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3DCoat 4.7 (BETA testing thread)


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6 hours ago, jene said:

in my personal opinion, the rendering software is enough .

I hope that sculpting capability of 3D-coat is improved  rather than rendering.

I largely agree....been waiting for Sculpt layers for years, now. However, it's my understanding that Andrew is currently working on the Paint Room, while the Rendering issue is something Carrots is working on, separately. Andrew would be the one to do the Sculpt room work.

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On 4/7/2017 at 1:18 PM, jene said:

in my personal opinion, the rendering software is enough .

I hope that sculpting capability of 3D-coat is improved  rather than rendering.

The rendering in 3D Coat could definitely be better, whether real time like Marmoset Toolbag or a progressive renderer like iray.
Rendering however is something that should be low on the list, as there are so many more important areas that need improvement in 3DC, things people actually buy 3DC for.

You touched on the on of the most important ones, sculpting. Zbrush needs strong competition, and a lot of people are looking at 3DC for that.

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I disagree . Each to his own I suppose, at the moment I an trying to solely work in 3dcoat and keep my workflow really simple . I've been through the rigmarole of remeshing ,unwrapping ,blah blah blah what a waste of my time that is.( yes I know people have to do all this stuff for games and what not... but that doesnt mean everybody wants that.) The rendering room is almost there for me and my simple needs ,a few improvements would help. For me at the moment Bounced colours and nameable lights would be a start...

It is a shame that survey was not a bit more in depth, there wern't many options, but I suppose they just wanted a general feel of what folks want.

Edited by stusutcliffe
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You should not focus on stuff that other, already established apps will be able to do better anyway, and that most people in the industry already own. I for one will always do previews and presentations in Marmoset Toolbag, period.

Focus on what the app does best, and what other apps can't do. Rendering should imo be of very low priority.

 

Edited by wilson66
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So it seems a few people are interested in rendering updates, but more users would like to have the energy rather spent on other parts of improvement.
I personally think there are enough other apps that do great renderings and some of them are free or not too expensive and some are easy to use.
A possible interesting rendering update could be render passes for quick look-devs.

For me I would love to see some love brought to dimensions. I would like to easily define the position and sizes of objects, pivot points, selections and whatever else could use it.

Very important for me would be a clearer definition of the voxel resolution in terms of the specific size of a voxel to the size/volume of an object. If I know the diameter of a finger of my model is 1cm then I know what resolution I get if I put my voxel size to 1mm or 0,1cm.

This is also important when working in more technical fields where I would design a new bottle and can import some technical defined parts like the top and then combine my design with that technical part because it has a defined voxel resolution and a defined position in space.

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9 minutes ago, Carlosan said:

Take note that Sculpt/Retopo and Render are for different programmers, are two different development team so there is no interference.

 

if the render development does not take away development time from other features I´d say go for it and go wild. :D
Then offer it as a rendering option for other apps like 3ds Max and Blender.

The Render Elements/Layers output could help as well as an EXR and multi layer EXR saving option.

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1 hour ago, wilson66 said:

You should not focus on stuff that other, already established apps will be able to do better anyway, and that most people in the industry already own. I for one will always do previews and presentations in Marmoset Toolbag, period.

Focus on what the app does best, and what other apps can't do. Rendering should imo be of very low priority.

 

I just really don't understand that. if you follow this way of thinking, you can say it about every aspect of 3DC. why sculpting when zbrush exist ? why texturing when quixel/SP exist ? why retopo when topogun or Maya exist ?...

It's also great to have a way to plug an external renderer because you can't do that with zbrush (you can use keyshot & bridge, but it's really expensive). it's a huge advantage for concept artists and a good selling point.

If it's not slowing down the developement of other areas of 3DC, I don't understand why peoples are against it. It's probably less work than trying to keep the internal renderer of 3DC up-to-date anyway.

Edited by Mr.Panka
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If I may add to this subject " RENDERING "

In my Humble Opinion I feel that 3D Coat has given me a Hardcore Speed Workflow. And has taught me the does and don'ts on its own! It has by Far the smoothest and self-Intelligent Workflow there is out there.

This goes for Sculpting, Retopo, Painting & Exporting. As for the Tweek Room I don't even use it.

