Joat

Herein lies the core of the issue I started this thread for. A good intention and a beautiful thought has turned against it's originators. When I first came across the discussed wish, it put a smile on my face, in a good way. Here's a small company that makes a tool that is fast becoming the tool to produce those monsters, manga figures, scantily glad females and all the cg stuff that fills the 3D forums everywhere... And yet the creators are so strong in their faith they wish the program to not be used in making stuff that everyone and their mother does with other software of the same genre. I don't do much any modelling that would be even borderline of what was the intention behind said passage in EULA. I also find the stereotypical satanic monsters and poorly disguised visualisations of teenage daydreams in the name of "anatomic studies" really boring. Of course an artist depicts what he finds the most interesting, and the role of hormones and the general idea of "coolness" are major factors in that. But to even make a wish the program should not be used in making anything that in our world is not considered illegal opens a lot bigger can of worms. As artists we mostly can't stand the thought of any kind of control applied to our work. In the real world there usually is limitations stipulated by the work in question, it's target audience, and our clientele. And as artists we play ball to be able to do this for living, and to gain exposure and new job opportunities. But for the same real world factors we need tools that can get the job done when needed. If my clients want to have a model presented in a way I personally consider tasteless or offensive, I would tell that to them straight up. But if they would still want it done that way I would probably still make it for them. I might refuse to have myself or my company associated with it, but I would still do it. I'm running a small company, and for me to turn down a paying customer would mean their values would really have to be something I disagree with. Such cases would indeed be something along the lines of hatemongering, promoting cruelty towards animals, child abuse or faking the products for downright dishonest business practices. And yet, I know that they would have no problem finding somebody else to do their dirty work. Having said all that, I could not use 3Dcoat to do the kind of work I think borderlines with the intention behind the EULA passage. It is not a problem for me, but I totally get why it is to many. It would have been for me too when I was a little younger. I have done my share of these borderline subjects with other tools a few years ago.

The reason I opened the topic is that for some people this issue can be a dealbreaker that stops them from checking out the program and it's toolset. Which is a pity because all of them are the ones the paragraph in EULA is not meant to be directed at. Those who produce truly immoral content are immoral and don't care what it says in EULA. They probably don't pay for the program either.

The great thing about it is that you don't have to. When I see something appalling, I reserve the right to be appalled. :lol:

I agree with you on that. AND I think it's mandatory for artists to have a total freedom of expression. In fact, it is the art that we don't like that often has the most impact on our thought processes. And it is one of the most important functions of art to make people think.

The works I was referring to are from the likes of Michelangelo, Luca Signorelli, Limbourg brothers, Taddeo di Bartolo and, say, Jacopo Tintoretto. Works, some of which were comissioned by Pope himself. Back in the days the majority of the people could not read. And those who did, could not comprehend latin. Which was the official language of the church. Yet the church felt the need to get the message across to them as well. Using very graphic means indeed.

I felt the need to open a topic about this. The section in EULA lead to a closing of the news thread in cgtalk. It's sad but I can totally see why. Sad it is, because it is a conversation that needs to be had. I am not a newborn christian, although I confess to have somewhat christian view of the world and have therefore no personal problem with the wish that is included in EULA. I also think it is a stand up thing to do to at least try to limit the damage done on moral values by something you have created. But there's a lot more to this than initially meets the eye. A few views to consider.... It has never been denied to depict sin, sexuality, horrors of hell or acts of obscenity in christian art. Back in the old days these images were made as warnings and reminders of the horrors that await in the afterlife for those who live their life in sin. In order to drive the horrors of hell to the hearts of people they needed to be shown what awaits. And if the purpose was right, those hellish creatures could be seen doing unspeakable things to naked human figures too. Which brings us to nudity and human figures. The most important thing in producing convincing and accurate depictions of humans is to understand the human anatomy. It can be studied only by producing studies of the said anatomy. To my knowledge everyone serious about studying the art of drawing, sculpting or painting humans is likely to participate in sessions where there is a living naked model present. There is nothing obscene or wrong with that. It is the proven way to learn to depict human form. Today the situation with the human anatomy's "acceptance" is really perverted in my view. This is the direct result of lobbying done by certain bodies of somewhat authoritative and fundamentalist religious groups in America. They have managed to distort the nudity to be automatically obscene. Which it really is not. We are all born that way. And as artists we should understand that the subject in itself is always different from the meaning we give to it through interpretation. I totally get where the paragraph in EULA is coming from. And to me that really is not a problem. As an artist I work on the subjects that don't get even close to the areas that are considered to be gray in this context. But there is a lot of people out there who produce pictures of human anatomy or demonic creatures due to personal or professional necessities. And yet they can still be doing that without the intentions of being obscene or promote distorted or hateful content. And I think we all deserve and need to have complete freedom as artists. It should be our heart telling us not to produce images of obscenity or hatred for wrong reasons, not the EULA. ...and for those who have the agenda of producing filth to demoralize humankind, any statement in the EULA is going to be meaningless anyway. They are standing in the opposite corner already.

