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TimmyZDesign

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Everything posted by TimmyZDesign

  1. No I think the "related searches" doesn't have anything to do with the current search.
  2. Houdini has a $200/year indie license. Also Lightwave often has big discounts on their pricing which makes it pretty much indie (like the crossgrade deal). Also Cinema 4D has a limited version which is much cheaper than the full studio version.
  3. Hmmm sounds like these Google Trends charts verify what you have seen happening in the industry...maybe they are somewhat accurate after all...On the other hand people searching for the words "Autodesk Maya" or "Autodesk 3ds Max" on Google doesn't necessarily mean they are buying the product. Plus, like Chingchong said, the Google Trends tool itself might be a bit wonky. On a separate note, I wonder about the effect that the hobbyist/indie/freelance demographic has had on the market. Are big studios still the biggest customers? Maybe all these monthly rental plans and indie pricing everywhere is becoming a significant source of income for 3D software companies? For example, they sell 10,000 expensive pro licenses to a big studios, but maybe they sell 100,000 cheap indie licenses of the same product.
  4. Yeah a new version of Lumion is supposed to be released sometime this week. The new render engine is even better. The preview videos are showing very nice photorealistic architectural fly-throughs.
  5. Oh I didn't think about that, you are thinking in a more scientific way than me! I guess we should test Google Trends more to see how it works, then we will know what results to believe. But I was just having fun with it. It is pretty interesting! Anyways, I'm headed to bed now, it's late here. I'll check back in on this thread tomorrow.
  6. Who knows, maybe people are really not that interested in 3D modeling as they used to be? But yeah, like I said, I don't know how scientifically accurate Google Trends is. How can they even know if their search algorithm is working correctly? I guess they must have tested it somehow. But it is amazing to think that Google has all of that search data in a gigantic database somewhere!
  7. This is what Google Trends help says: "Where Trends data comes from Google Trends analyzes a percentage of Google web searches to figure out how many searches were done over a certain period of time. For example, if you search for tea in Scotland in March of 2007, Trends analyzes a percentage of all searches for tea within the same time and location parameters. Data that is excludedSearches made by very few people: Trends only analyzes data for popular terms, so search terms with low volume appear as 0. Duplicate searches: Trends eliminates repeated searches from the same person over a short period of time. Special characters: Trends filters out queries with apostrophes and other special characters." So, I guess that it is based on just what people search for in the Google search bar.
  8. I saw somebody over on the Newtek forums using Google Trends to gauge 3d software popularity over time, so I decided to try it out myself. Of course I don't know how scientifically accurate Google Trends is, but it is a lot of fun to put in some search terms and see what it comes up with! I decided to do two searches. My first search was to see which software programs are Autodesk's best selling products, and how their popularity has changed over time. I picked four that I thought would be big sellers, and I came up with this chart: According to this, it looks like Autodesk's AutoCAD products are currently their best selling software. 3ds Max used to be a really big one too, but it has declined quite considerably! Is Max losing popularity for architectural visualization? Maybe architects are just doing their visualization renders directly inside Revit now, or they are using visualization software like LumenRT, Lumion, Twinmotion, or even game engines instead. Also maybe game artists are quitting Max and moving to Maya LT. I also did a second search trying to see which 3d software is currently the most popular, and I came up with this chart: It looks like Blender and Cinema 4D are pretty steady over time. Maybe they have their user base locked in. That big decrease for 3ds Max and Maya is pretty stunning. But wouldn't the other software options increase if Max and Maya decrease? Where are those customers going? Have all the big studios just made their own software and they don't need Max or Maya anymore? Are there too many viable alternatives to Max and Maya out there now? I don't know, maybe these charts don't mean anything important really, but it is definitely fun to have a look and wonder about what is going on! What do you all think?
  9. Yes every video by AbnRanger has a treasure in it. He always demonstrates a little trick that I didn't know was possible. Thanks for dropping the knowledge on us!(And big thanks of course to Andrew for always including something special in each tool!)
  10. Thank you Raul for all the hard work you have put into the Quad Paint tool! It is definitely already a good tool for the Retopo Room in 3D-Coat! Of course all of us would still like something even more complex, and I think the sketch-based retopo method that Carlosan suggested is good, but I saw another approach that you will probably find interesting as well. Please have a look: http://lesterbanks.com/2015/05/data-driven-retopology/ Thanks again!
  11. Congrats ajz3d! Great work!
  12. Great! Thanks Farsthary! It looks like some of the polygons were not extruded on some of the edges (the interior edges at the end of the video for example). Maybe it only looks that way in the video but the faces are really there? Anyways great work so far! Thanks again!
  13. Thanks for your work so far Farsthary! It looks like it should be useful additions to 3D-Coat! I sincerely hope that your personal problems will be resolved soon! And AbnRanger I hope you will be alright too! Best of luck to you both!
