Fluffy

You may need to be a little more specific since 3D Coat contains both a Curves tool and also a completely unrelated Curves feature with it's own menu and editor. Perhaps you could provide a link to the video in question (preferably with a timestamp)?

I'll be honest, I've had the occasional issue with objects in surface mode developing holes or other artefacts but I've never seen anything like that in 3D Coat before (and I've been using it since around version 3.4). I've tried using the default brushes as well as custom made ones and this is the result I typically get... Is this something that occurs with all brushes/tools or just specific ones? Can you share a screenshot of your settings in the Tool Options panel (here's my settings for the Extrude tool used in the above image) As for the Factures feature it's actually a whole separate room, you can learn more about Factures from this YouTube video... or by checking out some of the threads on these forums, such as this one...

@castaneda The reason your decals/brushes look faded is because when you import a texture to 3D Coat as a brush if the texture has no alpha channel 3D Coat will try to generate one based on the combined luminance of the existing red, green and blue channels (which it will then also uses for the depth map, etc). This means that if you import a colour texture rather than a black and white image, the alpha channel that's generated will vary in opacity based on the brightness of the image which is why the red pixels in your texture are showing up as semi-transparent (because they aren't white). If you hover your mouse over a brush you can see each of the channels/maps that are associated with that brush, here's an example brush I just made (using 8-bits per channel, 24-bit .BMP file format)... and here's the same brush but with an alpha channel added to the texture (also 8-bits per channel but using 32-bit .TGA file format)... As you can see the Alpha of the brush created using the texture without an alpha channel is grey rather than white, so whenever you use it the results will appear faded whereas the brush created using a texture with an alpha channel appears completely opaque when used... So, in order to create opaque 3D Coat brushes using colour textures you have to include an alpha channel. As for creating alpha channels in Corel Painter I only have a license for Painter 2018 but assuming they haven't made any dramatic changes you can save to PNG complete with alpha channel by simply hiding your canvas layer so you have a transparent background... then choosing Save As from the file menu, selecting the .PNG file format from the drop down menu and making sure you enable the Save Alpha checkbox... after which you can import the texture as a brush in 3D Coat and the transparency of the layer you exported should appear as the alpha channel of the new brush...

I've never encountered a 3D application that didn't have bugs and issues of some kind or another but one of the things I like most about 3D Coat is its versatility and how you can often find multiple ways to achieve the same result. The downside of this is that not all of these workflows are as effective as others and sometimes a process that you think should logically work fails for what seems like inexplicable reasons. Like any other app 3D Coat has its bugs and some of them can be frustrating but in the years that I've been using it I've yet to find a problem that I can't work around simply by adjusting my workflow. As for your specific problem, since you only use 3D Coat because of the materials/shaders, perhaps you'd be better off using Surface mode and materials in your workflow instead of shaders, or trying the new Factures feature if you need higher resolution surface details?

The default grid (with Grid Density set to High) equates to the following settings using Customize Grid Grid Step is the size in units of each grid division, while Division Number is the number of Divisions in each quadrant of the grid. So if you want to effectively extend the default high density grid while keeping the same unit size and subdivisions just use the above settings but increase the Division Number accordingly.

The reasons that the back-faces on the polygons look darker in comparison to the front-faces is because the back-faces are in shadow since they're facing inward rather than towards the light source. Single-sided polygons aren't exactly something you can "fix" since making them double-sided is a process that occurs in whatever renderer/platform you intend to use the final model in (some will support double-sided faces and some won't). More importantly making the polygons double-sided won't allow you to add textures to both sides, whatever textures are on the front side of the polygon will appear mirrored on the back face since both sides share the same UV space. In order to make polygons which are double-sided and have the ability to texture both sides independently you'll need to add additional polygons to the model. I don't really use Blender but here's a couple of ways you can do it via the Retopo room in 3D Coat. First you'll need to use the "Take mesh from Paint room" option (see previous post) or just import a copy of your model to the retopo room. Once you have your model in the Retopo room, select all the faces using the Select All Faces button in the Poly Groups panel If you want the faces to have volume/thickness then you can use the Shell tool, otherwise use the Flip Faces tool (both are located in the Selected section of the Tools panel on the left hand side) If you use the Shell tool then you'll need to UV unwrap the newly created faces and then use the Update Paint Mesh with Retopo Mesh option (see previous post) to replace your original model in the Paint room whereas if you use the Flip Faces tool all you need to do is use the Retopo > Per Pixel Painting (no baking) option (see below) in the Bake menu to import the flipped version of your model into the Paint room alongside the original version (don't forget to rename your UV Set so you don't end up with multiple UV sets with identical names). Once you have the flipped version of your model in the Paint room alongside the original version you can just swap between the two UV sets depending on which side of the faces you wish to work on.

