Nemoid_

IMO, no need to talk. In ZBrush videos they don't talk very mush or don't talk at all. Another company which has great marketing is Luxology they are great and used several videos to promote Modo with a sort of weekly reveal www.luxology.com http://www.luxology.com/modo/tour/ http://www.luxology.com/training/ about gallery: i do agree it should be often updated with best works from users. Maybe a system directly connected with forum would work well.

well unless of huge technology changements you'll always have to retopo the mesh, if you build it entirely with sculpting, both in ZBrush or 3D Coat. Traditional 3D app work with polygons and deform low/mid poly meshes, not meshes with millions of polygons because they start to literally crawl down their knees updating animation and solve IK and deformations in such situation. Whats actually cool about apps like ZBrush and 3D Coat is they allow user to think at shape before, sculpting it quite from scratch, and only afterwards to how the mesh is interms of optimization and polyflow. This is great especially for organic modelling, where you want a natural and believable shape. With poligonal modelling you can do great models however, but if forces you to think to polygons first and then actual shape so it ends to be a bit more technical. This also brought sometimes a division creating pipelines in which you can have a sculpting artist creating the shape for a character or a creature, and then, a modellig artist creating the poligonal cage for it for animation purposes. Another thing thse apps brought are displacement and normal maps to give to models a more natural and detailed aspect at render stage. About retopo i would add that 3D coat has great tools for it so no real problem having to retopo meshes into it. Zbrush i hope will have better tools than current ones for retopo purposes. I agree with the fact is better to refine and enhance existing 3D Coat toolset and performace before starting to add new stuff. Voxel is an excellent technology to keep pushing and an advancement even over current Zbrush one. When 3D coat will be as smooth as Zbrush for sculpting, competition ill be really huge!

ok my 2 cents here. Zbrush and 3dcoat are two totally different approaches and technologies. Z brush is polygons, and 3d coat is voxels. while polygons are voxel representation though marching cubes or other algorythm, technology behind is different from polygons and it allows cut, paste, boolean operation, and its resolution independent, while polygons are not like this, you have to subdivide the mesh or parts of it to get more detail. you can have booleans, but the final shape has to be calculated and closed into a polygonal mesh and this can bring errors and create an unclean mesh. z spheres II is very interesting, mainly because its a different workflow to build up characters. It will be more natural for perople coming from a sculpting background in real life foe sure. It will offer better rigging/deformation of the final mesh for sure, and, regarding zspheres will offer better results spheres placed into complex ways that are sometimes difficult to manage right now. The volume mass you obtain, is something like a unified skin mass, very clean and subdivided equally, thus allowing good sculpting after youre happy with the general shape. Notice that a mesh can be rigged even now in Zbrush You can use zpheres as a sort of armature yet to deform a character, but surely pixologic has enhanced this making this the focus of this zsphere II workflow. So characters will be posed with that system, now, rather than with the transpose tool. Very probably users will be able to store in ztl file zspheres tructure plus the muscle mass they obtain, for further modification. this will allow to use models as a base for several ones as it happens yet now with z spheres /adaptive skin, but into an empowered way. About flexibility, i dunno if you'll be able to further add modification to a model when you are in painting or detailing stage. Maybe editing it when you're in muscle stage is better and more possible. Voxels have great advantages too, btw. They allow for inorganic modelling too, very well,and allow to grow detail resolution independent which is way cool. I dunno about rigging /posing. however at the end of the process, u can always generate a low poly mesh and rig that one, and project details with disp and normal maps. right now, after all, you'll be forced to do this, when working into traditional 3D apps, for further animation, because they use polys and subdivisoon surfaces, and rig poly meshes with deformers (bones)and lattices. So, even with Zbrush you'll be forced to retopo the final mesh or have a system through which you obtain a low poly mesh good for animation, with good topology for correct deformation, to work with other traditional 3D apps. Lets say that as time passes, this is more and more a limitation of traditional 3D apps rather than a disadvantage of apps like ZBrush. But still, traditional 3D apps offer a real 3D environment in which you can build your scenes with several objects, put lights, cameras, setup dynamics and more, and rig into a controllable way. It willl come a time where the different approaches that apps like 3dcoat /ZBrush, and traditional 3D apps offer, will somewhat collide, since these sculpting apps offer a more artistic approach to DCC for sure! Sorry for the long post. Hope it makes some sense

