The Candy-floss Kid

Increasing the depth and smoothing ratio as you step up in resolution should help greatly as well as changing perhaps to an e-panel setting such as draw with constant depth and radius for a brighter and more definitive response. The surface mode brushes give faster/ snappier responses as well as jumping in to proxy mode as you suggest to make bigger changes quickly to a low resolution proxy. There's a different flow and rhythm when working with both apps and the merits of both make fine creative bedfellows. Cherry picking the best of both certainly helps in shortening the steps to achieving rewarding results faster and to this end switching your mesh out to ZBrush at a key stage for a higher end brush response is prudent.

For those of us fond of anatomical study - a great resource

Such a handsome creature. Such a soul. Such an endearing shot. Happy Christmas Michalis and thank you for your input , sharing and advice here. Christmas wishes to all. Andrew , Raul and all here and at Pilgway have made 2011 such a great year for 3D-Coat. They even helped to make ZBrush better too :-)

From Wickepedia :"Arthur Thomson (21 March 1858, Edinburgh 7 February 1935, Oxford) was a British anatomist and anthropologist. He is best remembered for his formulation of Thomson's Nose Rule, which states that ethnic groups originating in cold, arid climates tend to have longer and thinner noses, while the noses of those from warm, humid climates tend to be shorter and thicker.[1] The longer nose is an adaptation that heats and moistens inhaled air in higher latitudes." A sweet find full of great illustrations. Digitizing sponsor: University of British Columbia Library.Book contributor: University of British Columbia Library The link to download the pdf of Arthur Thomson A handbook of anatomy for art students (1915)

I was watching Joanna Mozdzen sculpt on youtube and noticed she sets up the tight little turns/ shape of the medial canthus by placing a wee ball of clay by the inner corner of the eye - using this to quickly set up the surrounding forms as it turns. It helps give that little highlight kick here too. A simple technique that works really well in 3D Coat :-) A real time saver to achieve the subtle twists here quickly even at lower resolutions and one new to me so it's a pleasure to share. In many ways it reminded me of the sculpting technique of placing two nodes of clay on either side of the mouth to quickly define the depth and turns there.

I believe these are also on youtube. Here's the link to the full video http://v.youku.com/v_show/id_XMjIzNTAxNzk2.html

Moving on....... brushing in ArtRage....looks cute

Aha - cool Tip, many thanks for posting this!! This had been frustrating me as I'd just assume there was no depth setting for this tool.

These look good. Very tasty.

Personally I think they owe the Lightwave users base a big apology for Core the confusion which is a thoroughly needless nonsense and should be scrapped forthwith. Who needs this kind of BS , small print and misunderstandings, isn't life too short? Version 10? I got a Core Member t-shirt but no disc , oh and just a download link after finally hassling Newtek Europe as the weeks and months passed . Very poor, atrocious in fact. The T-Shirt went straight to charity , the download never got loaded and the whole seedy experience ? Somewhat like being robbed up an alleyway. Have they heard of Blender? Seems like a good enough upgrade for those in FX , but still the glaring omissions from which Luxology sprung verdant leave me to wonder on the corporate direction. I expected more - much more. The consciousness and expectation of the audience has changed.

Thank you both, much appreciated.

Thank you Digman , ok so it's an initial implementation of Raul's work and a step towards another method of adding detail ? Thank you Kay for the explanation of the Booleans. You say these are surface booleans - so are they "traditional" polygonal meshes that can be turned back to voxels should one wish? So if say I was creating a scene or character in 3D-Coat, layers could be polygonal and/ or voxel in nature?

What's going on? Does LiveClay represent a directional change of emphasis in 3D-Coat or merely a broadening of additional functionality? Is it about including all the advantages of surface modeling over voxels - kinda like Dynamesh in reverse with the emphasis still on returning to the glorious freedom of voxels? Is it a drive to be more like Sculptris with regard dynamic tessellation and in consideration of the existing advantages of Proxy mode what advantages does dynamic tessellation offer when even Sculptris flakes out at a certain poly count? A tool such as the cut tool in LiveClay - what is the difference between it and the standard voxel cutting methods? What are the creative advantages of moving in this direction? I had always considered 3D-Coat a voxel sculpting program but is it moving in a greater a hybrid voxel/ surface direction? So many questions but you get the gist. I'd be truly grateful for some illumination on this conceptual umbrella subject.

