3D-Coat 3.2 updates thread.

[Andrew Shpagin]

Linux build uploaded too.

[Roger_K]

I don't understand how it's useless when I'm using it with LightWave on my current project and it's working great.

Thats fine if the your not planning on doing any more work with the models textures. that uvtile is useless for games. every single edge is split. Do you realise that this masively increases the vertex count of the model, each vertex has to be represented in uv space with an additional uv vertex, if that vertex is used by 4 faces and if you split those faces into individual islands then you need 4 uv vertices to represent that 1 mesh vertex(as it is now in 4 places) the same is true for vertex normals.

To work in a regular game workflow a good UV workflow is needed.

Ideally 3DC could do with being able to export multiple uv tiles of different resolutions. A nice workflow for this can be seen used alot

in film. the model is UV'd and the islands are spread not just in the 0.0 to 1.0 range but into many UV tiles. if 3DC assigned a new material to each of these individual uv tiles and allowed you to export them at what ever res you needed it would be awesome.

in the image below each square is a uv tile, and each gets a individual material

[philnolan3d]

Thats fine if the your not planning on doing any more work with the models textures. that uvtile is useless for games. every single edge is split. Do you realise that this masively increases the vertex count of the model, each vertex has to be represented in uv space with an additional uv vertex, if that vertex is used by 4 faces and if you split those faces into individual islands then you need 4 uv vertices to represent that 1 mesh vertex(as it is now in 4 places) the same is true for vertex normals.

I am learning that now. At the time nobody had said anything about UVs in games.

[Roger_K]

I am learning that now. At the time nobody had said anything about UVs in games.

Sorry if I sound preachy I dont mean to. Its just this sort of stuff is what makes the app usefull and not just a niche product.

Regardless of what your using that model in it doesnt change the fact that its very wastefull of your ram. Imagine how this problem scales with high detail models.

[philnolan3d]

Honestly I had never heard of UV points being any different from points on the model So this is the first I've ever heard of it, it's never come up in LightWave before. I've just always felt that it was wasteful to have all this empty unused space on your UV map. Anyway we should probably either end this discussion or move it to another thread, for the sake of forum order.

Edit: Wow I just baked a voxel model to micro-vertex and I must say the Candle2 shader I had on baked perfectly! Good job Andrew!

[ifxs]

I've brought up some of the points Roger_K references with some of my posts regarding PTEX implementation, and I'm sure my feelings on that are better left unsaid for now, so I dont stir up any more "defense of PTEX" chat.

PTEX in its current implementation is useless for a majority of my realtime and GPU-render-engine pipelines. In 2011 or 2012 (or later)that may change, but not now, not while all the GPU based render engines are all going with traditional UV's and not PTEX(which is where the next 2 years or render tech is at IMO). This is a key point IMO. Not only do absolutely none of the game engines on the market support ptex, there isnt 1 game engine I develop for that plans on adding PTEX support for the foreseeable future, for good reasons given its current implementation, but NONE of the LIGHTNING FAST GPU RENDER ENGINES support or plan on supporting PTEX at this time. WIth a little refining PTEX COULD be very useful for realtime, but not now, not as it stands.

If you dont care about how much ram is being eaten up on your GPU to render a scene in an external render engine, or you done care about MASSIVE frame rate drops and ram hogging, then PTEX is for you.

If not, for now, stick with UV's till the PTEX technology matures. Hopefully we get multithreading and OpenCL instead of the next multi-month "ptex like undertaking" feature added in 3DC. Something many of us can benefit from now.

There will likely be a day when PTEX or a ptex-like technology will be the next step in polygonal texturing; this year is likely not the year for that though. Plus, we have real-time voxel engines(from ID and others) that look like they might make commercial release this year or next; the next texturing revolution for real-time sparse-tree voxels might leapfrog PTEX-like tech al together.

EDIT: the shader baking in the new builds looks GREAT!!!! Thanks Andrew

[AbnRanger]

If not, for now, stick with UV's till the PTEX technology matures. Hopefully we get multithreading and OpenCL instead of the next multi-month "ptex like undertaking" feature added in 3DC. Something many of us can benefit from now.

+1. As cool as Ptex may be, it doesn't amount to a hill of beans if the rest of the application still has show-stopping slow-downs and tools that just don't work that well (ie, Pose tool...just spent a few hours wrestling with it, trying to get decent results, and finally gave up trying).

