel_sulpting/

I signed up for Vimeo but they're not sending me a confirmation email. Seems to be a common problem from what I see in their forum.

Edit: Got the email. Now it's on Vimeo too:
http://www.vimeo.com/1766143

[Andrew Shpagin]

Good! Bot some smoothing is required Or more tools

[Layer01]

Hey not sure if anyone ended up posting a vid of ZB clay tools.
This is a quick screen cap showing off some of the brushes in ZB,standard, clay, clay tubes, and standard_DB which is a varient of standard that adds pinch to the stroke,and has a tiny dot with little falloff as its brush alpha.
Anyway here it is:) hope it can help.

http://screencast.com/t/iGgsvMsqpz

[Andrew Shpagin]

Layer01, on Sep 19 2008, 05:33 PM, said:

http://screencast.com/t/iGgsvMsqpz

Yeah! That is what I need. Clay brush seems to be very simple thing for volumetric approach. I will do that easily.

[Andrew Shpagin]

!!! At least voxel move tool is done! I t was one of most complex and hard coding sessions... I am not sure that I will upload it today, need to fix small quirks. But anyway I am glad that so complex part is working now and is quick enough.

[3dioot]

Thats great to hear andrew, thanks alot! You rock! I hope we get to try it out soon.

I have to get something of my chest though. These sudden appearances of people asking for brush x y and z from zbrush/mudbox make me very nervous for volumetric sculpting development. Really a lot of these brushes are settings (not all but the clay brush is). It would worry me a whole lot less if the only true brush that volumetric sculpting has at the moment (besides smoothing), carve, would work a full 100%. But there are many basic problems with it still. It must be getting old by now but:

Working fallof for carve (with profile curves).
Depth; 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.

I also realized today what the BIG thing was that made the carve brush feel so awkard to me. I realised it after making the picture to explain fallof curves. Ill explain with a new picture. This will make a humongous difference in how the carve brush feels and bring it right up to par with brush behavior like its in zbrush and mudbox (yes; this is pretty much appliable to the correct feel for all volume adding/removing brushes). Its also the big reason why even if you unlink radius from pen pressure (which works now) you STILL get a different radius while you sculpt with the carve tool.

Brush radius bug

Percentages are pressure. On the left you see the current situation. You see that even with the brush radius being constant you STILL get differing stroke width. This makes the carve tool feel very aggresive even when you press lightly (the depth to width doesnt change much with diminishing pressure). On the right you will see how it works in zbrush and mudbox. This makes the brush feel very responsive and controllable. If you want to keep the carve tool with its current behavior as a seperate tool i could understand. But in that case we really do need an additional solid voxel sculpting brush that follows the principle shown on the right.

I know its weird for me to have a lapse in faith after you just told us you got voxel move working (which i seriously cant wait to try out) but.. its just because i care. :lol: I hope you are working on improving the basic voxel brush first till its up to scratch.

3dioot

[Rodney Brett]

That's a really good explanation, 3dioot. I haven't been using a tablet to test out the ALPHA, so I never noticed that, but I agree that pen pressure should not change the "thickness" of the stroke. It's really difficult in the early development to really get a nice "feel" to the brushes. I remember the length of time I was testing the Silo 2 beta's, they went through dozens of revisions before they got it right. Blender's sculpt is still in it's early stages, so it has similar "brush feel" issues right now.

[philnolan3d]

I mentioned the "thickness" of the smoothing brush before for my ear lobe. Here's a case of the opposite. See the attachment. I've got this nice clean slit, but the inside all bumpy. There's no way to smooth it. A large brush like in the image won't fit in there. If it's made small enough to fit the smoothing won't work. A kind of catch-22 if you will. This is an extreme case, but I've already come across similar situations.

Attached thumbnail(s)

• 

[3dioot]

Here's a little tip. Use flatten. The surface is flat allready and if you use flatten on there it will polish away the irregularities just like smooth.

GrtZ 3dioot

[philnolan3d]

Nope flatten just made it lumpy and had the same issue, if I made the brush larger and tried to flatten the bottom side of the slit, it would pull mesh down from the top.

[3dioot]

Thats a bummer. I thought i remembered that worked. Time to request masking and hide tools from Andrew then. :P

3dioot

[Christoph]

In Zbrush and Mudbox with pen pressure you control the "thickness" of the brush as well as how much it push in and out from the mesh....
I personally like to have the pen pressure to change the "thickness" of the stroke.... in conjunction of course with the strength of the add and subtract. So please in any case make the "pen pressure to change the thickness of the stroke" an optional turn ON and OFF switch so everybody is happy.

Thanks

[3dioot]

@ Christoph
Its allready an option. Please do not misunderstand. That option is fine. However if you toggle it off (so the width doesnt change from pen pressure) it STILL changes. That is a bug and needs to be fixed. So im not saying width should not change with pen pressure. Im saying it should do that. But correctly when turned on and not at all when turned of.

@ Rodney Brett
Im glad you think the explanation is clear and understand the importance of getting it just right. Im certain if we put alot of effort into showing examples and theories on brush behavior Andrew has the skills to pull it of and make a killer sculpting app!

With that said. I had a little fun session tonight. Didnt put an exceptional amount of effort in (some restrictions begin to frustrate me) but i think it turned out ok.

shell sculpt

Took me 40 minutes.

Here is a 200% sped up version on VEOH: <a href="http://www.veoh.com/videos/v159393018qdNTsHq" target="_blank">http://www.veoh.com/videos/v159393018qdNTsHq</a>

Youtube: Refused it because it was too long. Sorry; only VEOH version.

Used the lasso tool alot to cut away because i just love doing that! Didnt use any of the mesh based tools since they can create mesh errors which give spikes when converted back to voxels. Since you cant undo mesh to voxel anymore (it would destroy the model in the previous alpha) it would leave me with a mess that i wouldnt want to clean up in a video thats put online. Its not a masterpiece but i had my fun.

Also in general. Its freaking amazing how fluid and fast this, admittedly basic, sculpting is. You can really hatch in or away volume. It feels like butter on my system which really isnt a fast system. I also tried it today at work on a slightly better pc (still nowhere near the specs i will upgrade to soon) and its just amazing. It feels like sketching. Also; the smooth brush is fantastic. I know i have complained about it before i realised the slider worked but i realise now it gives sooooo much control. I can use it to smooth big areas or make it so sensitive i can "clean" the edge of the shell without it eroding it. Its awesome (beats zbrush current smooth which i never liked after 3.0)

Goodnight all.

3dioot