I tend to agree. it is clear that 3D coat is potentially far superior to ZB and Mudbox. IMO , it simply has to become faster, and as smooth as it can be within voxel technology it uses. Also, painting is a strong area to make work as smooth as possible especially with low poly. 3D coat right now has painting , voxel sculpting, good retopo, quadrangulation features, cloth and much more. If Andrew will reach coupling this with a good and clean UI taking care about workflow, and be as smooth as possible in what its implemented, the app will have a HUGE success. Not too worried , tho. Andrew knows his way, UI is in the works and we can wait even a bit more if its required for 3.0 to be released and being a real bomb within the market. Another thing to consider is that, Andrew develops with such a fast pace, that even if when 3.0 is released Q1 it isn't at 100% but 90% it will become better so rapidly people will not be upset at all. @Andrew another thing: think you noticed Newtek is making that CORE thing (which i hope they'll do well) so, since it seems it will be very opened, a smooth workflow 3d coat/CORE would be really awesome ! Maybe also you could even find some form of agreement with Newtek too.

Actually , as manipulator i like better a traditional one , with rings. The one posted, with cube, small part of ring , and arrow seems to be great visually, but picking up the ring for rotation with your mouse arrow rapidly, would not be so easy. you'll end up picking cube or arrow, whatever instead what you wanted to, cause they're simply too near each other. I'm not the best fan of manipulators actually. A part from free move/translation that allows you not to click into a precise point, they usually force you to click into a very precise point in order to manipulate elements I tend to use manipulators only when they're needed, otherwise i make em disappear. and often when modelling in 3d apps i tend to work with traditional quad view or i switch to single ortho views if needed (this gives me a better grasp of distances between elements) but that's just me. :lol: so, manipulator i'd like to see is with rings, not very thick nor 3d fashioned, translucent if possible, but most important you can scale it on the fly though a key/mouse combination, just similar to a brush in ZB or 3d coat so that it will fit your needs,depending what you're manipulating Possibility to toggle the different transformation widgets and even more important, option to set it as invisible if it clutters your viewport/workflow. Sometimes manipulators get in the way. period. :lol:

no i don't think he waisted his time. painting to texture can be very handy to work in larger pipelines, and to better share work with other artists. ZBrush misses it. Modo has it, for example...

Very interesting read ! IMHO, you're in the right path with your life. The problems regarding religion, especially christian, are that many people tend to misunderstand the real spiritual message, because after all mankind is imperfect. Actually its all written in the comandments you have to love even your enemy, not judge people not impose your believings to other people, but rather express them through your life with the example. Many things in the church go wrong and mislead people trying to get closer, because human acts don't always correspond to what they say they believe. Its not they're bad, its they're sinner like all of mankind. They try to follow the correct path but sometimes they fall. There are also peole which deliberately do bad, but i think they actually know this within their heart. What's important is not to judge other people, for their acts, it is not our job to judge them, but follow the message, and rather care to your own sins and try to live in the right path. Those which are real believers and have the gift of faith you always recognize them, because they give love.They help others no matter who, no matter what faith this is whats important. It also can happpen they aren't christian at all, but they follow the law of God however, because they love other people. Its not so important what one say. Important Is what one does. For example: its not that God would say bad of someone like Gandhi,or put it within sinners beacuse he wasn't christian. He was as good as any other christian saint or believer, because he had faith into love. Religion is a way to talk with God, but's the human way. That's why different people have different ways, and they deserve respect. So, actually, even through making an app like 3d coat you end up helping others because you allow them to produce better art. This is what's important!

