RabenWulf

To be fair, you do not have to worry about topology either with Zbrush via Dynamesh. Via online docs: " DynaMesh is a perfect solution for free-form sculpting because it removes all need for focusing on topological constraints." Just throwing that out there to avoid confusion.

Wacom Tablet Properties will be installed along with the driver. From there you can set up the pen. The most common config I have seen is to have the top side button as right click, and the bottom side button as middle click. This will let you alt + top side button for zoom.

Hey, at least I have the balls and maturity to buy and or seriously learn software before making a conclusion off of it. You should try that some time with zbrush, it is obvious you wont though. Its not hard to do what I am asking you to do, it is far more relevant than making youtube videos of stuff you can already find all over youtube. Something is wrong with you if you cant even go and do that much. Using cars as some kind of magic comparison is nothing short of a logical fallacy. It is silly, stop it. Why dont you go seriously learn zbrush? Talking from experience is a lot more productive, but hey I cant expect too much from a fanboy right? I'm not going to play your "show me your videos" game, its not a good shield nor will you seem to accept why its not necessary. Might as well argue semantics at this point since thats about as far as you are willing to go.

That video really doesnt say much, its obvious the results are not nearly the same nor can you make sweeping judgements based on carving a few lines on a sphere or flattening a few edges.... How do you show a feeling? With ZB there is a feel, a kind of quality to the how the mesh is being displaced as well as as a form of control via the wacom pen thats present. When you mix this with the brushes and the options tied to the brushes (very simple) you get flawless results. This impacts the quality of the sculpt. Thats why you wont get it until you actually get over your zbrush interface trauma and for at least curiosity sake figure out what they are doing different that results in such good results. Its the difference of having a fine scalpel and a mallet. Other areas are worth a video demo, such as masking, polygroups, transform/posing, and overall mesh control... but there are hundreds of videos already covering that. With ZB you can pull out an entire arm, with finely detailed muscles, fingers and automatic polygroups from one sphere easily... masking gives quick and detailed control when pulling out geometry, no fiddling with pose tool settings or artifacts, no swaping between voxel and surface mode. No need for curves. Just easy mask, pull, and sculpt. Doing the same thing with 3D Coat, even using voxel mode's curve or freeze brushes takes way too long and its extremely low in quality, trying to detail on top of it becomes more of a struggle than is necessary. This can be solved in 3DC with improving the sculpting quality across the board, reassessing how "pose" and "transform" work, how masking is currently implemented and the lack of fine control over the masks, the ability to mask by depth, or get some kind of selection group (polygroup) to easily work with. Too many brushes act like you are squeezing out toothpaste and not finely layering on surface mass. Its critical to understand why this is important and the easiest way to do so is to "taste" zbrush seriously.

I can say the same to you, pick up and learn zbrush first... use it on a project, know it inside and out then come back and talk to me. I already explained why your "challenge" is pointless, but you seem to be using it as a kind of shield.

Funny, I clearly said "What about exist in application neutral art communities?" How on gods green earth did you get zbrush forums from that? Why do you think everyone not singing the praise of 3D Coat sculpting is some how some plant from the zbrush forums? Its insane. Take off the tinfoil hat please. I am recommending you spend some on time on non application centric forums, get out of the echo chamber for yourself and interact with artist from all over with no one exact set of tools. Polycount is one such recommendation. The fact you ignored everything else has been noted.

You see it as well =) Its something zbrush users or those with serious experience with zbrush would notice. One thing I am confused about is that if the "presets" are so good and are the answer to every bad brush in 3D Coat, why are they not the defaults? There is some maintenance required to clean up the whole set of tools/brushes. Agree that sculpting is a bit more fun in 3D Coat though, its more familiar and conventional.

