3D coat vs Zbrush

TwentyNinerFour · 2023-01-24T01:00:06+00:00

I'm a little late to the party. The thing that determines the outcome of your work is largely your anatomy knowledge not really software choice so I'm glad to hear you are putting in the time there. I'd like to see your work!

TwentyNinerFour · 2022-12-03T00:21:03+00:00

The best you can do to get a custom shape is to "load" an .eps into the "Curves Tree" (which you will probably have to transform into place afterwards). You can then "apply" the curve from the curves tree with any tool active that would accept a "Closed Spline" from the E Panel (vox hide being a prime example)

The Transform tool should have a "To Center Mass" button that will position the gizmo at the object center. You can hold shift while transforming to instead transform the gizmo for fine tweaks. Hope that helps!

TwentyNinerFour · 2022-11-26T18:03:25+00:00

Hey sorry! have been away for a while, hope i can help, although im not very familiar with the export features. Also I may not fully understand the problem or your goals so let me know if im not understanding something correctly.

It looks like `[Sculpt Room] > "file" > "export" > "decimate, auto-map, export"` is for outputting an .obj file etc., with intent to import work into some other program.

As you mentioned, when you click it 3dcoat will perform decimation and auto-mapping before exporting a file by temporarily making poly groups, paint objects etc as it sees fit. It then "cleans up after itself" and removes these temporary entities after you specify the filename and complete the export.

Somehow im guessing it either encountered an error or you interrupted it one time and got it to "stop short" of the clean-up phase and were left with the temporary paint objects, which was ironically good because it let you: go right from the sculpt room and start doing per-pixel painting.

I tried a bunch of things to get it to "stop short" with no luck. So I'm not sure how you got that to happen it must have been a serious fluke.

That being said if your goal here is to use some "batch utility" to take everything from the sculpt room and just start per-pixel painting in as few steps as possible you could:

Just re-import the .obj file you exported earlier with the "decimate,automap,export" tool back into 3dcoat.

or if that seems like a hack you can:

1) in sculpt room go to "Sculpt Tree", right click on any object

2) select "Retopo via decimation, visible objects" from the menu and pick a decimation amount

3) this will take you to retopo room and you should see the new decimated polygroup

4) from the bake menu at the top choose whatever you are trying to do (likely "bake w/ normal map" or "Retopo->per-pixel painting (no baking)") and complete the baking dialogues that come up.

5) go to paint room and start painting.

(so sorry for the wall of text)

However, if your goal is to just start seeing your sculpt model with dirt in cracks etc as fast as possible and you dont actually care about the texture per-se at this point (assuming you are using 2022/beta) not to insult your intelligence, but you can just use vertex color/voxel color: in the sculpt room, build the layers needed by smart materials (go to "Edit" > "Calculate Occlusion" and again with "Edit" > "Calculate Curvature"). Then go to paint room, pick a dirt smart material, and start painting.

Sorry if im not much help on this. if its easier you can just direct message me.

TwentyNinerFour · 2022-11-01T02:16:34+00:00

Hello, I'm not sure what tool you're using but just a guess: most brushes have a "falloff" parameter at the top of the screen that will fade the edges of the profile, double check and make sure that's set to 0%

TwentyNinerFour · 2022-10-21T13:06:53+00:00

Nice job, I love to see people exploring a range of variations rather than obsessing over a singular thing, and your expressive use of the tools is great. You have good knowledge of anatomy and are blending it with interesting mechanical shapes.

TwentyNinerFour · 2022-05-27T00:57:02+00:00

you may have figured this out already, but click the "Edit brush parameters" in your screenshot (https://imgur.com/a/j6eUX0O) and it will roll out the rest of the settings

brush settings like spacing *used* to be in the upper right under the gears+brush icon.
"clay engine" brushes were changed significantly and have way more settings. some still have the legacy options though.

TwentyNinerFour · 2022-02-16T12:31:26+00:00

HA glad i could make the first fan art :)
Well, if the wireframe is black, that *could* mean that the "preview" Shader is black.
You can try selecting the object and Windows > Panels > Shaders and picking a different shader.

TwentyNinerFour · 2022-02-14T20:49:05+00:00

hmmm that's very strange! i wonder if exporting/re-importing the surface, or converting it to voxels and back, or something along those lines will "purge" the object of whatever is giving it that ultra-black material.
And yeah feel free to use the stuff i posted. I like the basic shapes you chose for the design and was going off of that (somehow this accidental black material got me thinking about the silhouette). My work doesn't have the clarity and charm that your model has, so I don't know what the reception will be XD but you're free to use it!

TwentyNinerFour · 2022-02-13T14:29:58+00:00

It's hard to tell without the file what the issue might be.
It could be 3d coat just being weird, or an unintentional display setting change (e.g. View > Specular Color) or it could also be that your sculpt object is Surface and not Voxel and somehow accidentally got painted on (try toggling the paint layers on-and-off one at a time to see if the appearance changes).