well yes, its a very similar thing, but projects a new topology onto an existing shape, using preexisting polyflow patterns to resolve known shapes. The creative part would be the sculpting of that shape as this "projection" would be not artistic at all, you're right. But i think that in several cases could be quite efficient tool. Also, as i said, it could be coupled with possibility to have some kinda guides to allow obtaining a better polyflow where needed, but some shapes could still be resolved with preexisting polyflow patterns, especially regarding realistic organic shapes. after all it's nothing more than a polygonal cage driving sculpted details. If you don't go automatic, and need a very particular topology, then a manual retopology is what you actually need. despite how "clever" a program could be, i guess there's nothing better than a manual, well thought polyflow that allows you to add details where needed

I think in the future there will be similar techniques generating automatically quite good meshes. a cool thing to add to shape evaluation to generate polys, would be also have the possibility to store as reference some example of good polyflow and allow the app to apply the identical pattern to a similar shape : for example a realistic man has quite the same features everytime, only proportions change actually and so, the right topology could be applied everytime to a differently proportioned shape. this, coupled to editing tools to fix topology where needed or to add other details,(and 3d coat has some awesome tools yet) would be a fantastic workflow and would save alot of time.

The 4 years rewrite model is surely great but i don't think this usually happens in 3d programs field. Look at apps like Lw. it has never been totally rewritten since at least version 6.0 (and also in that case i think it was only partially rewritten) I read somewhere in the forums that also Maya core is not that recent. Between Maya and XSI the newest is surely XSI. however : i Think AD will mantain also XSI for a while (the userbase is just too large to totally drop it suddenly) but they could have bought it to make it slowly die .(bummer!) Maya is too well known and userbase is just too large to drop it, period. It is a well known brand, even marketing wise, and it is widely adopted from almost all major production houses within the movie industry. so for XSI, AD could actually make it die or evolve into a direction geared towards game production, TV production, or other areas for example. IMO Maya will become more and more the Photoshop of 3D content creation, especially if it will evolve a bit considering innovations brought from XSI and other "competing" packages.

andrew repeat by yourself: I won't sell out to Autodesk I won't sell out to Autodesk I won't sell out to Autodesk I won't sell out to Autodesk I won't sell out to Autodesk I won't sell out to Autodesk I won't sell out to Autodesk I won't sell out to Autodesk etc....

NT : they should go ahead and modernize the app. Join Modeler and Layout, update the core and become nodal, at least under the hood.its possible to keep what's good now, and to build on this but onto a modern structure. They cannot keep on living on allures. Despite the fact that high end apps are pricey, and Lw not, people tends however to adopt what's mostly used within the industry if they can. Especially if they want to work in big studios. Maya, 3D Max and yes, even XSI are widely used. Lw finds some good place here and there. It deserves that, buts not on par with lets say Maya. If Nt does well with Lw 10, tho, at least we'll have a modern app with a 2008-ish workflow. Keeping into account the goodness of easy to use approach Lw has always had, BTW, will be a real benefit. Lw has not to change radically. It has to actually evolve in better.

It didn't help Mudbox SO much. in the sense that the app still is not on pair with Zbrush for sure. I hope you'll be not forced to sell to AD too !

i agree on bees wax yellow !!! will look natural, and good.

cool model love it!!! i see how volumetric in 3d coat is starting to rock on !!

I mostly agree with what you say, especially separation of split tools from add polygons, because coupling this can generate some confusion with the users. Instead, if something in this could be unified in some way, may also be add/delete they could be part of same tool with different shortcuts because one is the exact opposite of the other. tweak vertices and polygons could be unified through brush size, maybe? just like you happen doing in Zbrush. set brush size to 0 and you tweak vertices. increase brush size and you tweak bigger areas . spin rotates edges as its logic for it to do . in Lw this tool is called spin quads, because you first select polys and it rotates edges between them. it was called like that because there was no edge support in Lw before 9.0. so now that edges are there, it should actually be called spin edges or rotate edges. so, maybe its more clear if in 3d coat name of this tool (that I requested) would be however related to edges to be more clear and obvious. spin of vertices and faces i don't find a reason to exixt. agree about the UI that should appear immediately . even if, the best thing is to be able to work with keyboard shortcuts only, and no UI at all.

