alvordr

That's true.

This is why I feel that 3D Coat is losing focus. The biggest benefit it gives me over other packages is the way it handles Voxels. If I'm pushed to do Surface mode, I may as well stick to ZBrush, which for me personally gives a better brush "feel." However, I love the way 3D Coat deals with complex shapes easily. Having to step back and forth tends to lose details that I bothered to make in Surface mode, which is why I tend not to bother with it. Thus, I might start out in 3D Coat to get my main shapes in, do the retopo work, UV maps, etc. and then port over to ZBrush to add the details I want, and then decide if I would rather paint and project in ZBrush or port back over to 3D Coat to do the same.

As many times as having to clear settings comes up, it seems appropriate to simply put that functionality in...say, as a "Superfix" button or "clear settings" button, that users know may not always work, but often helps and will require an auto-restart of the program, if pressed or better yet, simply dynamically load new configs on the fly.

I checked to see if the environment map was locked, but it wasn't. I toggled it to lock and then unlock again, but no change. So, I toggled it to lock and now I can rotate the environment map. That function is inverse of what it should be.

Still don't understand why we can't simply rotate the environment map both vertically and horizontally, instead of horizontally. Also, cannot rotate it at all in real-time. I realize the calculations would be high, but it's locked even when I turn off real-time lighting and rotate it and then go back...it simply stays lit how it was. Also, I noticed that I cannot rotate the model with the mouse in the render room, again. Somehow that bug got put back in. EDIT: I opened a newer file I created some time ago and I was able to rotate the model with the mouse in the render room. Seems to be that one file.

Rendering with Alpha channel works great in Beta15.

Nice renders. I have that cooler on my setup, right now...it's a beast.

Mine works fine.

Andrew, 13A does appear to load the files faster than before. I can also now move, rotate, pan the object in real-time lighting with the mouse. Thanks! I did notice that the ghosting affect produced from Renders was as a result of having Store Alpha Channel toggled to 'ON.' It does not store the alpha channel and doesn't go full-screen view, as it does when it's 'OFF.'

Yeah, I started to realize that when I thought about how the panoramas were likely being implemented and possibly other things.

On a positive note, hard to beat quick renders like this:

Is there a way to toggle the panorama off in the background, but still use it for lighting?

Rendering a shot from the render room seems to cause a double-image result...two copies of the image overlaid and off-set. It's also not storing Alpha channel. I'm also finding that sometimes it doesn't let me rotate the model with the mouse in real-time render, unless I grab onto the rotate icon at the top right. These seem like easy things to catch before throwing out to the community.

Andrew, could it be the size of the panoramas? Those are likely big files being loaded into memory. If they're not loading on-demand, rather than pre-loaded, that might cause the slowdowns. I have to admit, I've been feeling a lot less apt to bother 3D modeling as much for a while now, but the lighting and rendering is making me more excited to get back to it. It's odd, because I can already do this in other software, but it's nice to see the direction this might take 3DC.

Don, I agree. I just loaded a 28 Million Tri object and it took longer than usual. However, it still loaded in about 2 min.