3dcoat with AM

[ludo_si]

Here is the explanation for texturing a model AM in 3dcoat.

1. Create your model

2. Use bake texture to save uv without difficulty.

3. export obj 16* with triangle.

4. Import your model in 3dcoat (option perpixel)

5. texture your model with symetry, bump, specular, emission, ambiant occlusion etc...

6. Export your model in obj to. All the textures are saved.

7. Import in AM. and decal replaces by new images.

8. It work and it's easy.

[robcat2075]

What you imported back into A:M is an OBJ with triangles? I'm surprised that works!

 

Or are you still using the original A:M spline model with the new maps from 3D coat?

[Rodney]

Nice! I like it.

[ludo_si]

What you imported back into A:M is an OBJ with triangles? I'm surprised that works!

 

Or are you still using the original A:M spline model with the new maps from 3D coat?

first i create a moder in AM and i bake the texture to have good uv for export in obj 16* with triangle.

I import in 3dcoat with per pixel to paint.

The model has the same form in 3dcoat.

After, when it's finished, i export from 3dcoat the texture (the export is an obj export)

 

In AM, i have juste to use de texture. They are saved with the obj.

I do nothing with the obj from 3dcoat. It's just an option.

The more interessant is that 3dcoat can be used with AM without difficulty )

[Rodney]

So the OBJ export is just a proxy which is used in 3D Coat. Nice.

 

There is another topic buried here in the forum that describes a similar workflow with 3D Coat.

I'll try to look it up...

 

Found it. Yes, indeed.... and you should recognize the primary advocate Ludo si.

 

http://www.hash.com/forums/index.php?showtopic=37421

[robcat2075]

In AM, i have juste to use de texture. They are saved with the obj.

I do nothing with the obj from 3dcoat. It's just an option.

The more interessant is that 3dcoat can be used with AM without difficulty )

 

That is very cool!

[ludo_si]

In AM, i have juste to use de texture. They are saved with the obj.

I do nothing with the obj from 3dcoat. It's just an option.

The more interessant is that 3dcoat can be used with AM without difficulty )

 

That is very cool!

Yes, the texturing with other software is always a problem.

And there is a solution to do it easily.

 

This can be used with bodypaint of blender too.

All the software with a per pixel system to texturing can work with AM. ))

[jakerupert]

That sounds fantastic.

So now sculpting for A:m becomes available finally!!!

 

So no problems with fivepointers and hooks anymore ( three point bug )

 

Does it work with z-brush too?

[Rodney]

So now sculpting for A:m becomes available finally!!!

 

He's been using this technique for about two years now (see link above) but yes... finally!

[robcat2075]

You can texture in the other app, but sculpting and changing the mesh... then you'd have to import the resulting polygon model.

 

ludo si's technique is for painting mostly.

[Fuchur]

You can texture in the other app, but sculpting and changing the mesh... then you'd have to import the resulting polygon model.

 

ludo si's technique is for painting mostly.

 

You can of course use retoplogy (in 3d coat and / or A:M, while 3d coat has very advanced retopology features they are still no splines)

The workflow would be to model a base-figure in A:M, advance it in 3DC reimport it to A:M to retopology it and than paint it with this method shown here.

 

See you

*Fuchur*

[jakerupert]

Sorry, seems i a mixing up things.

 

Thought you could bake a normal or displacementmap in the sculpting app or x-normal

and then simply exchange the uv-ed decal on the A:M model?

[ludo_si]

You can texture in the other app, but sculpting and changing the mesh... then you'd have to import the resulting polygon model.

 

ludo si's technique is for painting mostly.

 

You can of course use retoplogy (in 3d coat and / or A:M, while 3d coat has very advanced retopology features they are still no splines)

The workflow would be to model a base-figure in A:M, advance it in 3DC reimport it to A:M to retopology it and than paint it with this method shown here.

 

See you

*Fuchur*

Yes, and voxel is perfect to do model before retopology in AM without use polygones

[Fuchur]

Sorry, seems i a mixing up things.

 

Thought you could bake a normal or displacementmap in the sculpting app or x-normal

and then simply exchange the uv-ed decal on the A:M model?

 

No, in general you do that in A:M first using BakeSurface (or you can use 3dpainter to do it, because it is using the spline-data directly) but you need to do it with the splines BEFORE exporting the final mesh.

