AbnRanger

Can you try to open the app and test an empty scene with something from the Splash Screen? If it doesn't crash, then it points to the file possibly being corrupted. In which case, you should send the file to support@pilgway.com, so they can try to test it on their end and see what the problem is. If it crashes even with a simple test scene/object from the splash screen, then there is something corrupted with the install or an xml file in the MY DOCUMENTS/3DCOAT directory. If that is the case, give that directory a temporary name and Install 3DCoat again > launch the app. It will create a new folder in that directory. If it stops crashing after that, then yes, it was either the install or a bad file.

I got the same thing. Could not make masks work at all, especially not how it is done in Photoshop.

Please send this request to support@pilgway.com or AndrewShpagin@gmail.com, because others have requested this before, and the more requests there are for a given feature, the more priority it gets. I sent Andrew a request to incorporate Auto HotPie Menus into 3DCoat (if possible). He hasn't answered back, but that is because he is working on the UI in other areas. The UI is the major focus, now, for the release of 3DCoat 2024, so now is as good a time as any to send such a request. GitHub - dumbeau/AutoHotPie: Radial menus in Windows, aka PIE MENYOOS!

Fantastic News! I hope they will be compatible with Photoshop Masks, also. Please enable MULTI-LAYER selection (to be able to hide/unhide, delete or move to a Folder, together), as it can be a real pain in the but and super slow/inefficient, trying to DELETE or UNHIDE, etc. one layer at a time + having to wait for each layer to process the command, which can sometimes take several seconds. This would also include Multi-layer selection of other panels such as PAINT OBJECTS, SURFACE (UV) MATERIALS, and RETOPO/MODEL mesh layers (Poly Groups). We can Multi-Select in the Sculpt Room (Sculpt Tree panel), but nowhere else. This is needed in other areas if for no other reason, but for the sake of application consistency. Adjustment layers (ala Photoshop)...to go along with Layer Masks...would make the Paint Room additions a real treat!

There is a very good reason why they are in separate folders. The POLY MODELS pallet is dedicated for use in the RETOPO or MODELING workspaces, and thus they are generally LOW POLYGON, QUAD Meshes. The SCULPT models on the contrary, are dedicated for SCULPT (Very High Polygon and Triangulated meshes) Objects. It makes no logical sense, then, to mix them together). I prefer they stay the way they are because there was some good, logical thought behind it.

One reason why the options for Painting /Textures are there is because you can now paint directly in the Sculpt Workspace, thus options for Baking AO and Curvature definitely need to be available there.

You can ALT + LMB click the Visibility (hide/unhide) icon of the Mesh/Object/Paint layer, to isolate it. Repeating this a second time toggles out of isolation mode.

When you installed the latest version, did you get a pop-up asking for the license file location? Whenever you have a licensing issue, the very best course of action is to send Sales@Pilgway.com an email, so that they can help you directly.

What I meant was, which 3D application provides total customization? None, that I am aware of. Some offer a lot of customization, but with limits. I think 3DCoat falls into this category, too. Therefore, total customization may be too extreme of a goal, especially considering that Andrew is not working on a total UI overhaul/reconstruction. What is planned is just more incremental improvements, but with more focus than normal. There is some work on Paint Layers intended, such as adding Clipping masks ala Photoshop (with mask thumbnails) and such, so now is a good time to make suggestions and requests for things in this area, prior to the 2024 release.

And which 3D app does this, currently? 3DCoat allows for a LOT of user customization and in fact let's the user toggle into a totally blank UI, so that you can just call up the tools and panels directly to your fingertips whenever you want them. It doesn't get more uncluttered than that...for all the critics who claim the 3DCoat UI is too cluttered.

I think it was planned for permanent release about the same time as the release of 3DCoat 2024. When testing, it needs a bit of work and stopped working with 3DCoat 2024 beta builds, but that should get sorted out soon.

Speaking of bugs....one that I have noticed for years and reported to Andrew multiple times (but he cannot seem to reproduce on his side), is baking Occlusion on a dense/heavy Sculpt Object. It freezes viewport performance on my system, to where the FPS is virtually 1 or so. To restore viewport performance, I have to restart the application. Does anyone else experience this problem?

With that system, 3DCoat sculpting should be very robust. Some Voxel brushes do use the GPU for acceleration, such as the SMOOTH and FILL brushes. I don't remember which other brush(es) got the GPU treatment (because the normal CPU multi-threading was still not good enough for those tools). Could you possibly do a screen recording to demonstrate this laggy behavior. We should be able to see in the status bar, in the bottom of the UI (lower left is the FPS counter), and if there is a noticeable dip in FPS, that indicates some kind of lag. I tested a few years ago, sculpting with the new sculpting brush engine on a new AMD CPU (4800H) laptop, and it was really smooth and robust on a model well over 10-20 million polys. Your laptop should be a stellar performer in this regard.

I suggested a few modest UI changes for 2024, using a mockup done in Photoshop, to illustrate what they would look like. 1) Move the Activity Bar to the location the Panel Bar is in Photoshop (they have similar functions and thus 3DCoat should have the Activity bar in a similar position, so most new users will be familiar with it's purpose right away), and be optionally displayed as it currently is (hovering over the icon reveals the panel contents directly over the right column), or like the panel bar in PS...to the left of the column (with a collapse icon at the top of the panel, the same way panels in PS can be collapsed). It would also be optionally displayed in a static fashion, or hideaway, like the Navigation bar is. 2) Move any List Menus (like the SHIFT and CTRL + SHIFT menus) to the Tool Bar and leave the MENU Bar only for Menu items (how it is done in Adobe apps and most every other app) 3) Replace the black background for asset panels like SHADERS and SMART MATERIALS with something more pleasant looking like Medium gray. 4) Give text and UI elements room. Some things in the UI are still too crowded, including text bumping up against its boundaries Anyone else agree or have anything else to add?

