randomguy_j

So far its turning out pretty good! Are you using an alpha for the fur or is that hand sculpted?

First thing I will do is make a cube and/or cylinder. In voxels mode I will carve it, sculpt it, etc. Sometimes I will take it to surface mode and tweak it or add another primitive. When I am done, I will export the object as an OBJ and import it into zbrush where I will tweak it a little more. Then I will use the applink in Zbrush to send it back to 3D coat as a pen alpha. After adjusting depth (Usually a negative value) and leaving size at 256, I create the new pen alpha, create a new cube primitive, put the cube in surface mode, and sculpt with BuildClay using the new alpha while tweaking the rotation, spacing, etc. Usually when I am testing the alpha is when 3D coat will give me a message about stability issues giving me a chance to save before crashing. This is a stubborn bug and isn't always consistent. Even if I just import an OBJ as a pen alpha without going through Zbrush I sometimes will get the crash warning. As a side note, I have also noticed for a while that depending on how complex your surface is, the LC CutOff tool in surface mode doesn't seem to do anything.

@ LJB: Yeah that is a nasty bug. Hey has anyone run into a problem with 3D coat crashing after creating and trying to use a custom pen brush? It has happened to me several times. I am using 3.7.14A non cuda 64.

Yeah that helps. Never heard of the whole biased vs unbiased though until after I got the link. Since we are on the subject, Anyone here ever heard of/ played with Bunkspeed Shot (used to be known as Hypershot)? Its a really fast (almost realtime) render engine that will use both your CPU and GPU. http://www.bunkspeed.com/ Luxion also seems to have a version of Hypershot they call Keyshot but I think it only supports CAD files.

I would as well @ Carlosa: How is Luxrender? Is it easier/ more intuitive to use compared to Mental Ray? How is it with global illum and final gather?

Nice update!! The icons took a little getting used to since I was used to the old ones but I do like the new ones more as they seem more clear on what the tools do. In voxels it seems if you hold control while using the rectangle feature with clay and carve you get the same result that you would if you were to use cutoff. Is it supposed to be that way? For formality I am using 3.7.14. Thank you for all of your time and dedication to this program. Because of 3D Coat, I am finally able to drop Zbrush from my workflow.

I have been looking for more software that can convert a normal map to a displacement/ height map. I used to use Crazy Bump but I could never get the end result to look right. I will definitely look more into Shadermap. Too bad Xnormal cant make that convert.

I agree with the points thing. I also would like to add that rotating a cylinder primitive on one axis before applying is a little problematic as the dot is covered by a ring when in an ortho view.

Yeah hard surfaces are quite fun in 3D Coat. Even though I hate insects, I do like your insect designs (I had a chance to look at one of your web links.)

That is a good idea. Thanks for the tip!

Thanks for the comments guys!

Hey guys here is an update to the thread. This M249 SAW is a weapon for the ferret I am working on. This is the high poly version and the only software used is 3D Coat.

Hey thanks for the tip! I recently have been getting more comfortable with the carve and various curve options. I do agree that for the most part the brushes are not very good with hard surfaces. However, the flatten clay brush seems to be pretty good at times. Wouldn't it be cool if we had a sort of "revolve" option for some of the curves for the carve tool? I noticed you can save and edit curve points on the "closed spline" option. A revolve option would be cool if someone wanted to create lets say a scope for a gun or an hour glass.

Well the primitives I am using started out as voxels so the warning probably came before I went into surface mode.

Hey thanks for telling me about that as that fixed a lot of the issues I was dealing with. I figured since it was red it probably wasn't good but I had no idea just how bad it really was. Out of curiosity, do you know what it means when an object is uniform/ non-uniform?

Hey guys, I am trying to sculpt a flat surface but I am met with brush issues. First off most of the LC brushes sometimes will have a bumpy "dirty" trail after a stroke and the smoothing still seems to have a hard time with small bumps. I am also met with an issue I cant really explain so I am going to post some screen shots of it. Its almost as if the brushes are treating my flat surface as a round surface. I also noticed (you may notice it in the shots) that the radius of what the brush is affecting seems to be muuch wider then what I am seeing from the display. In the shots I am using the Flatten Clay brush. I am also seeing on the bottom of my screen "NonUniform". Not sure what that means or how to fix. I have tried cleaning memory and a few other options but nothing seems to make that go away. The model I am working on is made from 3D coat primitives. I am using v3.7.13 GL NON CUDA 64 bit (DX did the same thing)

Thanks guys! ( and gal of course ) I have a lot of ideas for this guy.

The texture work is lookin really good so far. However, does a real turtle's rear area extend that far out of its shell?

To help free up memory you could try using "cleanup memory" in the voxels menu. Are you in voxels or surface mode? If in surface mode, something that helps me out is to press and hold "w" to see the wireframe then lightly go over it with the "decimate" brush to reduce the poly count in areas that are really dense. To enter surface mode press the "V" icon to the right in your voxels tab (Be careful because if you decide to go back into voxels mode its hard to retain details you sculpt in surface mode). Even with a powerful rig it seems if you have highly dense polygon areas the program slows down. For your human do you have any anatomy reference aside from pictures of people? I always have a book or something up that shows muscles/ bones to help me out when sculpting to make sure everything is accurate.

Hey guys! I figure it may be easier to just start a new thread and just update it with all of my WIPs instead of making a bunch of new threads. So first up is this little guy, my killer ferret. He is still an early sculpt and there is much to be added. But don't let his cuteness fool you. . . . . . Feel free to comment and critique.

@ 3DArtist: Yep using "cleanup memory" did fix the problem. Good idea! Is cleanup memory like a delete history?

Hey can anyone here confirm the pose tool ripping apart voxel models? No matter the option it seems to just take a part and "rip" it from my mesh. I am using v3.7.12E

I haven't used mudbox for posing but I have used Zbrush and from my experience I would say its easier to pose characters in 3D coat then in Zbrush. However, you could try Blender for rigging and posing. Its free and has almost everything any expensive software has. Also since Blender has been around for a long time documentation isn't too hard to find. Infact, I even found a site that lets you download free digital magazines for Blender.

Oh yeah the quick access is a very welcome change to the program. This is going to make things much smoother. I am diggin the new look so far!!

No problem!