 

With editing the mesh in the other application:

1.) Create a model in A:M or anywhere you want.

2.) Export to OBJ and import it to 3DC or whatever voxel-application / sculpting-package you want. Now you can change the polygones and use voxels and micropolygone-modelling and so on.

3.) Export it again as an OBJ from that application and import the obj as a prop.

4.) Use Resurface / Retoplogy in A:M to make a spline/patch-based model.

5.) Use Bake Surface on the model to create UVs to be used in the painting-application. (can be 3dCoat or ZBrush or 3dPainter or whatever you want)

6.) Export it again as an OBJ from A:M (now with UVs).

7.) Use the paint-features of the application (now you can ONLY change the textures on the model. if you change the polygones / add or remove polygones (by using voxels, micropolygon-modelling, etc.) the UVs will no longer work.)

8.) Export the textures from the application (in 3d Painter you just hit "Save" for that, in 3dCoat you export the model as a whole which will create an OBJ-file and external texture-files. (the obj is not important, it is all about the image-files here)

9.) If the name of the files has not changed just copy and paste them to the folder A:M is referenzing the model from if yes, rename them first or use A:M to change the texture-files of the decals. (this is the better way, since like that the refreshing will never be a problem).

 

Like that you can use any kind of modelling-method and texturing-method you want with A:M.

If you don't need to use micopolygone-modelling / change the model in any kind of way in the other application other then the textures the workflow is like this:

 

Without the need to edit the mesh in the other application:

1.) Create a model in A:M.

2.) Use Bake Surface on the model to create UVs to be used in the painting-application. (can be 3dCoat or ZBrush or 3dPainter or whatever you want)

3.) Export it as an OBJ from A:M (now with UVs).

4.) Use the paint-features of the other application (you can ONLY change the textures on the model. if you change the polygones / add or remove polygones (by using voxels, micropolygon-modelling, etc.) the UVs will no longer work.)

5.) Export the textures from the application (in 3d Painter you just hit "Save" for that, in 3dCoat you export the model as a whole which will create an OBJ-file and external texture-files. (the obj is not important, it is all about the image-files here)

6.) If the name of the files has not changed just copy and paste them to the folder A:M is referenzing the model from if yes, rename them first or use A:M to change the texture-files of the decals. (this is the better way, since like that the refreshing will never be a problem).

 

Viele Grüße

Gerald

[ludo_si]

Sorry, seems i a mixing up things.

 

Thought you could bake a normal or displacementmap in the sculpting app or x-normal

and then simply exchange the uv-ed decal on the A:M model?

The ideal would be to make a bake of texture of an object imported in AMN! But this function does not exist yet. To recover normal the map, displacement and color without to play with export obj.

[Malo]

Hi Ludo!

 

I do not know if it is the act of creating textures from perpixel option, but your model does not appear to have any trace meshes and triangular patches problem rendering.

 

the bump's problem is solved through this way?

Did you encounter any problems about triangles (diplacement)?

 

Nice model.

[ludo_si]

Hi Ludo!

 

I do not know if it is the act of creating textures from perpixel option, but your model does not appear to have any trace meshes and triangular patches problem rendering.

 

the bump's problem is solved through this way?

Did you encounter any problems about triangles (diplacement)?

 

Nice model.

bump maping the problem is masked by colors. we see the softer contrast.

the bump problem is not solved.

 

This is also why it would be nice to have a bump impeccable. We often talk about the problem with other software 3d. mainly for the sculpt is the bake texture.

The problem no longer exists.

could we enjoy a bake normal, ambient occlusion, Emision light and even global illumination. With the fast rendering of AM.

Not to mention the displacement mapping which is so effective in AM.

While more animated.

[ludo_si]

Hi Ludo!

 

I do not know if it is the act of creating textures from perpixel option, but your model does not appear to have any trace meshes and triangular patches problem rendering.

 

the bump's problem is solved through this way?

Did you encounter any problems about triangles (diplacement)?

 

Per pixel simulate perfectly displacement. And the bake is a picture in white and black. easily usable in AM.

with this the is never problems with triangle.

 

It is very quick to use too.

[Malo]

Hi Ludo ...

 

Can I ask you to do a test with this model, if it is not abused (thank you in advance).

