ghib

Taros, I posted in this section of the forum believing it was the correct place for this type of discussion. To quote the forum heading:- '3D-Coat Here you can discuss 3D-Coat, it's properties and facility and also share ideas for improving the program' Thanks for your concern

Does anyone else find the lack of versatility with the current Layers system extremely frustrating or is it just me. I constantly run into problems when I save my layers to psd file for photoshop editing then import back again. multiple extra layers and lack of photoshop-style thumbnail on the layers only adds to the confusion. I'd much rather see this issue fixed than fancy voxel tools or Ptex. Sorry Andrew I love using this program but it's really starting to frustrate me.

Definitely a yes from me

I've wanted this for ages +1

Do people not bake using arbitrary meshes anymore? As far as I know you can do this in Mudbox but Zbrush is a different matter. Not sure what the latest baking in 3.5 is like as I do all my baking using Xnormal these days as I work in the game industry I haven't had much need to use Displacement maps. Most major apps allow you to bake between arbitrary meshes these days. There are of course advantages and disadvantages to both methods but doing it the separate way gives you a bit more flexibility, especially if topology needs to change drastically. If you think about it in this way.. You have a library of stock models that you can take to ZB/MB to sculpt. You can get started straight away. You then BUILD the model (by Retopo) so you're only building the model once anyway. It's not like you're redoing work and this way you're modelling 'over' your form. Doing things the way you describe isn't necessarily bad.. it's just old skool (I jest)

A Sculpt mesh subdivides better if it's all quads with even distribution or with good pole placement, an Animation mesh quite often differs vastly and needs triangles in specific places so a decent workflow in MB or ZB might be to import a basic basemesh (not UV'd > Sculpt > retopo anyway. The triangles needed for good deformation in an Animation mesh tends to lead to BAD pinching that is nigh on impossible to get rid of in my opinion. Retop overcomes this and is something that I see as unavoidable for the best quality work. However... time budget sometimes dictates that you can't always work this way which isn't ideal. I actually prefer the method of bringing in an extremely simplistic base mesh (no longer than 5 - 10 mins work) Sculpt it up then Retop. This way you separate Form & Function, which have never been a great combination to the artistic mind. p.s. If you're Uving your base mesh you're a mentalist

I tried to be as positive as possible while remaining honest and objective. I did point out some negative points but that's only to be expected in a review. I think overall it's a pretty favourable review. That's a shame it takes so long to get the latest editions in the US. It's actually great to have 3D-Coat featured in such a good Issue of 3dWorld (It contains the buggy series tutorial by Mareck Denko and a production focus on Mass Effect2)

Hello all, I was asked to write a review of 3DC last year and it's finally surfaced in the shops. March 2010 Issue 127 I tried to be as objective as possible and unfortunately 3.2 has been released since the writing of the article (Andrew you're too fast) Thanks to Rick Sarasin for the use of his Ostrich Voxel sculpt.

Would some kind moderator please put the download links at the TOP of the 1st post on this thread. Makes sense to have the download & latest changelog next to each other at the top. Cheers

These are awesome dude. Top right one looks like it could be a little rapid prototype model sitting on your desk.

Yep, I really meant this thread to be a bit of a wishlist and to gauge what other users think about this program. I for one find the current material system a bit of a hindrance (which is why I stuck it on my list) It only becomes apparent when you start breaking down a model into material clusters and multiple uv sets. You CAN'T have multiple Layer structure per material which is a major pain but can workaround by keeping things simplistic. However, more often than not, as things need polished the layers can become quite vast (especially when many you are creating many iterations) and it just breaks the workflow. I agree stability of tools is important, but I'd say that is a given with any app. Considering that 3D-Coat is primarily a surface creation program (hence the name Coat) having a strong material system is of major importance. p.s. just thinking about this, 3d-Coat would need a bit of an overhaul. Not an easy job

AbnRanger - While I'm inclined to agree with what you've said; Voxels have seen a lot of love for a long time now and obviously they are of high priority still, but I'm quite disappointed that the Paint side of 3D-Coat has been neglected. I (and others) mentioned this way back when Voxels were 1st introduced to us, that brush speed needs much improvement in terms of speed. I feel that it is the core of 3D-Coat and the main reason I bought the app in the 1st place. Voxels are great and I've created a lot of content and assets using basic shapes to get the rough large normal information then baking and painting the fine detail in the paint room. In many instances I've been inhibited by the brush speed to the point where it becomes almost detrimental as an alternative to Photoshop. I'd love for Voxels to operate at light speed also, but for me it can wait. p.s. I'm not even talking about brush speed in the Voxel room here. I'm concerned with the Paint room. Cheers

