fneill

Thank you for your input. I think I posted on this a year or so ago. So Iam still trying. I have tried everything. Nothing has been written or mentioned about using the specific .ptex files that you export from 3D Coat via export/COLOR TO PTEX. I have tried every setting in Maya and every setting in 3D Coat. The actual ptex export can not get to work in Mudbox either. Maybe if one person who has Maya and 3D Coat can give this a try. Export an ptex setup object from 3D Coat and its COLOR TO .PTEX file (NOT the jpg or targa like this example_PtexPlane0_color.tga file ) In Maya turn on VIEWPORT 2.0. Import that .PTEX file on to the object. Should realtime render and work as it does with Mudbox .ptex files. I do lots of animation. I render huge scenes with Maya Viewport 2.0 and love working with PTEX but can only do it from my Mudbox characters p.s. The new Maya 2015 coming out and its TOTALLY REDONE Viewport 2.0 realtime rendering is just unbelievable. What I have been waiting for all these years AND WOULD REALLY LIKE THAT TO WORK WITH 3D Coat ptex files if possible ..

Keep hoping on each beta I can get the PTEX to work from 3D Coat in to Mayas VIEWPORT 2.0 viewport realtime rendering. Viewport 2.0 renders super fast and renders PTEX beautifully. That is at least from Mudbox .ptex files I can render in Viewport 2.0. Iam not talking about the exported test_PtexPlane0_color.tga type of files that get exported from 3D Coat. Those are not true ptex. Those jpg or tga files of course render in Viewport 2.0. Iam talking about the EXPORTED PTEX FILES via TEXTURES/EXPORT/COLOR TO PTEX files. Those are true ptex files that when I import in to Maya and render with Viewport 2.0 it is opaque with no textures. When I export a true .PTEX file from Mudbox as I mention renders beautifully. But not with the exported .PTEX files from 3D Coat. Been so wanting this for several years now.

Wow weeeee. These continual newly added features blow me away. I love the new Subdivide and Angular brushes (and Smoother and Lute of course). See my three images below on using Subdivide with Angular. Just so much fun and so useful!

UPDATE: I should of search more before I asked this. Sorry about that. I notice there is a great tutorial on hard surface modeling which is similar to zbrushes panel loops. That tutorial is here ... Does 3DC have a PANEL LOOPS function like that is in the new zbrush 4r5?. I LOVE that function and Iam totally amazed at what it can do. Bet 3dCoat has or will get something similar. Here is info of PANEL LOOPS on youtube ... http://www.cgmeetup....ryan-kingslien/

well all I can say is I just spent 2 hours having a blast with VoxExtrude. Iam thinking of a million ways I will use this. Some people say the older version of 3d Coat is fine because it works good and is fast enough. But the new features being implemented in 4.0 are adding up to be in my opinion a really killer program and people will miss how really useful this new features are (like the new spline draw mode ..I could not live without that now!) And this is coming from a long time zbrush user. I helped test different versions zbrush for several years. Anyway, just a thanks for all the hard work people are putting in to this.

Hello, I sure love following this testing thread. When new features are added during the beta would be soooooo nice to have more info on how to use each feature or any additional information on what the feature can do. As this would help with getting in to the testing. I search on youtube or tinker code and here for more info each time something new is added. Having a blast with the new spline function but working on using in with the ON PEN and what is the POLISH feature? Sorry such a newbie but 4.0 beta is so awesome Iam spending alot of time with it.

Hello, Hate to be a pest but been over a month and Iam still frustrated with no solution. If anybody has had success rendering the ACTUAL .PTEX files from 3D Coat in Maya 2013 Viewport 2.0 (see the previous posts) renderer please let me know. Iam still rendering my Mudbox .ptex sculpts in Maya Viewport 2.0 because can not get 3D Coat .ptex to render. And I sure have tried everything! Thanks much.