 

I have not 3Dcoat and would like to see if the result is better than the triangles that I have when I go through Sculptris and xNormal:

[ludo_si]

Hi Ludo ...

 

Can I ask you to do a test with this model, if it is not abused (thank you in advance).

 

I have not 3Dcoat and would like to see if the result is better than the triangles that I have when I go through Sculptris and xNormal:

 

Yes of course

[ludo_si]

Here rendering after texturing in 3dcoat. if the methode work to use painting application. there is a great problem with bump, displacement and normal map.

Iif there was no fault with the rendering would bump this lol happiness because it works really well.

[Malo]

Ludo thank you for the test.

This confirms what I thought.

It is clear that 3Dcoat product very good map for AM.

The problem is in AM. Once this problem set, AM will be very powerful.

[Rodney]

I note you are testing a v13 file. While I don't think there will be that great a difference with v17 with regard to the artifacts I cannot help but wonder why you are using the older file. At least if using v17 we could eliminate more variables.

 

Do the v13 files somehow work better with your other applications?

[Malo]

Hi rodney,

 

No, if I use the v13, it's just that I have the CD version 13.

I have not tried version 17. I expected a little more time to take out a subscription and be able to work seriously on a project and a way of working ...

For now, I trying to use my knowledge of AM when I have a little time.

 

To return to the topic, no there is no difference between the 13 and 17 models mdl that I could download (other new features)

but their treatment in AM could be different. The rendering looks better in version 17, saw the pictures I've seen.

[Fuchur]

Hi rodney,

 

No, if I use the v13, it's just that I have the CD version 13.

I have not tried version 17. I expected a little more time to take out a subscription and be able to work seriously on a project and a way of working ...

For now, I trying to use my knowledge of AM when I have a little time.

 

To return to the topic, no there is no difference between the 13 and 17 models mdl that I could download (other new features)

but their treatment in AM could be different. The rendering looks better in version 17, saw the pictures I've seen.

 

I have made a few test with resurfacing a model form 3dcoat, bake surface, texturing it in 3dcoat with displacement map and color-map, reimporting the maps to A:M and rendering it in A:M.

It works quite well... there are a few small stones in the way you have to know about, but all in all it is a quite cool workflow. I'll investigate a little more into this, but seems to be a very nice

way of texturing stuff and using displacementmaps, etc. 3dcoat is a quite powerful and nice program to do texturing-work too and it is not that expensive... it may be a very good partner for A:M.

 

Attached a few screenshots of my progress.

 

See you

*Fuchur*

 

PS: I dont know if I will find the time today to make a video-tutorial on the progress, but I will do one on the workflow and put it on my (then hopefully finally updated and redesigned) website in the next week or something like that.

 

PPSS: For all who didnt know: A:M has a realtime-displacement-view. That means you can see the displacement of a model done by a displacement-map in the realtimeview. Since 3d-coat seems to have by default another default-level than animation:master (or I am not good enough till now to use it which is more likely), it increased the volume of my model in the viewport only. This view has a limited resolution, but for such large influences you can clearly see it.

[ludo_si]

yes, 3dcoat is a great partner for AM.

 

A great avantage is to create a model from nothing, via voxel.

Retopology in AM easily.

Export for painting and detail in 3dcoat and get all the textures.

 

With the bake texture from AM, it is a very great workflow.

 

Of course, the problem with the rendering with bum need a solution.

[Rodney]

I note that 3Dcoat has released their v4 Beta.

I read somewhere (not sure where) that current users can upgrade to this for free. I have a feeling that is only for the Beta but some may know the whole story.

 

http://3d-coat.com/forum/index.php?showtop...amp;#entry80738

http://3dcoat.blogspot.com/

 

This is the closest announcement to the free upgrade I could find:

Q: I recently purchased 3DC (whether on Steam or otherwise) and just heard v4 is to be released soon. Do I qualify for a free upgrade?

A: If you purchased in the month of August or later of this year (2012) you get a free upgrade.

[John Bigboote]

SO--- 3D Coat is what... $450 USD?

[Rodney]

Site says:

 

Full Professional Win - 349$

 

I did note that they do have a Win/Mac release which I presume can be installed on either.

 

They do have a trial version to warm up to.

