Henry Townshend

This statement is bizarre. Have you ever used Marmoset even? What kind of "small fine tuning" do you think would bring 3D Coat on par to it? Let alone that Marmoset is far from serving a "niche" as a tool. It's basically industry standard for rendering real time art for like forever, and for baking it has become THE option since v4. Tons of working artists bake their maps in there every day, even those who use Substance Painter. So I'd be curious to what kind of simple "tweak" 3D Coat would just need to "easily" get to that.

This post again shows perfectly for me how 3D Coats potential to ever be used more in production pipelines by professional artists is held back by hobbyist mindsets who give the devs all the wrong ideas and treat the software as a playground for their own specific megalomania needs and dreams. Wake up guys, have you seen Marmoset Toolbag 5 is on the way? The Beta is already out. https://marmoset.co/toolbag/beta/ You think 3D Coat in it's current state, still lacking industry standard features/functionality/reliability on multiple ends, to compete with that? Marmoset even has some serious, serious competition now to Substance Painter, because they are listening to versed, skilled artists, and come from a game art background themselves. These guys know absolutely what they are doing and what real time artists need today. Yes, 3D Coat has some features and paradigms Substance Painter does not have, and I personally love them, it is a "hands on feel" not found in other apps for sure. It also has features and paradigms Zbrush does not have, in fact, I can't even go back to ZBrush due to 3D Coat sculpting being so freeformly awesome (and also because Blender Modeling and Sculpting exists, which so far eliminated my need for a Maxon sub). But, 3DC misses all the crucial contemporary features game and real time artists need, both in functionality, flexibility/non destructiveness, and speed, especially when it comes to materials/texturing. The Paint Room doesn't even have Mip Mapping for per pixel painting, making a noisy preview mess out of any high frequency patterns like Jeans etc., making it impossible to accurately preview your textures for use in other real time renders or game engines, who ALL use Mip Mapping as standard since eons. Try using the blend sliders to blend smoothly without experiencing lagging that equals system freezing during texturing, and then tell me we need a render engine in this software. What it has for rendering is absolutely fine for what it is. It's actually pretty great for a sculpting app. Don't waste the devs resources, and let people with serious needs working in actual production some day be able to integrate this tool fully into their pipelines, or allow them to enthusiastically recommend the program to others without having to have a bad conscious about it, instead of adding yet another experiment into this program. Like, the absolutely unusable and UI/UX wise aesthetically offensive shader nodes (which were back then advertised as a Substance Designer alternative directly in 3D Coat, with users expressing similar concerns about prioritization, and we still till this day do not see any benefits of them in Paint Room). Give us non destructive HSL filters, Levels, let me select freaking multiple paint layers at once and paste them into another group. Let me have true blend modes for Roughness and Metallic like ANY other texturing app on the market. Have proper ID mask selection. Have proper, dedicated extra channels for AO, SSS, Emissive or user custom channels. Talking about Anchor points? Some of what is written here seems so obviously coming from users who seem not battle tested using any tool in production, under a deadline. 3D Coat better than Mari? Better than Substance Painter? All the features that ARE superior to other apps, are simply and sadly HELD BACK completely by the lack of any rock solid basics, turning them into "nice to haves" in the long run, rather than the powerful additions they could be if the basics would have been nailed down properly. But jeah, let's all want a Render Engine for an Art making app. I couldn't have said it all better myself @Just a user I am glad to read some users here being reasonable and oppose this. Didn't take me more than 5sec to vote NO, and that delay was just stemming from my initial confusion if I read the title right or not. I am looking forward to using Toolbag 5, where I will render and/or texture a lot of work I created in 3D Coat, but not the other way around for sure. And I don't think any serious artist in their right mind who needs to present their work in the best possible light would. I say this as someone who loves to pre-render/lookdev my sculptures/painting inside 3D Coat render room.

Thanks for pointing this out. It was the reason I felt bad about my comments in the first place. This is prolly the worst point in time to open such a can and potentially put the devs under any stress. I hope this didn't come across as unthankful. I frequently express my grattitude to Andrew in email, cause I think what he's/they are doing under the circumstances is nothing short of hero-esque. I think it was just that when revealing this new pompous feature/room, it was naturally triggering this conversation. I just want to add/conclude from my side that I do not think that anyone is "dissatisfied with the current 'pace' of development". But rather with prioritization and perceived urgency of certain issues.