There are enough videos going over what zbrush does, what comes out of it and how its used... just watching a zbrush video and a 3d coat video on sculpting shows the difference. You wont seriously learn zbrush before you make a conclusion, yet you want me to go and start making youtube videos for you? Its unnecessary. I took the time to learn and seriously use 3d coat, why dont you do the same with zbrush? "My contention is that you've been just repeating what you've heard other ZBrush users say, and have not really experienced this huge disparity, yourself " Your contention is just confirmation bias. I OWN ZBRUSH, so how foolish is it for you blindly proclaim that I am just repeating what other zbrush users say? How can you blindly make such an absurd claim, one that you cannot objectively back up? I put down money, time and effort to learn a large assortment of applications. I like 3D Coat but want it to get better, otherwise I wouldnt be here. Do continue to learn and objectively analyze various applications? What about exist in application neutral art communities? Perspective matters. The disparity in brush strokes/displacement, in masking, in grouping and workflow, its real. You would not figure this out though if you keep running away from learning and analyzing zbrush. You dont even have to like zbrush to see what its doing right or better, where the standard has been set and vice versa. Common sense. Also stop going back to this old "3d coat brushes suck" projection you have a habit of doing. Just because something isnt up to where it could be doesnt mean it "sucks". Can you not look at everything in such black or white terms? There is improvement to be made here. Whatever label you choose to tack onto the current status of the brush system for sculpting doesnt matter, only that there is improvement to be had and that its obvious it should come well ahead of something like sculpt layers.

I have noticed that you have a habit of saying things like "I hear that a lot" or "a lot of people"... how do you prove this? How do you know what people are doing or experiencing? It seems like you set yourself up every time to back your firmly planted bias on this issue. Its not like I cannot understand your bias, you have talked about it in the past... Remember its not the first time we have had this discussion on here. Back in October you admitted that "That weird interface has largely kept me away from ZB" and that you have dabbled in the trial a bit. Imagine, writing off a program because of the "weird interface" or that pixologic copied 3DC over the autoretopo. Remember you also called me a "zbrush fanboy" just because I replied with some information about zbrush that was positive on a 3D Coat forum... (Quote: " You're the one coming across as a ZBrush fanboy, since you are trying to promote in ON A 3D COAT FORUM. ") My point here is that you have established you have an anti-zb bias in the past as well as never really jumping into ZB. You have at times admitted zbrush is better on the brushes but blame it it on "head start" they had (which is not entirely inaccurate), but also go into a feature comparison... you said what makes 3D Coat great is the dynamic topology and ability to vertex paint interchangeably. That certainly is a bonus point for 3D Coat for that particular workflow, but it still doesnt erase the quality issues and workflow of other features or base features (like sculpting). More features is not necessarily a good thing if the stuff they are built on isnt the best it can be. So with that said, doing the videos is pointless. It wont erase your bias, it wont change my experience or observations. All one has to do is look at the content coming out of both applications to see the wide gap in quality of sculpts. Sadly even blender has better sculpts coming out of it than 3D Coat at this point in time. I too prefer to use 3D Coat for as much as possible, and its certainly not bad when you compare it to dying product like mudbox. At the very core of a good sculpting workflow is the brushes and how they interact with the mesh, the algorithm that displaces the geometry and how its used... as well as masking (and selection features in general, example: Polygroups) and transposing. All three of these need some serious work in 3D Coat, this really shouldnt have to be up for debate. All the extra features, are not as important (this includes sculpt layers, also applies to ZB as well). 3D Coat will be able to showcase a lot more high end sculpts if it improves the quality/workflow of those 3 things. Just try putting aside your anti-zb bias, spend some time with it based on those 3 things mentioned, and you will see the obvious difference. Btw I do not want 3DC to copy ZB, I want it to be better or at least catch up to it on the basics... and right now its doing none of those things. Still usable in production? Sure depending on what you do and the quality expectation (as well as realism vs stylized). Lack of polygroups and masking options can result in a lot more work though and time requirements (plus effort) are also important. Focus on building up the foundation, not luxury features like sculpt layers which do not show their worth until the actual quality/workflow levels up.

I'm sure they have tried them, as I have many times. Their effectiveness compared to something like zbrush is grossly over exaggerated. They still have the over all problem of the other brushes, which probably has something to do with the brush engine or way in which the displacement is occurring. Even with that problem, you still have really bad masking features (or lack there of) that are a bit too basic, polygroups and surface selection..ect... over all the sculpting isnt bad when you compare it to a mudbox or blender, but once zbrush comes into the picture the quality and expectation levels change drastically. Also the same with surface mode, its a bit silly to think that people just stop at voxel mode and come to a conclusion. Careful of confirmation bias. Sculpt layers are just not something that should be considered a priority when it comes to sculpting. Andrew has something really good with 3D Coat but instead of more features persay, the quality levels and workflow need to level up a bit.

