AniRhythm

yes, exactly that ....especially cool for makehuman. ..I have tools to make a rig, but i'd rather just jump into modifying / molding a base mesh into something entirely new and go right to iclone and filming. It's really not necessary to start from scratch these days and would be a welcomed feature for those that just want to get right into shaping and texturing.......with pbr and stubstance textures going mainstream....that's becoming an art all it's own. between this and - a tool that specializes on keyframe animation, would be a welcomed feature to those that just want to focus on dressing up their characters and making them move - then exporting that data to their game or film software. - machinima and game devloping! ( or game modding! ) There are more noobs in the world wanting to make fun stuff without having to go dizzy figuring out blender - than pros

I'm thinking maybe this could be a very cool feature to have, especially with game design going mainstream. Imagine a pre-rigged biped character ( or quad for that matter! ) that you can mod - already rigged, head to toe - including facial, like a daz genesis character, but customize it with 3D coat - export it rigged to fbx ready for unity or any software that takes fbx.

which btw, this is as close as I could get it by sticking to the face count rules, and textures / bump maps - the basic shaping in pic above was started in iclone. fully rigged including facial.

Iclone can take in fbx from most packages that offer it - that's what's cool about it - you can sketch out / animate render ideas super fast in iclone - but have to go 3rd party to create original models. for example....I converted one of their base characters to Godzilla - but because I'm just using obj exchange - I have to stay within their face count to not break the weightmaps etc. But I can export and re-import fbx with the rig - I just don't know of a simple way to host it. This was moded adhering to their face count rule and only obj export, it would have been great to really dig in with detail in 3D coat. I can export the rig, and keep the bone naming convention, heirchy - it specifically works with the iclone IK system - I just want to alter that mesh.

yeah, but that's part of the issue with iclone - it's only for filming and rendering, and doesn't have rigging / weighting tools. We can modify mesh parts - which still works with 3D coat - but now I'm limited to basic tools since I have to observe a face count limitation in order to bring it back in without errors. I'd like to take a rigged model, and completely transform it in 3D Coat without the face count rules. If I simply had a way to just host the rig while I work on the mesh in 3D Coat - it wouldn't be a problem. But I haven't come across too many 'simple' options. Thank you

Hi All I've been trying to come up with a solution for this for a while - I think I've found one - but figured I'd post about it in case there was a possible solution I've missed. My issue is that I work in iclone - we don't have a rigging set up, but what we do have are characters we can customize - ie make more clothing for....we can export these characters as fbx, and re-import them as fbx. Problem is, I can't import the fbx characters and their rigs to 3D Coat to customize without a host software. I can't import the fbx skeleton / character to blender to host, ( breaks up the rig ) - I have messiah, but you can't import fbx there either..... I can import to shade 3D for Unity - but their tutorials are very scarce and there is no applink ...so that's a drama to figure out. any ideas on how to do this in a way that doesn't take a month of tutorials, or 1,500 - $4,000 worth of software to host the rig so I can work on the mesh in 3D Coat ? The only solution I've found so far is carrara 8.5 - even thought it doesn't have an applink, it has a good selection of tutorials, the process of skinning looks pretty straight forward - so in theory, I should be able to update the mesh relatively quickly and affordably in comparision to all other softwares that can host. would be great if we had an applink to 3DX5 pipeline. which is the module that allows us to import / export fbx to iclone. Cheers

Thank you very much, the videos you posted are what i wanted to see - so far I spent most of my video watching trying to get the hang of what the tools do. I noticed the different choices in the move / select - still trying to get use to all the different tools in different modes - sometimes in voxels i'm looking for the move tools and sometimes in the mesh I wish I had the voxel tools .....same with hard surface too - with time and practice I suppose knowing what mode to go to for specific tasks will come more fluent - for now though I spend a ton of time going "I know that tool is around here somewhere!" in the wrong mode lol Cheers!

Thanks. I've gotten through a good chunk of the 3D Coat tools, but wasn't sure about the most basic things lol.....I appreciate the response, helps me confirm I wasn't missing something and I have to adjust in the workflow. would be nice though to have textures in voxels - this way I could ..for example ....wrap a picture of someone on the voxels and carve it out right on the picture. Or even edit a standard mesh by voxels proxy - but I suppose that wouldn't work if the main mesh is substantially lower in face count.. Still trying to find my workflow with the tools I use - for making models from scratch - the voxels are amazing - but for modding items that have strict rules - it's a bit more challenging! Cheers

update- i figured out how - with just importing textures ....but now on the 2nd part - subdividing mesh and converting to voxels ....do I have to reimport the mesh specificially for voxels or is there a way to convert ? basically on the archipelis models - I want to import, subdivide - do basic adjustments then convert to voxels for more detail. - I suppose I'll lose the texture and have to import it as a background image at the voxel level .....but is there a way to keep it a basic workflow like i mentioned above without having to re-import ...simply for the sake of brevity and disk space lol also wish I had more tools on the tweak page - in iclone - in order to make morph faces, I have to stick to modding their mesh and keeping it the same face count ...so if I converted to voxels - iclone would reject it simply because the face count / edge loops changed, thus limiting me greatly to how much I can morph faces. - bringing that point up in case I'm missing a feature in 3D coat that would make this possible. Thanks again

Hi All, I'm trying to import some characters I already have that are pretty much done and want to touch them up - they already have textures and I just want to add a few details ....but I can't for the life of me figure out how to import these objects with their textures. ie - I use iclone - I want to import the character bodies and paint over the existing textures. I would also like to use a program like archipelis to draft basic shapes and start basic carvings before I convert the model to voxels for more detail. but everything keeps importing gray Thank you! ~Ricky

Hi All, I'm using the 4.07 version - am having a ton of trouble with the UV'ng - at least with one particular model - I tried manually and with the uv path ....and for example ...the right hand glove - makes the new section ...but the left, simply refuses to make a section ...may have to switch back to main release because there's no working around it ...even tried new paths - I also suspect a memory leak somewhere because sometimes I have to shut down the software and restart it to clean out errors that seem to carry over from re-loading a file. Also , on the auto topo - if I keep the edgeloops checked ....it hangs - remove edgeloops option, it works....wasn't the case with the prior version. and I can also confirm the holes issues - I was violently modeling ( lol ) and insteand of stretching, the voxels would rip - I tried fixing them with overlapping, but when I tried to smooth it out or add clay ..the holes came back.....and the software would randomly crash when I tried to use the bridge function - I think it has part to do with the brush randomly shooting off to different directions of the mesh and making the bridge bigger than it was supposed to be. Overall I love the software and commend Andrew on his amazing progress - bugs and all! Cheers

Total noob user here, I have to say Andrew, your work - and your community for that matter is outstanding, and very appreciated. I'm an Iclone user - still new to animation and learning the ropes. this is my first real attempt at character modeling, if this doesn't speak for your work I don't know what will....I took 2 days to review your tuts and forum posts and this is what i made from it....so an honest heart felt thank you and the Iclone community would love nothing more than to have you and the 3Dcoat community there with us!