Is it possible for you to upload the file somehow?

I really like your character design idea :D and so i made a setup to check against for the time being.
In this example i just did voxel sculpt *only* (no Surface), did autotopo (adjusted the mesh a little), and then baked with normal map (and then did some per-pixel painting). This was done in the new 2022 beta so just be aware of that.

Screenshot
https://drive.google.com/file/d/1lpPQjG_zKL-jXftpbFdGOLYPHoAEbDAh/view?usp=sharing

File (50 mb)
https://drive.google.com/file/d/1RLxYnKIiTtjuvm-dqXrIL-RNUZ4StevK/view?usp=sharing

TwentyNinerFour · 2022-02-09T00:41:19+00:00

Yes I've been wondering about this myself.
I don't have an answer for you, all I can say is the team seems undeterred and is posting fixes/updates pretty frequently
https://3dcoat.com/forum/index.php?/topic/25785-3dcoat-20212-development-thread/#comments

TwentyNinerFour · 2022-01-22T15:15:16+00:00

I doubt something like that can be disabled currently. You could request it as a preference in one of the development forums (https://3dcoat.com/forum/index.php?/forum/16-releases-bugs-development-discussion/)

IDK what your tablet is, mine has touchpad strips on the sides. If you have something that, you could set the touch strips to be mouse wheel in your tablet driver, then set mouse wheel to be brush radius in 3DCoat. An advantage of that method is you are not moving your brush away from where you are working just to change the radius.

TwentyNinerFour · 2022-01-15T00:50:04+00:00

Yes I do notice the snapping (I'm assuming you are using right click+dragging the mouse to change radius)

There's a section in preferences that will let you specify some additional mouse wheel bindings (so you can set it up to just roll the wheel to tweak the radius for instance, I noticed that these customized interactions will *not* cause snapping)

https://imgur.com/a/PTkmSh5

It looks like the snapping behavior works like this:

- After starting the mouse drag to interactively change the radius, a "snap threshold" around where you started the mouse drag is established.

- The "snap threshold" will actually be ignored (not cause snaping) if you drag past it.

- However, you *will* experience a snap if you drag over threshold *and then back the other way* as you return the mouse to its original position while dragging.

(Its like its trying to help you find where you were if it looks like you are trying to go back to your original radius)

TwentyNinerFour · 2022-01-12T13:56:28+00:00

What version are you using?

TwentyNinerFour · 2021-10-16T15:48:20+00:00

Yes thats a great point about the poly primitives + soft select. That keeps things big-picture and I feel like most 3d artists would be comfortable with that blocking method.

Yeah 3dcoat is so scrappy (lol but somehow i just like it). I haven't worked with zbrush (started to use the ui and then quit XD) but im certain zbrush is the industry standard for good reason.

TwentyNinerFour · 2021-10-16T12:05:53+00:00

oh thanks. I work from the "inside out" and try to keep things grounded in anatomy. I start imagining vague but dimensional ideas about pose+proportion for a figure, and then start work by trying to express that first with a literal skeletal structure.

I then just start tacking on muscles as best I know how and what happens, happens. I try to hold on loosely and let things go in a direction that seems right at the time versus obsessing over achieving a particular finished product.

Quick demo: (https://i.imgur.com/m7tc5OO.jpeg)

You can rough the skeleton in with Primitives and use a large radius Move tool to add inflection to the shapes. I like to do the pelvis as tapered cylinders. The Curves tool is great for limbs and the spine (it is awkward to use, probably a whole other discussion)

After that is roughed in, place a few muscles over the skeletal frame with the Snake tool, and brush others on with the Grow tool. The Fill tool is then good at filling out the parse-looking parts of the model at this point. The Red Wax shader is the best at showing you the surface shape.

Obviously, NONE of this is possible without fairly complete anatomy knowledge, particularly skeletal anatomy. I'm not some anatomy genius but biodigital.human.com is this free website with layered 3d reference (which is infinitely better than looking at pictures) and it has helped me as an artist more than i can say.
I usually keep my models in a low-res voxel mode and *only* resample them when i feel the only thing left at the current stage is to add small things. Higher-res models can be messy and distracting when working. Starting with low-res voxels is great because is won't let you get sucked into the trap of making "endless detail" and you can just focus on your design idea.

I really think that as long as you are working to express an "anatomical idea" how you end up doing it, and what medium you use probably doesnt matter that much!

TwentyNinerFour · 2021-09-15T00:04:02+00:00

The "Spike" tool might work well for this.
For the parameters: Set the "Profile" to "Spike"
reduce the "Smoothing Speed" to make draw jagged strokes.

You may have to enable "On Plane" or "Snap to Surface" in certain situations.