Lorenzo "RemoveStretching" is in the Mac version , top left hand corner of the interface's tool parameters. I sometimes find that using an existing prefs directory from a previous version creates issues like this and therefore would recommend going to "users" > and deleting the "3D-CoatV3" folder and starting again to see whether this resolves the issue. Keeping copies of this folder between releases is a good idea as it contains the preferences for shortcuts and many other parameter settings. So by deleting the folder you will lose these. Maybe somebody could pinpoint exactly what to trash from that folder so you don't lose all your existing prefs?

Best to think of most of the surface mode sculpting brushes as the equivalent of ZBrush's clay buildup tools - they have a way of filling depressions quickly as well as having an inherent planar quality in their nature and thus they help building forms quickly. Basically you're setting up the planar changes and smoothing out the differences where as in standard voxel mode the tools have a softer building quality more like ZBrush's standard brushes. Early experiments with LiveClay (save the artifact/ exploding mesh glitches ) in Beta mode suggest that it's the best yet for this Planar building and smoothing technique. This is very exciting as almost this one tool is getting the great percentage of the work done by itself.

Mac version: 3.5.27A Exploding mesh particularly at lower/ low mesh resolutions creating system hangs Crease clay exploding/ artifacts - fix = restart - reload voxel sculpt Liveclay - hangs system : fix - save form regularly and after lowering resolution by re-sampling. Aside from this these tools are fantastic even at low resolutions and even when maintaining the mesh resolution by pressing the enter key. They have a lovely snappy action and I can see that they will replace my habit of using some of the other tools. The SnakeClay is fantastic for hair curls. A much appreciated addition, I love it. Noticed too that the Chisel tool has a different response in .27A from .19A - upping the plane softness and the depth in .27A is required to make them similar. Please no losing tools in V4 - they all have their nuances - even similar tools - often in their shift/smooth modes

I should add this request is for sculpting when I wish to set the brush to "draw with constant depth and radius regardless of brush pressure". There are many advantages to the positive definition of attack of the brushes in this e-panel setting so having a cntrl key indent depth variable for this setting would be fantastic.

Many times when sculpting I wish to set a different input ratio for left click outward depth and cntrl click indent depth.

Wow, these are amazing render results. Thanks for the post Michalis Here's the video from the link.

Many of you will already know character design notes blogspot.com but for those that don't there's the link :-) Something for everyone here interested in the art and design of characters. For example some of my favorites 1,How to Kill a Great Character Design, Part One: Twinning and Parallels 2,How to Kill a Great Character Design, Part Two: Sawtoothing, Tangents and lack of Variance 3,Successful Silhouettes, Shapes and Action Lines 4,A study in anthropomorphism: Disney's "Robin Hood" 5,Bad Character Designs with Conan O' Brian!

Dynamesh and mesh insert assets from basic volumes - for all the world like a voxel sculpt methodology :-) Neat , cute and economical. Liked this video a lot. My initial response to this update - big fan of the curve solutions for sculpting. Been after curve control effectors for sculpting in 3D Coat for some time. Is it possible for voxels to hold sector information like polygroups? I can see immediately that this functionality is giving ZBrush some strong speed and control advantages when sculpting certain effects. Here's the video

A fascinating post. Many thanks. As an aside for those new to 3D Coat the increase (grow) brush will add volume (volume paint if you will) based on another voxel layer as will carve , sphere, curves, snake,spikes , muscle.toothpaste (burrow). The difference being that you can't color per voxel stroke only a color for voxel strokes per layer

Many thanks Michalis for your insights. Would you consider sharing your insights for the community as a narrated video series on Vimeo?

Ramp up the 3D Coat render room to allow accurate shadows in a more complex voxel environments , allow painting on voxels then the artists and illustrators will show work to kick ass. 3D Coat is not making enough of it's better rendering stage and perspective options. It astounds me that it doesn't grasp this. Think of ways to cache and be able to create complex voxel scenes with moveable lights. Grasp this and 3D Coat will leap frog as a tool for creation and visualization.

Another Picasso comment that I very much like for it sums up an increasing conundrum facing artists so bombarded by resources and inspiration "What saved me is that I became more interested in what I found than in what I was looking for." In other words the reconnection to the "found" self frees the artist. We can all become constipated by choice , comparing or measuring ourselves, measuring the adequacy of our skills to fulfill our visual ambitions and thus disconnecting ourselves from our inner unthinking force.