Kaos

I think a big part of any modeling software comes down to speed and efficiency, especially with 3DCoat, because one of the main reasons it's used is the ability to conceptualize something in it very quickly. The tools do take up a portion of the screen though, and to some degree remove you from the focus of what it is you're doing. Most of the people I work with only really use their mouse when poly-modeling (which generally isn't done in 3DCoat, but in a different app). You have two possible methods that I can think of to speed up your workflow. You can either use voice commands, or you can use a pie menu/markdown menu. For customization's sake, I think both are important as a goal because you're going to have people who just don't want to use voice commands. I use Voice Attack, and I like it, but it's not perfect, and ideally, you need to use a headset with it (my studio mic on a boom arm works all right, but it doesn't pick everything up. I might have to repeat a work 4 or 5 times. Not all the time, but it's still frustrating. The goal is to speed things up, not slow them down. The software that's being developed does work better than the stuff I'm testing out right now though, so I think it will be better when released. I don't think the pie menus would be all that difficult to implement. If I were designing them, I don't think I would develop anything on top of 3DCoat as is, such as making a Python-based application that uses the API(I'm not even sure if you could go this route, I haven't taken too much of a look at that yet). You could do this, AutoHotPie is a third-party app that sort of does this, it's just not quite as sophisticated as a direct application made for 3DCoat. I would take a lot of creative liberties from Maya, as most people I know who do modeling and have used Maya, really do enjoy it. I think in 3DCoat it could be even better, because of the different rooms. Not only the different rooms but the different tools being selected would change choices. I think the most time-consuming part about this would be getting it just right for each room, and each tool. I do think it's doable though and would add some customization to how the software is used. From what I've seen, it's been asked for before, so I'm not sure if it's actually on any type of roadmap.

When I attempt to make new hotkeys in the sculpt room, I'm not able to do so. It acts as if I am, but it won't allow me. When I go to set a hotkey, it just acts like I didn't. I figured this out as I was going through the different rooms to set up VoiceAttack. I had finished in the Retopo room, where binding the keys worked as it was meant to. I tried doing the same thing in the Sculpt room, and it didn't work. I tried multiple different tools, but none of them worked. I closed my instance of 3DCoat and launched it again to test, but it still didn't work. I tested this in the modeling room, and on the tool, I tested it on, it did work. From my understanding, you are supposed to have the ability to set up the same hotkeys across the room. So, ctrl+B could load the brush in the paint room, and the brush in the Sculpt room, using the same key combination but calling two different tools. This is what I was trying to test and put to use, but I wasn't able to for some reason or another. I was using the original 3DCoat 2024 that was first launched a week or two ago. I thought that it might have been something fixed in an update, so I updated it to the most recent version that came out on January 18th. I launched the application, but it still doesn't function outside of the retopo and modeling room. Any ideas as to why this is happening, and if it's a big or something I'm doing incorrectly?

Hey everyone! I love 3DCoat, but having started with Maya, the menu system is something I liked about Maya, and had a hard time not having access to it. I use pen-tablet a lot, so I find a radial menu/pie menu very useful. I know that 3DCoat doesn't have a built-in option for this (I did submit a feature request), but I did find an option for people wanting to have access to this type of menu within 3DCoat. It's a third-party piece of software called AutoHotPie, and it works off of AutoHotKey from my understanding. So for it to work, you have to have a hotkey setup for every item you want to use within a radial menu. You can customize all aspects of the menu though, from color to size, to how the buttons interact. You can also make it to where the third-party software targets 3DCoat, and only engages it specifically (you can also have different profiles for different software that you use). I find it quite useful and thought I would share. I tried to record with OBS, but it doesn't show up for some reason. The one downside is that it's not context-based and can't be setup to be that way. So, when in the Retopo room and you open the radial menu, it's going to show the same thing as it shows for everything else. I hope that in the future we get a context-based version of this for each room, or something customizable maybe. For the time being though, this is fairly useful.

I think that speed and usability are important features in any 3D software. While hotkeys are very nice, a lot of us use a pen-tablet along with a mouse, and having access to a pie menu/markup menu would be a great addition, I think. Maya already does this. In Maya, you have access to a context-based menu depending on what mode you are in. I would take this a step further and allow each menu to be customized. There is a third-party application that allows you to do this, called AutoHotPie. The maker of this software first started it for Photoshop but is developing it actively to allow people to use it with any program they want. Because 3DCoat already uses contextual-based menus, so this wouldn't be too far off. I tried taking a screenshot of AUtoHotPie but for some reason, it doesn't capture the program, I'm not sure why. I will write out an example though. Assume you are you the Retopo Room. You have 4 base categories inside of this room. Add Geometry, Tweak, UV, and Entire Mesh. If I were using only a pen and tablet, one of the buttons on my pen or tablet would produce a radial/pie menu with these 4 buttons. When you hover over one of them, it will give you the other tools within that section. This ends up being very quick with a pen, allowing you to change tools rapidly. This also makes it so that you have more screen real estate, as you don't have to have the tools take up space. I would recommend taking a look at AutoHotPie, because all of the functionality already exists, and it's even very customizable. You can control spacing, how you want to interact with the buttons, if you want them nested, etc.

I haven't heard much as of recently when/if it's coming out as a permanent installment. Any word?

Hey everyone, this is probably more of a question for the Devs.... I haven't seen any marketing about 2024 yet. Are we going to have a major update for 2024? I saw that someone else asked this question a little bit ago, and they were told to reach out to support. I did send an email over to support but didn't hear anything back. Any word on if an update will happen this year, and around when we can start looking for the marketing material to check out the changes?