Sorry, but the "Manual Update Feb 15th" I downloaded at 11:13 24.02.2011 has only 21 of 120 pages. Are there more pages to come?
I discovered only this morning, that a this manual exists.
I am a bit sad, that it goes only to page 21...
But it seems to me, that it´s much better than the wiki-thing.
That dreadful and soooo incomplete wiki-manual (which for me IS the official manual, because it is linked from 3 prominent places on the website) is very disappointing.
My opinion is, that the by far weakest point of 3DC is its wiki-manual (which for most beginners seems to be the official manual !!! )
Imagine a potential customer coming along and downloading the test-version of 3DC. Maybe kids or hobbyists don´t need a manual, so they install the soft and doodle around. Professionals, especially older guys like me, not only want but NEED a good and COMPLETE manual that covers every tiny feature. So they look around your website and aahhhhh - the downloads section! there is the wiki-manual! and oooohhhh - the tutorials section ! there is the wiki-manual again ! and yahoooohhhh - the community section ! there is the wiki manual too ! so there is no doubt, that the 3DC bosses want to tell you that this is the official thing and you have to read it. So you do, but this wiki-manual is bad! It´s so incomplete, and even the features that are not skipped are very short explained. Many features are only mentioned but not explained.
For a software with such a big potential and such great features it is a MUST that it is explained properly to it´s users. Sorry to say that, but the wiki-manual is the complete opposite of a great manual.
Recently I tested Mari - in my opinion the 3D painting soft with the by far best manual. That software has great marketing and a fantastic manual. But for me, it´s feature-set is so poor. You cannot even see the displacement you are painting. The soft shows you only the greyscale bumpmap you are painting on, but to test the displacement, you have to export and render in an external app. Oh, oh... maybe for some very specialized texture artists at Weta that makes sense, but i want to SEE the bumps I paint, and not guess what displacement I am painting. I think in comparison with 3DC Mari is so poor and only suitable for some egg-headed ultra-specialized texture artists. But I wish 3DC had such a good and complete manual as Mari has...
I hope my post wasn´t too negative, but I mean it only good with 3DC !!!