Digital777

Someone should email them about that, while i doubt they will change it now 3DC should get the credit for both as you say. Also i don't get why Sculptris is running for New Application of the Year as i think it's been around a lot longer. Something like Meshmixer should definitely replace it for that category in my opinion, Meshmixer should probably also go in the Innovation of the Year category also.

I am thinking more to get models into 3DC quickly yes, there could be other uses though like painting textures etc. Importing models to make bots or use with the new boolean system seems like a popular request so this could be good for that if they add support for that it in the future. There is also the possibility of direct exporting to the 3B file format which would be nice. 3B file format details here - http://3d-coat.com/forum/index.php?showtopic=3227 Talking of 1-way applinks though i think they are still a good idea as it just makes things that bit faster. I am sure Andrew could add new applink options also like send/merge mesh into a new layer, export a mesh from another app directly to the object and brush library's etc. As you say they focus on this also as a ZB helper app so if they do the same with 3DC that would be great. The applink system is good for when other programs do this but i guess when i say applink i also refer to the regular SDK and i am thinking more for future features also. I am sure Andrew would be interested in working with other developers like the GroBoto team to make 3DC have a good workflow with it.

Hi groBoto, I think one thing that would be great is a app link for groboto. They make it quick to send objects to and from other programs and 3DC now has quite a few of these for various different programs - http://3d-coat.com/forum/index.php?showforum=60 As a owner of both 3DC and GroBoto i think it would be really great to be able to use the 2 programs together quickly/easily.

Ok so i figured i might as well give this program another try to test if the latest version was a lot faster, i did not like what i saw though. You would think just being hosted on the ZB forum and having ZB linking in the app etc was enough but now everywhere i looked in the description it says "Zbrush" so it seems Sculptris has basically turned into one big advertisement for ZB. When i went to download i was then taken to a page where it says "please fill in the form below" and it looks like i would then be sent ZB newsletters, so in the end i just decided not get it. It's still a great program i am sure but i don't really like the direction it has gone now. I kind of wonder what would have been added if the developer had another funding source to just continue the project and did not join the ZB team, i am guessing it would have been a lot different...

Live Clay is very new right now though as i said before and apparently there is some big news on the way, so i think that what we have currently been able to try is just a sampler of something amazing on the way. The devs probably don't want to reveal any major tech until it is nearly finished because 3DC is now at the stage where other major 3D company's want to copy what it does. I doubt Andrew would want Live Clay to replace Voxels either as it has been the main technology in 3DC and Live Clay and Surface mode will probably all merge together much better in the future. I just don't think things are at that point yet which is why there is often discussions about which would be better to use for sculpting here at the moment.

> in a 1-2 months they'll have another update with auto retopology. If that is true and they are following what 3DC does now to try and maintain the top spot for sculpting they probably see 3DC as big competition. Hopefully when they release that update people on 3D forums will talk about 3DC and it will just work against them and as free advertisement for 3DC instead.

Wow nice, the updated Radial Symmetry seems like it will be a very useful tool to have. Thanks Farsthary

+1 vote, i made sure to keep a copy of the older version (before the buy out) and will probably never update it either unless they actually add something that makes it worth it. Mesh Mixer is the new Sculptris though and with blenders new sculpting, MM and 3DC i haven't used Sculptris much recently to be honest, other than Mesh Mixer's GUI it's much better already for certain tasks. I hope the author doesn't do the same thing though or instead takes the technology to another program like 3DC or blender.

Remember that Live Clay has only just recently gone into beta though. I think you might be judging/thinking about what is currently there too early in, i am guessing things like switching to voxel mode and keeping details won't be much of a problem later into developments.

Voxels are great for terrains, another program called voxelogic Acropora does it really well. A link - http://www.voxelogic.com/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=24&Itemid=26 It would be nice if 3DC had some better tools for that type of mesh generation using maths also. I guess in 3DC using a top view and terrain alpha masks when sculpting could be another option. Farsthary also did some procedural planet making things for blender a while ago, maybe this could be done in LiveClay/voxels as it could be very interesting i think - http://farsthary.wordpress.com/2010/11/24/new-planet-procedural-texture/

I noticed "Use CUDA" is enabled as default which is great however i noticed "Cuda smooth boost" always needs to be checked each time. It would be great if that could be enabled as default also.

When you add brushes you can load from a few 3d formats, rotate etc and convert the result to a brush. It would be nice to be able to directly do it from voxels also though which as far as i know is not possible without exporting a object first. Maybe you can't do it because some projects might be very complex but i guess there is ways around that like resolution reduction, only getting the current layer or view area etc. This could be very useful so it gets my +1 vote also as a feature request.

I am thinking 3DC could do this maybe, it already does auto retopo, PTEX for great textures and now with live clay tech you have great mesh optimization. With some Sketchup/MOI style editing also if you added all that technology together it would be amazing.

