audiodacious

Well it seems I lied when I said I wouldn't comment further, well actually I'm certainly not getting into childish platform arguments. I was a bit hard in my original outburst but I think I do have a valid point. On reflection the best solution for me is probably to use (or at least try) both apps so today, on recommendation from other users, I'm downloading a z-brush trial to give it a go. Like I said before I think 3DCoat is, or at least will be, really very good but it desperately needs attention to it's outdated, confusing and generally awkward user interface. Although I'm sure everyone will say that ZB's UI is also just as confusing, which it probably is! I personally prefer a minimalist approach to UI design, less is almost always more. A good UI always strives not to overload the user with the unnecessary and there is far too much of the unnecessary visible at any one time in 3DCoat's wordy menus and buttons. I realise Andrew and Co are working hard and most certainly getting off on the challenges of creating such a complex software, but nonetheless it's all almost worthless in the end if it's not a joy or at least not painful to use, because soon enough someone else will create something that is and blow all the hard work out of the water. In my opinion while bug fixes are extremely important, 3D coat probably does not need new features at this time, the developers aught to start thinking about improving the user experience. Mine, so far, has been a particularly frustrating experience leading me to feel the need rant on forums! I realise that's plainly not true for everyone, but I think a lot of folks are too readilly prepared to settle for less and I think I feel the way I do because deep down I want to love 3DCoat because it offers so much promise. I will keep coming back to 3D coat and I'll keep a good eye on it and when I need it I'm sure I'll use it, I just hope someone up there is listening because I'd love to come to use 3DCoat without having to continually swear and curse at it's awkward foibles. One always needs to learn new tools but doesn't require for example to learn how to extract iron ore and forge steel in order to wield a chisel with skill. Oftentimes software writers need to step back and take a holistic view of what have and haven't achieved and it seems to me that time has arrived for this app.

After my previous experiences with 3D Coat crashing, freezing my machine and forgetting all my preferences etc, I haven't used it in quite a long while, but today I thought I'd take a look at the latest build. It does seem a bit more stable but something just happened that really takes the biscuit and makes me just want to throw my hands in the air in desperation at the way in which unix app programmers seem to have such a laissez-faire attitude toward their users ... Please let me rant here... <begin rant> I went to save some preferences and an alert box appeared with this text ( it's too long to quote all of it so I've edited it )... < quote> You are attempting to write file to 3D-Coat installation folder. Since 3.5.07 3D-Coat avoids writing to the installation folder and writes files to your user folder, if you will define environment variable COAT_FILES_PATH or creat ..... etc etc etc < end quote > Eh? Duh? wtf? and other similar exclamations! Apple have UI guidelines for a good reason, really they do! ... Most 3D artists are not geeky hackers and who the heck understands what an environment variable is if they're not a programmer ? This is the most ridiculous alert I've seen in many years on the Mac! Ok I realise it's trying to be helpful but with a little more knowledge and CARE about the platform you're targeting you'd know ( for consistency of user experience ) you're not meant to write to the top level of the user folder. There is a place for application support files and it's called the "Application Support" folder. Why even show an alert like this when it would be SO SIMPLE to automatically create the 3DCoat support folder in the correct place and open the file dialog to that place without bothering the user with any this nonsense! Please try a bit harder, go read the Apple UI Guidelines. 3D coat is great, I repeat I think it's really great, but the user experience is generally coming from the past ( from about 20 years ago as far as I can tell ). Ridiculous and confusing presentation only make users far less likely to choose 3DCoat as their first port of call. User experience of an app EVERY BIT as important as the functionality of the app. You don't seem to get that at all. <end rant> Please don't misunderstand me, I'm not actually suggesting you go off and make a full blown Cocoa UI for 3D coat, but just that you try to have a little more care about us the end user. After all 3D Coat isn't all that cheap and we're paying for this pain. I tried out 3D coat originally because it was such a tempting offer, maybe I'll come back to 3D Coat again in a few months, I think at this moment I'm more tempted to fork out the extra dosh to Pixologic, after all they don't require me to learn Unix. So now, Fanboys, please feel free to troll away ... I won't make any more comment ...

Yes, seconding SilverCity on this. The problem is not that 3D-Coat crashes or is unstable... The problem is that WHEN it crashes 3DCoat cannot be quit and force-quitting 3d-Coat causes OS X to freeze solid. ie when the app has crashed or is not-responding to user input or any other OS event and you try to force-quit, 3DCoat causes the OS-X kernel to crash. This is pretty much only possible when the GPU crashes or some other terrible event happens with hardware timing. I've seen this event on another app when a GLSL shader caused the GPU to crash and I've seen similar when a faulty graphics card caused problems. I cannot think of any other app that can cause this amount of damage to the system when it crashes. The only way out of this is to power down the machine by holding the power button until it turns off. not good !

Just want to say that I too am seeing this freezing bug. So far I haven't been able to identify a repeatable crash so I realise it's not very helpful but just saying that this is not an isolated incident. My machine is just a bog standard 4GB Macbook Pro which I use for light 3D work for fun. I only bought 3D-Coat a few days ago, my first project was the rat tutorial and this freeze occurred 4 or 5 times while I was following the tutorial instructions. Really hoping you can fix this SOON as it's bad news having to forcibly power down the machine to get out of this freeze, I'm not looking forward to hard disk failure or worse. My guess is a shader or something is crashing the GPU which always renders ( 'scuse the pun ) a Mac useless. Please do your best to fix this asap as I think 3D-Coat is superb, this bug however makes me almost afraid to use it. Model Name: MacBook Pro Model Identifier: MacBookPro6,1 Processor Name: Intel Core i7 Processor Speed: 2.66 GHz Number Of Processors: 1 Total Number Of Cores: 2 L2 Cache (per core): 256 KB L3 Cache: 4 MB Memory: 4 GB NVIDIA GeForce GT 330M: Chipset Model: NVIDIA GeForce GT 330M Type: GPU Bus: PCIe PCIe Lane Width: x16 VRAM (Total): 512 MB Vendor: NVIDIA (0x10de) Device ID: 0x0a29 Revision ID: 0x00a2 ROM Revision: 3560 gMux Version: 1.9.22 Displays: Color LCD: Resolution: 1920 x 1200 Pixel Depth: 32-Bit Color (ARGB8888) Main Display: Yes Mirror: Off Online: Yes Built-In: Yes SyncMaster: Resolution: 1440 x 900 @ 60 Hz Pixel Depth: 32-Bit Color (ARGB8888) Mirror: Off Online: Yes Rotation: Supported

Hi, I bought 3D-Coat today and I also have seen this problem 4 times already, all I'm doing is the Rat tutorial. System completely freezes and I have to power down the machine.