jedwards

Nice update! Thanks for the quadrangulate/new layer fix too! Very fast response on that one, and it will come in handy immediately! Thanksf for all the rest too!

Hey Andrew, was wondering if it would be possible to include mouse clicking (left, middle, right - even thumb buttons if possible) to the key customization mode, with support for modifier keys like ctrl, shift, alt, etc. Basically just expand the mode to recognize mouse clicks as part of the combination when you want to reassign a command via the 'End' key toggle. I suppose this would include pen input as well, since that is most likely how I would be using it myself. Also, would it be possible to store different bindings to the same key, based on which room you are in? This way I could reuse the most easily reachable keys for both retopology, sculpting and painting.

I'd sooner see him add more realtime rendering options into 3dc first. =]

Hi Fabricio, not surprised there - Mynki likes to try on all the cool tools =] I think someone pointed out to me that you were at DE when we were looking at your Hulk model awhile back. Love your version of Hulk... it's one of my faves. Can't wait to see more! Cheers

Thanks Taros! I've started upping the resolution and trying to refine it... going well so far. I think at some point I'm going to hit that wall where, without decent masking tools I won't be able to get the same kind of detail I would otherwise in ZB. Regardless, I think I want to try and take it as far as I can in 3dc and see what happens. Working in small, manageable chunks is the key to getting good performance and brush control with voxels. Copy brush becomes very important even in later stages, if you need to extract pieces for further detailing - better than trying to force it with fewer pieces I find.

Here's another blockout. I wanted something I'd be a little more interested in completing than my last one. Most of it is still at base resolution, though I did extract some pieces and up the rez a bit or swap them out with primitives where it made sense (like cylinders etc). Still got a few more things to try out on it, then I'll sharpen it up, retopo and send it off to zbrush.

Would it be possible to add some extra settings in the primitive creation panels for objects with hard edges like cylinders and cubes? Being able to bevel the ends of a cylinder and control the width would be awesome. I would imagine it as a simple checkbox to enable, with maybe 1 slider for each end to control the width. Same with a cube, only maybe having 3 sliders, 1 for each axis. I use cylinders, cubes and spheres the most and I often wish for a bit more control over the hard edges.

Yeah they upped the ante so much I decided not to upgrade to 2009 or 2010. =] Was pretty disappointed that zb 3 was still more useful to me than 2009 when it was released. And less buggy too. I was hoping that the products would tend to leapfrog each other a bit with their releases but I didn't see that happen.

Very cool! Love the detail work at the bottom!

Great stuff both in and out of 3dc! The retopo tools are what pulled me in originally as well. Once the voxels got added it was sculpting heaven! 3dc is becoming a bigger part of my modeling process all around!

I think the new zspheres will be a great addition, and will probably bump zb into a more useful tool for doing pure organics. They were already pretty awesome as it is. The ability to pose and define your volumes in the beginning is very important, just like with clay sculpting. That said, 3dc is still strong in this area even without zsphere functionality. I wouldn't complain if it got easier, like in zb, but it's still very easy to get any shape you want quickly in voxels without an armature. I'm currently tackling a purely organic creature and a fully armored character in voxels and 3dcoat makes it very easy in the beginning for doing both. It's not perfect, but the new zsphere additions won't be either I suspect. At this point I'd much rather see 3dc get the ability to do higher detail in voxels because currently I still think ZB is a better all around tool for that. I don't see the new zsphere additions taking me out of 3dc at all. Maybe for some stuff where appropriate, but more than likely I'll continue to use both for what I feel they are best at. 3dc doesn't just provide easy, seamless merging... it's a very powerful boolean approach to building stuff as well, and should be even further refined to handle more precision modeling as it matures. This is the kind of thing ZB isn't so good at.

Thanks for the comments guys - I'll try and get back to finishing that punk dude... keep getting distracted with starting new stuff in this program hehe. GED: I started doing retopology on the marine so that I could take it into zbrush and finish it but since there was no real design effort put into it I didn't want to put any more effort into it. I've started a new marine instead - something a bit more challenging and worth taking to completion. The first was really just a test to see if I'd like doing hard surface blockouts in 3dc. Will post a pic soon!

