Reactor

Sorry, late reply- email notifications don't seem to get sent to me. I understand it fairly well, but I'm no expert. But hey, as happy as I am to admit that, it doesn't matter if I am or not. As I said, the professional side of the indie game dev community don't consider it a viable option. That speaks volumes in itself. Maybe kids like mucking around with it, but guys working hard on commercial games know there's better out there. Plus, it doesn't matter if they're not experts at the Blender engine either (before you bring that argument up) because as expert coders and game designers, they can easily adapt to and identify the best tools. These guys, unlike me, have been coding games for a huge number of years. To my knowledge, all of them have taken a look and said, "No, this won't do." As I said, if you think I'm wrong, go and post over there and see what they say. Maybe you'll find some guys who do like it! I don't know- I just know every comment I've seen (from the knowledgeable guys, not those just getting started) hasn't been positive towards it. My overall point is this (which answers your other questions/comments)- people who don't make games don't understand what tools are best for making games. You can claim that Blender is a great game making tool, and that the difference between one tool and another is superficial. However, the guys out there starting and finishing games that people want to pay for (ie: high quality, well put together games, containing every aspect that constitutes a full game) wouldn't take your comments seriously. Their statement to you would be- "First make a game and then come say something." Armchair experts are all over the place these days. And, that'd be a fair comment. Who would listen to a mechanic who has never fixed a car? Obviously no one. And look, let me just say- I have no issue when someone is passionate about something like the Blender game engine, or about something like Visual3d.NET. That's cool. No worries at all. But, it does seem strange to me when certain people run around with a megaphone proclaiming one thing about game development tools, when the guys who really are out there producing the games are saying very different things. I hope all of that makes sense. If it doesn't, I guess there's nothing else I can to get my point across. Peace. Out.

I have exactly the same results as philnolan3d... still

That's a decent enough request Ghostdog... I'll try and restrain myself in future

Just a quick question- was the drag-drop issue resolved in any of the updates? I realise it's a difficult one to diagnose... I'm more curious at this point.

The 'Blender is hard to use' issue aside, that's not what I'm talking about. Really? I'm an indie game dev. Who are you? How many games have you shipped, and what experience do you have which gives you the ability to declare it a good game development tool? You're at adds with every game dev I know. If you don't believe me, pop on over to the indiegamer forums and ask how many successful developers have chosen to work with the Blender game engine over the other alternatives (which obviously cost money). Last count I think it was... zero. You know, the people who are saying it's bad aren't software always n00bs- a lot of them are the guys who founded the entire CG industry. You sound like a n00b, trying to portray them as people who don't know what it is they're doing. But, I'm not going to argue this point with you. You're obviously a fanboy who has gotten used to the UI and enjoys it. That's fine in itself- just try and resist the urge to look like an idiot and declare it as the most amazing thing in the universe. It's not.

I'm a Shiva user. It has its weak points currently, but where it's strong, it's very strong as a middleware solution. The low-end version really packs a punch for the money, and the devs are always on the forums listening to what people need. The coming versions (free, until 2.0) are going to be pretty impressive if the 1.8 beta is any indication. And has a workflow from hell. There's a good reason the 'net isn't flooded with Blender games. On a side note, did anyone mention 3DRad, which is free?

Yes, yes I was. I agree with leigh about the focus of 3D Coat. Animation is a huge thing to tackle. Most people into CG have zero idea about the true complexities of rigging and animation. It's a seriously complicated business, and the tools which pro animators work with are often little more than a pile of scripts, designed to get around the myriad of issues which arise. A professional animation program is a lot more than a bunch of nice looking tools. If 3D Coat were to go down the animation route, I doubt it'd be accepted as anything more than a casual animator's toy. What I'd like to see now is some rock-solid stability of 3D Coat, and those nagging few usability quirks taken care of, such as conflicting keyboard shortcuts.

Motionbuilder is primarily used for handling mo-cap data. Why on earth would Andrew and the gang make an animation app to rival Motionbuilder, when the vast majority of 3D Coat users aren't in the market for that kind of functionality? I know you're excited about making things move, but...

This is exactly my problem. I'm running Vista, 32bit. I'm not sure how you can look into this one Andrew, but thanks for doing so!

What do you mean by moderated? Same, drag and drop still doesn't work in .5 On a side note Andrew, is it possible (while downloading all of these .1 updates to test) to have a smaller download, possibly without DirectX included? That is of course if I'm correct that DirectX is included in the package. Either way, if it's possible, it'd be nice

Well said Andrew. One hammer for one type of nail, and one for another. Both Zbrush and 3DCoat are handy to have in the ol' tool box.

He did? I don't read that. But, either way... it's bed time for me

Eh? How has it been fixed? It doesn't work at all for me. Andrew, the number one thing for me (aside from a few other workflow adjustments and bug fixes!) is this, so thankyou for trying to get it going. Being able to drag drop images to make materials sounds like a dream come true. Right now though, as mentioned, I can't do that... so something's not quite right. EDIT: I should mention, I'm running CUDA, but the problem is in both Opengl and Direct X.

I've tried drag dropping from Chrome and from plain old explorer. I don't even see an error- the pointer simply changes from the plus to the crossed circle, preventing me from doing anything.

Sorry, I should have read above. Vista 32 is what I'm using.

This sounds amazing, but I must be missing something, or confused about what this means, because this doesn't work for me. (drag drop from explorer, that is)

An awesome update, thanks!

Sorry, I had to comment. Normally I'd agree with you, but just between you and me... you need not worry because I've heard the author of the program is a robot. Pro tip: when you observe something, open your eyes. It helps. Think of it this way- 3D Coat has twice the tools of CS5 right now, and CS5 isn't even out yet! How awesome is that?

Excellent stuff! Thankyou for your continued dedication to improving 3D Coat!

Actually, whenever I quadrangulate, I get nothing. Is this a beta problem, or...?

Ah, right... I should have worked that one out Thanks lc8b105.

Where's the option for this?

I'm sure there are a lot of little things. I'm also expecting there to be some big things. It's the first app out the door with this kind of tech, so it's to be expected. Is Zbrush free of bugs and workflow quirks? Obviously no- it's full of them. However, for both apps pushing into new areas of technological advancement, it'll take some time before things settle down. That's just life though, and people still get stuck into Zbrush, as I'm sure many will 3D Coat V3. Another welcomed tool in the toolbox.

It's fair. You payed for the program at that time. It's still worth the money you payed for it. Anyway, why isn't it finished 3dioot? I haven't been keeping track of V3's progress the last little while, and finally got around to trying the beta today. After a few crashes I focused on the painting side of things and thought, "Yeah, I guess the additions to that area is good enough for the upgrade." so I went and placed my order. Then I played with the voxel sculpting some more, and was blown away by how easy it was to build something, retopo it, and wind up with a mesh and normal map in about two seconds. Finished or not, whatever this is, it's pretty darn useful!

I don't understand the difference. What are clusters? UV islands? Whatever they are, I don't understand the difference between overlapping ones and self-overlapping ones. I'll try the V3 beta a bit later, but for the time being I just have to live with less texture space and finish the job I'm doing. I started painting and didn't realise 3D Coat had repacked my UVs for me. Good to know V3 can handle this kind of thing. On a side note Andrew- there's a bug with the Clone tool dialogue. When changing values on it, you can paint through the dialogue box onto your model. And, it can't be undone, which is very scary when you're working in symmetry mode. I screwed up my painting a few times because of it.