wilson66

Thing probably is, there is no such thing as 'zones' in xNormal. There are no extensive options to set. And when it still produces better results than 3DCoat, there has to be something awry with the code. Take a look at ZRemesher in ZBrush. It produces far better results without any guides than 3DCoat.

So, if I have a finished mesh (with final UVs) and want to sculpt additional detail onto it, then extract, lets say, a normal map from it, I will: 1. go to the retopo room, press SPACE, click on 'import', select the mesh. Hit ENTER to place the mesh. Its in the Retopo room now, but not in the voxel room. To put it there and start sculpting on it, I will: 2. go to the Voxel room, press the SPACE bar, select 'merge', then at the bottom the tool menu, click 'pick from retopo', then click 'Apply'. 3. Do my sculpting. When finished, I switch to the Retopo room an extract the normal map by clicking on 'Retopo -> Merge with NM'. Correct? When I import my object into the retopo room, it comes in at an extremely small scale (object was exported at a scale of roughly 2x2 meters), so small that camera clipping occurs when I zoom in close. I can scale the oject up, but it'd be nice to know why 3DCoat imports it at such a small scale. Is there some preference setting I can adjust? Lets say I want to create new UVs for my imported retopo object. When I switch to the UV room, it is not displayed there. Why not? There are some UV tools in the Retopo room also. I can mark the seams, then press 'Unwrap'. The UV set needs to be applied, the 'Apply UV set' button is missing in the Retopo room though. When I switch to the UV room and press the button there, I get the message 'Use the Unwrap function before applying the UV-set to the model', although I pressed the Unwrap button in the Retopo room already. 3D Coat does not seem to recognize this. What to do?

The stamp tool is here:

I have a quick question concerning the desaturate/darken ect. tool in the paint room. When I paint with this tool onto a layer, the strokes are very irregular. Take a look at the screenshot: I don't see why the strokes are not completely smooth, regular strokes, but have some kind of noise to them. It happens with a Wacom Intuos 4 with low pen pressure, 3D Coat 4.0.1.3A and Ubuntu 13.10. Would be nice to know if this is 'normal' behavior in 3D Coat or there is some setting I need to adjust. The other painting tools, e.g. the brush tool, produce strokes exactly as they should, there is no such noise visible. EDIT: Might have something to do with the crappy Wacom Linux driver, noise is not visible in the Windows version of 3D Coat (Windows 8.1). But why do the other brushes behave correctly on Linux?

You are right, since 3D Coat is a program with such a broad range of features, there is not just that one single workflow for everything. There could be some quick tutorials though that describe the most common workflows. Lets say I want to create an animatable character, including all textures, in 3D Coat. To understand how that works its not necessary to watch a person for hours sculpting each and every single spot and pimple on the characters nose, whats important is the big picture, the outlining of the several different approaches. Just a couple of minutes, no details, e.g. what buttons do I have to click to get my retopo mesh into the UV room, and extract the maps, without having to skip through dozens of long videos where he describes at time stamp 12min48 or whatever what you are looking for.

I absolutely agree, its hard to wrap my head around the general workflow in 3D Coat also. The tutorial series on youtube is great, and I'm thankful for the effort that person has made, but they are too long for a beginner. I would be thankful for one brief tutorial: sculpting -> retopologizing -> texturing -> exporting options -> re-importing after edits have been made to the lowpoly mesh in an external program (e.g. UV created outside, but maps extracted inside 3D Coat). A very simple object will do, some random sculpting on a sphere and a couple of paint strokes on the retopo mesh will completely suffice, outlining the ENTIRE workflow in one single tutorial is important.

Guys, please, I did not want to start any kind of rant here. I just thought lattice deformation (as in the screenshot I have posted) would be a nice feature addition to 3D Coat. If that is not what others here want, so be it. Lattice deformation can be done outside of 3D Coat, as well as a number of other things. I can use Sculptris for LC sculpting, ZBrush for vertex painting and auto retopology, Mari and Photoshop for texturing, Modo or Topogun for manual retopology, and still get the work done without starting up 3D Coat in the first place. But to not add a new feature because there is a workaround or there are other programs that can do it instead is just silly in my eyes. The fewer programs we have to use in our workflow the better. But thats just my personal opinion of course.

Yeah, I'm aware of the distortion feature in 3D Coat that distorts images like the liquify filter in Photoshop. It works for many cases, but if you need precise control and need to distort a texture image in a more extreme way (don't know how else to put it) brushing the image into that shape is not optimal. Try to pull a line into a nice, even circle using the distort brush, for example. It might work, but it'll take a long time, and you'll have to do a lot of brushing and pulling to eliminate unwanted distortions because its only possible to transform (move) the elements of the image, not rotate them. Its much easier to use an actual lattice (the liquify filter is not a lattice as I understand it) where you have a limited number of control points that you can move around directly. Its not a big thing, and this lattice distortion can be done outside of 3D Coat easily, but I though it'd be nice to have anyway.

You do not mean the 'Distort Image' feature that you can choose in the top window when a material is selected and where you can distort the image using a brush, right? Its great, but does not give exactly the kind of control I'm looking for. What I'm talking about is this: Is that possible? Where is that feature hidden? Excuse my questions that may be simple to answer. I have a lot to learn.

