HevJudo

Thanks Phil

Struggling with SSS... next is fur....

Hi At the best of times my uv skills are not that impressive.. I can paint pictures and get my models painted and looking fine until the cows come home..but I have only recently explored the generation of different maps for different purposes.. Ive been reading up on UV textures and how translucancy maps can be used to control the effect of subsurface scattering on your model.. Is it possible to generate these in 3d coat.. or do I just paint my model mid grey and paint the areas I want effected by transluceny and use that map. Im using lightwave at the moment for my rendering.. Regards andrew

Playing around with the eyes.. will have a chance to update voxel sculpt and add a tail.. then back into painting a playing around with subsurface scattering and fur..

Ill take that as a compliment!.. Thankyou.. that is why I loved your tutorial because the workflow you showed made things I struggled with easy!

Attached are some images of a mouse character I hope to have rigged and animated.. A little bit of inspiration from Psmiths Rat tutorial.. and endless watching of 'Flushed away' with my daughter!.. Im a huge fan of all of Aardman Animations and still find myself having a laugh at some of the characters. At the moment my favourites are the French frog and the two 'henchmen' rats.. Regards andrew

Cheers for the quick response man.. I new it was something simple! Awesome.. Hows the modelling and animation work going? I am trying to start from scratch learning the principles of rigging in lightwave (because of the availability of tutorials).. Hopefully by the time I get a handle on the principles the transition into Messiah should be easier.. Rigging is so different in Blender it was a real struggle to transition to Messiah.. but the similarities between lightwave and messiah has already made things I struggled with previously remarkably simple. Im looking forward to the Messiah rigging tutorials from atomic toon! Anyway - wishing all the best with your work! Regards andrew

Hi Im not sure if this is the right forum to place this very basic question..but... Im creating really long feet for a character and need to find the quickest (easiest) technique to create the base of the feet. The feet are created using the curve tool, and I just want to flatten the bottom of the feet (the scrape tool is a bit unrelaiable, and the 2D tool is awkward...) I do recall a tutorial by Geothefaust where he just puts a box over an area he wants cut away and it removes averything in the box but I havent had a chance to revisit his tutorial on hard body modelling again. Im normally lazy and flatten the feet when I import the mesh into lightwave to add eyelids for animation and general cleanup prior to importing back into 3d coat for painting.. but I want to get better at 3d coat so thought its about time I stop being lazy.. Any tips? Thanks andrew

Thanks for the comments.. I agree about workarounds.. Im in my mid 30's, have a young family and a job completely unrelated to 3d or design.. and all my learning is gained in the hour or two each day that I can squeeze in to trawl forums, training videos or osmosis in general .. so I can make cartoons! The best training not only shows you how but explains why.. Im an engineer and the worst thing you can do is memorise a formula.. the best thing is to know how to derive it! So any sort of training that does that (like yours) is the biggest time saver imaginable.. More time can then be spent creating so that your design and your animation (the ultimate goal) constantly improves. Regards Andrew

Thankyou for an awesome series!! One of the best tutorials in presentation, voice over, content.. that I have seen in a long time.. I agree with your comments re not needing other applications depending on your workflow.. I have zbrush, I have messiah, I have blender, I have lightwave, and even Toonboom Animate(which is fun) (maybe modo Geothefaust!! ).. but the one I use the most for all my modelling and painting is 3d coat. At the moment the workflow for me between 3d coat and lightwave has been great but the ease of modelling and creating textures is just awesome.. Check out my simple simple simple rocks, trees and mushrooms.. all done in 3d coat.. lietrally all modelled, retopo'ed and painted in 30 - 60 minutes (I cant remember.. but my coffee was still warm when I finished!) By the way.. you had me at 'using the move tool'.. dont know how I did anything without it! All the best Andrew

Thanks for the quick response AbnRanger.. One more thing, will the seriel be automatic??. I wouldnt know where to start to find it (if I have it) on my external drives.. Thanks again Andrew

Well.. last night the blue screen of death began.. maybe it was a virus, maybe it was my new pc tools installation.. but whatever it is my computer doesnt work. Its going to the shop today for a new operating system installation as it looks like i have lost everything. Thank goodness I had backed up most of my stuff.. except.. How do I get a fresh copy of 3d coat? Should I write to thye pilgway team?.. I wrote to them before advising I had changed my details and never got a response back. Im worried that I wont hear from them again.. Any tips? All the best andrew

Hi Thanks to geothefaust's recent video on the 3dcoat and messiah applink he inadvertantly opened up a whole world of painting possibilities to me. The main tool that I learnt about was the 'fill' tool and some of the options available to it. I had been spending my time importing in my photoshop brushes and painting as if I was in photoshop, not realising the power of some of the tools available to me.. Question 1: Are there other fill patterns available? What is the best way to find them, and if none are available, what is the best way to make them? ie. in photoshop, image x pixels b y pixels etc etc.. Question 2: In photoshop there are a wealth of tutorials (obviously) devoted to digital painting.. I havent been able to find much in the way of 3D coats painting tools. Are there any project based painting / texturing tutorials, or any tutorials that shows how each of the painting tools work?? Regards Andrew

I have recently purchased octane renderer and am very impressed with what I have seen so far.. while I am not up to speed on the the ins and outs of the software I think a plugin with 3d-coat would be fantastic. As it is still in the beta stage it is worth 3d-coat programmers getting in touch with refractive software to help develop this. In the meantime my current workflow would be 3D-Coat to blender (hows that plug in going? ) and then using the plug in octane has for Blender to Octane. One of the advantages of that vs. 3D-Coat direct is that you can export your obj files (triangulated) into Octane. I have tried regular mesh obj files and triangulated meshes are definately required..