And the Render Room I like to use it for a Quick Reference and to quickly ( During the whole Process) Understand where My Art will take me. I don't believe it is necessary for a upgrade here.There are So many Renders that Companies have Dedicated their time creating, but there are very few who understand and use Human Psychology for the Human Eye.

# The Point is: 3D Coat Render does a great job for quick Poses and still can be used for great showcasing, but if you want a deeper workflow one should really smooth into another Program that already has something that sticks out.

I decided to try Instant Light sure it is new and needs more work to be used continuously, but it does a great job for that Price & I am not bound with it. Blender if fine it just feels like it was made for a certain kind of Brain not mine :) Then the Second one I use more then anything and anyone who knows it understands just as well how almost Perfect this Program is from Epic Games  and it is not just a fun toy to play around with. This thing can really give you by Far the best results. (Still just my Opinion)

Where I think 3D Coat should advance:

 When I use 3D COAT, I look at it as a Artist would look at his Painting. Every Utility and Brush should and must be Customizable and easy to reach.

When writing this I take a look closer at Painting & Illustration Programs: Layers, Transformations, Pen Tool & a very Important tool the align tool. So if this could somehow be implemented into 3D COAT & have this kind of Flexibility while using Voxels like by going back to a Line and use a ARC tool or a Round Edge Tool. You would be leaping into a hole new kind of 3D Art! Something that would speed up a Workflow of how it is ment to be used (Don't get me wrong the Pose Tool does a great job, but just like many Tools Saving them out as Presets you can't keep the standard Brush set. Here we should have some kind of Option to create our own Layout.) To really feel what you are Drawing Modeling Sculpting. Right now I feel it is like in all Sculpting Programs just pure Work arounds to get the job done it works yes, but why stick to old ways. In my Eyes 3DCoat's Dev are Reinventing a Wheel that really needs to be reinvented :)(Still just my Opinion)

Maybe a few are aware of Artrage & add Clip Studio Paint EX, yes even a bit of PS: (These are the true Canvas Painting Programs), & The Workflow in here with UI & The Massive Tool Option Capability just brings everything to life. I know this might just be a bit off topic, but hey this is called expressing ^^

Greetings

Edited by Speike-Styles
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Hi Speike-styles, I dont understand what you are saying  , what program are you talking about here?
 

Quote

 

"Then the Second one I use more then anything and anyone who knows it understands just as well how almost Perfect this Program is from Epic Games  and it is not just a fun toy to play around with. This thing can really give you by Far the best results. "


 

 

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16 minutes ago, stusutcliffe said:

Hi Speike-styles, I dont understand what you are saying  , what program are you talking about here?
 

He is talking about Unreal Engine 4, which aside from game development is being used as a stand alone rendering tool.
 

Edited by RabenWulf
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12 hours ago, Mr.Panka said:

I just really don't understand that. if you follow this way of thinking, you can say it about every aspect of 3DC. why sculpting when zbrush exist ? why texturing when quixel/SP exist ? why retopo when topogun or Maya exist ?...

It's also great to have a way to plug an external renderer because you can't do that with zbrush (you can use keyshot & bridge, but it's really expensive). it's a huge advantage for concept artists and a good selling point.

If it's not slowing down the developement of other areas of 3DC, I don't understand why peoples are against it. It's probably less work than trying to keep the internal renderer of 3DC up-to-date anyway.

1)
-Its a matter of saturation. How many, realistically speaking, competitors are there to Pixologic's Zbrush? How about multi-channel/pbr Texture Painting? Retopo?  The answer is not much. 3D Coat grew in usage because those markets were not over saturated, the choices were very few if any at all. Thus 3DC was picked up often just to be a dedicated retopology tool for example.   So what 3D Coat offers now, Sculpting, Painting, Retopology (those 3) are high demand, low supply features. Zbrush needs serious competition, Substance Painter is tied to substances and is more of a coloring book for those said substances. Mari is $2k for the professional version and it doesnt do symmetry. In fact you need a beefy rig just to use it, and the workflow has you painting on a 2d canvas before projecting it onto the said mesh. So what other options? There are practically none at the level 3D Coat is at. 