 

Of interest to those who won't be making any money off of their endeavors I note what they consider their educational release:

 

The policy on the 3D-Coat Educational version have been changed. We offer 3D-Coat to students, hobbyists and amateurs pursuing non-commercial goals, so as senior people and unemployed at $99 US.

 

Hmmm.... I am the very definition of unemployed... am a hobbyist... and am pursuing non-commercial goals...

I might have to take them up on that and if I ever turn commericial make the transition to the commercial license.

That sounds like a very good deal.

[itsjustme]

SO--- 3D Coat is what... $450 USD?

 

I'm not understanding the difference between using 3D Coat and 3D Painter/A:M Paint (which is $99, if I'm remembering correctly). Why jump through the hoops for 3D Coat?

[Vertexspline]

3d coat is indeed a very powerful application and would be interesting to see how folks might integrate with AM. The voxel scuplturing and retopology tools are indeed --top shelf.

 

rich

[Rodney]

I'm not understanding the difference between using 3D Coat and 3D Painter/A:M Paint (which is $99, if I'm remembering correctly). Why jump through the hoops for 3D Coat?

 

From my persepective this may be primarily related to the fact that 3D Coat has a broader feature set. As I've little desire to move things further down the polygon pipeline A:M Paint would suffice for basic needs... with one exception that I can think about and that is creating the initial decal. I've never been very good at doing that in A:M Paint. If 3Dcoat has this same issue with creating the initial decal then there isn't a lot of reason for me to go there.

 

Where I think 3Dcoat has a clear advantage (and the real reason to use it in my estimation) is in how it can be used to paint deformities and displacement in real time. I don't believe we've seen that yet with A:M Paint.

 

I assume that maps painted in 3Dcoat can be taken back to A:M and adjusted further in A:M Paint (via the general workaround described of ignoring the exported model and keeping the decal for use with A:M). In this sense I don't see it as an 'either/or' but an 'also/and'. The real question then becomes one of streamlining the workflow between 3Dcoat and A:M Paint.

 

The benefit of A:M Paint of course being that we can paint directly onto the A:M Models without no middle man.

In this sense 3Dcoat just facilitates the process.

[robcat2075]

Yes, AMPaint doesn't show you the shading of a bump map you may be painting, it shows you the grayscale. You'd need to take the model back to A:M to see the bump effect.

 

On the plus side, AMPaint doesn't require a tiled map. I like to pre-wrap my model with a blank decal and paint on that in AMPaint and the result is something you can take to a regular paint program for touchup or filters or whatever. A tiled map won't work for that.

 

example here: http://www.hash.com/forums/index.php?s=&am...st&p=318153

[John Bigboote]

We shouldn't turn this into a contest between the 2... but isn't 3DCoat a full 'voxel' modeler too?

[itsjustme]

Yes, AMPaint doesn't show you the shading of a bump map you may be painting, it shows you the grayscale. You'd need to take the model back to A:M to see the bump effect.

 

On the plus side, AMPaint doesn't require a tiled map. I like to pre-wrap my model with a blank decal and paint on that in AMPaint and the result is something you can take to a regular paint program for touchup or filters or whatever. A tiled map won't work for that.

 

example here: http://www.hash.com/forums/index.php?s=&am...st&p=318153

 

I would rather not use a tiled map. Using other paint programs for touch up would be the way I would go. I'm thinking I could rough-in the bump maps with A:M Paint, then, in another paint program modify the decal with A:M open and just update the display as I go....wouldn't that work?

[robcat2075]

I would rather not use a tiled map. Using other paint programs for touch up would be the way I would go. I'm thinking I could rough-in the bump maps with A:M Paint, then, in another paint program modify the decal with A:M open and just update the display as I go....wouldn't that work?

 

yes. An advantage of finishing in a 2D program is that you can get to crevices that are obscured in a 3D paint situation.

[jakerupert]

The main advantage would be to make not just painting but sculpting available for AM that then could be baked onto hashmodels via normal or displacementmaps.

Also there is the free application sculptris to try this...

[itsjustme]

The main advantage would be to make not just painting but sculpting available for AM that then could be baked onto hashmodels via normal or displacementmaps.

Also there is the free application sculptris to try this...

 

It still wouldn't truly be sculpting since the splines would not change...it would be displacement, normal and bump maps.