Any possibility for adjustment layers? And lattice deformation for textures (before applied to the object) would be nice. But I'm dreaming here probably. Anyway, thanks for that great piece of software Andrew. Only started using it a while ago and still need to wrap my head around the complete workflow, but I like it a lot.

Rapid brushes corrupt the surface (create holes). Tried reconstruct/ close hole features, both had no effect whatsoever (close hole actually made the holes slightly larger). Painting the small area (red circle) with the "Reconstruct" brush projects the mask all over the place. Might or might not have something to do with sculpting on an area where two surfaces on the same object are in close proximity to each other. 3D Coat 4.0.12B (Windows 8.1).

I have a little time on my hands, and would like to really start using 3D Coat (I purchased a professional license a short while ago). I already watched some tutorial movies on youtube (which are great by the way), and already painted a lowres character (I love the 3D Coat painting tools, much better than Modo's). I have some quite basic questions concerning workflow in 3D Coat. I read in a couple of places that the workflow in 3D Coat is very linear. Maybe someone can explain what that means exactly? I am used to ZBrush, have used it for many years professionally. When I create a character there are essentially 2 approaches that I use: 1. create the character from scratch in ZBrush. Start with a dynamesh sphere and go from there. Then I export a highres version of the character to Modo, retopologize it there, create UVs for it, then re-import the retopology mesh into Zbrush and project the details from the highres mesh to the lowres one. Extract normal and/or displacement maps. When I need to alter the lowres topology I can do so, subdivision levels can be frozen and then transferred back afterwards. 2. create the character in Modo, create UVs for it. Import the character into ZBrush and create the details there. Export normal/ displacement maps. What would I do using 3D Coat? This might be a stupid question (probably is). When I import a lowres object created outside of 3D Coat and want to sculpt the details, I can keep the original lowres mesh, right? The topology cannot change at all, because I need to create normal maps (and UVs) for characters that are already rigged quite often. I'm asking this because in most videos I have seen the characters were created entirely in 3D Coat using voxel/ surface sculpting, then retopolgized, all in 3D Coat. What happens if the topology of a character needs to change drastically after the details are already sculpted in? Is there a way to do the edits in an external program, but keep some of the sculpted details (transfer them)? Can 3D Coat bake displacement maps into geometry?

Very nice. I got a dual license for Windows and Linux (I use Ubuntu 13.10 64Bit). I'm sculpting already (got the 4.0.0.9 beta version which is the newest version for Linux), and have a quick question: I noticed this in the demo already, but CTRL + Z to undo does not work for me. When I press that shortcut nothing happens, I need to detach the Edit menu and click Undo there. Not a big thing, but it'd be nice to have the shortcut anyway of course. What could be going on?

Well, thats good news, thanks. Now I'm waiting for the 3D Coat christmas sale (lets hope it'll actually come...).

No answers, so I guess that this is not possible? The maximum resolution for textures is 8k per object then? I cannot put, lets say, the head and the rest of the body into two different UV tiles, import that into 3D Coat, assign a separate image file to each tile, and then paint seamlessly between both? Thats not good.

Simple, but important question: I'm not sure if this is what Tiles means, but in 3D Coat you can assign a separate image file (or layer if you want to call it that) to each UV tile (or UV set since 3D Coat does not have UV tiles I think), and then paint across those multiple image maps, right?

So 3D Coat is not able to paint across multiple image texture maps? That would be really serious flaw.

Well, too bad. Thanks for asking anyway! Will get 3D Coat for the regular price then of course, probably from the site AbnRanger has posted above.

Didn't see it either, but I thought maybe carlosan knew something we didn't (it says "Stay Tuned for more...." at the bottom of the vendors list).

Hey, thanks a lot. Will probably wait for the 29th then, already signed up.

Very nice, thanks for the link AbnRanger! Have never heard of that site though. Have you bought something from them? They can be trusted?

Thanks for the answers guys. I wrote an e-mail to the adress carlosan has posted, already got an answer, and I think what I'm planning to do should be possible without problems. I'm aware that there is an educational version, but since I'm planning to use 3D Coat professionally that version is not an option for me. For some reason the professional version on Steam is cheaper than the professional version here on the 3D Coat site (why that is I still have no idea), also they don't offer a Linux version on Steam, so what I described above will be the way to go for me. That Andrew is charging a little extra for a 2nd OS license is perfectly fine of course.

When I buy the steam version of 3D Coat for Windows, and then buy an additional upgrade serial for the Linux version here on the 3D Coat site, will that combination work? Will I be able to use 3D Coat in both Windows and Linux?

Are the questions too difficult to answer? Too stupid? Noone here knows if the manual updating of the Steam version is possible or how to do that? I'm trying to decide whether or not I'm going to buy 3D Coat and whether or not its going to be the Steam version. Help me out here guys. Thank you.

Hi, I am sure this has been asked before, and I remember having seen a thread about it, but can't find it now. Lets say I buy the Steam version of 3d coat, it is the regular Pro version with the exact same functionality, right? I'm asking because the Steam version for some reason is much cheaper than the Pro version directly from the 3d coat site. Whats the reason for that? The Pro version from the 3d coat site costs 81€ more. When I buy the steam version of 3d coat, I guess I can still use the latest build here from the site? How does this work exactly, can I just download it, and install it to the Steam directory? I read a FAQ entry about that somewhere, it seems to be possible, but the instruction itself did not make sense to me. Thanks for your patience!