Hello,

I must be one of the few here doing sorely environements (nornal maps) and having used the demo I didn’t really have time to find out anything I will be talking about, so excuse me if some functions already exist and I missed them...So this is my take on things I’d like to see implemented.

A: Align stencil: Often when I do textures (normals) I bypass the highres modeling stage and just go straight to painting my normal on a 3D plane mesh. I’d like to be able to perfectly align my stencils with the plane (or match top view with a plane) If it’s curently possibl, let me know! =D

B: Again for stencils, Using my lowpoly UVs interpolated on the subdivided model, like taking a column, subdividing it, load my stencil and match it to UVs this way the stencil will “wrap” my object rather than just being projected flat. this way I’d be able to put my details exactly where I want them to be, or do a detail texture containing all the details I want and flood the mesh with it.

C: Tile function: A bit like ofset in PS but would work on layers. Like when I sculpt on a plane I ofset it by half so I have my sculpting ofseted and can fix the tiling (would be cool to have a texture template on off tooble as well this way I’d be able to follow my texture and tile it at the same time as my sculpting)

D: A way to draw straight line of some kind, without any need to do a stencil or a mask or even a curve (why waste time doing a curve hehe) like in PS Shift+Draw = straight line.

E: An ability to lasso select (or with a mask why not, as long as it can be blured around the edges) to select details in some parts of the model and copy / past them on another part of the model...And maybe painting with another mesh as well...like adding a horn on a character, as a separate object, detailing it, and copy paste that horn along the normal of the polys in another spot to quicly add details…
This way i’d detail part of my mesh with elevation / hole / crack etc and copy this detail to another layer on the mesh I m working on but with being able to rotate / scale it. And you could even do a 3D bank with the ability to save those sculting masks to reuse cracks / holes / dents we like to quiclky “sketch” environements....press and boom your sculpting detail is done, or stamp them on the model (and please for the love of baby jesus stamp tool with shift could be starting from center or something)

I’m sure i’m forgeting some other things, but yeah it’s already a long list of hard to implement feature ^^

Cheers!

Thanks for the suggestions.

B: Again for stencils, Using my lowpoly UVs interpolated on the subdivided model, like taking a column, subdividing it, load my stencil and match it to UVs this way the stencil will “wrap” my object rather than just being projected flat. this way I’d be able to put my details exactly where I want them to be, or do a detail texture containing all the details I want and flood the mesh with it.

This sounds like you can use Mesh Displace utility to use texture maps to displace your mesh.

C: Tile function: A bit like ofset in PS but would work on layers. Like when I sculpt on a plane I ofset it by half so I have my sculpting ofseted and can fix the tiling (would be cool to have a texture template on off tooble as well this way I’d be able to follow my texture and tile it at the same time as my sculpting)

There is a ‘Tile Stencil” option under the properties tab for the active Stencil. Please try this and see if it gives you the reslut you were looking for.

D: A way to draw straight line of some kind, without any need to do a stencil or a mask or even a curve (why waste time doing a curve hehe) like in PS Shift+Draw = straight line.

Have a look at the Curves menu. This allows you to draw curved or straight lines.

Mesh displace, oh yeah I diddn’t think about that but as I stated it would be cool to edit it directly in Mudbox rather than bake the texture / wait / comp in photoshop / export / discplace / wait / oops it doesnt really work the way i want / edit it again / rince repeat till it’s done…
maybe a clone tool like, a la photoshop but in actual 3D (one can dream)...and the hability to rotate / scale layers to quickly edit the details I cloned out of my mesh. The advantage to this would be more souple editing of my sculptings rather than going back and forth 2 softwares + testing stuff directly without having to waste time doing a displacement map that might not really work at the end. An example would be a hole in the corner of a wall...quickly select it with lasso, copy it on new layer then edit it rotate etc and stamp if in another place, or a completly different mesh (and store the object if i want for future reuse of this nice detail). might be too tricky to do tho because of levels differences.

for the tile stencil option, that’s not what i’m talking about. I’d like to tile the actual sculpting, the actual geometry, to fix my details and make it tile. Maybe a brush continuity? Like sculpting on the right side of a plane and as soon as it reach the border it switch to the left side (some ind of wraping) this way you can continue sculpting without breaking the flow on both sides.

I know about the curve menu but why not implement a way of doing straight line directly without the need of a curve? would be faster (at least for me). options never hurts ;)

I think you might be on to something, what if we could draw straight lines like in photoshop...by holding shift and clicking point to point style...would be alot more intuitive than curves if you just want hard edges.

Yeah and while we are at it, why not rectangular and lasso / polygonal lasso selection as well? with the ability to round corners of the selection (if it’s square enough) as well...with a fill function to flood the selection at the same level and maybe a project selection onto mesh to be able to sculpt inside my selection on rounded objects (or whatever you might think of) and a feather to have nice beveled edges. Maybe convert selection to stencil to do stencils on the fly with mixing selections (mostly useful for hard surface again).

The ability to clone details from a layer could be joined to a clone tool around those axis object center / local / screen / along mesh - to slide / edit the details.

Bake texture could let you pick groups (like in XSI) or pick a list of the highres objects you want to bake. I often detach parts of my lowpoly models and sculpt them separated, hiding others, to gain speed but at the end i m forced to bake them one by one. Importing my attached lowpoly mesh into mudbox and selecting all the bunch of high res objects at the same time would save me some precious time.

Lock elevation: you can turn on / off this option in the brush option to paint and the eight is always the same, maybe by cloning the eight first or defining the eight based of the layer opacity.

some kind of bevel working with selections would rules too… like draw your selection / bevel / select the eight and the inset of it then a spinner to smooth / harden the edges created by the function. would make hard surface details a breeze (again I’m thinking mostly for when I work on a subdivided plane)

Export layers alphas as PSD, like 1 PSD with all my alphas saved in it ‘cause sometimes I’d like to paint my diffuse along my normal rather than doing my normal after the diffuse is done (I’m weird like that) and it would make the process easier.

Blend shapes: import another 3D object and place it the way you want, then drop it onto your mesh and blend them together…

Cuves could be used to draw polys, or cylinders, on top of the mesh, to quickly add pipes / wires details.

Ok i’ll stop here before you guys slap me ^^ Sorry, too many ideas!