i agree that auto completion is a no no. agree on the paint polygon option. If this is difficult, a good idea would be to have the option to set number of clicks in which a polygon is generated. create a pont, second one , third. click on the spot where the forth would be, and the quad polygon would be formed. keep clicking and you see that next polygon is appending to previous one. if you set the option to higher values a ngon could be formed. lower values than 4 , a tri is generated. maya and some other apps have those opptions. Ignore me this is just in 3d coat toolset yet.

A W E S O M E !

hey small question here . does volumetric sculpting will work similarly to metaballs or z sphere process to build up chataracters from scratch?

Making price grow as long as features grow is a good policy !

Very interesting! I like this idea, even if camera settings and such are more proper features of a traditional 3d app: do cinema aligns geometry and lets you paint the object in bodypaint, even afterwalignment process from within that viewport and all works smoothly for making a matte?

hehe joint or bone export, i do know can be difficult, if not impossible to handle. it was just an idea i threw, knowing andrew is such an excellent programmer. the main thing i was asking for is a system similar to what Pixologic previewed , just because i find a similar workflow more handy to pose characters from within the app.it could also be quite helpful when modelling a character, for example raising his arms and sculpt in difficult spots. also. if you take a look in ZBrush centrals there are several topics about some convoluted workflow to rig geometry, and faces of a character. i read alot of posts asking for what Pixologic originally previewed rather than simple transpose. This being said, also transpose feature is really fantastic. but you have to be a bit careful placing the deformer correctly, and masking areas, to not cause strange distortions onto your model. with a "rigging" feature ( i call it like that because it would not be exactly the rigging you make in 3d apps) you maybe would have to set some weight map or mask or something to control "bone" influence - this could be made with 3d coat usual painting toolset, incidentally, but at the end you would be done and you could pose the char to your hearth content. Thanks Andrew for the quick reply. I think such a feature could be interesting for many users.

A great feature to add for 3.xx could be some sort of rigging within the app, a bit like was demonstrated years ago in pixologic forums for - never released - ZB 2.5 in ZB 3.0 there are some possibilities, to do this, but workflow is very convoluted. clearly transpose, despite being good , was a result of an half implemented feature. i think that what was prviewed wasway more artist friendly :lol: I know that in 3d coat there's yet a tool to pose the model, with a similar workflow as transpose, but having the possibility to build a sort of skeleton inside of the model to pose it will be very handy (even while modelling) and the great thing would be always having the possibility to change the pose with great ease and comfort. plus, maybe that this skeleton could also be exported as joints to other packages like Lw or whatever other app (i don't know if this is easy to do programming wise , tho) think about it, users would appreciate this a lot.

I think they just buy out things they feel they need at that particular moment!! they aquired Maya as a side app, but then aquired Mudbox to add anotther weapon to their toolset... Probably Pixologic wasn't disposable to be bought, plus , they sell alot so they can stand on their legs MB has been conceived during LOTR production and was quite Maya related. Software house was started since not a long time. Anyhoo, I think IMHO, that the bad thing is not just Autodesk buying MB but Cardwell, and co selling it out. BTW , better to be bought than close a software house, but probs are always around. look at Hexagon....

Wah autodesk sux. they have great funds so they buy out apps, but they don't do much other. they also tend to live in allures , IMHO. Maya sells by itself because its considered a software leader in the industry, similarly to Photoshop for 2d this especially for movies. It is a good piece of software indeed, but i don't see a fantastic load of innovation in recent releases. Max is the same for games. Autocad same concept no great evolution in it coz its accepted somewhat like a standard. So the real problem is.. where's real innovation? where's R&D ? I see real innovation coming from smaller software houses, and also from softimage rather than autodesk. so that's why 3D coat deserves to grow! p.s. and i would do some UI changes to make it more classy! version 3.0 maybe?