Melik

This is a great idea for a different "Quick Access" shiftbar panel. The important thing is being able to create a CUSTOM quick access panel featuring only the brushes we use regularly so we don't have a giant panel with all the brushes. The option to drag your favorite brushes to the top of the quick access panel is a good idea, but the distance the cursor has to travel from your sculpting area up to the top of the big quick access panel defeats the purpose of having favorites for easy access.

This thread tells the story of 3D Coat. Rygaard's great suggestions for much needed improvements to the UI and user experience have not been considered or addressed - though they would make using 3DC so much more fun, fast and enjoyable. On his YouTube channel, Rygaard is performing miracles with 3DC customization and I'm grateful for all the work he's doing to push the limits of the new scripting capabilities. But the suggestions in this thread should have been worked on years ago. It's been years since we've requested options for custom brush palettes, etc. Quality of life UX improvements are what we're asking for. Bug fixes are what we're pleading for. Instead, we get new features no one is really asking for. 3D Coat is a great software but every time I use it the frustration outweighs the enjoyment. Developers, please revisit this thread and put these customization options at the top of your development priorities.

Hey @DannyBCreative May I ask what are the specs of your Mac and what version of 3DC were you using? I"m also curious about performance on the newer Macs. It's 3DC's Mac versions I'm also concerned about. Compared to the Windows version, the Mac version always seems to have strange little "surprises".

Sorry to see you didn't get a reply to your question. I would say go for the best nVidia RTX graphics card and as much ram as you can afford. I'm on a HP Omen laptop with a 3080 (but the laptop version) and 64 gigs of ram and I could still use more power for when the sculpt objects exceed 2 million. I'm also using it with a Wacom Intuos Pro and that's working well. Tweak the pen pressure to a custom curve in Wacom preferences for the best performance in 3DC. I like to use the Pinch brush in Surface mode as a litmus for how my pen is driving the Brushes while I sculpt. DEFINITELY use 3DCoat on Windows. I don't know about Linux, but on Mac, 3DC is pretty rough around the edges with many micro bugs depending on the version. The Windows version is always better. Good luck!

Hey, Regarding your flat shader request... Quickest solution: In the shaders menu , click submenu "Polymers" and look for a dull grey shader called "DerlinIndustrial". It's the 9th shader from the beginning in "Polymer" shaders. Then adjust the lighting effects in the viewport using the three controls at the left of the header icons. Also, I would highly recommend the 3D Coat tutorial linked in this thread. The one with the Crocodile character. Excellent overview of the full character creation pipeline in 3DC. I'm going through it now and am picking up good stuff from it. I'm actually thinking of getting the other tutorial by the same instructor. Good luck!

This discussion is fascinating and I'm happy it's a topic that is being explored. The UI of 3Dcoat is one of the major areas of grievance for me - especially the terrible gizmo, the brush icons, not having a quick customizable pop-up menu to select favorite tools/brushes like Maya's Marking Menus or Blender's Pie Menus or Cinema4D's pie Menus or Krita's brush selector (in 3DCoat we are stuck with the giant Quick Access panel or the Preset Menu - "Better than nothing" I guess). @SonK I love your proposals - if only for the look. If 3DCoat only had a cosmetic facelift, with new icons, and menu aesthetics, and some rearranging...similar to your mock ups, I think it would feel so much better and probably appeal to a wider audience. But, as with all suggestions from users, it comes down to Andrew not having time for it. So, while fun to dream, it's not something I expect to see happen.

I'd like to know this also!

Just want to add that I would also really appreciate the option to invert a brush so I don't have to keep CTRL pressed. In the latest 3DC, only a random number of Voxel Tool brushes have the toolbar "Invert" option. Like OP, I don't understand the thinking behind this. Beyond the convenience for users to do large areas of inverted brushing, this option would also be essential if we're trying to create a custom brush preset that behaves in the inverted form of the original brush. I can't find an "Invert" parameter in the Tool Options/Modifiers for brushes either. If not in the toolbar, the invert brush option should be in the menus somewhere (so we can assign a hotkey).

No apologies necessary, @Rygaard I hope you're feeling better and are having fun creating your course and brushes!