" i guess someone could say 3d coat just works differently, coming from zbrush i feel like this brush is going backwards for workflows compared to zbrush. its such a powerful brush in zbrush, i use it 95% of the time and its killing me not having this working like zbrush does in 3d coat. really would appreciate any insight on this. " Thats one of the few things that have been killing me with 3D Coat... the brush system and the way they appear on the mesh are just not quite right... I gave up trying to get zbrush like brush strokes (and quality) from 3D Coat but its just not possible until Andrew improves upon the sculpting features. @AbnRanger " This is why I hope, with 4.7 now released, I hope Andrew turns to Sculpt layers first. " Sculpt layers are nice feature but they are not really a necessity. Whats the point if the sculpting quality/brush types and strokes as well as workflow just isnt up to par? Its far better to focus on getting higher quality, higher fidelity sculpting results first as the base, then add on the extra companion workflows like sculpt layers, otherwise the development is just working backwards and thats not good. The zbrush alternative is a pretty good market thats been somewhat untapped. 3D Coat can really fill that niche with some serious work on the sculpting aspect.

Extensions are fine. It means you have more time to polish your entry and more people can submit. I get that sometimes people wont want the competition, but also look at it from Pilgway's point of view. What do they get out of the competition? Most of these competitions are done to get some good marketing material out of them, while also generating interest in trying out the software. Two things have happened. 1. Not enough material has been created to generate some good marketing material. 2. 4.7 has been released, bringing in more interested parties. To get people interested in delving into a new release, the extension further aids in that endeavor. Remember, this is not autodesk here, they dont have mountains of money to throw out. Its a small studio in Kiev, Ukraine with a niche market. Its in every 3D Coat user's interest to see the software get out of the niche category.

Just noticed there is some weird behavior when rotating with the Curve tool active (green sphere) via the Voxel room when Symmetry is turned on. It seems to jump around and fly towards the navigation camera. Checked back and noticed this is happening in older builds as well as the released one.

Cheers! This software is really leveling up. Love the new professional look (website, styling). Looking forward to seeing how the sculpting and modeling features develop past this point. Painting is top notch (could use some workflow/UI improvements, but feature set is solid).

I think so too, but would prefer to see the actual sculpting quality (results, brushes, workflow) raise the bar a bit first. The particle brushes if not done right end up just being more of a gimmick than something important as well. So there is a lot of risk with very little reward to get out of it imo.

I doubt it. Its available for my other two posts. Only that one is missing. Anyways this is a diff topic altogether and we are going off track. Is there any mention on what 2.7 will mainly focus on development wise?

By the time I went back it was gone. Maybe its a timed thing.

Thanks, I figured that out not long after I posted... the edit button went missing. I have no idea why.

1) Is this going to be another paid update? (noticed it doesn't recognize my 4.5 license) I was under the impression it would have jumped straight to 5.0... 2) Is there a list of what 4.7 will focus on and or what is (if any) the main development focus for the 4.7?

Speaking of that, I really hope some more love is given to sculpting in general (surface and voxel)... I definitely want it to see 3DC level up a bit zbrush and surpass it with the kind of quality sculpting you can get out of it.

Heya, so I have been out of the loop for awhile. Noticed the new pbr shaders... they are very nice addition. That said, is there any information on what exactly is being worked (features/major improvements) on at the moment or are we just seeing mostly bug fixes at this point?

Regarding the brush behavior, I noticed two different things happening. If it skips around, I have to restart 3d coat and its fixed temporarily. What I experienced after loading it up and having all settings reset to default required an entire PC restart to get the behavior back to normal.

Damnit I was just warming up to 3D Coat again and it messes up again. Was using it earlier today, everything was fine. Loaded it back up and all settings were reset, didnt remember past save files but for some reason my custom matcaps were there. On top of that, the Brush behavior isnt the same before, the quality dropped. Color Blending starts showing banding. Why is this happening? So frustrating. Anyone else have weird issues like this after 4.5?

Yep, right now if you are doing hand painted style texturing, 3D Coat is probably one of the best options out there for it due to tool set, layout and ability to quickly pull colors and blend them together. A handful of blizzard artist are known to use it. Otherwise its usually photoshop or a plugin for 3ds max. I managed to pull out some what better results in Mari, but due to its unique design (and formerly price point), I can see how it wouldnt be considered...at least just yet. ON a side note, here is Blizzard's Tyson Murphy in action.

That's unfortunate, I thought it was improved. I get it with all shaders and custom matcaps unfortunately outside of the first few defaults. Granted you can see a bit of this in other applications its just way more pronounced with 3d coat.