It's hard to tell from just those two images but your missing polygon problem could just be down to single-sided polygons. The easiest way to check if that's the case is to try turning off Backface Culling in the View menu. As for the issue with brush strokes, etc. appearing in multiple random places one possible explanation is overlapping UV islands which you should be able to see if you turn on the Wireframe option in the Texture Editor window. If you're unsure if the model has been unwrapped correctly in Blender you could always unwrap it again in 3D Coat to see if that fixes the issue. You can either adjust the UVs on the paint model directly in the UV room or use the Take mesh from Paint room option in the Mesh menu of the Retopo room to import the model there and the Update Paint Mesh with Retopo Mesh option in the Bake menu to apply the changes to the model in the Paint room when you're done UV unwrapping. (Using the UV room works best if your model already has textures applied since changes to the UVs there also affect the textures whereas if you make the changes in the Retopo room and then update the model in the Paint room only the UVs will be affected)

As I said, it's a temporary solution (and a pretty hacky one at that) rather than a recommended method of creating custom shaders and overall it's a minor issue that will most likely get fixed sooner or later (personally I find that texturing using smart materials is a lot more effective than baking from shaders so I'd class it as little more than a minor irritation). As for 3D Coat being "bad", I'm afraid I'd have to disagree there. With the wide range of features and capabilities that 3D Coat has to offer I'd say that it's probably one of the best 3D apps currently available for modelling and texturing. The majority of complaints I see about 3D Coat from professional artists are related to its UI/workflow and how hard it is to swap from ZBrush to 3D Coat, which isn't surprising given how much of a dumpster fire the ZBrush UI is.

Just to clarify, Unlink Sculpt Mesh is one (very useful) method of getting your low poly model from the modelling/retopo room to the sculpt room. Additionally, since any model you make in the modelling room also exists simultaneously in the retopo room you can use Import>Pick From Retopo as well. The subdivide and flat subdivision options can be used to increase your mesh resolution before import and the Estimated Poly lets you know how dense the resolution of your object will be (in surface or voxel mode). As far as the difference between Voxel and Surface mode goes, essentially since voxels are "volumetric pixels" when you're working in Voxel mode you aren't working with geometry at all and the object you're seeing is just a geometric approximation of the voxels as you manipulate them, kind of like a giant 3D matrix of voxels that you turn on and off to create 3D shapes, so the higher the resolution of the voxel layer the more refined that shape can be but consequentially the more polygons it will take to accurately approximate that shape. Conversely when working in Surface mode you are working with vertices and polygons and, using the Auto-Subdivide option available in a lot of the Surface mode brushes, you can add additional fine details to parts of an object without having to increase the resolution of the entire object. Voxels are extremely useful for blocking out shapes and organic modelling and performing booleans with them is flawless in comparison to working with geometry but in order to retain any sharp edges or fine details you need a fairly high resolution which can equate to millions of polys per object. Personally I try to stay in voxel mode as long as possible (probably a little too long at times) and only switch to surface mode once I want to add really fine detail or sharpen edges and corners. Fine details and hard edges are where Surface mode really excels.

Yes, as a temporary solution it seems to work. I just found the Documents\3DCoat\UserPrefs\Shaders\PbrShaders\[Shader Category]\[Shader Name] folder and replaced the default CustomSampler files with custom textures. You'll need to rename the new files to CustomSampler1.dds, Custom Sampler2.dds, etc. so, since the names aren't particularly descriptive, I found it easiest to set the custom shader up in 3D Coat as usual, then open the ShaderParams.xml file (located in the same folder) and find the TexReplacement tags. Those should give you a clue as to which specific texture is meant to replace each of the Custom Sampler#.dds files (for example the file listed in tag TexReplacement[0] replaces CustomSampler1.dds, TexReplacement[1] = Custom Sampler2.dds, and so on). If my assumptions are correct then CustomSampler1 is the base colour, CustomSampler2 is the normal map, CustomSampler4 is glossiness and CustomSampler5 is metalness (I have no idea what CustomSampler3 is meant to be for). FYI I'm using Irfanview and the plugin for .dds compatibility (which can be found in the plugins collection available on the Irfanview site) to convert to .dds, but I'd assume any program that supports .dds will suffice.

@wonderland78 It's been an issue for a while now I think. I noticed after looking through the ShaderParams.xml file for the custom shader that the correct textures meant to replace the defaults are listed in the TexReplacement tags at the beginning so I suspect that 3D Coat is meant to replace those default textures dynamically rather than overwriting the .dds files. Still, replacing the default .dds textures in your custom shader folder with the desired custom textures should solve your issue for now.

