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Hi, really hoping to get a conversation going here. Over the last few days I've been playing around with texture painting in 3DCoat and have hit a bit of a wall when dealing with PBR normal maps. This is odd considering normal maps are standard practice with PBR materials, especially when preparing assets for real-time rendering / game engines. I've reached out and discussed this with a number of people, including 3DCoat staff who consistently repeat to me the following: Normal maps are supported, select your normal map in the "Depth" field when making your smart material and it will convert it for you. Height/depth maps are "better" and I should be using those instead of normals. They are different things and both have their place. Especially when using heightmaps to displace geometry. Normal maps don't make sense when texture painting directly because of tiling or something? I've put together a few screenshots of what my one of my paid PBR materials looks like when used in 3DCoat in a couple of ways, as well as what it looks like when used via Marmoset Toolbag 4 for reference. I can correctly use this PBR material using ArmorPaint, Substance and Marmoset and Quixel, all of which allow me to apply a normal texture along with albedo, rough, metal etc. You basically just create a fill layer and provide a normal map as part of the material you are filling the layer with. I had a response from support@3dcoat.com which basically told me to convert the map, when I asked for some more details I basically got silence/ignored. Is this something that the 3DCoat dev team is looking to add at some point? Is there an actual technical reason why you can't sample from normal maps when painting? I used the shader materials to bake in the normals prior to texturing but vertex painting those details is just not a solution. 3DCoat - Using PBR provided height map No surface scratches, only general bump information. Scratches may be only slightly visible because they are present in albedo and roughness details. 3DCoat - Using generated depth map from normal map source This is just wrong, looks like a normal map I would have generated from a colour image or something in GIMP. Notice the weird warping artifacts around the plates where they connect, this is unusable. Marmoset - No normals, No Depth/Bump (Just for reference) Marmoset - Depth/Bump Only Take a look at what details the texture artist captured in the height map, scratches are not accentuated in this map, just general material bumpiness. The scratches seen only because they are present in the albedo and roughness textures details. Marmoset - Normals Only Scratches and other small details are accentuated in the normal map. These are completely different artistic details that are present in this PBR material that are to be replicated using lighting/normals rather than height/displacement or bump. Marmoset - Height and Normals

Hello. I have a problem with appearing normals (shadows on the surface). I am sure that i am doing something wrong in the topology. Please one of the good modellers can tell me what i doing wrong and how solve that to make smooth normals? I've also attach two screenshots that showing the problem.

Hi Folks, I have already completed some simple objects and imported them to unity. But some of my models don't do what I want. One example: I want to sculpt a simple block for a stair or a wall. The sculpt looks like this: Very simple, very basic, very boring, I know. Next, I do the low poly mesh, define Seams and unwrap: The UV needs some workover, I know. The problem begins with the BAKE: I choose Unity and let the standard settings as is. The result is this: The normal map looks very scattered, and the model is not usable with this map. What am I doing wrong here?

Hi, I've recently been working on some 3D models for use in Unity, and I would like to paint textures with Smart Materials. For each texture that I wish to paint with, I have the albedo texture + a normal map. These normal maps work great in Unity, however I am unable to use them as a "depth" map in 3D-Coat. Is there a way to utilize these normal maps as depth maps?

hello, I'm using 3d coat nearly year and now i got some problem: I cant draw with norlmals in paint room, but only when I'm using texture. Only one day before it worked and now I cant. 3d coat version 4.8.10. On screenshot 1 I'm drawing with just brush and no texture and it works well. But on screenshot 2 I draw with texture and it doesnt work properly. On 3rd screen normals and they are plain. it should be as on 4 screenshot. Thanks for any help.

Hi all, I am not sure what happened but suddenly 3d Coat is outputting my normals in reverse - things that should be carved OUT are going IN on my object when i send the obj file to substance painter. I wasnt having this problem to start and I am not sure what I could have changed that has everything coming out poking the wrong direction. Can anybody tell me how to fix this?

How a thing looks in 3d coat, how it looks in unity. and the normals. What am i doing wrong? Is it that it get's weird when relying on normals rather than sharp edges cause unity can't handle that well? This is only weird on the normals i baked in from a high res model and also only on some of the places.

Hi Can anyone explain what is happening here? I sculpted and retopoed a car that looks ok in 3d Coat but is horrid on export to Simlab and Daz Studio. This is the paint object in 3d coat This is the mesh This is in Simlab without Normal map This is in Simlab with normal map Daz without normal map Daz with normal map

howdy guys, working on a set of norse alpha/normal brushes looking for feedback, you can grab them here https://gumroad.com/l/uIFW# for free, i look forward to your feedback

Hi, when i bake my retopo mesh then i get strange normals! I played already with the setting but i just dont get it... Can anyone help me in this cage? What could i do wrong?

The problem i have is the following : -I unwrapped my UVs fine -I then baked my normals (with the default shader & name correspondance for baking unchecked as it seemed to cause problem) -Normals are fine in the paint room I tried exporting the object from the retopo room (Export Retopo Object) & from the paint room (Export Object & Textures), and in those 2 cases, i get a weird UVW mapping in C4D : Also, in the Retopo room, i can't move retopo meshes in other UV Sets. I tried with my mesh selected or not in the Retopo room, with the initial object layer selected in the Voxtree or not... Anybody has ideas ?