Can confirm. On latest build (the one that has multicore as a checkbox) the speed is again good. Heck, even great. Really responsive. But when I turn shadows on, it slows down to a crawl. Is this because of the little memory I have on my display adapter? It's Pny QuadroFX 560 with 128 megs. I'm running two 1550*1024 (or thereabouts) screens with it. Not a big deal for me since I can do without shadows. But if it is something that can be fixed... Tools are getting better by the day. =)

Same here, QuadroFX 560, 2* quad core xeon (2,33ghz), 16 gigs of memory, winxp 64bit and the newest gl-version is unusable because of the slow framerate. I wrote about this also on "new releases and betas".

Magnificent work so far! I have been playing and admiring the process in the background, but now I felt I need to comment. The newest alpha is slow (GL - version, DX works alright) beyond the point of usefulness. Andrew commented earlier that it is due to old displaycards. I don't consider mine as "old". The card is PNY QuadroFX 560, and the screen refresh rate is once in every 2 seconds with default shader, with more plain shaders it's slightly better. Earlier it worked a lot smoother, even with more advanced types of shaders. On the other subject: I don't know how it is planned, but would it be possible to have 3dcoat automatically convert voxel sculpt to a low(ish) resolution mesh and automatically generated displacementmap that would bring the sculpted detail also to the final mesh? When I picture the workflow with existing tools, it would seem very natural to have the sculpting and texturing integrated in this way. I am not into gamedesign, so I personally don't mind higher polygon meshes. Smaller meshes are just nicer to handle. How have you tought of implementing the texturing part? Can we import first, sculpt then and convert to mesh & texture last or will it be possible to sculpt in passes? I mean to start with a sculpt, then texture, then sculpt again, then texture again etc?

This just popped into my mind while thinking of doing cameramapping with other application. In 3dcoat we can export viewport to texturing in photoshop. That's half of the functionality already there. Now, if it would be possible to align the geometry with background image and define the properties of viewport (lens aperture etc), it would be quite easy to make 3d enhanced matte paintings. Basic geometry can be made in different applicattion, but 3dcoat would need to be able to import camera settings from there. Even cooler would be to just import the background image, use retopolgy tools to draw the geometry on top of it and export the geometry with background image mapped into it. If interested, check Cinema 4d11's new matte projection manager. 3Dcoat could gain a whole new target audience...

Boy, am I glad you were not around when God was thinking about creating the world. The tought of Him having a conversation about the feasibility of the idea with you... Surprisingly it's not your program we are discussing about. There are those who concentrate on doing stuff, and those who spend their time spilling the juice of their infinite wisdom to us lesser mortals. Your attitude is something I am pretty familiar with amongst 14 year olds, and being an adult I refuse to take this conversation any further with you. This section of the forum is called feature requests. I started this thread to make a feature request. What's your excuse of answering it in the first place? Andrew: I take some time and study the subject a little further before I get back on this. I really hope this pointless argument fades away and we can continue with the original subject a bit later.

Scott, you seem to have a misunderstanding about GPL license. I'd take you haven't read one. GPL requires that any derivative work made from GPL'ed applications source code to be GPL'd too. It says nothing of using GPL'd software's file format specification and building import / export functionality to other program, be it commercial or GPL-software. That kind of limitation would simply be insane. Exactly the same goes to other formats discussed here. Altough .obj and .lwo are formats of commercial software, it is of everyone's interest they can be used to transform models between applications. Both are also free to implement. Andrew has published SDK for 3D-coat for the same reasons. GPL license's purpose is to secure the efforts of software's developers against derivative works built on top of their code. They are not (generally) paid for their work, so I think this kind of license is fair to say the least. GPL's intention is certainly not to restrict the usability of the software itself. Restricting the implementation of import / export functionality to other software would do just that. I think no-one in their right mind, could consider 3D-coat a derivative work of Blender, no matter how smooth and comprehensive import / export it would have. If uncertain, ask from the source in question. Blender head developer Ton Rosendaal can be contacted, and his address can be found from www.blender.org. I am pretty sure he backs me up on this. As it comes to the format of .blend, I know nothing about it. It might as well be just as you said. But still, it can be done. And I made a wish to Andrew to do so. Given what he's capable of, I think it's not even a tall order.

No. Importer and exporter coded in 3D-coat would in no way be binded by Blender's GPL lisence. Same as with any other format. Is 3D-coat affected by Lightwave's or Softimage's lisence? I really doubt it. And as it comes to Blender import / export, i think when there's a will, there's a way. After I wrote my first post I noticed there is already an SDK for 3D-Coat. I will ask if there's someone in Blender community willing to do the import / export for 3D-coat. They have done marvellous integration job also with Indigorenderer, an I see the situation between Blender and Indigo and Blender and 3D-coat pretty similar. Indigo has certainly gained momentum from Blender userbase, and Blender has had it's "de facto" unbiased renderer in Indigo. I was willing to pay to have 3D-coat as part of my workflow. If and when Indigo gets to be commercial software, I am willing to pay for it too. But I would propably not be if there would not be the excellent Blendigo exporter. It really makes a difference there.

It would be cool to have blender import / export. It's an open format, so all the necessary information should be there. But is it possible?