Back on topic though, it seems there will be new Boolean operations which sound very useful. Via - http://twitter.com/AndrewShpagin

Image editors like photoshop have loads of tools and loads of brushes. The way they sort that out is having a nice and simple GUI for it with well designed menus. So i think 3DC should do a similar thing and change the GUI if anything rather than removing tools which would be a very bad idea. Sure there could be improvements to the most common tools but other than that lots of tools to use is a good thing, some of them need a few more adjustment options however. But talking about the GUI, one thing 3DC still needs to do with it in my opinion is sort out the resource system - http://3d-coat.com/mantis/view.php?id=161 The way it works now makes it annoying to use new content so usually i just don't, with most other apps it's as simple as navigating to my resource folders though.

It sounds like it has a bad workflow, i don't like programs having to be connected to the web to use them for one thing but having to upload loads of content with my slow connection would be really annoying. This technology seems to have some great results though, i look forward to when blender has something like this available.

In my opinion it depends, i think free software can get away with it more but if you buy a program you want it to have a good workflow. Workflow can depend very much on the GUI so even if you had the best features ever without a good GUI it would sometimes be faster/simpler to use something else which was easier to use but maybe gives a bit lower quality for the results. I think the MM GUI is ok though, the main problem is for the brushes you have to hover over them to know what they do unless you get to know them well, so basically they just need text also on the icons. With 3DC i generally like the GUI but i don't like the resource system - http://www.3d-coat.com/mantis/view.php?id=161 It makes it annoying to add new resources and usually things like new brushes help for better workflow but with 3DC it's just annoying and time consuming adding them in. This is a area where things could be improved a lot i think. I have stopped using a few programs that are quite good feature wise just down to the fact they cannot be customized and i don't like the standard workflow they use, with a few adjustments they would be fine though. So i think decent GUI customization options is one thing any decent app should have have from the start because if they are fixed GUIs what works well for someone will be bad for another, however if it can be changed easily everyone wins.

Meshmixer is much better than sculptris in my opinion. The main reason i kept sculptris installed was for it's reduce brush which was great but now Meshmixer has this also as well as all the other great things. But yeah, Meshmixer is now the new main side tool for 3DC along with blender. I just noticed a new version is out today also - http://meshmixer.com/forum/index.php?PHPSESSID=e9ddc0938cf4869c7c4f622fa6059505&topic=400.0

I looked at the website samples and it seems really good, i know a lot of company's edit things to make them seem more impressive though so i am just wondering if it actually works well?

Great work with the beta of LiveClay, i have recently been wondering if LiveClay will have CUDA acceleration at some point? It seems quite fast already though but that will make it even faster. I posted some bugs i found here but you probably know about all of these already - http://www.3d-coat.com/forum/index.php?showtopic=6634&view=findpost&p=62711 By the way i just noticed someone posted on your blog that the link to the beta download is broken, i tried it and got a 404 error.

I have tested LiveClay now and it is really great. I guess these are known since it's early beta but - I noticed a bug when i use liveclay and then select another tool after as the tool options dialog still remains. Then if you close the dialog and later go back to liveclay there will be no dialog. There is a droplist which doesn't seem to do anything, i guess this will be the modes later though and it simply is not complete yet. Probably the biggest problem right now is if i am in liveclay mode then press the Res+ button, the moment i then go to draw the program will crash. @Michalis - Thanks, i had seen that update before but it seemed it was mainly linking it to ZB which i don't own. I only have windows OS computers also so that update was not too interesting to me really but it's good to know Sculptris is still being developed however.

I used Sculptris before mainly as a way to reduce meshes but it's just been replaced with Meshmixer for that. As for the Sculptris speed i agree with what BeatKitano said, it's quite good until you get to higher details when it will be slow and can crash. Other than that it was a nice program for free but with programs like Meshmixer now and the fact blender now has quite decent sculpting tools there is better options available for free. Now with Liveclay for 3DC also i doubt i would have much use for Sculptris really though. It was great for a while but after the ZB buy out not much has happened with it as i guess all of the main work is going to ZB instead.

Wow this looks great, i couldn't find any win32 builds for this cycles render engine anywhere though and only linux so i have not been able to test it yet. Edit - Have found a build with this now

That sounds really great thanks Raul, also thanks to Psmith for forwarding the reply's.

I think that is slightly different as that feature (from one of the earlier videos) seems to relax/smooth the whole layer/model. In the latest videos (Extreme subdivision no displacement test) there is brushing which adds a lot of subdivision detail but it appears to keep the same details that were there before, so looks low res but actually very detailed. What i was asking is when doing this brushing to add a lot of subdivision if it's possible to smooth/relax at the same time. So rather than keep the lower res look but actually have a higher detailed surface you just have a very high detailed but smooth and relaxed surface instantly as you brush in the extra subdivision. I guess i just need to wait for the beta versions with this to test