@Elemeno I'm guessing Blender's user base is enormous compared to 3D Coat's and it's the current "IT" thing everyone is curious about, a vast and enthusiastic community on social media and forums, and it has serious corporate sponsors. Unfortunately, I don't see 3DC being able to match that kind of following or excitement. I wish I was wrong. Also, Blender is a generalist tool that appeals to hobbyists and semi pros worldwide. 3D Coat is more advanced but covers only a portion of the 3D pipeline, which other softwares cover specifically. (zBrush, Substance, Topogun) I love the idea of 3DC being so flush with funds that they hire more developers but not sure how it will happen other than continued user based exposure and word of mouth.

Yes, the option is available now. Thanks very much @carlosan !

When I click "Create" and see the window with forum sections to post in, "Feature Requests" is grayed out. Is there another way to post there?

Oh, thank you @Elemeno I missed the tip

I think I understand what you mean. The only way I've found to turn this off is to use Maya navigation

Regarding my initial question, how can we get the Smooth All window to appear if we've clicked the "skip this window next time" option? And is there a way to post in the "features requests" section of forum or do posts get assigned there by moderator? Thanks

@Carlosan the ability to slide the value in the Smooth All window is great. What I meant by slider was being able to drag on screen or on a slider to see the smooth affect the mesh. Here is a demo in Blender. Note the meshes are roughly the same polycount 3D COAT - BLENDER SMOOTH SLIDER.mp4

With a very high res sculpt, I can see a slider causing problems but the Mesh Filter slider in Blender works well even with denser sculpts. It's just the numerical guessing game of 3DCoat's Smooth All (is it too little? too much?) that gets annoying. Even a sluggish smoothing slider would be better because it's realtime feedback.

How do I get the "Smooth all" window to appear if I clicked "Skip this dialog next time, just smooth once"? The only way I've found is to quit 3DC and reopen. The smooth all function should really be a slider at this point. I'm not able to post in "Feature Request" section. How many posts do I need to be able to contribute there? Thanks

This sounds so great, @Rygaard! Extreme customization in 3DC sounds like a dream!! I'm very excited to learn from your years of dedicated 3D Coat usage. I'm also very interested in your clay "sponge" brush and am grateful if you have the time to work on an hPolish brush that flattens with clean, flat hard surface planes like zBrush. But I consider that a bonus to all the great stuff you are planning. Thanks for all your hard work. I pray you'll be rewarded in many ways when you finally release your training, brushes and video channel. Good luck!

For reference about the hPolish brush, in 3D Coat, I can come close, but I can't do this: https://youtu.be/xuTiQphuP9A?t=171 Do you have a modified flat polish brush in your set or are they primarily brushes for clay effects?

Hey @Rygaard, I agree with you about stylized icons. It's very difficult to create the perfect, simplified picture to represent subtle brush strokes like clay variations. I think your ideas about brush icons will lead to better, clearly readable icons. Interesting...I just assumed your custom brush set would be a preset. I'd intrigued about them being part of the left hand side brush options. They will be welcome wherever they land in the UI. Yes, the zBrush icons are beautiful as larger pics but not very helpful as small thumbnails. Your logic is very correct. In addition to brush icon stuff, I wanted to say that I would love to see some part of your training course cover more in depth UI customization like what you showed in your Rhino demos. To replace system sculpt brushes on the left with your own custom brushes or just the favorites you use, so you don't have to scroll down the long list or use the Quick Access panel (I'm not a fan) to get to your most used tools. I remember your excellent post years ago with suggestions on UI changes. https://3dcoat.com/forum/index.php?/topic/24681-ideas-and-suggestions-to-improve-the-3d-coat-interface-and-usability/ You expressed many frustrations I have about using 3DC. Every time I'm in 3DC, I long for a Pop ups menu like Blender's Pie menus for favorite brushes and tools. If the developers had made the changes you suggested, I would use 3DC a lot more. Unfortunately, these suggestions have been lost and forgotten. Very sad, but hopefully with custom changes to the UI, we can have a more efficient and enjoyable 3D experience in 3D Coat. I wanted to add simply that I'm excited for your brushes based on your great Rhino demo, but my one personal request would be a solution to an unsolvable 3D Coat sculpt "problem" which is: A good flattening brush that behaves like zBrush "hPolish"!! I gave up a long time ago in 3DC - whatever Flatten/Scrape/Trim Adaptive brush method I use always seems to create a concave surface instead of nice flattening like in zBrush. Maybe there is a way in 3DC 2021+ to create this with multiple brush modifiers - I haven't had good luck matching zBrush hPolish brush behavior. If you've solved this problem and have a brush like this in your brush set - please take my money now! Thanks again for listening to feedback and best wishes as you develop your brushes, course, and YouTube channel. I'll be checking in to see what your progress is. No rush - it would be better to take your time and create something that you're happy with than release a product that has a "work in progress" feeling. Though I always appreciate future flexibility and changes based on client feedback. But that is a long way off. Good luck and have fun!

