Hi sayd, I've heard some good things about this program but I haven't tried it myself yet.

When exporting your data over to there, try setting the option for Output: Quads & Triangles (instead of n-gons).

Some programs don't deal with n-gons (polygons which have more than 3 or 4 sides) very well.

- Michael

Hi Luca, from his description it sounds like he wants a denser mesh - triangles that are longer don't work as well in there.

So to get that you can use some of the mesh export settings in MoI to create a mesh that is more diced up into smaller polygons.

Usually the main way to make this happen is to use the "Divide larger than" setting - you can put a distance in there and any polygons longer than that distance will be broken down into smaller pieces.

So for example on your model there, I'd say try putting in 0.5 in "Divide larger than", and you should see the result broken up into a lot more smaller polygons which should work better in 3D Coat.

Also you may want to set the drop-down next to "Divide larger than" to be "All", so it applies to all surfaces, by default it will only apply to curved surfaces and not planes.


Here is an example.

Default settings will produce a lower polygon count model:



Setting "Divide larger than" to 1.0 in this case will create this result:



That second one should work better for 3D Coat.

The value you put in for "Divide larger than" is a distance value, so the best value can vary a bit depending on the scale of your model. Like if your model is 100 units across, you shouldn't put in "Divide larger than" of 0.01 because that will create too dense of a result. Try a value that is about one tenth or so of your model's overall size to start with and adjust from there.

Hope this helps!

- Michael

It should help for sure!

Thanks
Luca

The problem I find with 3D-C and say ZBrush, is they prefer all quads - ngons and triangles seem to destroy any smoothness (or should that be flatness) of the model surfaces after import. :(

I'll try bumping up the triangles as mentioned here but I've experienced a lot of no-joy getting non-character based models into sculpting apps for painting...

-Will

Hi Will, ZBrush doesn't handle n-gons well, it turns those into triangles by just taking the average point of all the points of the polygon and connecting that to every point. So any kind of more complex n-gon that goes around holes and such with a concave shape will not get handled well, triangles will "leak" outside of the n-gon.

So you definitely need to use Quads & Triangles output to ZBrush, not n-gons.

I think you should see a big improvement with ZBrush handling with dicing things up into smaller bits though. It seems to handle triangles much better if they aren't big ones.

I don't think it is so much the "quadness" of your character models that it likes, but rather it's the "small evenly spaced-ness" that tends to go along with that.

- Michael

Hi Michael, yes after reading this thread, I tried using quads/tris and also making the mesh more dense did help with 3D-Coat though there still was some artifacts that were rendering as "dark shards" in some places.

I'll try ZBrush next. Making the polys smaller does seem to help though.

Of course ultimately everything is reduced to a triangles at render time so yes, smoothness shouldn't be dependent on having "all quads" in the model.

The trick is working with MOI's export parameters...

-Will

I am one of the early purchasers of 3D Coat (then 3D Brush).
It is brilliant--best value for money 3D paint/displacement paint app ever.
Ngons are a nono allmost everywhere.
The forum reply to questions by Andrew are within hours so if you have a problem/question--ask!
(As often, within hours he will have an updated version of the app to suit your needs!----HEY!, that sounds like a Michael!)

or perhaps Mikhail in this case... ;) I also bought early for just $70. I couldn't resist! :)

jonah

Im testing the current version but i must say even though it works pretty nice, im utterly lost. I dunno where to start learning etc.
By doing the halogen lamp tutorial in MoI i nearly learned all i needed.
Any tips?

Yes, it's a completely different world from MoI modelling and in many ways, different from typical basic 3D rendering apps.

If you had worked previously with say Hexagon you would have a better understanding.

You need to read all the tutes and other information and take it all step by step.
Much easier to learn than most 3D painting apps and, for me, far, far easier than Z-Brush.

Being able to both texture paint and displacement paint, in 3D, is something special.

When all your textures are paint on your mesh and your happy with it, where do you render it?

I agree with Brian, you definitely have to practice though the supplied tutorials and watch the videos (they give you a feel for what's going on within the app and how to use the various toolbars and functions).

Typically an app like 3D-Coat and ZBrush are used to create your texture and displacement maps for loading into your rendering application.

So first you have to be comfortable with working with UVs, and various map channels (color, bump, displacement, specular etc.) within your rendering program.

3D-C lets you create those various map images to be loaded where you plan to render.

The first thing to pin down and get comfortable with is creating the maps in 3D-C and getting them to render properly in your rendering app (Carrara, Cinema 4D, XSI etc.)

If you don't have a rendering app yet, you would need to choose one first before you start working with and learning one of these displacement / painting applications!

-Will

Im now completely convinced of MoI. So im 5 % away from buying it.
I have created the pot from an tutorial, now im trying to render it. Do some you work with Kerkythea? Modeling the scene/ Object in moi and then using Kerkythea, the program seems nice!

Advantage of Kerkythea is that works with all option of Moi OBJ export!
Ngones, Quad + triangles or only triangles!
And Kerkythea have some cool functions like Instance or Modeling !!! (subdivide)

First render with Kirk. A little bit of AA would have been better. I gotta read my book "lighting and rendering" to more optimize it ^^
Later i will do a scene with more of the pots and DoF.

A bottle of paint :)

i found that using the above suggestions combined with a dense mesh exported from moi and no smoothing in 3dCoat worked quite well.... not perfect but useable

Sorry to bump this old thread.

I didn't find 3Dcoat really impressive at first, but this new voxel modeling stuff (alpha) is really amazing.
Just a collection of MoI 'primitive' melted, quite funy.



Starting to love this little jewel :)

PaQ, Looks good enough to eat :)


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Heeeeeee it's supposed to be a carpaint shader :) !!! ... but thanks !