The Candy-floss Kid

Digital squat thrusts and software competence go romantically unrewarded time and again. Imagine instead pulling some plasticine from your pocket and fashioning a cute rabbit for your partner's amusement. Here's a thought - software without bugs :-) They said it would never happen. Bugs are the Mistress that spank the unworthy slave and 3D is our dungeon. Yes that's right - feel free to discuss anything here :-)

Talent borrows , genius steals. A quote, not mine.

Most of the shift function features of 3DCoat act as polishers - chisel in surface mode being one I like, also the flatten in shift mode, but the hpolish? Hmmm, - sounds like something maybe snuck away in Liveclay? That said hi rez voxels will keep their edge to transition edge quality much better and certain polish effects are best up a touch in rez - indicated at lower rez and finished to edges at a higher resolution. A polish that maintains crisp edges/ edge integrity at medium rez - any suggestions from the Liveclay experts?

The curves tool is like zspheres, zspheres with insert local functionality, zsketch and the newer insert tripart brush all rolled in to one allowing you to freely add your own created spline objects along it's curves. It's great for carving out forms from forms too as well as creating a depth skin between it's bezier curves with "filled inside" - altered by "add scale". It has many great features and I would urge you to dig deeply into all the functions of the curves and splines to create surfaces but also modify existing ones by running brushes along curves, which is a lovely detailing feature. Using the sphere tool with an e-panel setting "stamp mode with moveable brush is also a nice way to draw out zspheres and place one at a time. It won't give you the advantage of altering the curve however. If you create these at a lower rez it will allow you to mesh them together with less definition whilst concentrating on the volume more. Stamp mode with moveable brush is cute. Another interesting feature comparison "like for like" is - if you go to objects > merge and select "on pen" you have you very own "insert mesh" which you can select from the models window or navigate to on your system. You can drag and drop a voxel layer object into the Models or Splines Pallet, and have it also create a thumbnail for you. You can also quickly use/ create/ save a voxel form as a basis for a merge object file by another route > file > export pattern for merge. A merge object in this context is the ZBrush equivalent of an "insert mesh" and the model library (top right of interface) the "multi mesh" facility to include mesh components as you require. 3DCoat has had this function for a good while now and rarely blows it's own trumpet quite enough over such gems. Hope this helps some more in your discovery. Out of interest work flow wise ZBrush's major advantage in many respects is it's polygonal emphasis. It's automatic creation of polygroups in it's functions allow you to quickly recall sections of your mesh for auto-masking for posing and transforming , separating form for texturing etc etc. If 3DCoat continues further with polygonal workflow it does need to look into allowing quick polygroups/ vertex group functionality of surface meshes and voxels too if that is possible by transferring / recalling vertex paint to masks. 3DCoats major workflow weakness to date is the missed opportunity to improve and further develop the ease and use of creating and or recalling masks quickly as part of it's creation and sculpting process. We need the freeze tool i.e 3DCoat masking facility prioritized more creatively. Masking or Masks has a greater creative/ artistic resonance than "Freeze" I would suggest 3DCoat standardizes the term and drops "Freeze".

