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farsthary � Moving to 3D Coat!


Tom K
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Big news!!

Posted: January 21, 2011 by farsthary in General

Hi all!

I have an exiting announcement to make: I’m joining Pilgway/3DCoat team!!!!! my Unlimited Clay efforts are higy appreciated by them and I will be collaborating to integrate dynamic subdivision sculpting in 3DCoat.

3DCoat (http://www.3d-coat.com/) is a leading sculpting application in the bleeding edge of volumetric sculpting and retopology and I’m becoming part of the core team!!!!!!!!

I thanks everyone at the Blender community because one way or another you have taken myself to this point and who knows what could bring the future?

For my loyal Blender followers that can be fear of myself leaving Blender developemnt I must say: Don’t be afraid! At first I was a concerned by the possibility of a restrictive NDA, but nothing more far from reality! Pilgway/3DC team is like the Blender team very cool, open and collaborative guys ! ofcourse I can continue blender development and your beloved Unlimited Clay now and in the future

I’m pretty exited because many new things will await us all in the future and also with everyone and God’s help I will carry you all in my heart to my new 3D family, the 3DC team respects a lot the Blender community and with blender becoming mainstream there’s no better time to meet the marriage: I will be a Blender embassador in 3DCoat and a 3DCoat embassador in Blender so this blog wellcomes 3DCoat users as well as Blender ones!

Exiting times await! And as I always said: I have the will and the interest and I will do my best to fullfill the responsability and expectations everyone are investing in me

All the best

Farsthary

Bombastic News!!!!!

unlimited clay

Tom

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I was about to post this here on the forum too. :rolleyes:

This is just great.

Im so happy that I decided for 3DC,

someone can really feel that something IS

happening here.

Welcome! :drinks:

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It will be interesting to see how they plan on integrating this into the program, and how it fits in with the voxels.

Tom

I'm thinking that the idea is to overhaul the Sculpt Room, which would mean a full-fledged 3rd sculpting platform (Geometry-Based, Image-Based. and Voxel-Based). If that is the case, I wonder whether it will be GPU driven (like Mudbox) or CPU driven (Zbrush).
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Artists can live without fireworks, thank you.

Some developers think that they are more useful than artists, these are the clever guys, ha ha These same guys never listen. never watch.

I don't expect anything good, only fireworks.

IMO of course.

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Artists can live without fireworks, thank you.

Some developers think that they are more useful than artists, these are the clever guys, ha ha These same guys never listen. never watch.

I don't expect anything good, only fireworks.

IMO of course.

I have no idea what you just said. It sounded like English, but it could have been Martian. :blink:
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I think Michalis, in his cynical way, was expressing a state of non-excitement and non-expectation.

And, I think by "fireworks", he means "bells & whistles" - as we use the phrase - non-essential "gizmos, gadgets and gewgaws".

The way I see it, (and I've spoken to Raul, in depth, about Dynamic Subdivision and how and why it's necessary for 3D-Coat), - DS, (I hate acronyms), provides a sculpting path for Mr. & Mrs. Everyman.

What I mean is that practical voxel sculpting is hardware dependent, due to the sheer volume of information contained in them, while a similar "unlimited" method, (DS polygons), is not.

Though the first implementation of this algorithm will be for use in "Surface Mode" - which is really a pseudo-polygonal mode - and whatever is build with DS in "Surface Mode" must go back through the Voxel pipeline - Future implementation of DS could lead the way to a set of dedicated, non-temporary polygonal tools.

The details of how to do this still remain to be discovered, I'm afraid.

Greg Smith

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Thanks Psmith,

Sometimes I speak martian. :pardon:

It was a privilege to belong to blender community, its my rights now to belong here as I paid for. I'm a customer.

Now, get to work, do what artists want and lets not discus about these any more.

This is the main reason I escaped from blender community.

Not polite you could say, think about these many hours of work spent to learn this bad tasted blender.

We don't live forever, hey developers, do your job. Do a decent 3dcoat, one year here and still all these bugs and memory problems around. Clean the code, this isn't a freeware app!

My main workflow will be around zbrush, 3dc is just a helper app and it will remain so until pixologic develops a decent retopo system.

Its too hard for me to finish a job and then realize that I can't export it. Because something went wrong! Post this to Andrew etc etc. Post this to mantis. Nothing was wrong. 3DC was wrong.

To understand what 'selected' means when exporting under retopo menu

To understand why I can't autopo under reference meshes.

When splitting imported groups leads to a unified mesh and never to splitting vox layers.

When 3dc never respects the particular OS, its called 'finder' under macOSX

When it creates an ugly 3dc directory in users dir and not in apps support dir. Bad tasted, indicating the ignorance of the particular OS. And an empathy against Steven Jobs.

As I said life is sort, don't make it sorter. I paid for this, didn't I?

BTW AbnRanger, you know what I'm talking about. Not martian.

eh

Try 'groboto', see what a humble coder can achieve. Humbleness is the key here. When the coder is an artist too. When he shares his creations.

Andrew, Raul, show me your creations, comment my posts or other's posts, then lets see what is wrong with codes.

