Full Version: PBR pipeline for MOI3D using 3D COAT and KEYSHOT

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That is exactly what I decided to do, which means a great deal of complex shading networks. Redhsift was required for this renderer, so I did have limits on the depth of the shading network.

When working with TriPlanars, UVs are not being used anyways, so I only used UVs on specific areas instead of the complete model.

Pilou, Zbrush can handle 50m polys no problem I am sure...but this was an optimized export from Moi so the topology was useless for sculpting or vertex painting. If I used settings that Zbrush would need, then the asset would easily be 1 billion polys. Working with such dense assets needs a proper pipeline which I didnt have the time to setup. The challenge is working with a 1500 meter asset that gets viewed up close with a 6k render! I never worked on such a huge asset before, and I would never be able to do it without using Moi on 95% of the asset.

Thats why I found 3d coat interesting because it can take the UVs from Moi and do a layout on import.

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Hi 2byts,

I read your posts very carefully and it's a very interesting thing to know that Moi can help also in this extreme situations,
thanks to its great exporting capabilities.

I absolutely have no skill regarding so complex projects, but as far as I know, unless you don't have a limitless budget,
3DCoat actually is maybe the best solution for that type of UVing and 3D painting.

I suppose that this choice requires, of necessity, a big amount of work in order to "break" the whole project
into smaller pieces, easily digestible by 3DCoat...

Anyway...thanks for your sharing and best wishes for your work.

P.S. If you can, if it doesn't violates copyrights, could you post some screenshot of the project you are working on ?

Have a nice day,

- Marco (mdkm)

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FWIW,

I was able to import for texturing in the PAINT room a 5.1 million poly OBJ on my little weak Macbook with only 8 Gb memory and crappy 1.2 GHz Intel Core M

The Paint room is where you can AutoUV your models and apply smart materials, which would be pretty great. Good luck!

So.. I would think it would work for a more powerful machine. :-)

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Hi chippwalters,

> I was able to import for texturing in the PAINT room a 5.1 million poly OBJ on my little weak Macbook with only 8 Gb memory and crappy 1.2 GHz Intel Core M

3DCoat is great!!

I hope that you are going to do some interesting tutorials regarding the workflow between Moi and 3DCoat.

I think that it would be very helpful for many people (and for me). ;)

Nice day,

- Marco (mdkm)

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Hi 2byts,

I hope you will share the end result one day !

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i hope i get permission!

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Hope I'm not overstaying my visit, as this post will mostly be about 3D Coat.

Consider this object (click to view larger)


It represents the start of a robot hand, sculpted in 3D Coat in about an hour. I've been playing around with 3D Coat lately, and I find I can sketch with it like I do in Photoshop. Don't get me wrong, the quality of the final model is quite suspect, and I couldn't use if for finished client design work (I use MoI3d for that), but I could use it for preliminary concept work and quite fast I think.

I'm still trying to learn the program. Voxels are a completely different paradigm that what I'm used to and just like coming from Polys to NURBS, you have to 're-think' your modeling strategies. One of the nice thing 3D Coat has is instancing, which allows me to work on one finger and have them all update, not unlike SketchUp. The other thing about 3D Coat and ZBrush is they have a certain 'look' to them. "Uncrisp" if that's a word.

FWIW, I bought and watched most of Jama's Intro to 3D Concept Design tutorials. He's quite the talent, and really does work 3D Coat magically, but unfortunately he's really weak on actually teaching the basics of what he's doing. He misses a lot of steps and doesn't explain very well HOW he does things. Still, it is very inspirational to watch him work and I do think he put a lot of thought into his workflows. He's just weak on technical stuff and especially explaining technique. All said and done, I still think I got $100 value from watching him work-- so no complaints. I may do some 3D Coat modeling tutes when I get better and understand the process better.

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Yep voxels are funny things! (a 1*1*1 cube(s) of pixel :)
they are apparent inside 3DCoat and editable!
they are hidden inside ZBrush! (some functions use them but transparent for the user! ;)

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Hi Chipp,

i do have 3DCoat (edu) too and have read that switching from Voxel to Surface mode is the way to go, when finalizing a model. I do think also that 3DCoat does not have the crispness and models looks mostly woobly compared to those sharp sculpts seen from ZBrush. But i will test this when i have obtained my copy of ZBrushCore.

Regards
Stefan

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Hi chippwalters,

And thank you very much for sharing your progress in 3D-Coat learning!
Much appreciated!
And I like your hard-surface style. (although I must admit that I'm not much for robots and weapons in general...)

Over the past few weeks I spent much garbage time to dig into 3D-Coat and more I use it more I understand how smart is this software.
Yes, it's true that, for the moment, the polished and crisp results achievable with ZBrush 4R7 modelling arsenal are undoubtedly better than 3D-Coat,
but admittedly it depends very much on the skill level of the artist (and I'm not very skilled...)

Talking about ZBrush Core vs 3D-Coat, I think that the debate is worthless.
3D-Coat Amateur version costs around 100$ and offers all the tools of the standard version :
Voxel, Surface, Boolean, UVing, Texturing, Painting, Baking, Retopo, etc, etc...

So...3D-Coat beats Z Core 10 to 1!

Anyway, I think that if we strictly talk about modelling tool-set, although 3D-Coat Voxel’s are a Swiss army knife,
the power and versatility of ZBrush’s bushes and modelling tool-set is actually unreachable.