Hey Rygaard, It's great to see your passion and commitment to your Brushes and Training project. A long overdue and welcome contribution to the 3D Coat world. I know I'm not the only one that appreciates how much time and energy you're investing into this. Thank you! I wanted to briefly give my opinion on brush icons. The samples you posted are too dark, in my opinion. The sphere image is about 80% in darkness and as a small thumbnail will be difficult to see, especially as small thumbnails. And while I love the idea of assigning colors to brush icons based on their behavior, I think the background colors you proposed are also dark. This may be your style/preference but I think a brush set should be about universal readability above all else (see example from Blender below). About the icons. Let me rant for a moment. I absolutely HATE the new brush icons in 3DC 2021 They are tan colored which makes them clash with any custom UI theme you create that doesn't use tan as part of the UI color palette. They are a strange hybrid of 3D and 2D. The have strong, dark lines on the spheres which creates a high frequency, peripheral noise to the UI, making the UI more unappealing. And above all, the icons are just ugly. I propose simple, clear, high contrast brush icons like those from 3DC 4.9. These icons were a neutral gray, clear as thumbnails, high contrast, and distinctly 3D in appearance. I would use these as the icons in my 3DC 2021. Anything would be better, in my opinion. I prefer a full sphere instead of a section like the 4.9 icons. The important thing is they are based on lighting/matcap that has a good highlight and shows the topology of the stroke on the sphere clearly - not in dark shadow. Here are good examples of clear, easy to read brush icons in zBrush. Perfect as larger thumbnails but too busy for small thumbnails. I like these but would like them a bit brighter overall and with stronger highlight to better demo the stroke for small thumbnails. And I love the super simple, 2D icons in Blender. But I think this would be too far from your personal style. The good part of these are how instantly you can recognize the brush and the groups are color coded as separate color groupings. Also, the simplicity of the icons helps create a clean, fun, easy to use UI. If 3DCoat allows users to assign custom brushes to their own brush preset brushes, then I think your icons could be anything you personally feel shows the stroke and stays in your brand - which I think is what you're building. I think you'll create good icons, and I also really hope the newest version of 3DC allow this king of brush icon customization so very opinionated users (like me!) can assign our own icons. Simply said, I would request clear, high contrast icons that are not too dark. Thanks again for putting in the work to create the training and custom brushes we all have been asking for. Good luck, Rygaard!

Thanks for the super exciting news, Rygaard! It sounds like you've been super busy and it's awesome that you are sharing your experience and skills in 3DC. I look forward to all your new stuff and I wish you the best with it all.

Right, that is the way to "repeat stroke" in 3DC, but you can't apply varying pressure to a stroke using that method (with pen tablet etc) The other work around is to create a new sculpt layer, make your stroke on that layer, and then duplicate the sculpt layer once and many times to get the amplification of the stroke you just made. I wish this could be done with one click like in zBrush. Seems like such a small request - maybe it's a coding nightmare...I don't know. But it's something that has been requested in the past and doesn't look like we'll get it. Happy to see you enjoying your 3DC rediscovery mission! Keep us posted!

I don't believe your question about repeating strokes was addressed, was it? "1. Is there an equivalent to ZBrush's Repeat Last stroke ('1' key) ? I used that a lot in ZB to repeat the exact same stroke a few times when desired." This is a feature I would kill to have in 3DCoat. Any headway here in your 3DC rediscovery journey?