This is an understatement really. I am a 13 years Blender user, knowing my way around all common addons. While Blender is a DCC beast, 3D Coat, for me, is a true Art tool. It offers artistic paradigms, usually only found in 2d/painting software, in 3d space. It feels organic where many other tools feel robotic. It is an incredible accomplishment. I just wish they would equally focus on pipeline reliability and polished functionality as tools like Blender do, which I think would def. help more to compete in the market than trying to jump wagon current trends. However, thanks for taking the time to illuminate the business perspective. I have to say tho that if a company decides to use 3D Coat in production, that, in a sense, also very much influences THEIR business, in terms of time and reliability of getting things done. And if that's not the case, sadly, they can not afford to keep 3D Coat out of mere good will, cause we all have to fight against our very own Behemoths', too. Even more impactful: People who convince their company to use 3D Coat in the pipeline, and then having to justify unreliabilities, time loss, missing functionality, stand responsible for that, and simply having to spend their time on being a voluntary tester/reporter to keep the program usable for them in production, as a paying costumer. And as thankful as I am for that it is being listened to my feedback and the close communication that one can have with 3D Coat, the reliability/missing commonly expected functionality is still something that out of my view damages the programs marketability and word of mouth. It hits somewhat that I can not recommend 3D Coat/Textura to as many people as I would like to, simply because they roll eyes when it is revealed to them that there is no "Levels", nor non destructive "HSL", or that the layer blending is too slow to work with, or that textures look like oversharpened/moired due to the lack of the most crucially needed Mip Mapping lacking in the viewport, making it impossible to accurately author high frequency details in textures for games that are not just handpainted. It is honestly hard to believe for myself that a tool that is that well thought out and that artistic, in 2024, lacks these things, and yet seems to consider itself completed in those areas. I think 3D Coat, despite being exceptionally well thought out as an art tool, still has to go some way to understand and have empathy with professional users, who are putting trust into the tool to earn their salary by trying to progress commercial projects with it. I think this is very much a large aspect of why it is so difficult to compete with battle tested software like Blender or Zbrush, where reliability is a first class citizen, because those devs understand this very well, which is why those tools are trusted by thousands of professionals and studios across the world. It doesn't have to do with corporate money or budget alone, but with sheer priorization, sensefulness and purposeful selectivity on the development decision part. The professional user base pays for the software to in turn be able to reliably offer their skills to earn their own bread. If that is being made difficult for them by not caring about reliability and functional completeness to enable them to withstand the needs of contemporary pipelines, then it is kind of self explanatory why sadly this wonderful program is not being integrated as wide spread as others, and as a result seemingly has to do business decisions like this. (Which I sincerely hope from the bottom of my heart will have a positive outcome) Trends come and go. Art stays. Plasticity is fashion currently, it's specialized and pretty affordable. But people already jumped on that wagon, already are learning the tool, or staying on their Fusion, Moi, what have you. So, in a sense, similar to Modeling Room v.s. Blender, it seems to me like tailoring to a market that is already kind of satisfied. Which is nothing wrong with, but you'd probably have to able to offer something more than just merely "being the cheaper version". The other things 3D Coat already offers, Voxel modeling flexibility, having a painterly wise more powerful (but incomplete) Substance Painter in built, incredibly powerful layer compatible dynamic topology, being able to PBR texture your sculptures, Automatic Game Res Export, most artistic Retopology... etc. etc. All that, no other software has, especially not under one umbrella, and most of the time not without any addons, which is why 3D Coat already is utterly impressive in terms of what it offers (It would just need to be properly advertised and tutorial'd, but that is another story). The sad thing is, that in turn, all other competitor software has all the other, more basic, crucial things in, that are demanded in a contemporary, flexible, art directable pipeline as basic needs, which 3D Coat for some reason, lacks. Even tho those are separate, more specialized tools: If 3D Coat would realize that bringing their multi room structure that is basically a cleverly put together, but unfinished mirror of multiple trusted software, into an "on par" state to those other software and by this, strengthen their core on mutliple ends at once, instead of continuing to expand it, this would, imho, make 3D Coat way more competitive and increase it's USP. Trying to tailor it to everybody, in turn, makes it in essence a tailoring to none (excluding me, and other passionate users who love the program, but not without an effort and good faith to see past these things, which can not be expected as a general tolerance in a professional context, where money also has to be counted). To be completely blunt: I feel empathic for the hard working developers, because I personally feel they are being mislead. Nevertheless, I wish all the best for the CAD Room Module and hope to see some positive outcome, and, cross fingers that potential benefits then will also be re-routed towards the the neglected aspects in future.

