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Here's a fun little browse:
The 20 Best 3D Texturing & Painting Softwares
Another thing to consider. For your own UV maps you can get away with being quite slap dash. Within Modo UV'er you can quickly unwrap complex geometries into relitively problem free maps. Which are "technically" fine. Particularly if you are going to use something like Mari which allows you to paint directly onto the model and "fills in" the UV map templates as it goes. Or if you are applying a procedural texture in something like Octane, which only needs that the model has a UV map of some kind to function. However, if you are working with a texture artist, and/or submitting textures templates as part of a product. You will not make any friends if you have not made some attempt to lay out the template vaguely logically. I am making no claim to be an expert at this, but, I know when I make a bad choice because I get grumbled at.
OK, I got Silo yesterday and on their site it does offer the $50 off. So it's $109 vs $159
http://nevercenter.com/silo/ (click on the Buy Now to see the info)
BUT if you use Paypal they say before you buy:
*Note: Unfortunately, discount codes cannot be auto-applied using PayPal. However, if you email us with your discount code after you have placed your order, we will happily apply your discount manually through a refund.
That's OK, I would have thought this should not be a big deal. So I bought Silo with PP and then emailed them noting my use of the code using the email sent to me with the licence key. It's the right email, double-checked. I have not heard anything, not even an acknowledgement. My PP account has been charged, but no refund. I might think it takes a few days to refund, but that they would at least acknowledge my email as I did as requrested.
Has anyone else taken the offer?
Good point. So how does one know how to create a logical layout?
Any advice?
I always prefer my lines to be laid out squarely against the grid. It makes it so much easier when it comes time to using digital editors without having to use a bunch of crazy, custo selections. There's often enough of that without having 'off' angles to worry about ;)
If they're in the US, they might all be on Thanksgiving holidays.
Depends on the subject. For example. With wooden things, I try to arrange all the components so that the woodgrain would all end up pointing the same way, which gives the option of using a tilable wood texture if that was desired. On other thigns I'd be more concerned with orientation, so that up in the UV map also corresponded with up on the model. Which might help in the application of text. Maximising the use of texture space might be set against, laying out things in UV space so it is clear what bits are correspondingly close in UV as they are in 3D which might help the artist figure out particuarly knotty unwrapped geometries. For example, taps on washbasins, look really odd unwrapped. So I put them near to where they are on the sink - which is more recognisable to offer a clue. So that's my rough plan.
Wow. Congrats!
Must have cross posted - I totally missed this one.
Sorry for the woes. I'm sure they'll take care of you though.
Very cool, though... I'm eager to hear of your exploits! It looks like a fascinating tool. I often get all hyped up to get something like this, then end up just using Carrara.
Okay cool. So we're pretty much on the same page then. I'm glad I asked though... it's nice to have these thoughts in here for others to read ;)
By the way... I really love your work you've been doing. have you made most of those models in Wings3D?
Dart, I know Wendy Pusey (Wilmap Creations) has used Silo. so I thought I'd like to give it a whirl when I can get to it for clothing. I just was not able to get Hexagon to behave, even with a patch/fix from a couple of years ago. I am a bit tired of cannibalising DS and Poser clothing in a tortured effort to make clothing for stone age characters. I will always be back to Carrara for it's excellent dynamic hair for creating fur among many other fine features.
I recently got Z-Brush as the exchange rate is so in my favour right now and on a student licence.
So I see them as long term investments... to be learnt slowly and carefully! Silo looks very user friendly... Z-Brush, errr? I've made a couple of Genesis face morphs with it for my primitive people with some success.
The beach huts, props, the beach cafe stuff and the helter skelter were Wings 3D. The helter skelter took Wings to the limit of what it could handle on my reasonably powerful i7 920. It got to the stage of having to wait at least 30 seconds for the model to update after being modified. I split it in up to overcome this problem. But then spent a lot of time shuffling importing and exporting and aligning. I could see this was counter productive and a better solution was needed if I was going to take this seriously. So I invested in a solution. Which thankfully paid off. I'm glad you like what I've done, but it would all be for naught without the help of a gifted texture artist.