Performance and stability should be PRIORITY No.1 for the next 6-12 months, in my opinion...here's my vote for no more wiz-bang features until those areas have been fully addressed.

[amcmahon]

+1. As cool as Ptex may be, it doesn't amount to a hill of beans if the rest of the application still has show-stopping slow-downs and tools that just don't work that well (ie, Pose tool...just spent a few hours wrestling with it, trying to get decent results, and finally gave up trying).

Performance and stability should be PRIORITY No.1 for the next 6-12 months, in my opinion...here's my vote for no more wiz-bang features until those areas have been fully addressed.

+1,000,000. Outside of stability and performance I would like to see the auto-quadrangulate refined. With that and a good AO baker you'd have a near perfect production set of tools. Auto-Quadrangulate could be made 100x better than it currently is with existing features in retopo already and this would be a 1000x more useful than Ptex.

[Roger_K]

+1. As cool as Ptex may be, it doesn't amount to a hill of beans if the rest of the application still has show-stopping slow-downs and tools that just don't work that well (ie, Pose tool...just spent a few hours wrestling with it, trying to get decent results, and finally gave up trying).

Performance and stability should be PRIORITY No.1 for the next 6-12 months, in my opinion...here's my vote for no more wiz-bang features until those areas have been fully addressed.

QFA,3DC seems to be growing outwards rather than up. I haven't been able to use it at all on my latest models because it just cant handle the texture resolution i need. Its not a case of my computer not being up to the task either. I love 3DC but i wish more time could be spent refining whats there rather than adding new features and neglecting the existing ones.

Another issue that bugs me is that 3DC's retopo while being totally awesome, lacks the ability to see a simple preview of the smoothed mesh.

[lowedennis]

QFA,3DC seems to be growing outwards rather than up. I haven't been able to use it at all on my latest models because it just cant handle the texture resolution i need. Its not a case of my computer not being up to the task either. I love 3DC but i wish more time could be spent refining whats there rather than adding new features and neglecting the existing ones.

Another issue that bugs me is that 3DC's retopo while being totally awesome, lacks the ability to see a simple preview of the smoothed mesh.

I second that, Although I'm a newcomer to this application I spend at least 90% of my time fighting to get from one room to the other and end up killing the app and trying a different approach (which usually doesn't work).

Unless you're a top expert in retopo and UV bodging then you are out in the cold.

There's simply not enough information for artist types that just want to sculpt and paint - it's still in Beta testing I feel.

[philnolan3d]

Another issue that bugs me is that 3DC's retopo while being totally awesome, lacks the ability to see a simple preview of the smoothed mesh.

Why not just hit the subdivide button a couple of times? Then when you're done hit Undo the same number of times.

[faizol]

In several last versions you don't need to install Toolkit, all is included in 3D-Coat's folder.

So, ensure that you installed last version.

Hi Andrew,

3D-Coat still crashes on me. Does it actually have anything to do with the driver I installed on my system? I already deleted cuda folder.

Can anyone here who uses Fedora 12 or Fedora 11 and nvidia's driver version 195.36.15 let us know if 3D-Coat doesn't have any problem running?

Thanx.

Regards,

Faizol

[Adamek]

But those buttons still doesn't work.

In 3DC 32bit on win xp 32 bit all is ok.

In win7 64 BIT both versions 3DC 32 and 64 bit left and right buttons don't do anything.

My personal suggestion is that buttons are somehow 'read' through SN driver which is 32 and 64 bit version.

Other software (3DS MAX, Photoshop, or even explorer.exe) can 'read' those buttons in both bit versions.

Only 3DC can not recognize 64 bit driver for buttons, as I suppose.

I'm very sorry for writing about this over and over again, but disabling SN buttons from use makes SN usable in half... or less.

OK, I have found the problem.

It exists between chair and keyboard Just kidding

Windows 7 64 bit (and maybe 32 bit ver.) probably differently handles SN driver. Or 3DC isn't fully compatible with new Windows. But it's not so urgent... Win7 goes on bookshelf and win XP 64 bit welcome again

[Roger_K]

Why not just hit the subdivide button a couple of times? Then when you're done hit Undo the same number of times.

The mesh still rendered with hard normals, with the underlying showing through. All you would get from what you suggest is a better idea of how the volume was being retained not how the mesh is smoothing.

[Andrew Shpagin]

Hi Andrew,

3D-Coat still crashes on me. Does it actually have anything to do with the driver I installed on my system? I already deleted cuda folder.

