astraldata

This, too, is pretty crazy for low-poly work. I'm struggling finding a fast way around this since I have many uv islands... wtf, this is kind of an important feature for a huge majority of us doing game art... Seems like there'd be a better way now that 3dcoat has had time to mature. Doesn't seem like such a standard feature like this would be overlooked with such a small dev team -- especially when the framework is already in place in the UV room... D:

I agree, there should be some option to allow you to directly paint the texture seams if you desire to do so. I originally almost dropped 3d coat for this exact issue. Despite it being such an AMAZING program in everything else, it seemed like it took control from me over the one thing I thought it would GIVE me control when I bought it -- control over what and where I wanted to paint in my texture space! I don't care if it's only the Albedo map you give me control over, I should have full control (natively) over at-least my texture-coloring if I need it. I do lots of low-res work, and using 3dCoat would be amazing for flow if it weren't for such pebble-in-my-shoe issues like these. And to clarify why this is a problem to me personally: I don't use all the fancy color channels for simple low-res models, and not everyone uses textures and UVs for static imagery anyway -- sometimes they slide the texture across the model, and other game-engine-relevant stuff. Let me be clear -- I love 3d Coat. It does an amazing job doing what it does. But it has a PR issue. It feels wonky to new users for various reasons -- not the least of these offputting reasons are things like the subject of this topic. This quirky but in-your-face sort of stuff is IMPORTANT to fix -- even if it's only for the sake of a single customer's perception. That customer has friends and they will mention how quirky things are, and they will also mention if they feel 3DCoat can't do what they ask it to -- and, bottom-line is, they'll go elsewhere. At least allow an option to work on a given texture-channel with absolute control. Bottom-line is -- If the program needs to do something behind the scenes, it should STAY behind-the-scenes.

I forgot to mention this tool would also be able to extrude faces/points/edges as well as move, scale, and select them, both separately and simultaneously, perhaps with a simple modifier key or three.

That's interesting, but I was referring more to selecting+grabbing multiple faces/points/edges with a sort of falloff/tolerance, kinda like you would weight paint, but also be able to scale the falloff to single edge/face/point selection, while being not only able to move, but scale and rotate the grabbed stuff too -- and most importantly, this would work in the retopo room to allow low poly 'sculpting' with a single tool as well as allowing one to select as well with the tool, working on one face/edge/point at a time or an average of many, based on the falloff or alpha mask. Is this any clearer? That was, I guess, what I was hinting at with the equivalent of the anti alias brush in Photoshop, speaking more to the principal of innovating the fundamentals (the single pixel pencil into the single pixel brush into e.g. the vector pen in Manga Studio 5, and so on) rather than offering the 3d equivalent of anti-aliasing. I was referring to innovating the select + move/scale/rotate/extrude functionality of typical modeling programs into one made for low-poly sculpting. Voxels and retopo are great, but sometimes it's just faster to box-model -- except it isn't actually fast in most 3d programs, nor is it a lot of fun for an artist who wants to just play with form. Sculpting is best for that, but combining the simplicity of low poly modeling and the freedom of sculpting is an ideal solution to my workflow issues, as I'm not creatively inclined to enjoy selecting, moving, reselection of nearby points moving them less and scamming them too, and so on just to create a little falloff curve on my low poly models, for example. A tool like what I mentioned above would be perfect, alongside proper simple modeling tools for organic character modeling as well as other simple mostly-organic low poly assets like rocks or cars or whatever. Other modeling tools based around low poly modeling simply don't have this, or it's just not as cool as 3d Coat for everything else. As stated before, it'd be my dream to be able to stay in 3d Coat for all but the most specialized modeling requirements, like complex array operations and other such architectural stuff and actual animation, which are more suited to parametric modeling and specialized workflows that are almost independent of model creation. For everything else -- there is 3d Coat.

Sorry for the double post, but I can't edit my last post for some reason... I just wanted to add: As a huge fan of this application, I never want to leave 3d Coat for simple character, vehicle, or armor modeling, whether high-poly or low-poly! Unless I'm doing intense architectural stuff, 3d Coat should cover it all, since it's already 80% there! I'm seeing this program as the (original) Photoshop of 3d Modeling, but even Photoshop has a 1 pixel paint tool called the pencil tool -- and it's there for those rare occasions when you DON'T need every other awesome thing it offers -- and the kitchen sink too. 3d Coat should offer the equivalent in poly modeling tools -- especially if it can make them better! Consider what adding softness and anti-aliasing did to the pencil tool -- now just consider what adding the 3d equivalent could do for low poly modeling! (A side note: mesh tools / room is a great name for the proposed room, because retopo is very misleading and confusing!)

I personally think that combining the points and faces and the transform tool into a single tool with a sort of 'soft' selection mode (potentially through alpha masks and/or falloff settings) would allow for both exact selections and organic brush like operations, allowing for an extrude + scale operation being applied over multiple points/faces simultaneously. This would aid volume tweaking and simplify precise tweaks and modeling operations all in a single tool. I'm sure we have tools that come close, but none quite as low-poly and modeling-oriented. Just to be clear though, being able to also create points and faces out of thin air and not being forced to have them based on existing geometry would go miles for me. If instead we could base the topology strokes, for example, on an invisible plane or axis (or maybe even a reference image plane?), this could speed up creating low poly geometry for characters as the scaffolding would be there already due to the strokes tool creating the necessary geometry in 2d space, then using the quads tool or even the strokes tool as a *bridge* between the 2d verts/points to create the faces across three dimensions based on the locations of the selected verts (something akin to the quad tool would be ideal, but possibly using strokes instead). I hope what I'm saying is making sense. All in all, 3d coat definitely needs some simple tools to easily create geometry from scratch (without relying on existing/imported models) and to be able to select/edit/extrude/scale and even draw that geometry -- especially in the retopo room. (As an aside, Mesh tools / room is a great name for the room, because retopo is very misleading and confusing!)

I absolutely LOVE 3dcoat and would like to do ALL of my character, organic, and very basic hard-surface modeling in it. The one MAJOR thing preventing me from doing this easily is the fact that I must ALWAYS start with either A) a voxel object, or an imported mesh -- and this is such a hassle! I would like to start 3dcoat with some form of a low-poly model (such as a plane, triangle, sphere, cylinder or cube) to start with that I can go immediately to the Retopo room's toolset with and shape it up manually by adding/removing quads, edges/loops and extruding/scaling faces. I wouldn't need anything fancy, as there are better tools for heavy-parametric-low-poly workflow needs, but all I'm asking for are the essentials to get started and shape up some organic (and sometimes slightly inorganic!) forms with the brush and quad tools for example! To me, the essentials would be the following: have the option to start out with a triangle/plane/cube/sphere/cylinder to begin modeling with (or of course, importing if you need something more complex) face/edge selection/extrusion/scaling on the x,y,z all the current geometry-manipulation tools provided in the Retopo Room such as adding edge-loops, quads, etc., using curves, planes, etc. That's pretty much it. For now, I'd settle with simply starting out with a triangle/plane/cube/etc. that I'm not forced to have to import or convert back and forth between voxels, etc., that I could simply massage into nice low-poly shapes from the outset without having to worry about doing retopo on very simple models since I could do them much faster with the amazing Retopo toolset -- and I could even UV Map and Paint them -- all in 3dcoat! From the moment I saw 3dcoat's retopo and painting tools, I had hoped it would offer the awesome Retopo Toolset for simple low-poly workflows like mine too... but alas... I am still left waiting... possibly forever.