> FWIW, I bought and watched most of Jama's Intro to 3D Concept Design tutorials. He's quite the talent, and really does work 3D Coat magically, but unfortunately he's really weak on actually teaching the basics of what he's doing. He misses a lot of steps and doesn't explain very well HOW he does things. Still, it is very inspirational to watch him work and I do think he put a lot of thought into his workflows.

If you haven't already done, let's take a deep look to the official youtube 3D-Coat channel (https://www.youtube.com/user/PILGWAY3DCoat/playlists).
There you will find a huge amounts of tutorials on almost every aspect of 3D-Coat.

Thanks again and have a nice day!

- Marco (mkdm)

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Hi futagoza,

> Voxel to Surface mode is the way to go, when finalizing a model.

Yes, this is a good workflow in 3D-Coat :

1) A first and coarse model, done in low/mid voxel density
2) Using voxel tool-set, especially boolean tools.
3) Increase the voxel's density while modelling details
4) Switch to surface mode + Live clay brush for the finest details

Nice day,

- Marco (mkdm)

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I'm still using mudbox so very interested in 3D Coat and how well it generally works for retopo, UV, painting, modeling. Love to see your and other vids on that Chipp.

Funny, I'm able to get pretty good models that are organic out of mudbox and feel it's a descent tool but it's obviously way behind Zbrush and other sculpting specific packages these days. However it's pretty fast and works pretty well. It's not very good at making hard surface sculpts however so I use moi for that specifically and Maya.

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A quick robot I 'sketched' using 3D Coat. It certainly can't do hi rez models (though this one was some 50 million polys) but it's really fast for generating concepts.
CLICK to view full size.



The other thing is it has a really nice object model and go do instances and hierarchies simply. Something I'm hoping for in MoI v4!

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6 liberties ?

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Hi chippwalters,

Thanks for your post. It's a very good work !
We already knew your talent and it seems that you are getting better and better with 3D-Coat.

> It certainly can't do hi rez models (though this one was some 50 million polys)

50M polys aren't enough for you ? :)
I can say you that with the right lighting and/or texturing far fewer polys are enough to render an excellent prototype.

If you have free time take a look at this (First Official Contest Winners) :
http://3dcoat.com/forum/index.php?/topic/19893-first-official-contest-winners/

I think that you are not so far from that quality :)
What do you think ?

In the last weeks I played a lot with 3D-Coat, and I can say that it's very funny modelling with it,
but for the moment, my skill in Retopo and Texuring are very weak.

P.S. Here's a very interesting collection of smart materials : http://3dcoat.com/forum/index.php?/topic/18542-smart-material-procedural/
( buy at https://gumroad.com/michaelgdrs)

Have a nice day,

- Marco (mkdm)

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As in 6 axis of movement? Yes. One needs that many axis for fine positioning at the point of the hand. (Hell-- what do I know-- I just made that up!)

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Hi Marco,

As I mentioned previously, I'm looking to 3D Coat for primarily 2 functions:

1. To help UV MoI models and apply realistic textures to them
2. To quickly sketch ideas faster than what I can do in MoI

Well to tell the truth I really didn't do (2) above very well on this one. I do believe I may have been able to model this faster in MoI, but that's because I'm just learning the 3D Coat tools. Plus it doesn't hurt that I'm switching back and forth between Mac and PC.

A couple things 3D Coat did do for me:

1. I was able to create instances and object hierarchies which helped tremendously in rotating the arm assemblies
2. I am able to 'refine' my model quicker as I can easily stretch and pull and manipulate forms as they are being created *as well* as afterwards. As we all know, once we create a fillet in MoI, we're pretty much locked into the shape unless we want to spend a lot of time ungluing, editing and stitching it back up.

One thing I don't see me doing anytime soon is using the Retopo tools as I think it will end up being too time consuming. But, who knows?

Michael, if you're reading this, I'm really starting to see the value of a Gizmo tool in a perspective window-- and something you may want to reconsider. It's especially handy when trying to position all these robot joints with different rotations and translations-- something very difficult to do in orthographic views.

-C

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Hi Chipp, I haven't ruled out having a gizmo for MoI too, I just had a higher priority on having a 2D edit frame first instead. The edit frame's big advantage is that it's very low profile, not taking up much screen space and going around the outside of selected objects rather than right smack in the middle of everything. That makes it possible to just have it on all the time.

I still have a little bit of hope to try and make an outer 3D edit frame that might retain some of those qualities, I'll probably want to do some experimentation with that first before giving up and just going with the regular kind.

- Michael

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Hi chippwalters,

and thank you for your reply.

Regarding the tools that 3D-Coat provide, keep in mid this very good workflow :

1) Use Voxel modelling to define the main shape of your model.
A great feature of Voxels is the way they easily and quickly handle boolean operations.

2) Increase the Voxel density during the refinement of the model

3) Jump to Surface mode when you want to add the final details.
In Surface mode use as much as you can Live Clay tools because they offer subdivision surface only where needed.
While you are in Surface mode and have already added the finest details, never go back to Voxel mode for that object,
but if you need to do some macro modification use Proxy Mode with Move/Pose tool.
("Menu Geometry -> Caching -> Toggle Proxy Mode" and "Menu Geometry -> Proxy Method -> Decimate 4X").


P.S. Just out of curiosity...did you get a look at First Official Contest Winners ?
(http://3dcoat.com/forum/index.php?/topic/19893-first-official-contest-winners/)

Best,

- Marco (mkdm)

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Hi Michael,

> I still have a little bit of hope to try and make an outer 3D edit frame that might retain some of those qualities

Sounds good...

Ciao!

- Marco (mkdm)

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