Common general guidelines/good to knows for beginners

[existe]

I'm struggling to learn this app, I must be missing something simple. I'm going through the YouTube tutorials plus a few others. I get the basics of the different rooms and some of the tools in each room, what is foreign to me are the methods. I get the concept of experimenting but thought I'd ask as well.

So questions I guess I have are what are some pretty basic general guidelines to follow? Mainly talking about sculpting/topo/textures

1. More common to build a base mesh in say Blender, merge and sculpt or create 100% within 3DC?

2. When do you know it's time to subdivide? Or work on a lesser subdivision? (This is a big one)

3. Which are the more common brushes? (say top 5 used)

Almost looking for a "If I knew X when I started 3DC, it would have been easier" type of knowledge. Thanks

[AbnRanger]

That's the one thing about 3D Coat. There are so many options, whether you are painting, UV Editing (Ptex is a UV toolset in it's own right), Retopologizing, and Sculpting....that it's hard to pin it down to an ideal workflow. Some prefer to Model outside the app, no matter how good the modeling tools are in 3D Coat. Some like to do what they can all in one app. This is my own personal preference. Although the Applinks really make it nearly seamless to quickly switch back and forth for different tasks.

10 million polys for the head might be enough to do high detail work, but for the whole body, 10 million polys is more low to mid level resolution. You will just have to get a feel for that as you go. Caching your layers allow you to preserve RAM and also do large scale edits on the proxy.

[Pix Jigsaw]

1. I am by no means an expert in any 3D modeling package, but as I am gaining experience, I find some things are easier or more fun to do in Blender and others are easier and more fun to do in 3D Coat. Personally, I love working in the 3D Coat Vox room. On the other hand, if you have developed a lot of skill in some other modeling program, you can leverage that by building the base mesh in that program and then importing to 3D Coat.

2. The subdivision thing is this balance between having enough resolution to handle the level of detail you are sculpting without having so much that your computer bogs down and performance becomes unacceptable. In a perfect world you could just work with massively high resolution all the time with zero lag. In the real world you have to compromise and find the subdivision sweet spot.

3. I don't do much organic modeling and don't work in surface mode that much. So for me, vox room tools/brushes I use most are Grow, Smooth, Extrude, Pose Move, Transform and Primitives. I'm starting to use curves much more lately as it slowly dawns on me how powerful the tool is. I use invert tool and do a lot of cutting to create my models. Block in with primitives and hack away using invert tool and e-panel modes like the rectangle. I work in ortho mode a lot while doing this.

Things I wish I knew when I started Wish I had spent time exploring the e-panel options right from the start. You will never harness even a small fraction of 3D Coat's power without having a solid grasp of the e-panel modes and settings. Another one: I wish I had understood how powerful the Move tool was. I also wish I had known about select with pen mode in the Pose tool combined with the e-panel rectangle mode and the e-panel boarder width setting.

Good luck as you gain skill with the program. It is very much worth the effort.

[existe]

ALL helpful and replies appreciated

[digman]

When to subdivide is a question of what form stage you are working at... Use the resolution that you only need to sculpt the form you are trying to achieve. When you get to the high details as AbnRanger suggested increase your resolution for those details.

This wip creature at it's current stage is just a little over 2 million voxels or if you were in surface mode, polygons... You can see that to create basic form you can do alot with less before bumping up the resolution.

Note: You will need a 2k to 8k texture map to capture details when merging to the paint room depending up how fine they are. Some details are best added in the paint room but the choice of when to do so is up the user.

The second picture is the creature with 3 separate uv sets using a 2k normal map each to capture the current details. Real fine details require 4 to 8k texture maps.

The retopo mesh is 2900 polygons created manually.

Some users create higher texture maps in 3DC but resample them down later to be used in a game engine. You preserve a good amount of the details that way plus save memory for the game.

[Pix Jigsaw]

@ Existe. Here is a post from someone who imports a base mesh from another program and then works in 3D Coat. Beautiful work. I think what he is talking about there is relevant to some of your questions. http://3d-coat.com/forum/index.php?showtopic=11258&hl=

[existe]

@ Existe. Here is a post from someone who imports a base mesh from another program and then works in 3D Coat. Beautiful work. I think what he is talking about there is relevant to some of your questions. http://3d-coat.com/forum/index.php?showtopic=11258&hl=

Thanks, good stuff...lots to learn