Medium Frequently Asked Questions - Meta Community Forums

MattHickman · ‎12-05-2016

Hi all, we've compiled a few frequently asked questions for recent and new users. We'll keep this updated as we continue to grow and support Medium!

Q: I tried to queue some assets for download from the Oculus.com/Medium sharing site but now Medium crashes immediately on launch.

A: We've noticed that some antivirus and malware softwares, particularly Ad-Aware Web Companion and Free Antivirus have been identifying Medium files coming from the sharing site as untrusted or as malicious. We're working to get this issue resolved but in the meantime uninstalling in the case of Web Companion or disabling in the case of Free Antivirus will resolve this issue and allow you to download assets from the sharing site.

Q: I'm seeing weird graphical behavior on my AMD video card, what do I do?!

A: Verify that you have the latest AMD driver by right-clicking on your
desktop, going to AMD Radeon Settings, and looking at the
system/overview tab. You should be on version 16.11.5. I have seen
driver updates look like the complete but not actually update the driver
correctly. This location in the settings has been a reliable place to
check for me. Also, when doing driver updates I tend to uninstall the
driver, reboot, install the driver, and reboot again.

If you are on the latest AMD drivers and are still experiencing trouble make sure that your monitor is plugged into the same video card that your Rift is. We've seen issues with having a monitor plugged into the on board video while the Rift is on a separate card.

Q: When I’m painting or sculpting, sometimes the surface looks jagged or pixelated. How do I make it smoother and sharper?

A: By increasing the resolution of the layer you’re working on, you can increase detail and precision. To do this, pull back on the support hand thumbstick, select the layer you would like to increase resolution on, then select the desired resolution. After a brief processing period, your layer will now appear at a higher resolution and allow finer details for both sculpting and painting.

Q: I tried to increase the resolution on my layer and part of my sculpt got cut off or disappeared. What happened?

A: When the resolution increases, the bounding box of the layer scales down; anything outside of the bounding box when it scales will be cut off. To resolve this issue, undo the resolution increase operation and choose “Center” before once again increasing the resolution.

Q: What’s the little triangle on my tool tray? Why does my tool switch when I pull the support hand trigger?

A: This is your Alt tool—think of it like a shortcut to switch from one tool to another with a click of the trigger. Your default Alt tool is Smooth. If you’re sculpting clay and want to quickly smooth out an edge, press and hold the front trigger on the support controller to switch to the Smooth tool. The primary controller’s functions will work as expected—thumbstick for size and color wheel, front trigger for use—as long as the support controller’s trigger is held down. To choose another Alt tool, hover over the desired tool with your primary hand and press the support controller’s front trigger. The triangle will move to indicate your selection.

Q: When I try to upload assets to the sharing site and take my HMD off to change the settings, the upload fails. How do I fix this problem?

A: Your HMD must remain on during the upload. Make sure the HMD remains active until you receive the upload complete notification.

Q: Can I convert my recording into another video format?

A: Recordings aren’t actually a video. They are a special VR-only format for use in Oculus Medium. We will be adding video export support in a later update.

Q: Can I import my own OBJ/FBX files into Medium to work with?

A: Yes! You can import OBJ and FBX files as either stamps or reference meshes. Once they're in as reference meshes you can then select them and choose the "convert to clay" option which will convert them to the Medium file format and you'll be able to work on them however you'd like!

Q: Are there limitations to what I can import as a stamp?

A: You can import any OBJ or FBX; however, you should be aware that stamps are at a lower resolution than the sculpts as they are meant to be used as tools. In addition, any OBJs intended for import need to be closed or else they will not behave properly once they are brought into Medium.

Q: What exactly does the Export button in the home menu do?

A: The Export button exports a high-resolution version of your sculpt. To be very specific, you now get two .obj files. Let's say your Sculpt is called "fork". You'll have a "fork.obj", which is the high-res version, and a "fork_preview.obj", which is low-res.

Q: Is there a poly limit on performance? Is there a way to check or monitor performance when I have multiple layers?

A: We currently don't have a built-in way to show you the performance or memory footprint. For best performance, a good NVIDIA GPU will do the trick (a GTX 1080 is excellent). Our optimization work for Medium is ongoing. We currently have a 20-layer limit; when you get close to running out of physical memory (layers or otherwise), you’ll receive a pop-up warning. If you continue to use more memory after that, Windows will start swapping memory pages back and forth from disk, which will negatively impact performance.

Q: Does performance increase if I split a complicated model into separate layers?

A: No. The number of layers does not affect performance. We did a lot of work to ensure that performance is dependent upon the total amount of polygons you’re rendering across all layers. If you split up the sculpt so that one layer is high-resolution while the others are low-resolution, you can manage the total number of polygons to increase performance overall.

Q: How many levels of resolution are there?

A: This depends on how much physical memory you have available on your system—we let you increase the resolution of a layer as many times as your machine can handle (Medium 1.0, 32 GB of RAM or better will help a lot). We’re working on memory usage improvements, which will be rolled out in future releases.

Q: Sometimes when I use the Cut tool, it makes a failure sound and doesn’t cut. What’s going on?

A: The Cut tool has to completely sever whatever you’re trying to cut, so when you’re making cuts, make sure the blue line from the tool passes all the way through solid material.

Q: Are there any shortcuts so I can switch tools or perform operations more quickly?