Been just loving the live clay tool. Can not believe I can start off with a real low rez human figure 10k or so. Then using live clay in the surface mode only the areas I want high rez I use live clay to sculpt on. Just unbelievable. Iam so use to zbrush and I would have to in the dynamesh mode increase the resolution so high then deal with bringing all that resolution back down with QREMESHERS and DECIMATION MASTERS and all that work and pain. But with live clay my model is remaining low rez and my wanted features are only high rez and I dont even have to reduce it down. I have a few comments and a question if possible. 1. I notice so much that increasing my volume FIRST as mentioned in this live clay scale tutorial gives me better finer results. Thanks so much for that tip.2. This is a dream come true for me when I bring the DEFAULT MAYA RIGGED and SKINNED CHARACTER as an OJB file in to 3d Coat and live clay it then send it back to Maya and its instantly converted to a 3d Coat RIGGED inverse kinematic rig. And my Maya character is still extremely low rez but with the fine detail I need on the face and other areas. Then I animate it. I made a tutorial on that here ... http://3d-coat.com/forum/index.php?showtopic=10659 3. I still have to use zbrush for some old projects and I dont see any new features or brushes in zbrush that do a live clay tessellation thing. Or does anybody know if zbrush has that at all? onward to more studying.

Thanks for the last 2 posts. I will answer your questions. re: Poser Daz question: when you import your obj file back in to Maya from 3d Coat and DROP on the FULLY RIGGED HUMAN IK BONE TEMPLATE and then CLICK ON SMOOTH BIND SKIN your have an instant FULLY RIGGED IK CHARACTER that can be KEYFRAMED in MAYA or you can drop on bvh or fbx animation clips. This is a fully rigged charcter in Maya only (works in Motionbuilder too because Motionbuilder uses same rig) BUT this does not work in POSER or DAZ 3D (because this rig is for Maya and Motionbuilder and the bones are not named or setup for Daz or Poser). However! any animations you do on that character you can EXPORT as A BVH and those animations will work well in POSER OR DAZ. So that workflow would be from POSER export your character as an obj. Then import in to 3d Coat add sculpt and textures then export to Maya. Drop on the skeleton (you will have to resize bones a bit as a obj from poser to 3d Coat to Maya will be different size than the rigged skeleton template) and then do the skin smooth bind. Then export the OBJ back in to Poser or Daz and export the BVH animation in to Poser or Daz and there ya go. In your Poser or Daz That should work as I did something like that before. (also you could export that 3d Coat obj from Maya to Poser or Daz and use it as a morph target obj) re: vertex order question: As for the keeping the VERTEX order unaltered it seems to work perfectly. Because when you drop in the skeleton template in to your obj character and click on skin/smooth bind skin then Maya binds the skinning to the vertices. As for the color diffuse and normal maps those come in beautifully to Maya just as exported from 3d Coat paint room.

TimmyZDesign, Thanks so much for getting back with me! No hurry at all. Iam just happy someone is taking an interest in this (rendering PTex .ptx files in Maya Viewport 2.0). BY THE WAY ... since you are a Maya user I just put up a tutorial on how to go from 3d Coat to Maya and within couple minutes have a fully rigged humanik character ready to animate or whatever! That tutorial is here ... (we are talking about sculpting to animatable rigged character in couple minutes!) http://3d-coat.com/forum/index.php?showtopic=10659 >>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>> MUDBOX PTEX TO MAYA RENDER VIEWPORT 2.0 1. In mudbox create and load a basic Mesh like the head. Go to MESH/ptex setup and turn on ptex texturing. Color, sculpt and texture your mesh a bit. 2. In mudbox go to WINDOWS/PREFERENCES/FILES and turn on SAVE PTEX TEXTURES WITH .MUD FILES. This means that whenever you save your .mud file it will export the .ptex file with the .mud file its a separate file from the .mud file in the same directory. There are other ways to export the .ptex file but this .ptex file works beautifully with Maya Viewport 2.0. 3. Now all you got to do is create the normal .ptex map. Go to maps/extract texture maps/normal map. Set up your target and Source Models. Level 0 rez is the lowest level and Level 5 or whatever is your highest Rez Level. NORMAL MAP OUTPUT OBJECT SPACE. OUTPUT OPTIONS .PTEX. Name the file and directory and extract that NORMAL MAP .ptex file. 4. Lower your model to lowest rez, then in the object list select your model EX basichead. THEN GO TO FILE/EXPORT/SELECTION and export that as an FBX. ALSO, SAVE YOUR .MUD PROJECT so that it will export that .ptex file for you. Remember the normal map .ptex you created in maps/extract texture maps is different than the one that is exported via save .mud file. 4. In Maya turn on Render 2.0 Viewport. Import the .fbx model. It will come in already having the .ptex texture applied and colors and textures WILL BE SHOWING. But not normal map yet. Only thing you need to do is select the model and and in texture BUMP MAP channel add that NORMAL MAP .ptex file. AND TURN ON object space normals (where it says bump value and bump depth) 5. Finally in order for Maya Viewport 2.0 to show your textures at high rez you go to DISPLAY RENDER SETTINGS/MAYA RENDER 2.0/BAKE RESOLUTION FOR UNSUPPORTED TEXTURES/ turn color and bump up to 2048 or whatever to sharpen your textures. THEN CLICK REBAKE ALL TEXTURES. Please note if you change anything always go back and click REBAKE all TEXTURES. If you see black model then maybe thats all thats needed. Need to REBAKE to see textures at high resolution and to show the normal map. If you have trouble seeing anything go back and REBAKE ALL TEXTURES. Thats it. Now if I could get that to work FROM 3d-coat I would be a happy happy camper! >>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>

