L'Ancien Regime

Good stuff, lots of character.. Maybe you should add this character to your story;

Isn't that deactivation of the older version only applicable if the Beta Tools are activated? I just fired up 4.9.74 and it gave me the warning that it would be deactivated in 8 days because I had Beta Tools activated. I went into Preferences, and turned off all the Beta Tools and then restarted 4.9.74 and I got no warning that it would be deactivated. Got to say there's a lot to love in the old version though I'm happy to have purchased the new 2021 upgrade...

... problem solved, sort of.

It should be a mix of both. The UI hasn't changed that much and really how difficult is it to produced an infographic anyway, particularly for a program that is all about graphics. Rygaard produced those two inforgraphics on the brush engine in under 2 minutes. I'm not asking for something that's immensely difficult here. The people that created this software know it inside out. What is to stop them from just whipping out an awesome PDF that is vivid , easy to read and comprehensive of all the tools functionality? Snip tool + Photoshop...it's easy to do whether in the initial creation or the updates.

Let's look at the Manual for the new Modelling Room for example. Let's look at the Extrude functionality. That's it? That's all we're going to get? Like the developers that created the four different extrusion tools didn't have the time to bang out two or three paragraphs on how it actually works, or take a few screen shots like Rygaard's above to demonstrate it? How to get it to extrude along a normal? Really? There was no time for that?

That's true but there's several things wrong with it. 1. The user base for 3D Coat is small , relatively amateurish, and reticent to post tutorials and advanced works or share workflows, compared to Zbrush which has an overabundance of super accomplished professional artists churning out superb tutorials all the time. 2. The "common knowledge base" is important but it's also unwieldly for those who simply need to get up and running and desperately need a proper manual that really goes deep into the functionality of the program in an easy to digest manner. We can't all be hovering over this forum looking here and there desperately for information that for the most part doesn't exist. Making proper documentation isn't something that can be easily dispensed with. As I've said before; go look at Houdini's documentation. This is how a software is supposed to present itself to its users. https://www.sidefx.com/docs/houdini/ This is a manual to learn from. What we have now here in 3D coat isn't adequate. I'm sorry. I just paid for my update and frankly it's not up to snuff. A one and a half minute demo on the new Modelling Room is what you get when you go to the manual and want specific info on the Modelling Room. That's not right. We shouldn't have to go to digman and bother him to tell us how this software works. Pay Rygaard to produce a proper manual.

yeah the password recovery letter I got sent me to a non functioning page on the Pilgway website. But I was able to purchase my update successfully.

Is it going to just be the same stuff that's online or will it be a more comprehensive manual that actually delves deep into 3D Coat's functionality? The lack of a good manual is really the biggest shortcoming to using 3D coat right now. I mean this to me is how a PDF manual for a program as deep as 3D Coat should look. Imagine if every tool in the new modeling room or all the complex possibilities of the texture baking tab had this kind of vivid instructions in the manual. Rygaard just threw these out in a minute or two in response to one of my questions. A manual encompassing this kind of functionality would really be a huge boon to all the users. Maybe you should pay Rygaard to produce your 3D Coat manual for you.

Both are badly needed. You Tube's main advantage at this point is its own user base of highly professional artists who can create hyper realistic work of the highest order. I'd like to see the equivalent quality happening over here. Kris Kosta at Fly On the Wall Studio for example..this is an essay by one of his students... And just a quick test and decemating works about as well as it did before. Thanks 2021; 4.9

That's awesome Rygaard. But can you also decemate the mesh locally too? And that's a superb graphic too. Maybe you should do an entire PDF book on 3D Coat and sell it online at Artstation.

I realize things have changed and I looked at the manual but I simply cannot find the Live Clay or Surface Tools like Subdivide in 3D Coat 2021. There's Clay/Draw when I put the object in the Sculpt Tree into Surface Mode but no live clay.. Anybody?