There's a travelling fair comes to town once a year, closes down a couple of streets where the old cattle market was for 3 or 4 days. When I was little, the main attraction was always the helter skelter, followed by the dodgems. Nowadays it's all throw-you-about-the-sky machines and blaring noise. Back then it was steam organs (and noise...). Alas, the helter shelter is now limited to persons less likely to cause a, um, blockage. And then there's the candy floss, and the coconut shys where the coconuts are glued on, and ring a duck to win a piece of floating carrot that might be a goldfish, and shoot the arse off a politician (I may have made that one up), and giant carousels and waltzers and . . . Totally off topic. Ahem!
What can I say? I live at the seaside. https://www.google.com/maps/d/viewer?mid=1UT63B4dOII9EROvBjPSdspSgIG8&hl=en&ll=53.341153156182074,0.28193150823017277&z=15
Yes, FW is much more than gifted - but a Gift!!! ;)
So wonderful to hear of your exploits. So when you've said earlier that Modo is Robust, I bet that also rings true towards the issues you were having in Wings3D then, right?
In looking only at a few promo paragraphs and videos, I've seen that Modo is blessed with caching abilities in various portions of the workflow - which I consider to be true magic for the artist.
Fusion (one of my Visual Effects applications) has caching ability nodes that we can add to the flow where we want them - caching off work that's been done up to that point - making it work in real time thereafter. Most powerful!
Anything else you'd like to add regarding Modo, UV Layout, Bryce, anything, is welcomed and greatly appreciated!
Last night, while taking a break, I took out my Bryce 5 users manual (I printed it out and hard-bound the book - one of my old hobbies) and went perusing through it. Just a glance, really. Such a wonderful piece of software. I stumbled across the "Volume" section of materials. Wow.
For those whom don't know, the Volume portion of the Material tree determines what the object looks like inside the mesh! Can we get that in Carrara please?
Wow. Good score! Z-Brush is another of the Big Boy tools of today.
My 3D modeling mentor has now fully switched from 3DS Max to Z-Brush
So I asked: "For what... tweaking the geometry, right?"
No. He uses it to create models from the ground up, map and texture them. The whole works.
I don't know how much modeling you like to do. But I have a feeling that you'e really going to like the elegance of Silo. The more I see of it, the more I like it.
Was it a horrible journey learning to optimize for Daz Studio?
If I'm not mistaken, he does all of his modeling and UV Mapping in Carrara!
Carrara has a bit of a learning curve too... kind of.
I feel that the modeling tools are very similar to any other modeler I've tried.
I imagine that its ability to do so many other things actually has an opposite effect of scaring people away from it - thinking that since it has so many abilities that most of those tools are half-assed or something.
When it comes down to it, Carrara rocks!
Being able to model directly in the Assemble Room (I suppose that doesn't mean much to anyone not using Carrara) is really cool - Carrara's ability to dial up morphs on figures which retain all of their original rigging is a real dream - since we can simply model directly, no matter what shapes we want dialed up, without having to export/import special version of the target figure.
Ooops... rambling!
Have you ever seen my Carrara Fun movie I made years ago?
I did this one to show that Genesis now works in Carrara
Man! Age of Armour's UV Unwrap tutorial for Wings3D is Awesome!
I'm also really enjoying this
Dart, Thanks very much for all the information... this thread Rocks!
Thanks also to David Brinnen for all the very good/expert advice about modeling to be UVUnwrapped as well as all else mentioned.
Also to everyone else... I'd better not attempt to name everyone for fear of leaving someone out.
Modo I've had a couple of years now.
The horrible journey... well, not horrible. A bit tricky. I made that beach hut in Wings 3D, it took about a week, to make the model. Then came the UV mapping. Then I passed it over to Jack Tomalin and he told me what wasn't going to be acceptable, introduced me to the concept of N-gon's and other such delights that you more seasoned modellers will no doubt be already familar with. And seemingly endless issues with the UV map templates. Stretching, overlapping, organisation. Generation of CR's and rigging. So that was like another four weeks of intensive hair pulling (and bothering Jack) and head scratching (and more questions for Jack) to get everything ready for the texture artist to work her magic. So essentally, without Jack's guidence I'd have been scuppered.