At least part of this issue still exists. Using the latest version (2022.55) I created a custom shader and applied it to a voxel cube then I swapped to the retopo room and added a low poly cube and baked the textures from the voxel cube and this was the result. The .dds textures contained in the new custom shader folder (located at Documents\3DCoat\UserPrefs\Shaders\PbrShaders\...) are the default shader texture rather than the custom textures that were added to the shader. Manually replacing those default textures with the custom textures in .dds format fixes the issue and baking the shader to a texture will then work correctly. Duplicating the voxel cube also results in the shader textures reverting to the defaults on the new layer even though the shader still appears correctly on the original layer/cube. Without wanting to confuse things further there's also an issue where saving and reloading a file will cause objects to lose their assigned shaders if those shaders don't utilize any textures (i.e. the shader only uses colour and cavity settings).

Recently upgraded from 3D Coat v4 to 2022 and want to start by saying that you guys are doing an incredible job! One issue that I have noticed is with the Spine tool in the modelling room. It works the first time it's used, but after that it ceases working and becomes unselectable. After some testing I discovered that it seems to work fine in version 2022.5 through 2022.7, but 2022.8 and all subsequent versions seem to have the same issue (I tested this by upgrading to each release candidate using the update manager and also by uninstalling and doing a clean install of 2022.12 then updating to 2022.13, the results appear to be the same). Hope everyone at Pilgway and their respective families are safe and well!

Most likely by looking at the current setting for Scan Depth Inside the Object (0.096) and noticing that even at a setting that low the Inner Shell preview was well inside the object?!

Ah, sorry I thought you were referring to the eraser on the stylus, no those are the options for the paint tool. If you want to turn off stylus pressure for the eraser tool in 3D Coat you just need to change the Stroke Mode to Constant Pressure (or Radius & Depth Pressure if you only want to disable stylus pressure for transparency but still have it affect brush radius).

@tantangula I don't think there's a way to turn off the pen pressure solely for the stylus eraser in 3D Coat (or the wacom driver settings for that matter, although you can almost fake it with a custom pressure profile), but you could always bind a hotkey to the pen pressure toggle on the opacity settings (see image below), then use that hot key to turn pressure sensitivity off when flipping your stylus to use the eraser.

@Cybergooch No, voxel density is uniform across each layer. Think of voxel layers as bitmaps but with 3 dimensions rather than 2, increasing the resolution of a voxel layer increases the density of the voxels on that layer in much the same way that increasing the resolution of a bitmap increases the number/density of pixels in the image.

Selecting all the faces of your model then using the Retopo menu > Select Faces Picking Method > Select N-Gons command will leave only the Ngons selected.

Same problem here (4.8.10), the extrude tool has no effect if the voxel layer resolution has been changed (regardless of whether the change was made before or after any objects have been added to the layer).

I normally settle for something between 1 million and 4 million triangles (the cylinder in that example was around 1.5 million I believe).

When using stencils/smart materials you can change the mapping type via a dropdown menu in the Preview options panel (use the Settings button to access controls for texture scaling and positioning) Once you have your stencil mapping set up correctly select the Extrude tool (or a similar tool) with Stroke mode set to one of the selection/lasso tools and make sure that your Extrude Direction is set to Vertex Normal and that Ignore Back Faces is turned off in the Strokes panel, then drag a selection over your object.

I'm currently using 4.8.04 but I keep a close eye on release notes in case any changes are pertinent to whatever project I happen to be working on at the time and whether or not releases are marked as stable and update accordingly. My primary reason for upgrading to 4.8.04 was because of the addition of the Bake menu in that release and the fact that it provided an effective workaround for this exact issue. I've been using 3D Coat since around version 3.5 and to my recollection have never had any luck with preserving hard edges on models imported to the Retopo room (I'm guessing Andrews post in this thread solves that particular mystery though ). That's awesome news, the ability to set sharp edges manually is something that's been at the top of my wishlist for a while, removing one of the few reasons I have to leave 3D Coat during my usual workflow, thanks Andrew!

@Deviner75 If your retopo model has a checker pattern on it like so... then you should check to make sure that you're looking at the right UV Set. (ETA: the checker pattern is the default setting for previewing UVs on a retopo model, so if you don't see it then you should also make sure that your checker style isn't set to "No Checker") If your retopo model is completely blank like so (and your checker style is set correctly, see above note)... then your model has yet to be unwrapped (try selecting the Mark Seams tool then using AutoMap to quickly generate a UV map for your retopo object).

@Missy Alternatively, if you'd rather not delete the original layers, you can right-click any layer and choose Export > Export Object to export the contents of a single layer.

Doesn't seem to work for me, I imported the exact same .OBJ file as you see in the last two screenshots to the Retopo room and with UV Set Smoothing set to No Smoothing and Lock Normals enabled it still ignored the smoothing groups of the cube. Also, the tooltip for UV Set Smoothing states "This option works only if you have chosen to subdivide model during import". So far the only solution I've found for importing and baking a model in 3D Coat without losing the smoothing groups is to do it via the Paint room.