In fine arts university of athens, I had a great teacher, he used to work among us, this is how I learned art. Not talking and reading, just watching,

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I'm thinking that the idea is to overhaul the Sculpt Room, which would mean a full-fledged 3rd sculpting platform

probably should find a way to combine the sculpt with the surface mode, since they are both polygon modes.

Tom

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First Welcome to the 3DCoat team. A team approach in the long run will be good for 3DCoat. One man (Andrew) can only do so much...

+1. That's what I was thinking. Instead of Andrew having to go into bugfixing mode, then feature creation mode in cycles, he can likely focus more on stabilizing the application, while Raul continues to build the feature set. That's a good thing....I think. Or maybe it's a diabolical plan to convert everyone to the darkside (Autodesk), eh, Michalis? ;)
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Welcome!

I hope you can improve the sculpting room while Andrew refines 3dcoat in general and fixes bugs.

We need something similar to zbrush that doesn't require retopo. Modo has a multires sculpting feature already and this will improve no doubt. I am sure Andrew is thinking that to be competitive with modo and zbrush, 3dcoat needs a multires polygonal sculpting environment. Heck why not a polygonal modelling room like silo. :)

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First Welcome to the 3DCoat team. A team approach in the long run will be good for 3DCoat. One man (Andrew) can only do so much...

+1 vote

Andrew is not a robot (I am guessing) and i remember when i made the suggestion that a team of devs would be good for the program a while back but some people did not like it. Now people do like the idea and it is great because it means even faster development, more chance the project stays active and hopefully lots of great ideas and developments for the program. Farsthary is a really great choice for a new team member also so this is really great news. :)

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Or maybe it's a diabolical plan to convert everyone to the darkside (Autodesk), eh, Michalis?

I didn't mean this. Just tired and with a growing idea that unlimited clay and voxels to retopo to paint isn't the best workflow for me. Its good for base meshes mostly.

@geo_n

+1

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Farsthary has had other projects than unlimited clay though like procedural textures, physics and UV relaxing etc. I am guessing the sculpting will be the first big focus but hopefully things like this will be added also and i am sure Farsthary has lots of other great ideas also. :)

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Even though I may find Michalis to be slightly outspoken, I have to agree with his objection to our "sealed" workflow.

Having argued, vigorously, with Javis about future 3D-Coat development, and understanding his view that 3D-Coat should be a Professional's tool for Professionals - for Professionals with a capital "P" - I can see that the 3D-Coat workflow is heading in a direction that places topology second in priority, not first.

By placing the new Dynamic Subdivision tools inside a temporary area, (Surface Mode), and translating the existing tools from the Sculpt Room so that they work inside Surface Mode, (rumor), everything must pass through Voxel Space before any topology is considered.

For many applications, this is fine - but generally, the Professional works the other way around - he makes his topology first with a dedicated polygon modeling application, getting as much detail in that app as possible - only to use a sculpting app at the last stage, for refinement and texturing.

Not everybody works this way - but many Professionals do. Many "old-timers" do. It's what many people are used to doing.

So, ideally, 3D-Coat should provide both ways of working: For those who don't want to think about topology, at the first, pure voxel or Dynamic Subdivision sculpting is at their fingertips. This workflow already exists in 3D-Coat. For those who would rather use traditional polygonal modeling techniques to establish topology, in the first place, they should be able to either import their model from other sources and use true polygonal sculpting tools inside 3D-Coat, or even better, create this topology within the confines of 3D-Coat, itself.

This proposition would require a phenomenal amount of work - starting today - and Andrew, working alone, can project no date regarding its completion. However, now that a programming team exists - perhaps this is now a definite possibility.

Greg Smith

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Even though I may find Michalis to be slightly outspoken

Just the opposite of yourself. ;)

I agree with most of what you're saying.

I think there should be only one polygon sculpting room with one set of tools. It shouldn't matter where the polygon model came from. whether it comes from a voxel skin or an imported mesh or a retopo mesh it shouldn't matter. should all use the poly sculpt room. then from there you could send it back to voxels if thats where it came from, or wherever else it needs to go.

I don't really agree with the assessment of how the "professional" does things. I think that just depends on that particular professional. I think the workflow you describe where you make an almost complete model then add details to it was the way of doing things when ZBrush first came out. But I think that the idea of needing to do things that way has been pretty much obliterated in recent years.

I was kinda out of the loop for a few years as far as 3d graphics was concerned. But I had remembered Zbrush from when it first came out. When I started looking at 3d graphics magazines again I noticed that almost every image had Zbrush listed as being used. So, I decided to get a book with a demo version. Let me tell you. That was a jaw dropping experience when I first realized what this new method of model creation was all about.

But I can't see anyone objecting to having better polygon tools, since ultimately it doesn't matter how you started out, you're going to end up with polygons. Also a lot of people like to use their existing models to make new ones. if someone spends a bunch of time creating a character then getting a nice topology they certainly wouldn't want to lose all that just to be able to modify that character into a new one.