To all you Maya users (free no restrictions 30 day trial) a really fun thing to do is model a character in 3d Coat and import in to Maya and instantly it can be characterized with humanik joints and bones and ready for key frame animation INSTANTLY with skinning. We are talking about NO creating skeleton joints NO tedious skinning or anything like that. This is beyond fast and fun. Here is how to do it .... 1. in Maya (Iam using 2013) go to your PAINT EFFECTS/GET BRUSH menu. In the HUMAN IK examples grab the humanoid.ma file. SELECT that object and EXPORT THAT HUMAN FIGURE FROM MAYA AS AN OBJ. 2. In voxel mode MERGE that OBJ human character file. DONT change the dimensions of the human object or the TSTANCE while you are sculpting as you will want to export it back to Maya with same size AND TPOSE. When you are done sculpting it and adding textures, etc export it to Maya. 3. In Maya import it as an a obj. Go up to HUMAN IK/SKELETON. Click on create a skeleton. It will place a totally positioned human IK skeleton perfectly back in to your obj file (since its the same size and tpose as when you exported it originally from Maya) 4. Click on SKIN/BIND SKIN SMOOTH BIND. 5. all done! you have just in minutes imported your 3d Coat character and instantly characterized it with a super human ik skeleton which you can key frame animations on or import bvh animations on to or export to Motionbuilder which in Motionbuilder it will automatically be characterized too (as Motionbuilder and Maya use the same HumanIk character template) Just a real blast if you want to create and animate characters from 3d Coat to Maya super duper fast. See attached images

Hello TimmyZDesign. Thank you so much for your interest and help. I feel lost as nobody is using .ptex it seems. Reason I need to use the actual .ptex files is because I will be help testing a new game engine the WILL ONLY USE "color vertices" or ".ptex". And .ptex will provide much better results. Here is my workflow for Mudbox .ptex to Maya 2013 Render Viewport 2.0. Its beyond easy and works beautifully.... 1. In mudbox create and load a basic Mesh like the head. Go to MESH/ptex setup and turn on ptex texturing. Color, sculpt and texture your mesh a bit. 2. In mudbox go to WINDOWS/PREFERENCES/FILES and turn on SAVE PTEX TEXTURES WITH .MUD FILES. This means that whenever you save your .mud file it will export the .ptex file with the .mud file its a separate file from the .mud file in the same directory. There are other ways to export the .ptex file but this .ptex file works beautifully with Maya Viewport 2.0. 3. Now all you got to do is create the normal .ptex map. Go to maps/extract texture maps/normal map. Set up your target and Source Models. Level 0 rez is the lowest level and Level 5 or whatever is your highest Rez Level. NORMAL MAP OUTPUT OBJECT SPACE. OUTPUT OPTIONS .PTEX. Name the file and directory and extract that NORMAL MAP .ptex file. 4. Lower your model to lowest rez, then in the object list select your model EX basichead. THEN GO TO FILE/EXPORT/SELECTION and export that as an FBX. ALSO, SAVE YOUR .MUD PROJECT so that it will export that .ptex file for you. Remember the normal map .ptex you created in maps/extract texture maps is different than the one that is exported via save .mud file. 4. In Maya turn on Render 2.0 Viewport. Import the .fbx model. It will come in already having the .ptex texture applied and colors and textures WILL BE SHOWING. But not normal map yet. Only thing you need to do is select the model and and in texture BUMP MAP channel add that NORMAL MAP .ptex file. AND TURN ON object space normals (where it says bump value and bump depth) 5. Finally in order for Maya Viewport 2.0 to show your textures at high rez you go to DISPLAY RENDER SETTINGS/MAYA RENDER 2.0/BAKE RESOLUTION FOR UNSUPPORTED TEXTURES/ turn color and bump up to 2048 or whatever to sharpen your textures. THEN CLICK REBAKE ALL TEXTURES. Please note if you change anything always go back and click REBAKE all TEXTURES. If you see black model then maybe thats all thats needed. Need to REBAKE to see textures at high resolution and to show the normal map. If you have trouble seeing anything go back and REBAKE ALL TEXTURES. Thats it. Now if I could get that to work FROM 3d-coat I would be a happy happy camper! p.s. the .ptex file just contains the color and texture info not the mesh info from what I assume.