I can understand your frustration that the simplified well structured workflow Sculptris offers was only taken so far. That consideration is now down to Pixologic should they ever wish but in truth that work has continued in ZBrush albeit with far greater depths. Sculptris has the ease, feel and immediacy more akin to an Ipad App, Myself I abandoned it after intensive trials for the lack of broader production features it has whilst also recognizing it's strengths with regard sculpting responses and push button uv and paint ease. 3Doat and Zbrush take things further and both have great depth of features and thus require far more compacted real estate in the interface with 3DCoat coming out far stronger in ui structure than ZBrush but much less covered in literature , tutorials and alike. A drive for that more simplified, less is more emphasis with regard shaping 3DCoats sculpting toolset is a valid argument that's been bouncing around a good while now but one that could easily be addressed by reordering the core toolset options particularly for beginners. But then ask yourself which room should a beginner be dropped in first and is the beginner interested in 3DCoat for all it's depths or merely certain key functionality it does with greater ease and logic than far higher priced competitors? Nobody would deem to attack you for your personal taste or personal response to the structure as you find it. The truth is pertinent to this thread - the fact that 3DCOat is in a state of permanent Beta clouds time talking of these workflow scenarios although it has all been covered in threads here and by videos. The bugs you mention are are due to this open Beta structure as opposed to deep flaws in the workflow structure itself. My advice is to avoid the Beta bugs and stick with a more known solid update and make this work for you whilst delving it's depths and freeing yourself of bug frustrations that cloud creativity and flow. Sometimes/ often with 3D there's a lack of naming logic with regard artistic path concepts - let down often by a raft of technical terminology pertaining to that specific application and sometimes there's just so many words. You basically have to learn a whole new ongoing vocabulary and thus a gaseous exchange of new information displacing existing information takes place. in the mental structure of our brains and thus a state of clouded confusion can occur. Frozen by permutations like a rabbit in the headlights and disconnected from your own logic of creativity. We've all been there :-) The key workflow permutation and possibilities within 3DCoat are much easier than one would first imagine but seem confusing when looking first as a whole. With regard V4 I very much look forward to a strengthening of the rendering room as part of a stronger commitment to make 3DCoat a greater creative environment in it's own right outwith it being an application that plays well with all. In this sense I think it's time that 3DCoat showed greater creative self confidence of it's amazing potential to create vastly more complex rendered voxel environments and lighting interactions with true 3d camera perspectives. If 3DCoat attempts to further a polygonal workflow development over voxels it is taking on what ZBrush has already made real. Aside from playing swiss army knife and being all things to all men - it's time 3DCoat grew some bigger balls with a more revolutionized future direction. So lock down the bugs in that army knife and lets move forward with spears.

Have a fabulous time!!

OSX [3.7.18F]: not loading /opening on my Mac 10.5.8

Brilliant tool - very excited about it's future +1for v4

The renaissance for 3DCoat will be in the V4 cycle - having unfinished beta implementation in the 3 cycle will not deter anyone upgrading save those that are already content to use it for what it presently does very well right now within their workflow

For the sake of new customers who may not be au fait with the expectations of Beta Cycles let us shy away form emotive judgements and keep things simple and clear and freeze v3 as is. New customers buying close to v4 release should also be entitled to v4 when released. All new features/ forthcoming features and improvements as well as new input from Raul should be included on a v4 teaser page. With Raul back on the team I'm sure they'll be plenty of fantastic reasons to invest in v4.

Out of all the suggestions this seems to make the most sense to me - it's simple and uncomplicated.

A video of interest to the sculptors in you all.

Not the only one with egg on face. I'm so used to thinking of what I use the brushes habitually for with regard sculpting tasks that I forget about what the absolute brush actually does :-) It's a great tool for an even surface relief to a set height and mostly I use it as the quick basis for clothing relief or creating the basis for head hair helmet relief. Extrude is nice though because it will raise the sculpted height whilst keeping existing details particularly when used with some of the e-panel shape modes when pressing the enter key.

Cavity/ height controls such as you describe are only in the painting room control for painting normal relief and not within the sculpting brush engine controls or the freeze/masking controls of the voxel or surface sculpting environments as Digman points out. It would be nice to see Freeze include cavity/height aware controls

Still running an older version of 3DCoat so it's great to see some of the latest brush features such as curves demonstrated. Nice tips on getting better results with your wacom too.

The ease of voxels is a great way of putting in the main shapes fast as a guide for poly tracing without the point pulling of box modelling. Knowing you will transfer to poly tracing/ retopo - do you tend to keep your sculpts to certain level of detail only before the retopo?

