A few questions on the UI

[Peter]

Just had my first play with Curvy and was pleasantly surprised at how easy it was to make recognisable high poly models. A few comments:

1) Is there any reason why the colour picker only takes colours from the currently selected object?

2) Is there a list of short cut keys? (In particular, for switching to colour picker and paintbrush)

3) How do I use the detail map? I couldn't seem to get it to unlock or make any visible difference to the appearance

4) I would love to be able to grow the tools menu so I could see all the tools available and select with a single click: I find the dragging action uncomfortable and unnecessary when there is so much unused screen real estate in the paintbrush menu

5) I may just not be used to the curve tools yet, but I find making minor tweaks quite painful and would prefer the option for the curves to have a (adjustable?) number of key points (e.g. 10) that I could then drag individually (after sketching the original in the normal way) and have some smooth line constructed between them (are these splines, nurbs? Perhaps, I am not too familiar with the terminology)

6) I found it very helpful to think of drawing lathes as a process of sketching the front profile, back profile, side profile. If this how others view the process it may be worth mentioning in the tutorial as everything fell into place for me once I got this realisation.

7) When I tried undoing past a Merge All operation, curvy crashed for me.

Overall, loving it, and am interested in trying our the bones feature next

[Simon]

1) Picker would be great if it worked anywhere (Especially on a background image) - Added to ToDo

2) Here are some Curvy 3D Shortcut Keys

3) Detail map has been disabled in this version of the Beta. Current workaround is to use high-resolution main textures and add the detail there instead.

4) Good Idea, added to ToDo (Will have an optional expand/contract switch so it fits smaller screens too)

5) I make curves by dragging the rough shape with widget tools then using S or Shift-S to smooth out the line. Small changes can be made by setting a small widget move scale eg: 5% and if you adjust the shape of the tool to be very sharp too you can drag individual verts.
I agree however that in some cases simple point and handles would be easier to work with.

6) I have tried to make that Front,Back,Side process a keypoint beginners tutorial. Still thinking how best to introduce this technique to first time users ( who sometimes skip the QuickStart tutorial in the manual ).

7) Some of the newest features are broken for Undo, sorry!

8 ) Bones is quite experimental, and not perfect. It is an interesting challenge to allow bones + skinned models without requiring a lot of hand-tweaking by an artist.

[Peter]

Thanks for the tips, I wasn't aware of the widget tools for adjusting curves

I was impressed by the different material effects you managed to show in the gallery but haven't been able to get very far with replicating these. I wonder whether it might be useful for beginners to include a dropdown box with some labelled styles? e.g. metal, skin, wood, etc. At the moment everything I try seems to be made of shiny plastic or metal.

Overall stability has been fine except for the one "undo across merge" crash.

Selecting objects seems a bit strange, I'll click on an object and it often seems to not be selected. It appears as if it is working on selection by looking to see whether you have clicked close to a curve, rather than by seeing which object is under the cursor.

I like pasting mirror images for things like arms and limbs but then find it a bit annoying that subsequent mods are ignored. Would it be hard to have a virtual paste in the same way as the mirror mode for lathes?

Do you find yourself turning things into meshes often? I have avoided it so far as it feels a bit permanent and would lose the flexibility of adjusting limbs at will.

[sculptor]

it takes a little time playing with all the tools before you realize the full extent of curvy's capabilities, mesh resolution is often the key to how a tool is going to behave.
I have found curvy to be the quickest way of modeling (for original work ).
enjoy

[Simon]

Virtual Paste - perhaps you mean like pressing the 'L' key? This just renders a clone of the same model on the other side - so it follows subsquent changes.

A lot of the surface effect comes from the highlight - try some of the softer highlights with darker colours. Prefab materials (or even just a load material from txt file) would be quite useful to help reuse of materials and quick modelling.

I usually spend a minute with the lathe - then go staight to meshes. Pulling the mesh around and sculpting into is good fun. I save versions as I go along so I don't worry about losing the original lathe objects.

[Peter]

Ooooh, yes the L key is exactly what I wanted
Is this in the menus somewhere? I can't see any mention of an option with the L key at the moment.

I think it will be a lot easier to use once I have mastered the shortcut keys, thanks for the link! I suspect I will no longer care about having so many clickable icons...

Any tips for the meshes?
I had a few surprises:
1) I lose all my texturing when I convert to a mesh
2) I lose all my cloned limbs
3) when I try to paint on the mesh the colour goes all the way through, and even with front/back uv I still can't easily draw on the curvy top of my elephant.
4) the mesh appears much more faceted than the original curvy objects did

[Simon]

L and M keys should go in the menus too.

I find I use the Ctrl/Shift shortcuts a lot, and the 'T' key. Otherwise I mostly use the buttons.

[sculptor]

Any tips for the meshes?
I had a few surprises:
1) I lose all my texturing when I convert to a mesh
2) I lose all my cloned limbs
3) when I try to paint on the mesh the colour goes all the way through, and even with front/back uv I still can't easily draw on the curvy top of my elephant.
4) the mesh appears much more faceted than the original curvy objects did

1 - the k key convert to mesh shouldn't lose texture or do you mean on a merge
2 - do you mean the L key clones (these don't exist as actual objects)
the (menu-model-mirror do) (the L key gives a preview of the mirror)
3 - uv - mapping- try to avoid having to paint detail on a front/back seam
(models can be exported and remapped in uvmapper classic)
generally leave texturing to finished model stage or keep objects separate

4- mesh resolution on merges are governed by the merge properties dialogue and the size of the model when you merge, suggest you have a play with that on a scrap object using merge group(that produces a copy) I find there is an optimum type of model size to work on .
Huge models just slow things down.

tip - do save projects under a different name at regular intervals

[Simon]

4) It helps to increase the resolution slider for lathes before using Merge/And/Sub - otherwise the finer resolution of the new object will show up the larger polies of the original. However I usually just press Shift-S a few times to smooth out the facets on the new object instead.

Sometimes the facetted look is useful - reducing the resolution slider very low will make gemlike facetted solids/boxy shapes.

[Peter]

Thanks all,

I was using quick merge all when I lost the textures.
The K key seems to work much better and preserves my textures.

I was talking about the L key clones not appearing after the quick merge all operation.

Any advice when it is better to use a curvy texture to add detail, as opposed to turning into a mesh and using the mesh tools?

EDIT
Just discovered that you can mix mesh tools and curvy textures at the same time for some weird and wonderful effects!
However, only the curvy texture appears mirrored. Is there a way to mirror my mesh changes as well?

[Simon]

Quick Merge not picking up L Clones is a new bug thanks.

Curvy Maps are best when you want to reuse existing tex tures or pull in textures from external paint programs. They also give precise control while keeping the curves editability.

Mesh brushes are good for adding larger distortions & pinching. And of course you can use the widget move tool on them too which is very useful.

There is a Mesh/Mirror menu command that makes a mesh symmetrical (right side of screen to left) and will copy all mesh and texture changes to the opposite side.