This is what I do, almost on a daily basis now. It seems to me that there are several things in improvement limbo and currently increased frequency of problems with basic functionality, and, tops, urgently needed non destructive features commonly needed in production pipelines are neglected. Usually what this means is, that there is one less work force on things that are more urgent. That is what makes the ""Conflict"". Software Development resources are distributed to new features, instead of bringing the old ones into polish/reliabilty. Same as with all your tech terms like BERF, BARF and Surf or the likes, I do not know any of those people/categories, and I am not ashamed about it. CAD software is used in Concept Art for sure. I am not against 3D Coat expanding how they see fit, it is not the most foreign/illogical move as a Concept Art software to go that route. What I am against is 3D Coat neglecting what is not done/not yet 100% reliable and with basic expected contemporary functionality gaps not filled, still needed to conclude the strong artistic base and make it competetive/recommendable to people who wanna use it in a production pipeline. (we can not even drag and drop multiple paint layers till this day) It is naive to believe that developing another large feature like a whole Room with adding a new paradigm won't continue to pile up the Whack A Mole like hunt of new issues, which what users like me, using 3D Coat in game production, are worried about. If you ever worked in any software development, this is a classical feature creep.

I would agree. Usually, it was that way until recentIy, 3D Coat not being any less reliable than, say, ZBrush. Especially for what it offers in comparision, it is literally a miracle, by a small team. But lately, I am writing Andrew several Emails with functionality issues every day, often subtracting from my own work time, cause things start to show fragmentation and unreliability. Things like Auto Export was basically unusable. There where disappearing/messed up Voxel Colors on file save, Isolation mode/-eye Icon issues, preset alphas and brush settings not stored, performance regressions here and there, etc etc, and even files open wrongly with missing objects and colors/layers are currently a problem. The point being that hose are not some newly added cherry features that act up, but crucial, basic functionality one needs to be able to rely on. It is not a matter of only "Crash Prone-Ness", but about sheer realiability of the software. And that needs to be guaranteed for a serious pipeline, otherwise it's a pretty bad shape to be in as a user. I see the point, every software has bugs. 3D Coat deserves an Oscar for how bug free it usually is compared to it's sheer complexity. It is natural. But defending currently feelable regressions in a globally gloryfying response like this doesn't benefit the devs, the community/users and the reputation of this software. (Excuse me, I thought this was the development threat , wish I could delete this comment here and transfer)- That said a refund is certainly drastic out of my view, as the software indeed is not more crash prone than any other, especially AutoDesk and Zbrush.

I for once agree with this here. The Sculpt Room and especially Paint Room Room still have basics missing other software has for decades as standards, and you guys stack another separate Room after putting so much development effort already into the modeling room. Of course whatever developers decide, it's their thing. But my suspicion is they are not really lead by professional users needs anymore, but by "wouldn't it be cool if" hobbyists wishlists of strange sorts. And what that should lead to seems strange to me as a passionate user of this software for primarily making art and game art, privately and professionally, and who ditched Substance Painter and Zbrush as a leap of faith in favor of 3D Coat. Sculpting and Painting is such a strong suite of 3D Coat and should not be neglected in favor of piling up more foreign features imo. Artistic users screaming for years and years what is still missing there to make it professionally/Industry compatible. I predict no one or very few tech fetish people will use 3D Coat for CAD. 3D Coat is an ART tool. Voxel Modeling is already capable to create shapes like these, especially with live booleans. Is it precise? No. Does it need to be to make art? No. Users do not chose 3D Coat for dry precision work. Users chose 3D Coat to make art. I can not understand why 3D Coat doesn't play upon it's strength in which it is unique in the industry: A godsent 3D software fusing 3d Concepting and Production for artists at its core. Better to polish that and iron out the kinks, to be more widely adapted, and integrated as a tool into pipelines, so all users, and the hard working devs, can benefit. Not focusing on experiments enjoying people, or people who like to bend the software to their very private dreams of wanting to get something that costs thousands of dollars in other software for cheap. I see e.g. something as crucial as non destructive Adjustments being off the table, but a CAD room is being worked on. Very strange decision to me.