First off, I have to congratulate Andrew and team for the release of V3.2 All the hard work is really appreciated here and by the rest of the users for sure. I want to take this opportunity to voice my opinion on where I'd like to see improvements now that there is a major point release out of the way. So my small list is this (in order of priority) Faster/improved Painting Engine (this for me is the BIG one. The brushes become sluggish very quickly with large brush sizes and with multiple UV sets on objects. With Mudbox painting is as smooth as butter but I'd like to see 3dCoat as strong) Sandbox Tiler (I know I'm being cheeky with this one but I've actually wished so many times during production that it were already implemented in 3D-Coat) More versatile Material System (please see this post for more info on how I personally feel it should work) Uncluttering of Retopology tools More modelling control of Primitives I hope this doesn't come a cross as too demanding but I wanted to give my feedback on where I'd like to see a concentrated effort as a regular user of this app in a professional environment. Thanks for listening always. p.s. I hope that other users post here and voice their opinion

Like the title says I really would like to see all menus and sub menus have the ability to tear off like the top level menus. Makes sense that it's consistent all the way through the program. Cheers

Just trying out the CTRL function to move edges and points along the last face normal selected. It's a great idea but it only works properly on points.. With edges it seems to only move in world space Y. Also It'd be great if we could introduce snapping with this tool for lining up points to other points or edges. Will work best with the CTRL or XYZ functions I think. Speaking of which Z & X are nicely close together on the keyboard by unfortunately Y is elsewhere, Might be nice to be able to reassign the keys to something more comfortable. Good job tho.. loving the scope of these primitives. Would love to see these expanded into a powerful modelling side to 3dCoat p.s. Just been playing with it more and it would be really useful to be able to slide edges and points along corresponding edges.

I think that the original symmetry function doesn't have the ability to have more than 1 axis activated at the same time; which is my guess as to why a new system was implemented. I agree that 3D-Coat does tend to suffer from this 'multiple functionality' quite a lot and really needs cleaned up.

LOVING the new primitives using control points. it does need some improvement e.g being able to select faces/edges mode would make things so much easier to manipulate. It really did make me thing, however, how very cool it would be if we could have a powerful lightweight modeller like Silo within 3DCoat.. quickly model some more complex primitives and stamp down to voxels.. Here's to hoping in the future. We are so very spoilt already.

That's a shame, I thought for a second that he meant the actual paint surfacing tools which in my opinion could REALLY do with some speed-up.

Well I think it's a good idea to have the gizmo handles but we need to be able to rotate them independently of the model to align the axis manually. Also.. We need another method to be able to rotate perpendicular to the screen projection. Similar to how the Transpose tool works in Zbrush. It's near perfect.

In the current version 3.1.12 (DX64) The pose tool is virtually unusable or very cumbersome at it's best. e.g. The rotation handles never align to what I need. Why is there no screen based rotation? The selection mode with line doesn't seem to be Topology based so it makes it hard to isolate limbs and digits etc. Hope this gets seen to at some point as it's only really useful for certain simple tasks. Also 'select with pen' is really slow with a radius of about 15 and above. (also it has a really annoying extra ball and line while drawing.. Comeon let's tidy this program up)

What happened to rotational snapping in the uv Preview window? It was there a couple of releases ago by holding shift or ctrl I can't remember.. Will it make it back in? p.s. also how do we deselect all shells? My instinct is to click on empty space... p.p.s. Is there a way to blend between ABF++ & LSCM? p.p.p.s anyone?

I don't like being the party pooper but I really don't like the way the image links open with that slow animated flash thing.. I prefer to middle click open links and images into a new tab (firefox) but with this new system we can't. Everything else is top notch.

Is very easy. 1. on the left panel in Voxel Room goto Objects > Merge 2. Click on 'Select Mesh' from the Params window 3. Select your mesh place it in the viewport & 'stamp it down' by hitting Return 4. Click on the + symbol beside the Root in the Voxel Tree 5. repeat steps 2 & 3 I think that is what you were asking for.. I'm not a morning person so I might've misread...

Je ne comprends pas

BluEgo I feel that an unfortunate side effect of having such open Alpha releases to the general public is a reaction like this. Not that I'm criticising it or anything but maybe we should all be a bit more grateful that Andrew allows us to view his work in progress. Having said that I am all for a stronger brush engine, not only in Voxels but more importantly for me in the painting side of things (which is one of the main reasons I bought 3DC)