Just thought I would check back and see if there might be an answer to my above question. How to get actual .ptex files from 3d Coat to render in Maya 2013 Viewport Render 2.0. As I previously mentioned rendering .ptex in Mayas Viewport 2.0 works fine from Mudbox just cant get it to work from 3d Coat. The other files render ok ex: (mymodel_PtexPlane0_color.tga), etc. But Iam needing to render the actual .ptex file. Model comes out transparent when I try to render .ptex.

Hi AbnRanger, Kind of embarrassing but that other poster that discovered V4 Beta working with Ptex was me. I was at that time I posted that post not getting Ptex to working so I loaded the V4 Beta and it worked in Maya 2013 RENDER VIEWPORT 2.0. I was all excited. But I just recently I discovered I was successfully rendering the tga files such as this (ptex1_PtexPlane0_color.tga) "NOT" the actual .PTEX file (like I do with Mudbox .PTEX files in Maya Viewport 2.0). So I notice that .ptex from 3d Coat renders as a transparent object (see image in my original post above). So now Iam back to trying to figure out how to get a true .ptx file to render in Maya 2013 Viewport 2.0. And as I mention I do it all the time with the actual .PTEX files I export from Mudbox so I dont think it has anything to do with how Iam setting up Mayas Viewport 2.0 renderer. I have tried every conceivable setting in Maya but with no luck.

Does anyone know why 3d-Coat exported .PTX files do not work in Maya 2013 Viewport 2.0 rendering?. Of course Maya Viewport 2.0 WILL render the "tga" exported files that have ptex in the name example (ptex1_PtexPlane0_color.tga) BUT that is not true a true PTX file. When I export a PTX model from Mudbox and in Maya 2013s Render Viewport 2.0 mode it renders the .PTX file perfectly. These are actual .ptx files. However doing the same exact export from 3d Coat (and exporting the .PTX file in the texture export menu) renders transparent Wonder why actual .PTX files wont render in Maya Viewport 2.0 as the do from Mudbox? See attached pic. Thank you.

Thank you so much BeatKitano and The Candy Floss Kid for your very informative responses. Iam really a good zbrush user (in my mind but not compared to super zbrushers) but the more Iam discovering is that 3d Coat has some features the were implemented years ago that zbrush is now finally getting. Iam now getting that unique zbrush ZSKETCH AND ZSPHERES function working in 3d Coat by using your suggestions. Here are some things I appreciate in 3d Coat that I did not appreciate in zbrush. 1. in voxel mode in left panel all the tools are there with an icon view of what they do. zbrush is a bigger process getting the right tools and brushes easily. 2. orientation with the left and middle mouse button and right button is brilliant (dont have to hold down the CTRL SHIFT RIGHT MOUSE to zoom! 3. Controlling the size of the brush and strength of brush with right mouse button is a dream. Can not believe how perfect this makes working so intuitive. and on and on. Of course as mentioned zbrush excels in masking. And I do love zbrushes LIGHTBOX where I can scroll all through all my projects, textures and objects, etc, so easily. I paid twice as much for zbrush. Will use both zbrush and 3d Coat but I sure seem to be working much much quicker in 3d Coat! (and that counts for alot!) Thanks again. Back to learning.

Bitkitamo, you really know how to treat new users. No it is not a joke (is this not the new user area?). Zsketch is (if you have never used it) is very unique. The way the strokes melt in to each other (like liquid metal) and build upon each other is not just a standard voxel type thing. So as the other poster showed that this was asked before. And as you mention there are strokes that can be used to get pretty close to performing that function. So Iam glad we can get that similar function in 3d- Coat

As a zbrush user Iam going back and forth between zbrush and 3d coat many times a day. There are soooooo many features in 3d coat that its overwhelming. One thing I just discovered and hope other newbies know this is that 3d coat has a zbrush ZSHPERES tool! I was getting pretting good with zshperes in zbrush. I could put together a rough human character in minutes. I thought there is no way 3d coat would have zspheres! Well I looked at this video and was amazed .... so that is really great. I was wondering DOES 3d Coat have a ZSKETCH TOOL like is in zbrush? ZSKETCH tool is explained here .... ZSKETCH is a really powerful tool and I dont see that tool in 3d coat unless Iam missing it.