A: Yes, there are a few! With most tools you can double tap the Gear icon on your tool hand to toggle functionality. i.e.
-Add/Erase with the sculpt tool, Inflate/Deflate with the inflate tool, etc.
-Double tapping the color wheel while using the Clay or Paint tool will bring up the eye dropper color picker.
-Open the layer menu on your support hand and select the icons at the bottom of the menu to quickly toggle the symmetry plane and the lathe on and off.

Q: How do I use the metal and emissive materials?

A: To change a layer to a different material open your layer menu by pull back on the support hand thumbstick and select the layer you would like to edit. While still holding back the thumbstick press the gear icon on your tool hand. At the top you will notice a tab labeled "Material". In this tab you can set that layer's material and edit its properties.

Q: I'm receiving an OpenGL high error 1282, what do I do?

A: Apps like Afterburner, Gigabyte Guru, Riva Tuner, etc. that render overlays to the screen use older versions of OpenGL that are incompatible with Medium. We recommend you close them while running Medium.

Q: I uploaded my sculpt but the preview image is blank or poorly framed.

A: Check your sculpt for empty layers, if you have any, delete them, then try sharing again.

KevinLongtime · ‎12-05-2016

Wow, great release! I had no idea about the ability to import OBJ stamps and that you can also export the low res version of your high res meshes! I was expected to do a bunch of re-topology work to make them game ready and unwrap so hopefully this means I'll get to bypass that much faster. You guys really thought of it all before it even launched. Exciting times we are in.

Can't wait for my touch to get here to try Medium ASAP!

Anonymous · ‎12-06-2016

Hey just started using medium, its so great! thanks for making it free 🙂

I was just wondering how do you create a turntable video of a sculpt? Would make a cool gif to post!

jtelfer · ‎12-06-2016

Is there any visual indication of layer resolution, or can you bring it back down? I seem to be struggling to obtain a model that's as smooth as some of the ones on streams when using hard-edged stamps like the mechanical pieces.

Anonymous · ‎12-07-2016

Hi, where in Medium can i find the metal & luminescence colour attributes? Thanks.

EDIT ... found it ... Open the layers menu then press settings button.

Axacuatl · ‎12-08-2016

Hi, this tool has great potential. And I appreciate that it is suggesting you are working with clay. But is there any chance to get to forget that "clay" Thing for a moment ? I mean when I import a clean 3D model of a car in .obj format, I would love to have it smooth & clean instead of having it modified to appear to have been handcrafted (slightly clumsily) with rough edges and small holes and the rest of it.
It would just be such a great creative tool ! And looking at some of the tools available under e.g. 3DMax, there are a couple of tools which would really lift it even higher up the creative tools ladder if being implemented...

Or is this where Oculus actually wish to stay out of the path of any "serious" tool makers and only intended this from the start as a proof of concept ?

P3nT4gR4m · ‎12-08-2016

Axacuatl said:

Hi, this tool has great potential. And I appreciate that it is suggesting you are working with clay. But is there any chance to get to forget that "clay" Thing for a moment ? I mean when I import a clean 3D model of a car in .obj format, I would love to have it smooth & clean instead of having it modified to appear to have been handcrafted (slightly clumsily) with rough edges and small holes and the rest of it.
It would just be such a great creative tool ! And looking at some of the tools available under e.g. 3DMax, there are a couple of tools which would really lift it even higher up the creative tools ladder if being implemented...

Or is this where Oculus actually wish to stay out of the path of any "serious" tool makers and only intended this from the start as a proof of concept ?

Sculpting is a sub-section of 3-d modelling. In terms of "Serious" tool, I'd say Medium is well on the way to being an industry-leading sculpting package, in terms of usability. All they have to do is add a couple of features and tool controls and it's ready to go up against the industry heavyweights.

If you're importing a finished 3d mesh, like a car, into a sculpting package then you have your whole workflow back to front, IMO.

weasel47 · ‎12-08-2016

I would assume that the rough look of the car is not a creative desicion but a technical limitation of the technology. The car is being converted to voxels (or something similar), which have finite / limited resolution.

Johnny3D · ‎12-08-2016

jtelfer said:

Is there any visual indication of layer resolution, or can you bring it back down? I seem to be struggling to obtain a model that's as smooth as some of the ones on streams when using hard-edged stamps like the mechanical pieces.

I too would like to be able to switch between resolution levels or bring it back down.

Axacuatl · ‎12-09-2016

P3nT4gR4m said:
Sculpting is a sub-section of 3-d modelling. In terms of "Serious" tool, I'd say Medium is well on the way to being an industry-leading sculpting package, in terms of usability. All they have to do is add a couple of features and tool controls and it's ready to go up against the industry heavyweights.

If you're importing a finished 3d mesh, like a car, into a sculpting package then you have your whole workflow back to front, IMO.

You can view it to make no sense to import a 3D object, but for many people it would ideally be an option as how to create things which otherwise either take too much time or you simply are not good enough to do all by yourself.

Taking the car example, starting of with a regular car model and working on its appearance to make it something cool, flashy, creative or just hilariously stupid looking, say your personal hot rod within 10 minutes, and giving it a paint job on top of it, all with your hands in VR, is just a great way of having fun and getting a result in a very naturally appealling way.

Perhaps I misunderstood the issue they have though - I thought they'd deliberately have the model be filled incompletely with the clay material. But possibly it is more this resolution issue, which seems to be quite a bottleneck on the technology they are using. Perhaps the sections of the mesh which had the unintended holes where just too complex.