Heheh, thanks for the reply cuffins. I actually find that toggle even more confusing though. =] I do want to see the brush radius cursor itself, as that allows you to see the size and also easily pinpoint where your stroke will start, stop etc. The capslock toggle crosshair is actually too distracting as well, being bulky and right in the center of the brush, and lacking the radius indicator, it's quite confusing. Basically I just want to see the circle when I'm working - no crosshair or anything else. It might be cool if you could customize the capslock toggle so that you could see either just the crosshair, or just the circle though!

Agreed. I would be more inclined to attempt high detail work in 3dc with some proper masking tools. Until then it's zbrush for that stuff.

That looks great! Perfect case for using 3dcoat in the beginning.

Had an itch to make a generic space marine dude so I thought I'd try a blockout in 3dcoat and see how it went. I started a new dropbox gallery for my 3dcoat sketches too as this one is already quite messy with posts etc. Link is in my signature at the bottom.

I often just start with a sphere. As much as I love modeling in Silo I find it simpler to just start sculpting in 3dc. Using the pose tool can reduce the amount of sculpting required at the start by just stretching out a couple of spheres into limbs, torso, etc, then merging them all together. There's so many ways of roughing stuff out in 3dc, but I've settled on those two as faves. Even for non-organic stuff I'm starting to rough out more with voxels and just retopo it, then move it to silo for more precision polygon editing.

It would be pointless to update the official manual as new features are added. They are almost never in a final state when they are first added. It usually takes a bit of feedback from the community to fix bugs, and iron out workflow and features for any given tool - this is part of andrew's overall approach to developing the software and it has worked pretty well so far. It results in us getting the tools we ask for rather than someone else deciding for us and paying for it 'like it or not'. If time isn't a luxury for you you probably shouldn't be messing with new features in new builds and instead focus on what's there that you use regularly. Asking for professional, commercial quality training from a product that is neither as mature, nor well documented, nor as well staffed as other commercial solutions is a bit unrealistic. The trade off here is that you get all this cool new stuff at a rapid rate and at a dirt cheap price, and faster than the other developers can do themselves. The alternative is to buy something else and pay extra for whatever training you need that is available and generally remove yourself from the developer/user feedback loop. Andrew's development method is a perfectly viable approach to business for a software as immature as 3dc. As it does mature and gain more audience you'll see more training material. Until then, this is what we have to work with. Personally I wouldn't trade this for anything. It's better than being left in the dark for a year or more and then getting stuck with whatever updates the developers feel you should have. Anyway, it's not that hard to skip a build or two and catch up on features later. I do this often as it suits my needs or dependence on a specific build to finish a piece. It's entirely up to me how much I want to scrub the forums for updates and info, and it doesn't take a lot of time to do.

Why stop there? I think if you are going to add UV tools, why go half way? Stitching, relaxing, and editing/tweaking uvs in general should be more capable. I'd love to be able to keep my meshes in 3dc after retopology as well, and do my UVs there. Currently I send my meshes over to UVLayout. I wouldn't expect as robust a toolset as that, but definitely some more basic tools for creating and editing UVs would be nice.

Using sketch tool crashes on mac while trying to create the voxel object. I tried using 256x256 images to start with on my imac to keep it simple but had no luck getting it to make anything.

Put me down for this as well - anything to stack functionality across fewer keys and more pen/mouse input would be nice.

I think this has to do with the mirror snapping. I find it tends to pull geometry towards the mirror seam too easily at the default, so I usually lower it down to around 50% or so when doing manual retopo work. The auto meshing always creates overlapping geometry at the seam so I always end up deleting all the geometry at the seam and rebuilding it by hand. Would be nice if this could be fixed, but overall it hasn't been a big deal to me.

Yeah I tried all the shaders. Any that have opacity as a setting did not work. Though modifying other parameters like color does work. I am testing it on an iMac though and I believe the video card it uses is an older ATI card so maybe that is part of the problem. I can try it on a pc with a better card at the studio on Monday.

Even as just a 3d painter it is worth the current cost. No matter how you use this program, the price is cheap. Any other commercial 3d painting solution costs twice what a photoshop license does... which is about 4 times more than 3dcoat. Just an observation. I only bought it for the retopology tools originally. Painting and voxels are a huge bonus for me... even as someone who uses zbrush and modo already.

Changing opacity setting on shaders doesn't seem to work. At least on latest mac build.