AbnRanger you are so right. And your tutorials are some of the first ones I studied (Iam a newbie but learning quickly). Best tutorials I have found. Whats nice about 3d Coat is that it does it all for whatever you might need. Color vertex painting is CRITICAL for some game engines. Must use it then. PTex is great for a production when UV's take too much time and quality can be sacrificed some (even thought ptex can create awesome quality). For me right now I spend most of my time ANIMATING in Maya and Motionbuilder so I really dont have time for dealing with uv's (even though you are showing us how easy it is). Really as you mention unless you are working on game engines or just need super fast results like I do lately your way is the way to go. I just did a one minute sculpt in voxel room and painted a little paint as quick test 2 meg voxel export to 15k or so and rendered Maya color vertice. This character is just showing Mayas Viewport 2.0 with ambient occlusion and high antialising setting. That renders instantly. So working in a game engine with color vertices from 3d Coat and rendering thousands of frames is fast and easy

ptex is definitely better. Color Vertex is just quicker since its straight from voxel room to paint room painting and then reduce to 15k and export fbx. I use both. Since I use this for games and previs work quality is reduced at such low resolution exports. Thats where careful coloring comes in handy (not texturing when going down to 15k) when using color vertex.Still can look pretty good for a 15k character. When I want higher quality I export my models at 50 to 100k. 15k characters allows much more complex scenes and animations in Maya while rendering the thousands of frames quickly. Ptex really is the future (I hope). This is all about very fast modeling, exporting, animating and rendering. Also, keep in mind Mayas VIEWPORT 2.0 rendering mode does not get bogged down much with multiple lights and characters. Can have several 15k characters in the scene, several lights, ambient occlusion and depth of field and high anti aliasing and still render at a frame a second. Thats really awesome.

I will speak for my benefits. For me the benefits are HUGE. 1. In the voxel mode I sculpt away at my 1 million or whatever poly high rez character. Using the dozens of incredible tools in the voxel mode AND in the voxel surface mode. 2. I then click paint room. I color and texture my model. I then export via fbx. I have NOT had to do ANY UV work as when you export voxels from the paint room (converted to polys of course) the paint and textures are added to the vertices so no UV work needed. Maya reads that color vertice mode as well as many game engines.. 3D Coat ask me my final poly count. I put in 15k or so. ALL DONE. Ready to import in to Maya. 3. Soooo I have not had to do any UV work as UVs not needed in the exporting color by vertices mode. Thats saves an incredible amount of time. Also in Maya I use their pre built characterized skeleton and drop it in my 3D Coat character and adjust the bone to fit in the character and instantly have an instant IK characterized character ready for keyframing or adding animation files to. 4. When in Maya using the Maya VIewport 2.0 rendering mode I render in less than a second a frame. Instead of minutes or hours per frame. That saves me hours of rendering time. Render quality is amazing. So for me, from 3d Coat Voxel to Maya Animation is extremely fast and saves me hours of work. I hate doing UV work. This is really beneficial if someone is doing GAME CHARACTERS or PRE VIS work where you need to make thousands of frames of fast animation and rendering to show what a final movie with high quality rendering will eventually look like. Thats the benefits for me.

On my animation characters in 3d coat I voxel sculpt them at about a million. Then I click on paint room and paint and texture. Then when I export AS A MODEL from the paint room I put the final reduced poly count to around 15k. Thats perfect size for large animations rendered in Maya Viewport 2.0. PTEX and COLOR VERTEX painting really are a huge dream come true for game engines and character animation like Iam doing. Especially for COLOR VERTEX until PTEX catches on more. I like them both. And quality is really very good. Thanks 3d Coat!