Split Tool; With 4.9 when you used the split tool on a Voxel Object, it created a new layer for the split off object that automatically received the default shader. I find with 2021 that no longer happens; there's no splitting off to a new layer and the shader remains the same.

These green new deal lunatics are going to ruin my life if this spreads to other N. American jurisdictions... This reminds me of the old Soviet Union where even in the 60's and 70's, only accredited communist members of the state controlled artists association had permission to buy artists materials. https://www.weforum.org/agenda/2021/07/being-smart-about-smart-cities-a-governance-roadmap-for-digital-technologies/

BTW now that you're here digman, if I tab out all the interface and just want to use the menu -> Windows -> Panels, How do I select the Texture Editor which isn't listed in Panels..

By "brush tool panel" and "brush engine" I take it you mean the Brush Options Panel?

Typically you have your guides ( the ellipses) and then you have the (in your case spiral) rails. Then you shoot the guides along the rails In your example video the the ellipse guides are fine but the spiral rails start out anchored to the first profile ellipse edge but then the two rail lines merge together part way through and the single remaining rail line devolves to the center point of the target profile not touching the target profile ellipse edge line at all. That certainly wouldn't work in any NURBS modeler like MOI3D nor in Maya poligonal modeling either. The guide rails should both touch the target ellipse profile line not its center point and should not merge halfway through, otherwise, what is the point of the second ellipse? I'd try that with just one rail between the ellipses for starters. A second one may be superfluous

One of the keys of photonic computing's superiority is that it's non-Von Neuman architecture. The computers we're using have Von Neumann bottleneck between memory and processor. Non-Von Neumann photonic architecture allows for in memory computing. But it gets far crazier than that when they start simulating neural synapses...and that is Neuromorphic Computing..

I started using the latest version with my Cintique and suddenly I was getting all sorts of problems too. First there was this; Using the move tool especially with Symmetry was making the brush displace itself from where I was placing it on the sculpt object. I fixed that with the first solution with Properties and DPI . This also made my entire interface much finer and frankly more impressive looking. Big improvement. But the brush still wasn't working right and the voxel surface would either jump way out or collapse. This seems to be solved by doing the opposite of the instructions; EDIT -> PREFERENCES -> BRUSHING -> and then setting TABLET INTERFACE to WinTab rather than TabletPC.

It probably wasn't but with me the mouse cursor works fine but the pen cursor can get lost way off on the most distant monitor. Took my tiny mind a while to figure it out.

If it's WACOM then you have to recalibrate your tablet or screen. I'm using the Cintique 24" Pro with two other monitors and I have to recalibrate every once and a while. 1. Open Wacom Desktop Center 2. Recalibrate pen to monitor 3. Select recalibration on new window that pops up 4. click pen tip to 4 crosshairs that pop up in seqence to 4 corners of monitor

No documentation again. When programmers write code, they tend to insert comments on each segment of code as they work for their own benefit and to help other programmers that will work on it. Surely they could at least just redact all those comments and throw them out there on a PDF so that the intentions the programmer could be made clear to the ultimate users? Houdini's documentation is the very paradigm of how this should be done. https://www.sidefx.com/docs/houdini/ Just go through this even if you never want to use Houdini; it's an encylopedia on computer graphics in general that's highly instructive to the greatest detail. Then look at how meager the 3D coat documentation is. And no I don't want to pester Digman to tell me what is going on. If this node editor is just for making sculpt room shaders that have no value in creating textures for a final render then really it's a waste of their time especially when their lighting system in the sculpt room is really just not up to snuff.

Thanks for this. What's your assessment of it? Is it a viable technique in the finished texture mapping or is it just a shader generator for use in the sculpt room?

Thanks. That's great. Now all I have to do is figure out how to use those nodes.

So is there a material node editor in RC3 that I'm too stupid to find?

Hey it's a big event for a small company. It's all going to work out. Thanks for the reply.