cineacoat

@Silas Merlin I think you misunderstand what I wrote. What I suggest would make 3DCoat easier by not having to convert a geometry object to another type of geometry object to make it usable in a different room. This would get rid of all conversions making it easier to use. You could still optionally bake stuff if you wanted.

We don't really need a Paint Object, Sculpt Object, Poly Groups, whatever else for geometry. Geometry is geometry. Blender for example has one geometry object that you can sculpt on, poly model with, UV, use for retopo, and paint on without conversions needed. It's simple. We don't need 3 different groups for geometry. There is a little letter next to the geometry for Sculpt (S) and Voxel (V) maybe add a Low Poly (L), but also let the sculpt be used for painting and making UVs without conversion needed. To get it ready for paint have a warning that says "This geometry has no UVs" if it doesn't have UVs. Baking high poly to low poly should be an option available between any 2 geometries. Just a "Bake high to low" tool that pops up saying "Pick high geom" "Pick low geom". It doesn't need to be so complex with all these conversions. Going even another step further Sculpt and Voxel doesn't even need to be there as a hybrid could be used where if a sculpt tool is used it moves and changes the points under the brush like if it were a sculpt object and Voxel could change the points under only the brush area like if it was Voxel. Way easier and less confusing. While I'm ranting here I'll also say the baking is not perfect. It doesn't really work with transparent textures. I had an eye brow made of planes with transparent textures for the hairs on the brow. There is no way currently to bake something like that to other geometry while it also bakes the transparent part in 3DCoat or Blender. Only way is to use Adobe Substance Painter which is gross because it's Adobe.

I have this exact same problem when importing a mesh as a Reference Mesh. It's imported and placed as a Paint Object which the Smart Retopo tool doesn't seem to like. To make it work I had to go to the Paint Room and go to Bake > Paint Mesh->Sculpt Mesh. That turned it into a Surface under the SculptTree. Smart Retopo tool seems to work way better when it is a Sculpt object. I kind of get why 3DCoat has all this stuff separate, but it would be way less confusing if all the different types of objects were not there. We don't really need a Paint Object, Sculpt Object, Poly Groups, whatever else for geometry. Geometry is geometry. Blender for example has one geometry object that you can sculpt on, poly model with, UV, use for retopo, and paint on without conversions needed. It's simple. We don't need 3 different groups for geometry. There is a little letter next to the geometry for Sculpt (S) and Voxel (V) maybe add a Low Poly (L), but also let the sculpt be used for painting and making UVs without conversion needed. Instead to get it ready for paint have a warning that says "This geometry has no UVs" if it doesn't have UVs. Baking high poly to low poly should be an option available between any 2 geometries. Just a "Bake high to low" tool that pops up saying "Pick high geom" "Pick low geom". It doesn't need to be so complex with all these conversions. Going even another step further Sculpt and Voxel doesn't even need to be there as a hybrid could be used where if a sculpt tool is used it moves and changes the points under the brush like if it were a sculpt object and Voxel could change the points under only the brush area like if it was Voxel.

I had to make a new account to see the upgrade price from V4 to 2021 of 3DCoat. After making I then entered my v4 license which it didn't seem to take with the only 2 options as "False" or "cancel". Clicking false it said false, then I clicked it again and it had my license number. and a price of 75 euro. It would not let me do that with Textura probably because no one would want to go from 3Dcoat pro to Textura seeing as 3DCoat has Textura built into it.

I have not tried 3DCoat 2021, but prior my biggest problem with 3DCoat's retopo is it would not respect the loops I would draw. I'm good a manual retopo and envision where all the loops should be before I start any retopo job. When I draw the loops and it doesn't respect them it drives me mad. To get around this I would use the autoretopo to get it good enough without loosing too much detail, then export for Blender. In Blender I can use Retopoflow to get it done faster than the manual tools in 3DCoat. Ideally I would like the retopo to absolutely stick to my edge flow, while being able to quickly add or take away loops to see the new result, and having it fill in geometry not there in a case where I already started making some of the retopo. Being able to quickly increase or decrease poly count fast would be a big plus. Density of the geometry should have an auto calculate based on curvature option. It could even have a recommended loops detection. We then set our loops, choose our percent geometry density, see result, modify loops, maybe quickly add some geometry in a hard place to help retopo using retopoflow like tools, finish fast. Done right it would be the best system.