Many thanks Rodney for laying out your thoughts and approach to retopo it's always good to hear other artists approaches and helps demystify some of the voodoo around the topic. What helped me get to grips with the topic was considering the directional/ traveling radiation of edges around "the holes" in respect to a directional linear flow through the form (the path of least resistance) - join the holes with regard to the planar separations and flow of the form , corral and enclose the remaining forms then cut loops as required for tighter edges or detail. It was watching Eric Kunzendorf's vimeo videos on the subject https://vimeo.com/16782952 that helped me greatly. They were the first videos that inspired me to consider the task as an enjoyable puzzle with applied logic and purpose.

Nice video with a time efficient approach to the retopo tools . A small written explanation of your demonstrated key approaches might be beneficial to those starting.

The effects of ambient sound on our tastebuds when it comes to our perception of food is well recorded. Haptic devices offer us physical resistance to surface but our ears also too speak to us about surface and touch. An audio pervert could play contentedly with the concept of stroking the rough grain of some gnarly wood whilst playing audio of a wet finger across a taught rubber balloon. Even digital sculptors I've noticed over the years makes noises when sculpting to fill the audio void. The wet slap of fresh clay , the dry scratching of an incising tool, the sound of scraping, the imaginary sound of our feet trudging through autumnal leafs as we switch on our computers that purr like happy kittens. Nothing whimsical about sound - bats can't see without it. Perhaps there's a little bat in all of us?

Great tips AbnRanger - never knew you could switch into transform on an extrusion.

The maintaining of polygroups within the insert brushes and the crispness available now of having connective poly modeling with the ease of dynamesh makes me most excited. For me polygroups offer so many quick posing and selection advantages. My admiration for Pixologic is how thoroughly they consider polygroup implementation into the process with each release .

Hi David, with many of the tools the new user is in a "what's in a name?" scenario before they have a mental construct of these tool names per pragmatic function. Some of these key "umbrella" understandings could be better reinforced in the literature I feel. I created a video some time ago on the concept of thinking of the tools by sculptural functional grouping albeit by comparison to ZBrush for ZBrush users coming to 3Dcoat. https://vimeo.com/31297729 Of note when it comes to brushes their uniqueness can reside also in their smoothing / polishing modes and not merely their default positive or negative modes. The smoothing modes of 3DCoat are one of it's real gems - yet little is made of this. Also your choice of brush parameter settings per brush and even best brush size may vary per task due to the resolution of your voxels. As you have seen- add to this the permutations and behavioral changes per brush using different e-panel settings and you have a rather deep topic.

Agreed that brush descriptions are currently sketchy. David ,try carve and extrude with different e-panel settings such as the rectangle over existing detail below, or pull the carve tool along the form and pull out from the form. You'll see other differences. Try using grow in stamp mode to fill a hole , try doing that with the build tool . Try creating a hole/indent then using the smooth facility of the the grow - now try the same thing with the build tool.Try using build on an empty over layer to an existing voxel layer - then try using the grow tool. The grow tool will add voxels based on the layer below in an empty layer. In other words some of the tools are additive also. You could merge the airbrush and build together then allow user control similar to ZBrush's picker for orientation modes, to normals , or to camera. At the moment build is to camera, airbrush to normals. Both are useful and can have different parameters set. That said It would be good to see a normal orientation or camera orientation cntrl added per tool regardless. What seem a little like subtle differences at first become subtle gems, but that's merely my opinion and I know there seems to be a push to simplify and I wonder if the baby will be thrown at with the bath water in attempting this? I've looked at this topic long and hard and always come to this conclusion - that the simplification of tools for new user expectation may and probably will be to the detriment/ functionality loss of the experienced user. Surely assigning your own preferred toolset is the best route ?

Bob, 10.5.8 working fine for me with the latest update 2 GHz Intel Core 2 Duo 4GB 1067 MHz DDR3 Running 10.5.8

cntrl+ up arrow saves view - cntrl+forward/right arrow scrolls through saved views and the lighting is saved with the scene in the render room - so you had to save variations of the file.