 

So, I'm thinking that my previous assumption is still valid:

 

I would rather not use a tiled map. Using other paint programs for touch up would be the way I would go. I'm thinking I could rough-in the bump maps with A:M Paint, then, in another paint program modify the decal with A:M open and just update the display as I go....wouldn't that work?

 

Or am I still missing something?

[robcat2075]

Or am I still missing something?

 

No. I'll just re-note that 3DCoat seems to be able to more accurately represent your bump and displacement painting. Photoshop and AMPaint will show grayscale imagery.

 

If you are comfortable with mentally interpreting grayscale, should not be a problem.

[Rodney]

Not to go totally off track but...

 

Several years ago I experimented with a technique that initially seemed to be promising. It was going to be part of a book I wanted to call "Hacking A:M".

 

This technique uses a utility to make a program (or programs) partially transparent and therefore you can place a paint program (or any program for that matter) on top of A:M and then draw over the top of whatever you see in A:M. The specific program I liked is called Chaos Crystal.

 

Just now I wanted to see if the technique was still valid so I just downloaded the program again and used Coreldraw to draw on top of Thom in A:M.

 

Of course decaling isn't the only thing that can be done using this technique. Animation analysis, rotoscoping and a whole host of other things can be facilitated by making programs partially transparent or... making A:M itself partially transparent and placing A:M over the top of something else... a movie sequence for instance.

 

I didn't pursue it frankly because it is a hack of the lowest order but as they say... whatever works!

It has the benefit of being usable with just about any program you can think of...

 

Added: One nice thing is that once you've got the decal in place you can turn off the transparency and really go to town on it in that program and/or move it side by side and refresh to see the updates directly in A:M.

 

Here's the decal plastered onto Thom after drawing on top of him with a brush in Coreldraw:

 

Added a second one cause it's fun stuff.

[itsjustme]

Or am I still missing something?

 

No. I'll just re-note that 3DCoat seems to be able to more accurately represent your bump and displacement painting. Photoshop and AMPaint will show grayscale imagery.

 

If you are comfortable with mentally interpreting grayscale, should not be a problem.

 

If I'm modifying a decal (after roughing things in using A:M Paint, saving the decal and opening that decal in another paint program with the affected model open in A:M with the decal applied), saving it, then updating the view of the model in A:M as I go along, wouldn't that get rid of mentally interpreting grayscale? The model should show the changes made to the decal as far as I know...of course I would have to re-save the decal and update the view in A:M after each change, so it wouldn't be realtime.

 

I may be wrong, but it makes sense in my head.

[robcat2075]

I may be wrong, but it makes sense in my head.

 

If that's wrong, I don't want to be right!

 

Your plan will work.

[Rodney]

I may be wrong, but it makes sense in my head.

 

You are definitely not wrong David.

 

As you say, the only real trick to it is the refreshing of the image in A:M and because A:M can be refreshed quickly you are talking about a matter of seconds. The benefit to using a program like Photoshop is that you can utilize all those layers. Most programs such as Photoshop also have an autosave feature so that portion of the updating could be largely automated.

 

And don't forget you can record Macros so that with the press of a button or shortcut key you can save out layers to different images. In this way you can have a layer for every equivalent image map type in A:M; Color, Diffuse, Secularity, Ambiance, Bump, Displacment, etc. When the Macro runs it can automatically update each of these.

[ludo_si]

For painting:

3dcoat is a real photoshop for 3d model. With layers with blending option ( ad, light etc... as toshop). Its really great and important to paint a model 3d easily.

 

We can paint bump and displacement mapping and The intensity of the bump in layers is adjustable.

 

All the brushes are adjustable ( à la photoshop too)

 

We can word on specular map, emision. We can have and ambiant occlusion map too.

It's in reatime and we can move the light to have a good idea of the work.

 

Very important is to work with symetry. Projection painting

 

With voxel, we work from nothing. And it's great to create props for AM, of base to do retopology in AM.

 

The great feature of V4 is to be able to paint on a voxel model and to bake it. It vertex color paint.

 

It possible to sculp an AM model with voxel too via the import option. The model is imported as a cloud of point and we can play with all tools in 3dcoat.

 

Sculpt is now as important as lighting in 3d. To be able to work on an AM model is fantastic.

 

3dpaint and 3d coat are so different.