Tom

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It just occurred to me that the "topology last" method of doing things is not really new. It's actually the oldest way of doing things. Since before all the nice modeling tools we have now. It was often easier to model a clay sculpture and use a digitizing arm to create the polygon model. That's really the exact same thing we do in 3d coat. Only we use a digital sculpture instead of a real one.

Doesn't get any more old school than this:

worlds first 3d animation.

Tom

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I can see why Andrew would want to stay focused on Voxels until he's really nailed it down, but with a basic polygonal sculpting platform already in place, I can't help but wonder why not mirror the same tools you have in Surface mode, multi-thread it and apply the new brush engine? This way, whatever work is done in Surface Mode (such as Dynamic Subdivision), could be mirrored to the Sculpt Room.

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I say welcome too!

Develop away, and don't listen to the nattering nabobs of negativism in this family. We gripe and snarl at each other, but the fact is that when one of has a problem, everyone still helps out as much as they can.

From a character development standpoint, topology is the end of the modeling process. Without a properly topologized model, animated deformations become problematic if not impossible. That means that it doesn't matter whether you start the model in 3D Coat, Mudbox or ZBrush, you almost always have to retopologize. Game rez models have special problems and need specifically placed points. AutoRetopo, as good as it may get, ain't gonna cut it as a final solution. The modeler will have to split polys and sling verts not matter what. And starting with a base mesh doesn't solve the topology problem.

3D Coat, in my humble opinion, offers flexibility as sophisticated as any program out there. With it, you have several different options:

-Start in 3D Coat and sculpt then retopologize, UV map and merge to PPP. Export to 3D app of choice, rig and animate. Or...

-Merge a model into 3D Coat's voxel room and detail. Retopo OR reimport your mesh into the Retopo room and snap the mesh to the voxel sculpt. Merge to PPP, paint and export. Or...

-Merge part of a model into 3D Coat's voxel room to combine with custom built voxels. Retopo, Merge to PPP, etc. Or...

-Import a hi-rez mesh from Maya, Mud or ZB, Retopo and UV map, then merge to PPP, etc. Or...

-Import a mesh directly into the paint room. I'm sure I've left something out.

It seems like what some are arguing is for the Surface or Sculpt room should be more ZB or Mud like. Or maybe this new tool will give 3DC an edge, I don't know. I can say that the mesh that this new subdivision technique creates is quite disorganized and rendering it would be a witch with capital B. So you will have to retopo at some point.

I have used Mud 2010, ZB (3.2, I hear the new version is better) and 3DC. I work on a laptop, and I can develop more characters quicker with 3DC. It is just that simple. Your mileage may vary.

Excelsior!

Eric Kunzendorf

Jacksonville University

users.ju.edu/ekunzen

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My dream workflow would be to slide between the subdivision levels on a retopo'd mesh (which would conform to the voxel sculpt). This way I get the benefit of adding fine details as actual geometry at a high subdivision and then being able to make a normal map from that for a lower level when I'm at the very end of the sculpting process. Currently subdivision works in one direction, so if I wanted to subdivide to shrink-wrap the mesh to the details (plus add my own fine details as geometry), I wouldn't have my low-poly mesh to export or have the ability to make general changes to the shape by sliding down to lower levels (and preserving the details of the higher levels). Some will say that this is what zbrush is for, but by using zbrush you lose the ability for the subdivisions to conform to the voxel sculpt (plus the hassle of sending everything over to another application and putting up with the zbrush interface :p: ).

I'm not too sure what the implications are of this announcement, but if it allows me to use subdivision levels in my workflow and overhauls the sculpting tools then I am VERY excited.

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My dream workflow would be to slide between the subdivision levels on a retopo'd mesh (which would conform to the voxel sculpt). This way I get the benefit of adding fine details as actual geometry at a high subdivision and then being able to make a normal map from that for a lower level when I'm at the very end of the sculpting process. Currently subdivision works in one direction, so if I wanted to subdivide to shrink-wrap the mesh to the details (plus add my own fine details as geometry), I wouldn't have my low-poly mesh to export or have the ability to make general changes to the shape by sliding down to lower levels (and preserving the details of the higher levels). Some will say that this is what zbrush is for, but by using zbrush you lose the ability for the subdivisions to conform to the voxel sculpt (plus the hassle of sending everything over to another application and putting up with the zbrush interface :p: ).

I'm not too sure what the implications are of this announcement, but if it allows me to use subdivision levels in my workflow and overhauls the sculpting tools then I am VERY excited.

You do have subdivision levels....in the Voxel Sculpting Room. It's resolution independent, so you can bring a model in with ridiculous amounts of detail, and still temporarily step down to a much lower resolution as needed. The feature is called "Mult-Resolution." When you are ready to export all your high detail work (bake normal/displacment maps), you can important your base mesh into the retopo room and it will snap to the model. If there are only tertiary details, then you will have no problem with it snapping properly. If there are major structural changes, you may have to massage the base mesh to fit into place or redo the topology in some areas.

Once it's snapped, you can now subdivide before exporting or adding edgeloops only where you want the extra geometry.

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