My posted workaround quickly falls apart when moving anywhere else than fixed world direction angle. also annoying having to set up symmetry for each axis each time, let alone the performance implications. Please consider implementing Move Infinite Depth, and also Transform Tool to respect Symmetry.

That's very sad to hear. You are offering a texturing software, and it still being without non destructive adjustments in 2024, which one can't even tell ones coworkers about if you wanna recommend and praise 3d coat/textura, without receiving roll eyes, justified ones, I think you should reconsider the prio of this.

I am using FBX, almost never OBJ. 3D Coats default export selection is OBJ. So each time (like 100+ times a day) I have to expand the dropdown and unnecessarily select "FBX". Is there a way to set a default export type? Maybe this could be achieved altering an XML? It sets OBJ as default, so there's gotta be a way to set the index in the list to "2" instead of "0" (or however this is implemented). Would appreciate any input, cause this really causes me a time loss problem on the long run.

Texel Density really means a lot more than what you described, as it exceeds the needs to have uniformly scaled shells inside one object or across several sub-ojects of one particular, individual asset. The topic gets a bit more complicated when applied across a whole scene or even an entire games world. Hence, Maya, Max, Modo, Blender, they ALL have tools for this. Blender has several plugins even, all great. The example you gave of a Characters face vs head vs body is a most basic (albeit good) example of what dealing with Texel Density entails. Thanks for giving the lesson, but this is not really related to what the thread is actually asking. It's asking about actual, real Texel Density Tools, not a way to only eyeball your shells in relation to the resolution of a Texture. I also do not see how Smart Materials would have anything to do with Texel Density Tools. My point in all of this is that they user already has a fair amount of control over Texel Density There is no fair amount of Texel Density Control in 3D Coat as of now. Just basic shell scaling, equalizing, and maximum UV coverage packing. All of this does NOT take Texel Density into account, at all. Either by changing the map size or scaling the UV shells in 3DCoat as needed. No, and No. This gives a user no control over an actual desired Texel Density. Texel Density is the relation of an objects physical surface size in a world to the amount of Texels used on a texture of a certain resolution. What you describe here gives users zero control over actually working with a desired Texel Density per unit. It's merely the most basic functionality to adjust UV coverage and distribution. A real control over Texel Density lets you apply a certain amount of Texels per unit (e.g. meters). Not only fiddle with Island size inside one Asset. There is NO way in 3D Coat to apply or measure a certain Texel Density like 256²px per meter. Or is there? Even tho you yourself maybe do not see any need for it, doesn't mean other users don't. If you wanna educate yourself on the basics of this subject in a game development context, I suggest getting a copy of this as a start, and you will probably see how much more complicated this topic is than you assumed and hence why users ask for this. https://www.artstation.com/artwork/qbOqP

+1 I would love to be able to ditch using Blender App Link back and forth and be able to control Texel Density directly inside 3D Coat! Please consider it. It would be an important addition for people using 3D Coat in game development. (I am aware Blender doesn't have Texel Density tools, natively, too. But that doesn't mean that 3D Coat couldn't be cooler in that regard natively :D)

Congratz to whoever finally implemented dragging and dropping multiple sculpt layers at a time from .18 on. This was a big (and much needed) UX improvement. Thanks a lot, it's such a joy.

Thanks a lot! Looking forward. 3D Coat Live Booleans rock heavily!