With 3dpainter sculpt is too much difficult. You have to test the texture to see what it do. In 3dcoat it's in realtime.

 

An other detail. With 3dcoat, i's easy to create all tiled texture.

 

I have 3dpaint and 3dcoat both.

[pixelplucker]

I use 3d Coat quite a bit for work, though I haven't really used it for texturing but rather for complex sculpturing for my die casting. The little bit of texturing I have done in it did impress me. A while back I tried to get Andrew to make some sort of mdl importer exporter for 3d Coat but because of the proprietary splines it would be too costly to code to be simply a feature.

 

What I would like to see is AM have the ability to load psd files with layers so users can assign a channel to a layer (ei: layer 1 color, layer 2 bump, layer 3 cookie cutter etc.), and be able to invert the layer color if needed. This would make textures compact and better organized. This would also make editing easier. I would think more people have Photoshop or a program that supports psd than 3d Coat.

 

In some aspects I still like 3d Painter but not sure if that has fizzled out or if there is a new version in the works. Would be nice to have 3d Paint support real time bump maps. Especially since it is already able to bring in mdl files and is 1/3 the price of 3d coat, 1/6 the price of Photoshop.

[Fuchur]

I use 3d Coat quite a bit for work, though I haven't really used it for texturing but rather for complex sculpturing for my die casting. The little bit of texturing I have done in it did impress me. A while back I tried to get Andrew to make some sort of mdl importer exporter for 3d Coat but because of the proprietary splines it would be too costly to code to be simply a feature.

 

What I would like to see is AM have the ability to load psd files with layers so users can assign a channel to a layer (ei: layer 1 color, layer 2 bump, layer 3 cookie cutter etc.), and be able to invert the layer color if needed. This would make textures compact and better organized. This would also make editing easier. I would think more people have Photoshop or a program that supports psd than 3d Coat.

 

In some aspects I still like 3d Painter but not sure if that has fizzled out or if there is a new version in the works. Would be nice to have 3d Paint support real time bump maps. Especially since it is already able to bring in mdl files and is 1/3 the price of 3d coat, 1/6 the price of Photoshop.

 

Filip is currently working on a 64bit plugin for 3dpainter... we are currently beta-testing it and till now it looks well...

 

See you

*Fuchur*

[robcat2075]

Filip is currently working on a 64bit plugin for 3dpainter... we are currently beta-testing it and till now it looks well...

 

That's good to hear! Is it just the plugin or the program too?

[Fuchur]

Filip is currently working on a 64bit plugin for 3dpainter... we are currently beta-testing it and till now it looks well...

 

That's good to hear! Is it just the plugin or the program too?

 

Only the plugin... do you have a need for the program in 64bit? I never ran into problems with too less memory with it till now.

 

See you

*Fuchur*

[robcat2075]

Only the plugin... do you have a need for the program in 64bit? I never ran into problems with too less memory with it till now.

 

My wish would be that it was faster at doing the conversion it does when it's getting out of projection mode.

 

That's a reason I avoid using a tiled map. You have to use projection mode to paint and you have to go out of projection mode every time you want to turn the model then, back in.

 

It's not really a 32-bit problem, but I was thinking if he was revisiting the code to make it all 64-bit maybe there are some new speedups that can be done as Steffen has done with A:M.

[John Bigboote]

It possible to sculp an AM model with voxel too via the import option. The model is imported as a cloud of point and we can play with all tools in 3dcoat.

 

Sculpt is now as important as lighting in 3d. To be able to work on an AM model is fantastic.

 

3dpaint and 3d coat are so different.

With 3dpainter sculpt is too much difficult. You have to test the texture to see what it do. In 3dcoat it's in realtime.

 

An other detail. With 3dcoat, it's easy to create all tiled texture.

 

I have been following the UV discussions, as I try to integrate C4D and Element 3D more into my A:M workflow I realize that I know diddly about UV mapping. This 3DCoat application keeps coming up, and I went and took a good look at it- thinking about grabbing it. How many A:M users are using 3D Coat, and the texturing method that Malo has laid out here? Also, the voxel modeller looks powerful... can models made that way be brought in to A:M for retopo? Seems like these two programs ping-ponging back and forth might be a powerful combo... why have I waited so long? Other than the $349 sale price...Any downsides?