Hi I just thought I would share my experience's so far on my self-tought 3d journey.. Basically my experience with 3d-coat and zbrush.. I have owned 3d coat and zbrush for a little while now, but have really only got into sculpting and painting a lot in the last 3 months or so.. I initially turned away from zbrush because of the interface and learning curve and took to 3d coat quickly.. I loved the ease of use, the retopo and uv tools and the fact that I could make brushes in photoshop and import them for use. I did struggle with the sculpting tools and still am trying to improve my work flow in that regard. Recently I got a hold of Eat 3D training videos on zbrush, and finally started to understand the interface, I quickly started modelling and painting and produced some pretty good UV maps for Blender and Messiah.. I still needed the retopo tools in 3d coat and found myself producing meshes in 3d coat to texture in zbrush.. so here I am still needing both pieces of software to produce my models. As my end goal is animation, I did find myself constantly coming back to 3d coat. The reason I am writing this post is to highlight what I loved (and struggled with) in both pieces of software. Im also posting it because the more experienced 3d coat users might be able to tell me how they have satisfied their artistic pursuits with 3d coat: So I will start with zbrush: - Use zsheres to produce base models very quickly. I struggle a little using the curve tool (ie creating arms and legs) because there is a slight curve in the finished model, and can be a bit fiddely switching between views. (I do love spikes though..). Creating hands etc can be a little bit harder using curves (purely because of the navigation for me) - Matcaps and other shaders when painting. Toy plastic, skin, metal.. I am not sure if this can be done in the painting tools in 3d coat (I initially thought that is what the shaders were for but they only seem to exist in the voxel sculpting section). Not a biggy, but I still havent masterd the use of specularity in 3d coat.. - Easy to produce a variety of maps (although 3d coat is very easy to do this in as well.. Philnolan 3d - want to make some tutorials?? I love your ship in the texture painting promo!! - Decimation Master - what a waste of time. Triangles!!! - Trying to figure out your mesh can be annoying. 3D-Coat - Much easier to use interface.. Without any significant training videos I picked it up pretty quickly.. I am only now starting to incorporate the use of primitaves and curves in setting up base models to sculpt, but overall much easier to move around in. - Retopolgy and UV's - How I love you!! - Painting, photoshop brushes, layers - how I love you to.. Texture painting is a bit harder for me (but I havent practiced too much) so that is something I need to work on.. - I dont know what size you model must be or if its just me but I am finding it easier to apply textures (bump) in the painting componant as opposed to while sculpting. The voxels dont seem to have as good a finish (ie skin pores in a zbrush model can be pretty impressive in the model) So as I write, I realise how much 3d coat has to offer (as long as I practice more). I think if there could be more project based tutorials, that may be helpful too (ie sculpting, retops and UV and painting for export). Sorry if this is a mindless ramble on topics you are all familiar with, however I am at a point where both pieces of software have differences that complement each other even though I would ideally like to just use 3d coat.. Andrew

Well.. after two days of 'will I.. wont I', I purchased Messiah!! It was on sale so it was great timing - $999 down to $599 so thankyou for the hot tip.. I was very impressed with the tools that it has, and I can also use it with Blender! And Blender 2.5 beta was released today so I feel like my tool set is coming together. Ive never used After Effects (although I have always heard great things about it) but, I think I will stick with Blender for compositing as well. If anyone gets the chance get a copy of the 'Big Buck Bunny' DVD and the Blender compositing book.. Amazing to study those as it also includes all the production files of a great short animation. Anything to help someone with no formal 3d education is great.. Anyway - thanks again for the advice. Andrew

Thanks for the help - Ive seen you on a few forums now and you are always helpful! .. and I will definately check out Messiah. In terms of animation tools, for someone who is interested in making an animated short, do you have a preference for your tools.. For a while it seemed that all I needed was 3d coat and Blender / lightwave (and photoshop) but now Im looking for tools that will help me work as efficiently as possible with my limited time (which is why I found 3d coat great for modelling and texturing)? What are the main tools that you tend to lean towards? Thanks again Andrew

Hi I thought I would introduce myself and ask a begineer question. My name is Andrew, Im a proffessional Environmental Engineer, I have a young growing family, and am working full time.. also.. I have no background in 3d art / animation. I have always been a keen painter (using photoshop and Corel X) and played around doing 2D animations in toonboom.. So in a nutshell, I work in an unrelated field and I am completely obssessed with 3D animation! I love it!! Ive spent the last 2 years playing around with Blender and have grasped the fundamentals (maybe just the basics) of 3D. I am looking at moving to Lightwave 9.6 because of the integration with 3D Coat. My question is aimed at those who use 3D coat mainly for animation. I want to be able to export my retopologised mesh (and diffuse, spec maps etc)yet also have a model that is completely animatable ie Body, eyes, eye lids... Now the body is easy.. but how do you create a model that you can export straight into lightwave that has a mesh that is useable for the eyes, eyelids, mouth and tongue? How do you separate these elements without having to remodel in lightwave? Sorry if its a stupid question, I have only been using 3D coat for a few months (and love it!) but I have kept my 3D coat models relatively simple because of this issue. All the best Andrew