Can anyone here who uses Fedora 12 or Fedora 11 and nvidia's driver version 195.36.15 let us know if 3D-Coat doesn't have any problem running?

Thanx.

Regards,

Faizol

Oh excuse. I was thinking it was for Windows. I will forward your problem to our Linux programmer.

[Javis]

Oh excuse. I was thinking it was for Windows. I will forward your problem to our Linux programmer.

I did too, actually. That said...

If you post a bug in a thread that is NOT in the bug report section (ie., this thread) PLEASE POST YOUR SYSTEM SPECS!

We've seen this way too many times now. Please, do as above. Thanks.

[faizol]

I did too, actually. That said...

If you post a bug in a thread that is NOT in the bug report section (ie., this thread) PLEASE POST YOUR SYSTEM SPECS!

We've seen this way too many times now. Please, do as above. Thanks.

actually, I did supply my system spec the first time I reported this, as u can check from http://www.3d-coat.com/forum/index.php?showtopic=4992&view=findpost&p=41030 (post #332). That's a very common standard in reporting any errors, and I fully understand that.

Thanx for the reminder tho.

[Andrew Shpagin]

Updated to 3.2.09 (Win+Mac, Linux - soon)

Changes:

- I made possibility to measure and define everything in Voxels using physical units like inches or meters. It was longstanding request, at least I done it. It is extremely useful for real production and prototyping.

- I hope that I succeed with exporting Ptex to Renderman. At least Renderman's utility ptxview displays 3D-Coat's ptx files correctly.

- I made special simple method for external programmers to make connector between 3D - application and 3D-Coat. I hope many connectors between 3D-Coat and different applications will be developed soon. I will post full description of the pipeline in a couple of days.

- Quadrangulation quiality and speed improved. Don't expect edgeloops but it is better then it was.

- I fixed several problems with STL export/import

- I resolved object/materials palette constant duplication problem if it is not docked.

- I restored checkbox "Use source positions" in export dialog for perpixel painting. It is necessary if you want to export model that was subdivided, painted and uv was changed. In this case it was impossible to export coarse (unsmoothed) low-poly object.

- I made possibility to create/install 3d-coat extensions from File menu. Extension may contain any sort of files - shaders, pens, strips, materials, masks etc. It is just image of additional files in coat's folder. It is good method to share 3D-Coat's content.

- At least I made expansion pack using Oliver Thornton's textures and pens in new format (3dcpack) that is cross platform and easy to use. He sent me tons of really cool stuff (great masks and skin textures, pens) and at least it will be published to community. Thank to Oliver! There is the link to package:

http://www.3d-coat.com/big/OT_Pack.3dcpack

Use File->Install extension to install package.

[ifxs]

!! Thanks Andrew, time to test

[artman]

Thank Andrew and Thanks to Oliver too!

[philnolan3d]

First thing I saw was a couple simple text problems in the measurement tool:

In the first sentence density is spelled wrong, everywhere else it's correct. Also "some object" really should be "an object". I see that a lot with native Russian speakers. Actually I would just change that whole part of the sentence to say "if you merge an object into the scene"

I'm not really understanding how this tool works to be honest.

[stevecullum]

Thanks for the update Andrew!

I installed the OT pack as instructed and re-started 3DC, but I don't see any additional pens or textures. Do I need to install them manually or something?

[philnolan3d]

Thanks for the update Andrew!

I installed the OT pack as instructed and re-started 3DC, but I don't see any additional pens or textures. Do I need to install them manually or something?

Click the little triangle in each of the tabs and look in the Folder area, you'll find new folders for each of these items.

[stevecullum]

Ah - thanks Phil. Didn't even see the buttons!

[Giuseppe]

Thank, Thank

[philnolan3d]

Did you look at what I just posted about where they are?

[Javis]

Thanx for the reminder tho.

Not fully targeted at you of course. Lots of people do this, and my reminder stands for all.

[AbnRanger]

So...3DC does not yet work with CUDA 3.0?

I guess not, then...

Thanks for the update Andrew, and also for fixing the "Frame Object In View" command in 3.2.08

[philnolan3d]

I believe Cuda 3.0 is only available on Firmi cards anyway, unless I'm wrong.

[Ghostdog]

Does anyone else get an empty OT_skins material folder after installing the package?

Maybe it wrote files to the similar named 'ExtraSkin' instead?