- How many rendering solutions are there, that are actually good and highly accessible? Too many. Its an over saturated market. It is not a "high in demand" feature since there are way too many of them and in many forms, whether external or part of an existing application. So its not nearly as important.

2)
Zbrush already has a widely used renderer built into it, as it exist as a dedicated sculpting application and external render going in doesnt make much sense at this point. What is inside of Zbrush now can render out multiple types of render passes as well as fur. It covers the bases needed for what ZBrush offers.

3)
Can't understand why people would be against it in 3D Coat? Simple:
- It takes development time and resources that could be spent on areas that are far more important to the 3D Coat user as well as the appeal 3DC has as well as its place in the market. A great render option usually follows great assets worth rendering, if the quality of asset creation or the pipeline associated with it needs work, then it makes sense to have that as a priority before rendering out beauty shots in the native application. Since 3D Coat can export assets, the NEED for rendering within the native application is tiny. Again in part due to over saturated market for renderers.

- Lets assume the above isn't valid since one can claim its a different developer working on it. Ok, then are there any repercussions? Why would some one be opposed to this development? Simple. COST!  Are you willing to pay more to cover the license cost that goes into adding such a renderer? If you think Keyshot for zbrush at $350 (starting) is expensive, how will you feel about 3D Coat costing more?  Depending on the rendering option they go with, the cost will inevitably go up. I certainly don't want to pay more for a feature 1) I don't need and 2) already have access too elsewhere. Toss on the fact some are quite fine with the results 3D Coat gives natively, the priority for such a development is low.

- Both perspectives are valid.

4)
- There is less to gain from the rendering solution, at least for the user at this point in time. Sculpting needs to be better, a better UI, workflow,  material system, lights/scene layout/control...ect are lots of prerequisites that go into taking advantage of a good rendering solution while also getting good results.

- More info is probably needed, and if Pilgway tackles some of those prereqs to work well within a new renderer, that wouldnt be a bad thing for users as whole... well outside of the potential for licensing cost to go up (assuming they go with a licensed rendering solution that cost $).

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Good discussion...I'll add my 2 cents.

I'm for the current development work being done in the paint room.  But like some others, I would love to see some time spent on sculpting.  Both voxel and surface, with the addition of being able to sculpt on quad based meshes with a traditional multiresolution workflow.  I like having the render room, but there are a few problems with it (not able to use different types of lights and manipulate them in 3d space with a gizmo(spots, omni, directional), no post processing (i.e. bloom, etc.)) And so I usually will render elsewhere.

For version 5 or 6 of 3D Coat I would love to see some or all of the following.

General

Repeat last function

Tool consistency from room to room...for example... in retopo/Uv room I expect to be able to hold shift to reposition the gizmo, or press the spacebar during a movement to enter a precise figure.

Ability to scale/move in 2 axis simultaneously (perhaps with a modifier key)

Ability to make finer movements with a modifier key, like holding down the shift key in Blender during transformations.

Disabling certain draw modes with certain tools...like disabling the marquee tools when using pick object in the pose tool.  Or when using points/faces in retopo mode if you set the shift action to delete, it will delete the connected mesh because shift deletes all connected geo when using the delete faces tool.  Things like this should be ferreted out and fixed.  Also, one more, if I use the select tool in retopo mode, then use a tool like transform on the selected elements, I then have to re enable the select tool to make a different selection, then enable to transform tool again to manipulate them.  These are things that should be cleaned up.

 

Paint room

ePanel draw mode that supports gradient...first define shape then drag a line for Point1 to Point2 gradient (gradient options should be robust)

Node based Smart Materials (a little more complex, but way more powerful)

 

Sculpt room

Topological Move equivalent for all sculpt modes (in addition to the volumetric mode that exists currently)

Patch based surface mode sculpting...(As a simpler, more powerful way to define the secondary volumes on a mesh.)

---where patches can be worked on independently while maintaining clean borders...

---borders should be spline based and manipulatable as well.  

---Patches could be extruded...beveled, etc...  

---Basically working similar to polygons...

