Jump to content
3DCoat Forums

Workflow for Inorganic Voxel Sculpting


kay_Eva
 Share

Recommended Posts

  • Advanced Member

Hey there guys. I'm pretty new to 3dcoat. I don't know 15% of it's features probably. So I was wondering is there a semi-established approach to sculpting inorganic structures with only voxels. Such as like making a cube, caving the insides out, carving some windows through the walls, and stuff like that. Is Andrew planning on making special toolset for inorganic sculpting. That would be awesome :lol:

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Hey there guys. I'm pretty new to 3dcoat. I don't know 15% of it's features probably. So I was wondering is there a semi-established approach to sculpting inorganic structures with only voxels. Such as like making a cube, caving the insides out, carving some windows through the walls, and stuff like that. Is Andrew planning on making special toolset for inorganic sculpting. That would be awesome :lol:

Right now hard surfaces are pretty difficult to sculpt. A cube is fairly easy though. Take the starting ball and increase the resolution a couple times (for sharper corners) then take the shapes from the E panel (hit the E key or the button above the brush in the upper left) like the square and hold Ctrl while drawing the shape to cut off the round parts of the ball. Use the camera shortcuts in the upper right to make sure your sides are straight. Ah heck here's a quick & dirty video.

http://screencast.com/t/kmJXoGeTbe

Of course the easiest way would be to just make a 6 poly cube in another program like LightWave and merge it in as voxels. Hit Merge in the voxel tools, then Select Mesh to load the file, move, scale, etc to your liking, then hit Enter.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

  • Advanced Member
Right now hard surfaces are pretty difficult to sculpt. A cube is fairly easy though. Take the starting ball and increase the resolution a couple times (for sharper corners) then take the shapes from the E panel (hit the E key or the button above the brush in the upper left) like the square and hold Ctrl while drawing the shape to cut off the round parts of the ball. Use the camera shortcuts in the upper right to make sure your sides are straight. Ah heck here's a quick & dirty video.

http://screencast.com/t/kmJXoGeTbe

Of course the easiest way would be to just make a 6 poly cube in another program like LightWave and merge it in as voxels. Hit Merge in the voxel tools, then Select Mesh to load the file, move, scale, etc to your liking, then hit Enter.

oh thanks for that video

but I'd like to sculpt from start to finish 3dcoat :brush:

So maybe there is like a pallette brush for saving shapes that you can merge in as voxel?

But eventually I'd like to draw the primitives in dynamically and then sculpt and that would be great along with the curve tools that's already there. :lol:

Link to comment
Share on other sites

  • Contributor
Hey there guys. I'm pretty new to 3dcoat. I don't know 15% of it's features probably. So I was wondering is there a semi-established approach to sculpting inorganic structures with only voxels. Such as like making a cube, caving the insides out, carving some windows through the walls, and stuff like that. Is Andrew planning on making special toolset for inorganic sculpting. That would be awesome :lol:

everything can be made from scratch in 3Dcoat.

I've been working only from cube and sphere so far.

here are a few moves (like videogame hehe :D )

most of the commands are in voxtree rmb menu.

BOOLEANS=you probably already know...merge to,substract from or standard merge

EXTRUDE= clone object,extrude cloned object,cut cloned object with E panel, merge to source object

SUBSTRACT= clone object,skin extract on cloned object,cut cloned object with E panel,substract from source object

LATHE= create base shape by cutting trough cube with e panel(must be thin) ,activate axial symmetry,select Z axis,

move gizmo at center of model until they are all jammed together tightly ,now at axial symmetry order setting set a

crazy value like 120 ,move gizmo at center of model,at his point the polycount will be really high :huh: :don't worry press enter.

it will go down a lot.Voila 3dCoat lathe!

3dCoat only needs a way to make loft object now (I know how it could be done,but Andrew got enough to work on now so I'll

wait later to suggest my idea for loft objects,it is based on axial sym trick for lathe :)

so ,Kay Eva you see you can do pretty much everything from scratch,save your objects to .3b and use merge .3b

to bring them in whenever you feel like it.3DCoat is really great!

Link to comment
Share on other sites

  • Advanced Member
everything can be made from scratch in 3Dcoat.