  14. 1. Yes it can do automatic UVs and they seem to be pretty good. You simply click on a button and then it is done. There aren't any settings. 1.c. Manually creating UVs in 3D-Coat is very easy (I'm serious), so I would recommend just doing that instead of using the automatic feature. 2. Yes there is an automatic smoothing option for normals where you can enter a desired angle. This is available when importing models into the Paint Room. 3. I don't think you can enter an angle for that, but there are various ways to relax/decimate/smooth the mesh either by brushing a specific area, or applying the function to the entire mesh. The degree to which the relax, decimation, or smooth occurs can be controlled, but I don't think it is based on angle, it is a percentage value. 4. You can automatically retopologize a triangle mesh into quads (this function also has multiple settings so the user can get desired results), or you can perform that retopology manually to get even better results. That retopologized mesh can then be subdivided in an external application if desired. The automatic retopology function (although good) is not perfect however, so I would recommend manual retopology to get more exact results. Manual retopology in 3D-Coat is very good. 6. Yes it supports Ptex, but I recommend testing it to see if it suits your needs because the implementation in 3D-Coat is somewhat different than other apps which support Ptex. (It might actually even be better than what you were expecting...or worse...depending on your needs). Overall I recommend that you download the free trial and test 3D-Coat for yourself. My brief answers are not adequate enough for you to see if your expectations will actually be met.
  15. Wow ajz3d! That monster is amazing! Great job so far!
  16. ...by the way, all this CAD stuff reminds me that 3D-Coat needs more CAD-style modeling tools. CAD is usually NURBS modeling, but I think 3D-Coat's voxel hard surface modeling is actually very similar to CAD modeling, and many CAD methods of modeling can be used the same way in 3D-Coat. For example we already have some nice 2D and 3D grid-snapping in 3D-Coat, combined with the ability to draw out, extrude, or boolean objects from b-spline curves, and even a nice new measuring tool, so we are more than halfway there! If Andrew just tied these kinds of basic CAD style "sketch" tools together, we could be modeling stuff to exact engineering specs in 3D-Coat! I'm sure there are many customers who would find multiple good uses for that!
  17. Another great tutorial Phil! Thanks so much! I am also very impressed with LWCAD, it's such an amazing plug-in for Lightwave!
  18. Your importing problems: Always center the preview gizmo before importing objects. Click on Reset Axis and/or Reset Space, then import. This way your objects will come in at 0,0,0 because the preview gizmo will then be located at 0,0,0. If you don't see the preview gizmo there after importing, then click on those buttons. Also, you are importing objects that are tiny and/or huge. The personal objects you import and the default objects in the Models palette probably have drastically different scales. So when you click on a model in the model palette, it seems like nothing happened because it is microscopically tiny. You should repeatedly click and drag on the center cube in the preview scaling gizmo, again and again, until you finally see the object appear. The auto scale button may help you do this faster. So basically you think it isn't working because you put the gizmo in a weird place, then import it out of sight, and/or the scale is huge or tiny so you can't see it when trying to import. Try all the buttons in the Tool Panel to help you get the gizmo centered and to get a good scale for importing. Voxels and Surfaces: The voxels in 3D-Coat are visually represented in the viewport by a surface. That surface is constantly shrink wrapped to the outside of the voxel volume. You can see that surface in wireframe mode. Each time you alter the voxels, that surface visualization will be recalculated, and shrink wrapped to the voxels. Therefore, you will never see stretched polygons on the surface visualization of Voxel Mode. In Surface Mode you will be looking at a real polygon surface. Turn on wireframe mode to see it. Unlike Voxel Mode, these polygons are not recalculated and reapplied every time you alter the mesh. Instead, they are physically moved in 3D space. Therefore it is possible to stretch the polygons the more you move them over time. When you switch from surface to voxels: the interior of the surface mesh will be filled with voxels and a brand new surface visualization will be shrinkwrapped around it. When you switch from voxels to surface: a brand new real polygonal mesh will replace the current surface visualization. While in wireframe view, switch between the two modes to see what happens to the mesh. Disadvantages of Voxel mode: The mesh is uniformly subdivided. There is no local subdivision. Advantages of Voxel mode: No polygonal stretching ever. Very complex booleans are very simple and intuitive. Disadvantages of Surface Mode: The polygons in the mesh can become stretched and folded in upon themselves while sculpting. Advantages of Surface Mode: You can subdivide locally wherever on the mesh you want, and to practically any resolution you want. Therefore you can have extreme detail and high resolution on one part of your mesh while having low resolution with no detail on another part.
  19. Ha ha ha! You guys crack me up! (like a Utah teapot) Anyways, no worries, I was just kidding about the ignore list. Also I'm amazed that the video I linked wasn't the one you were talking about! How many sneezing/exploding teapot videos are there in existence? Ha ha ha ha! Then again, maybe sneezing teapots were the benchmark tests for early animation software (Maxon Sneezabench 1.0)
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