The thing I learned. Making a small object and UV mapping it to learn that part of the process is worth doing. But that experiance did not jsut scale up into a larger project as more of the same. When had I more components, groups, material zones and templates, I needed a "production line" to ensure key steps didn't get omitted. Because the most time consuming thing for me is going back and fixing things. The reason being, for depending on what gets fixed, it might mean any or all of the following, re VU mapping, rebuilding the base model, redoing AO texture bakes, rescaling for export, generating new CR2's, editing up the CR2's, re-rigging, setting subdivisions, regrouping and resaving. Due to the linear nature of the process and depending on what gets fixed. Sometimes you can get away with a tweak of the obj and that's fine. But more often than not, it is the UV mapping of some piece that needs attention. My fault? Or just one of those things? Doesn't matter really, if it needs fixing, it needs fixings and you just got to accept that and get on with it.
Wgdjohn, don't take what I say as gospel. I have no formal training in this field. I just muddle along.
TangoAlpha's tale of the fair also reminded me that the Waltzer also was done in Wings3D - as well as putting me in mind of "Something wicked this way comes".
Ahh... but your muddling makes good sense.
How are the volume materials in Bryce different from Absorption and In-Scattering in Carrara?
I've been doing most of my modeling and UV mapping in Blender lately and I've run into this as well. Blender has "Smart UV Project" which is great for quickly unwrapping complex objects and making decent use of the texture space. And it is wonderful for then taking it into Substance Painter and quickly adding some cool textures for my own personal use, but the unwrap it produces would drive someone trying to create new textures in Photoshop mad.
Here's a quick example - literally one-click (OK three - "U" to unwrap and then I had to click on the "Smart UV Project Button" and then click "OK) and ta-da! instant unwrap of all surfaces.
OK for texture painting in Blender or Substance Painter, but if I handed that to someone and said "now texture it" they'd probably slap me.
My pleasure! This is fun, isn't it? :)
...and here's Blender's "Smart UV" in action
The Volumes portion in Bryce's material settings is the inner volume for whatever is being shaded. The manual explains it like this - in essence:
Without anything in the Volumes settings, when we fly the camera into a mesh, we see the external shader as we pass through the mesh.
Inside the mesh, it's empty, though we'll see the surface again as we pas through the other side.
Using the volume setting allows the user to set up what it looks like inside the mesh!
I didn't really study it... just noticed it. But I don't think that it's at all similar to Absorption or In-Scattering, even though similar results might be possible. I could be wrong. I'm not savvy with Absorption or In-Scattering.
It's a blast! :) I've been reading along watching how other modeling programs work Very good indeed but sadly a bit more than what I want to spend. When I heard that Wendy was using Ulitmate UnWrap Pro. Not too bad a price either. A better alternative is pay a bit more and get another fantastic modeler to boot... Silo. I've seen many of FifthElements models... they are extremly good. Buying either or both won't absolutely make me a better modeler able to produce models as good as others... that only comes from practice and knowing what one is doing and how to best accomplish it. I am, hopefully, finally on track to becoming a much quicker modeler... now all I need is to learn to model correctly.
I'm glad you brought up Hexagon... I was waiting to see if this might be a good alternative to Carrara UVmapping/UnWrapping. I have not taken the time to learn it's features which some folks like better than Carrara... this does'nt mean that it is better. I watched a video UV mapping a tire, part one. [hex3] and noticed that other than the icons for main functions being different that the UV mapping/UnWrap seem to be very similar. In the video a tire is modeled... even modeling is basically the same as Carrara... not surprising... I look at Hexagon as Carrara's little brother... the one without all the bell's and whistles. Since it is really only a modeler it was designed from the start to be a lower priced alternative to purchasing Carrara, a 3D Artist's Paradise. Please feel free to correct me if I'm wrong about anything I've mentioned... too often I am. :)
I do know 2 things for sure... Carrara Rocks! - Modeling is Funnnn!
Huh - that's kind of cool, I've never heard of anything like that before - it sounds like it makes it act like it's really solid.
It can be, but it gives examples (I think - just took a quick glance) of breaking it up to be partially solid, partially empty - like an inner scene inside the mesh without the need for additional mesh.
It would be really cool to see this amazing software get brought up to 64 bit. It's long overdue for a new update ;)
Every single time I take a quick glance at that manual, I get more and more inspired to delve deeper, fire it up, and learn it.
UV Layout just keeps impressing me more and more - the more I see it in use.
My good buddy Garstor, "The Gars Man" just made a new Human Unwrapping video using UV Layout
It's so cool to see how we can interactively make seem changes during the whole process so seemlessly! (pun intended)
Great Job Gars Man!!!
It's also a cool look at the Make Human project :)