Hi folks, Is it possible to do a similar workflow in coat like Ndo's normal map generation? I've been playing about with the stroke options and the depth setting but I can't seem to come up with a good combination of tools. Cheers your time and help Greg

The workflow I want is: I have low poly meshes w/ UVs laid out in Maya, import that mesh into 3dcoat, sculpt and paint it, and then export it into Unreal. What I have been doing is: exporting as obj from Maya, importing "Mesh for voxelization" then sculpting, at this point, I'd like to get a normal map and move to the painting stage, but it seems I have to do a bake in the re-topo, which isn't working now, I assume because I haven't retopologized, and I don't want to, I want to use my existing low poly mesh. So, my core question is - what's the best way to get a normal map from a pre-existing obj, and a sculpt in 3dcoat as the high poly? I assume there must be a way, but it's not obvious to me after playing around and watching a bunch of videos on the program. The final step would be to get this set up in the paint room, but I assume once I have the normal map, this will be easy to do. Thanks!! And while the above may not be the ideal workflow, the meshes and Uvs in Maya are already finished, so I don't want to start again, but I am interested in what the best way of doing this is.

Hello, I'm currently on the trial version of 3D Coat, seeing if it's right for me (I say that just in case there's some limitations in the trail version unbeknownst to me). I currently have a relatively basic obj. file (a bell post) that I've retopo'd. I now want to update the model in the paint room with the retopo mesh, and then afterwards bake normals. Every time I bake though, 3D Coat crashes. Every time. Any hints on what could be going wrong? I'm on a GTX 780, 16gbs of RAM, so I'm not thinking the rig is the issue, but who knows. Thanks in advance everyone; besides these occasional technical hiccups, I'm enjoying learning this program.

Hello guys I have a problem with the reflections of the PBR shaders. When I paint with very reflective material directly on to the high res model in the sculpt room (just for test) there is no problem, everything looks smooth. But when I bake the normal map and apply the material on to the baked low poly mesh the reflections get distorted, attached are previews of the problem. P.S I disabled the normal map and everything looks smooth on the low poly mesh, but there are no problems with the normal map, no errors. I also tried inverting the green channel, but there was no improvement. Any help will be much appreciated. Thank you! Zhivko

I'm trying to draw a weld seams... So I use a Brush Tool, a Depth channel active and the Additive paint checkbox turned on. But when I draw I get a plainly extruded stroke. Is there a way so that each brush drop (tick) will be overlayed on top of the previous one? Spacing parameter in Brush options doesn't help much. I use standard round alpha, maybe that is the problem? Do I need a specific alpha for a welded seams effect? thnx

I want to use 3dcoat to generate normal maps. I have been able to sculpt a high poly mesh, retopo it to a low poly mesh, bake the normals, color, depth, etc. My question is where are these maps. I want to use these maps in blender and unreal engine, but I cant seem to find them anywhere. Or find a way to save them to someplace. Can anyone help me? Thanks Mike

Hi! In per pixel painting I use several UV sets and there is some inconvenience in tech nuances. I have 5 meshes, 5 normal maps, I import all the meshes separately with their own UVsets. then I start importing normal maps. If I import them separately they looks correctly, but I no need a bunch of layers with same name "Normalmap" it makes workflow little messy so i'd like to optimize this bunch and there are 2+ ways to do that: 1st one is to import other normal maps into the same layer, I did this in early version of 3dc, but 4.5.16 has issue about it. 2nd way is place all normal maps into the folder. But! both ways finds same issue: normal maps get messy uv seams, because of kind a smoothing algorithm. seems like the program is trying to smooth pixels between uv shells. Is good for all maps except of normal maps Is there a swith smoothing switcher somewhere? If it isn't make it please! Thanx!

I made a simple hard-surface low-poly model in 3ds max. Then I want to import it to 3dc, to subdivide (up to several millions poligons) and to add details. Then I want to bake a normal map, to apply it to the original mesh (in Unity engine) How to do it? Describe a procedure. And I also want to bake AO.

So I am trying exporting normalmaps from 3dcoat for 3dsmax. Does someone have working settings? Cant seem to get nice normal maps. Always look blurry compared to the render in 3dcoat, and direction seems also odd. Tried swapping y-z, but nothing happened. Are there any special settings for 3dsmax normal export?

I'm merging a retopo in the paint room. Normal map per-pixel. I want to bake the details from the mesh onto the normal map. So when I merge, no details on the normal map and the ambient is all black. Know a little about baking but not much.......The details of the high poly mesh are suppose to get baked to the normal map, so it adds fine details for the low poly and saves on poly count.......right? Not baking it the right way. IDK what I'm missing here......

Hello. Again!!! I'm "importing image as mesh", seamless stone as textures. A texture map and a Heightmap are used. Apply in surface there's the mesh with bump displacement and the textures applied to the mesh in the voxel room. Now in the retopo room, it's been retopoed and shows the texture on the high poly also. Merging to perpixel with normalmap. I lose my texture in the paint room, the normal map layer have no effect and the occlusion layer is black. So missing a step here....... I don't want to bake the texture but keep it and apply it to the low poly and then bake the occlusion and normal map layers for perpixel.

I'm about to lose my mind. I'm trying to reduce seams between my hand model and body model and both use object/world normals. When I import my normals they look all messed up (really black areas with severe seams where there should be no seams). Am I correct in assuming that 3d Coat does not work with anything but tangent space normals? Should I just use flat shade and import and work on them as diffuse textures?