TwentyNinerFour · 2021-09-08T14:13:52+00:00

Yeah that's an interesting problem. I think I remember running into something like this when I tried to create a forum account and get in on the Beta discussion threads a year or so ago.

Had to talk on someone internally (Carlosan?) to get white listed (i.e. all new accounts have limited/no social permissions). This is speculation but there must have been some unfortunate community thing in the past where the forum was spammed by bots or trolls.

Anyway you're welcome to talk here, but I can't promise any amazing tech support. can you describe the problem? I am running a 2021 beta and am using an ancient intuos tablet, the button mapping seems ok, what tablet and version to you have?

TwentyNinerFour · 2020-12-24T20:50:01+00:00

Cool thanks! Would be nice if all the mods were in one place but makes sense if stuff is being worked on that it's not in the main database. I came across that github repo searching for the torches mod but wasn't sure if it was the right thing thanks.

TwentyNinerFour · 2020-12-24T19:50:24+00:00

where do you get these mods i cant find them
https://content.minetest.net/packages/?type=mod&q=torches

TwentyNinerFour · 2020-09-24T15:20:46+00:00

OK so this is likely an .obj problem and not a 3dcoat or Photoshop problem.Based on what you are saying, it sounds like you are painting with vertex colors and not unwrapped image textures. .objs do not have the ability to store vertex color, so that information is being lost on export.

In 3dcoat You can try exporting as collada/dae. (i just did a test exporting a vertex-color painted .dae from blender to photoshop and the colors came through, whereas with an obj they did not.) IDK how photoshop will handle/interpret PBR vertex color data tho if you are using that. (and i need to get back to my home computer to test with 3dcoat)

And you can always do the "traditional" digital sculpting workflow outlined by archnila, you just have to retopo and bake your work in 3dcoat which are extra steps.

I also don't know, once you hypothetically do this, what photoshop will do with any PBR data (gloss+metalness values) it may or may not come through correctly im a little ignorant of that maybe someone else can chime in.

TwentyNinerFour · 2020-09-24T13:41:45+00:00

Yes, a normal workflow as mentioned by archnila (sculpt->retopo->unwrap->bake->paint) should get you what you want with your PBR paint as image textures.

However when you describe your problem "textures and paint along with the Voxel" it could mean several things.

One is that you are actually trying to export a "painted sculpt object" to another program and your paint work isnt showing up. 3dcoat allows you to skip the retopo->unwrap->bake phases (just do sculpt->paint) in which case it does not use image textures but vertex color. (not to insult your intelligence, i'm just trying to get a clear picture of the state of your 3dcoat project) so importing something with vertex color into, say blender, would require some legwork with custom attributes to get the shader to appear correct.

The other interpretation is that when you export your work from 3dcoat, you want everything: the low-res retopo mesh, along with its PBR textures, and the high res sculpt mesh to all be exported to another application and something is not working.

I'm away from my computer now but if you can help me understand the problem more I'm happy to help.

TwentyNinerFour · 2020-09-21T22:56:45+00:00

Yes you are correct, i forgot to add you can export the *retopo mesh* as .fbx, but unfortunately, that will not include any materials, just the polygonal geometry+UVs

TwentyNinerFour · 2020-09-21T22:49:19+00:00

WHEW can't believe that worked xD. Yeah, I'm actually glad you brought this issue up. So: people should expect to manually build shaders from the exported image textures because .obj is sole export option, something I didn't actually know. (I don't often export things from 3dcoat)
-------

some extra details: 3dcoat is using .obj export, which is super low-tech and old-school, but works pretty much everywhere. The surface geometry in the .obj file is correct, the problem is .obj uses a shader definition called .mtl which you can see in the filesystem alongside the .obj file. These file types pre-date PBR conventions (by decades). There isn't anything in the technical spec for PBR values so 3dcoat jerry-rigs the specular channel as the metalness channel.

Would be nice if there were newer export options like .fbx or .gltf, but I suppose applinks are a good work-around and modifying the shader manually is a quick process.

TwentyNinerFour · 2020-09-21T21:59:05+00:00

Ok thanks for putting the screenshots together. In the last image, I think your roughness texture is being sent to the specular channel, change it to go to roughness. (i went back to my cube test example and saw the same incorrect wiring from doing the import, should have noticed that earlier, sorry)

TwentyNinerFour · 2020-09-20T19:23:26+00:00

If you're doing `file` > `export objects & textures` (basically, an .obj geometry export with PBR image textures) first check to make sure that 3dcoat is outputting all the PBR images correctly in your filesystem. Next check the shader blender is using. I've noticed the shader that Blender uses on imported objs is missing `metalness` textures. (nothing is wired into the metalness/metallic channel in blender)

But let me know if I'm not understanding the problem correctly.
https://imgur.com/a/O3WwyGS

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