CTRL + D clears the selection completely, rather than just hide it (temporarily). Which brings up another important need in the Modeling/Retopo workspace...RESELECT. Sometimes it takes quite a bit of effort to make a selection and an artist will want to reselect it quickly if they accidentally deselected...or perhaps they deselected on purpose, and then realized they need to get it back for one reason or another. Currently, it can be a big pain in the buttocks, if a user needs to reselect in 3DCoat. Also, users can store a selection in 3DCoat, but it is not very convenient to use, because it is stored in a file on the hard drive, rather than in a List Menu. We should be able to store selections and quickly recall them in a list menu, located in the Toolbar.

Alexander, can you please add a parameter to the Tool Options panel for the EDGE FLOW tool, so users can make adjustments to the degree of the (new) curvature? It's a really nice feature, but the equivalent tool in 3ds Max...SET FLOW, has a slider in the tool options to adjust how much of that effect is applied. Sometimes the default value may be a bit too much. Set Flow in Blender (pretty much the same feature as in 3ds Max)

That would mess up the RMB Menu workflow not only in the Modeling/Retopo room, but be inconsistent with the RMB for a list menu in the Sculpt workspace. Hitting ESC clears just the gizmo. Hitting it a second time clears the selection. I personally have no problem just hitting the ESC key when I want to make a different selection > hotkey to re-activate the tool. However, a better solution might be to just enable a default hotkey to hide/unhide Transform Gizmos, throughout 3DCoat, because this would help with the Pose tool (Sculpt Room) also.

There is no dedicated tool specifically for this task...to completely extract/separate a frozen portion of a Surface mesh, not just make a copy of it (like Vox Layer or Coat). You could send Andrew (support@pilgway.com) a feature request asking for it, because the basic functions to make the tool already exist in 3DCoat). However, in the mean time, you can use 2 separate tools to perform this task. 1) COAT tool...it uses a curve to create a selection. You could use the freeze selection > CURVES Menu > FREEZE SELECTION TO CURVE. Make necessary adjustments interactively and then hit APPLY when you are done. 3DCoat has separated the copy to it's own layer. To create a hole where the surface area was extracted from, make sure to select the layer you want to cut it from and choose... 2) POLY REMOVE in the ADJUST section of the Tool Panel. With the Freeze selection still intact, you can hit the APPLY button and it will cut the frozen selection away.

AMD makes great CPU's, but in 3DCoat, my experience is that a comparable Intel will outperform an AMD...probably due to lingering CPU throttling in the Intel TBB (Thread Building Blocks) Library that 3DCoat uses for Multi-threading. I will say, though, I was able to test 3DCoat on a laptop with an AMD 4800H (8 core) CPU, a few years ago, and the performance was stellar. I had a first generation AMD ThreadRipper (1650X) and noticed that the sculpting performance was sometimes a little disappointing. But, when I tested that laptop (brand new at the time, Jan 2021), the sculpting performance was rather robust. It would be helpful to hear the feedback from artists here, who use the latest generation of AMD CPU's with 3DCoat. I switched back to Intel a few years ago (10900k) and it was a noticeable improvement over the ThreadRipper, but there have been some significant improvements to AMD CPU architecture in the last few years, so the difference could be negligible now.

When you Retopologize, you are building a new mesh, so how could the vertex count remain the same (the same as what..the high poly/voxel object)? I don't quite understand what it is exactly that you are trying to accomplish. Perhaps a screen recording would help members or staff diagnose the issue?

Most people are too busy with their own projects and tight schedules to do private tutoring. That is why we have to spend the necessary time and effort to find training videos that fill this need. Anton's Youtube Channel is a good resource, as well as 3DCoat's Youtube Channel. Anton Tenitsky - YouTube

I don't think I am allowed to say much about this topic, but Pilgway received a good offer from the maker of a very high-end render engine (used to be the Industry Standard render for the Arch Viz and Film industry and may still be)...about integrating it in 3DCoat. I think it could be a game changer, especially if the nodal system works well. I hope Andrew will enable dual monitor support, at least for the Render workspace/preview, Nodal/Smart Material editor and 2D Texture Editor. Anyone else who would like better preview rendering should send Andrew their request (support@pilgway.com), as it could help expedite this process (by giving it High Priority status).

It was the mention of Blender as a free sculpting alternative to 3DCoat, that seemed to imply this. Perhaps I misunderstood your meaning. Quote: "I'm not being negative here, I LOVE 3D Coat, and I 'm just trying to prevent the next naive user input causing Andrew and crew to go the "Lets do a Printing app in the age of where free Blender sculpting became highly accessable and performant, because hobbyist user XYZ said so" approach."

3DCoat has been able to do this for years, actually. One method is the IMPORT UV option as previously mentioned above, but another is using the Texture Baking Tool.

I am aware of the depth and complexity of Designer and the comparison to Designer isn't stating that the goal is to try and compete with it, but that some of that type of functionality is in mind when the nodal system is being developed (by a separate developer at Pilgway). We can have different views about what the priorities should be, and that is perfectly normal in a software community. Implying that 3DCoat should just give up on Sculpting development just because Blender sculpting tools have evolved somewhat, would be like one expecting Adobe to give up on Painter once 3DCoat adds better layer masking and procedural texturing. Why would they? Just because you may not use the sculpting tools in 3DCoat, that doesn't mean many others don't. I am all for more Paint room development, but not at the expense of completely abandoning the Sculpt workspace. It is still the primary toolset for many in the Concept Art segment.