As I mentioned in previous threads I do Maya PREVIS work where I render thousands of frames of animation of my characters in Maya 2013 in just minutes with Maya 2013 RENDER VIEWPORT 2.0 rendering mode. And that includes ambient occlusion and depth of field and high anti aliasing at those speeds. So I was really happy when I found out 3D Coat rendered PTEX files (No UV's love it!). But Iam also very happy that 3D Coat exports VERTEX COLORS (no UV's!) IN THE VOXEL MODE and that also views and renders VERY WELL in Maya 2013 VIEWPORT 2.0 fast rendering. I just rendered a 30,000 frame animation of a character I made in 3d Coat. Rendered all frames in 15 minutes. HOWEVER, couple things you need to turn on before you can view and render VERTEX COLORS in MAYA 2013 VIEWPORT 2.0 MODE. So here is my workflow for COLOR VERTEX exporting to Maya 2013. 1. In VOXEL MODE scultp your model. Switch to paint mode (make sure to turn on VIEW SHOW VOXELS IN PAINT ROOM) and paint your model (no uv's needed of course!). When done just export it from the paint room model as an FBX. 2. Then IMPORT in to Maya 2013 as FBX. Turn on RENDER VIEWPORT 2.0 MODE, Then select your model and go to DISPLAY POLYGONS VERTICES'S and then in the ATTRIBUTE EDITOR turn on DISPLAY COLORS. 3. See image below. Its that easy. Now your painted textured VOXEL model from 3d Coat VIEWS and RENDERS the polygon vertices's in the VIEWPORT 2.0 mode. Now thats cool! anybody have comments on this OR comments on PTEX rendering in Mayas Viewport 2.0 mode PLEASE comment as Iam slowly becoming a simi expert at rendering both PTEX and COLOR VERTICES'S in Maya 2013 RENDER VIEWPORT 2.0 mode. SEE IMAGE BELOW COMMENTS WELCOMED

Love this thread. As a newbie Iam learning so much from this great forum. I really love this layer tool as I can create clothing and accessories or whatever so easily. When I was using zbrush I was using the EXTRACT tool (using masking then click on EXTRACT) which seems the same as the 3DC layer tool. Just worked well for me testing putting cream on a donut!

Thank you AbnRanger for the tip on Octane Render. Really not a bad deal for 175 or so (that price includes the Maya plugin). I downloaded the demo (which is only the desktop version as they dont have a demo on the Maya plugin yet) and was pretty impressive. Since I do so much previs (putting together huge amounts of animation quickly to show clients) GPU rendering is the way to go. Thats why I love Maya Viewport 2.0. Quality in Mayas Viewport 2.0 rendering is so impressive. Including the depth of field rendering, ambient occlusion, and high antialising, all at the rendering speed of a frame per second in many cases. I must stress to anybody who has Maya 2013 to try out 3D-Coats No UV's PTEX exporting and import in to Maya. I am having such great results using PTEX with the 3d Coat 4.0 beta. Here is an example of my workflow I have been doing the last few hours. I will upload a youtube wen I get a chance. 1. I very quickly made a basic human form using Voxels. 2. I made the character in to a high rez scary alien (this is a fun project) with horns and everything. 3. After sculpting and texturing and painting I AUTOPO the character with PTEX (love not worrying about UV's) down to a low rez export. I exported all from 3DC as a model. 4. I imported the character in to Maya and added the PTEX color and specular and normal map from 3DC. Mayas Viewport 2.0 must to turned on to VIEW and RENDER PTEX textures. Its so extremely easy, especially since UV's are not involved. 5. The highly detailed character I did in 3DC ended up less than 50k polys but with the normal map looks like it has a few million polys. 6. I quickly dropped on the HUMAN IK SKELETON in Maya on to the character. I adjusted the bones to fit in the Character, then clicked on "BIND SKIN". 7. I imported a bunch of free fbx animation files that are available on the web and added them to character. Plus added some hand key framing of my own to that. 8. Ended up being around 5000 frames. All that rendered in about 15 minutes using Mayas VIEWPORT 2.0 rendering and really looks almost as good as if it was rendered in Mental Ray EXCEPT Mental Ray would of taken well over 10 hours to render instead of 15 minutes (with the ambient occlusion and other features too). so anyway, I could not of done this without 3d Coat. Because it took my huge sculpted 3DC high poly character and brought it down to less than 50k and gave me a color and normal map to add all the high rez details when in Maya. AND because I did not have to do the whole UV thing that saved me a ton of work (and using the HUMAN IK SKELETON in MAYA saved me TONS of work not having to create a IK skeleton character). p.s. I solved my original PTEX problems I had in 3D Coat on my other thread here. For me it was easy as upgrading to 3D Coat 4 beta http://3d-coat.com/forum/index.php?showtopic=10385