I've been working only from cube and sphere so far.

here are a few moves (like videogame hehe :D )

most of the commands are in voxtree rmb menu.

BOOLEANS=you probably already know...merge to,substract from or standard merge

EXTRUDE= clone object,extrude cloned object,cut cloned object with E panel, merge to source object

SUBSTRACT= clone object,skin extract on cloned object,cut cloned object with E panel,substract from source object

LATHE= create base shape by cutting trough cube with e panel(must be thin) ,activate axial symmetry,select Z axis,

move gizmo at center of model until they are all jammed together tightly ,now at axial symmetry order setting set a

crazy value like 120 ,move gizmo at center of model,at his point the polycount will be really high :huh: :don't worry press enter.

it will go down a lot.Voila 3dCoat lathe!

3dCoat only needs a way to make loft object now (I know how it could be done,but Andrew got enough to work on now so I'll

wait later to suggest my idea for loft objects,it is based on axial sym trick for lathe :)

so ,Kay Eva you see you can do pretty much everything from scratch,save your objects to .3b and use merge .3b

to bring them in whenever you feel like it.3DCoat is really great!

oh yeah I see that's really great!

sorry for the late reply I was preoccupied with something for a couple of days there :blink:

Link to comment
Share on other sites

  • Advanced Member

I just want to have a strategy for now blowing out memory.

Do I need to just PRE_CUT my uni-body

characters built in Wing3D as low-res meshes into several parts ???

Like cut at BELT, SHOULDERS, NECK, CALVES/BOOTs ....

In order to set separate memory requirements for these all in the

VOXEL Painter ???

Is this BEST PRACTICE ????

I have not tried yet.

I mostly want to stay in VOX Sculpt for a while as I have a lot of fun with it.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

I just want to have a strategy for now blowing out memory.

Do I need to just PRE_CUT my uni-body

characters built in Wing3D as low-res meshes into several parts ???

Like cut at BELT, SHOULDERS, NECK, CALVES/BOOTs ....

That's what I've been doing, my current character has separate Vox Tree layers for the head / torso, L arm, R arm, L Hand, R Hand, and hair. The legs are coming next. Originally the head was separate too, but I started running out of ram (at 6GB!) and I found that merging the head and torso used a few less triangles, which makes sense, you're eliminating the two "end caps". But really I think you just need to make the Hide tool your b**ch and use it as much as possible. I find it's easiest to hide the part you want to work on, then Invert Hidden.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

  • Advanced Member
That's what I've been doing, my current character has separate Vox Tree layers for the head / torso, L arm, R arm, L Hand, R Hand, and hair. The legs are coming next. Originally the head was separate too, but I started running out of ram (at 6GB!) and I found that merging the head and torso used a few less triangles, which makes sense, you're eliminating the two "end caps". But really I think you just need to make the Hide tool your b**ch and use it as much as possible. I find it's easiest to hide the part you want to work on, then Invert Hidden.

In Soviet Russia, Hide Tool make a b**ch out of YOU! :lol:

Link to comment
Share on other sites

  • 4 weeks later...
  • Contributor
Great advice, Artman, imagine what one can do with 114K tris on that lathed object.... :rolleyes:

I guess voxel-based modeling is just a huge memory bite, eh?

If you are hitting the ceiling at 6Gb, what (x Gb RAM) do you suggest?

Thanks

Can you formulate you question differently I don' understand what you are asking? :)

Are you saying 114 000 tris for a lathe object is a lot?

Because,really,it is very light weight for a nice definition object in 3DC...

Anyone can reach 2-8 million tris at least: so that would mean

around 50 lathe objects in a scene,which is enough for very complex designs...

(I don't even know what I would do with so much objects.)

If you have 6GB you surely can go above 2-8 mil....(I got 3GB)

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Join the conversation

You can post now and register later. If you have an account, sign in now to post with your account.
Note: Your post will require moderator approval before it will be visible.

Guest
Reply to this topic...

×   Pasted as rich text.   Paste as plain text instead

  Only 75 emoji are allowed.

×   Your link has been automatically embedded.   Display as a link instead

×   Your previous content has been restored.   Clear editor

×   You cannot paste images directly. Upload or insert images from URL.

 Share

×
×
  • Create New...