Is 3D-COAT the right application for me?

[Coaty]

Hi

 

i'm totally new to 3D Coat. I've played around with the trial version but i don't have much time at the moment to dive deeper. From what i know about the software it must be amazing. I've watched numerous tutorials for seeing its capabilities. 3DC is definitely on my wishlist.

 

Now i hope you guys can help me with my particular question.

 

I modeled the attached house scene in lightwave. Now i want to texture the house without the need of making uv maps. In my imagination i simply import the mesh of the house into 3DC and be able to  paint on it right away. Is that possible? Or am i completely off the track? Is there something to take care off?

 

If not 3DC – is there any other app which lets me do this? Import – Drawing – Export = READY.

 

I am really looking forward to your answers. Thanks in advance.

[Taros]

Welcome to the forums.

 

About your question: Yes and No...

 

If you want to keep your model faces as they are, you need UV coordinates. This is a needed element in todays 3D techniques. The Point is: 3D-Coat imports your model, create the coordinates automatically and you can start to paint. This is actually what you want. After your work, you can directly export your model back to lightwave.

 

But in the most cases users optimize their uv set because the automatic mode offers not always good results. Additionally you will sometimes adjust your face normals, because 3D-Coat change them when importing or exporting the model.

 

So you will always do some additional work at the end.

 

Best wishes

Chris

[wilson66]

In my imagination i simply import the mesh of the house into 3DC and be able to  paint on it right away. Is that possible?

 

Sure, you can do it using ptex.

 

The thing with ptex is though that the target (rendering) application needs to support it, its no use if you paint using ptex and the app you need to render in afterwards can't read it.

 

Also, you must be aware that ptex is not editable in an image editing program like Photoshop, you are limiting yourself to the painting tools available in the 3D app. You can bake the colors to UV maps in 3DCoat, but then you need to create UVs first of course.

 

Ptex also only works with quads currently.

 

I like your house model btw, really nice.

Edited March 3, 2014 by wilson66

[Coaty]

Thanks for your answers! Sadly there seems to be no way around uv maps to achieve proper texture painting directly onto a 3d model. Unfolding a model like this is a real pain.

From the sculpting and modeling perspective, 3DC is the next software i am going to purchase. I already bought a series of tutorials from learn3dsoftware.com for this gem of software.

Are there other apps out there allowing me to paint on 3d models without manual uv creation? E.g. Mari, ZBrush, DDo etc.?

 

Thanks for sharing your thoughts.

[polyxo]

As wilson66 said, loading the model to 3DCoat and using Ptex was an option if you model is all quads. Then there's no UV-assignment needed,

you just paint away in 3D. It is not correct that the render application needs to support ptex when exporting your painted house out, because 3DC

can write ptex into images, which can be read by any renderer. Alternatively you can simply import to per pixel painting with Auto Mapping chosen,

the program will then do all UV work for you.

[The Candy-floss Kid]

A solution to help 3DCoat is to break your model into components for auto uv mapping in 3dc rather than uv mapping it all in one go.

That can be an effective solution.Export these with paint maps and uv's and reassemble back on Lightwave.

Obviously this does not give you the advantage of manual control for laying out uv's for the purpose of assembling texture maps quickly in photoshop

 

For work such as this I often create my uv's when modelling particularly for components that are replicated.

I'm sure with a good part of this model you could get quite happily with projection mapping rather than uv's.