---or easily masked/frozen for sculpting (cv points, spline or patch should be freezable)

---ability to move a patch island, cv point or spline with soft selection falloff defined by brush alpha, while respecting frozen elements

---ability to smooth a patch with 1 click (similar to smoother tool)

'Smart' Object layers (comprised of 3B files represented as 1 of sculpt/retopo/paint mesh in sculpt layers)

Volumetric masks 

Volumetric marquee selection

Volumetric clipping masks

Quad based sculpting (even if boolean functions are limited)

 

Render room

Different light types (spot, omni, direction)

Click to place DOF plane

Post process effects library for rendering with emmision, sharpness, etc. (SSS is beatiful btw, in realtime and when rendered)

Online embedded viewer that supports vert painted cubemapped PBR sculpt objects along with the regular realtime viewport rendering and vox shaders that exists in the program. 

 

 

 

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To answer to RabenWulf

1  They're is competition, it's not only zbrush and 3DC. You can sculpt in Maya or Modo or even Blender too. It's not as good, but it exist. And Let be honest, I love 3DC, but Substance (I don't even know what you mean by "colouring book"but whatever...), quixel and mari are better for pure texturing.

Are they a lot of good and accessible renderer ? yes of course ! but the goal is not to do a new renderer, they are building a way to plug an external renderer. I don't see your point.

2  I don't know why you think the zbrush renderer is "widely use". Do you have any sources or numbers ? (Are you saying than it's nice to have a good renderer in a sculpting app ? O.o)

3 If you argument if "3DC dev team are lying, this take dev time await from the sculpt and paint room" I don't know that to say, I have no info on the subject.

I missed the post where they said than 3DC will be more expensive because of the ability to plug a external renderer. Can I have a link to this post ?

4 See answer 3

Once again, I don't think "you can do that by exporting to an external software" is a good argument.

 

That's nice to see a lot of peoples are discussing what the software mean to them :). I understand than an external renderer is useful for a concept artist, but almost useless for someone who texture assets for a video game.

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5 minutes ago, Mr.Panka said:

 

Are they a lot of good and accessible renderer ? yes of course ! but the goal is not to do a new renderer, they are building a way to plug an external renderer. I don't see your point.

 

If this is the case (plugin renderer), go for iRay and make a bridge to instantlight and toolbag :)

Edited by Karsten
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On 11.4.2017 at 1:23 PM, Mr.Panka said:

I just really don't understand that. if you follow this way of thinking, you can say it about every aspect of 3DC. why sculpting when zbrush exist ? why texturing when quixel/SP exist ? why retopo when topogun or Maya exist ?...

 

You should always use the app that does the best job for a certain task. Whats important (to me at least) is to achieve the best result possible, not to use as few apps as possible (even if that involves a couple of extra steps). I'd be great if you could use just one app for everything, but that won't happen because all developers focus on different areas of the workflow, and thus the apps have their strengths and weaknesses in different areas.

Dedicating development resources on the 3DCoat rendering engine for example will produce a better rendering engine, but it will be inferior to other already established apps, simply because the other developers have dedicated resources on that area exclusively for years.

I own both 3DCoat and ZBrush, and use both. I do sculpting in ZBrush, but for certain tasks 3DCoat is better/ faster (voxels). 

I do texture baking in Marmoset Toolbag or Knald, Retopology in Modo, painting mostly in Substance Painter, somethimes in 3DCoat. I could do all those things in 3DCoat, but I'd miss out on a lot of great features in the other apps that produce superior results in the end.

Its often better to use specialized apps that can do a single task best, than to try and do everything in one single app. That might work for hobbyists, but not for professionals that need to produce models of the highest possible quality.

Edited by wilson66
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10 hours ago, Mr.Panka said:

 

To answer to RabenWulf

1  They're is competition, it's not only zbrush and 3DC. You can sculpt in Maya or Modo or even Blender too. It's not as good, but it exist. And Let be honest, I love 3DC, but Substance (I don't even know what you mean by "colouring book"but whatever...), quixel and mari are better for pure texturing.

Are they a lot of good and accessible renderer ? yes of course ! but the goal is not to do a new renderer, they are building a way to plug an external renderer. I don't see your point.

2  I don't know why you think the zbrush renderer is "widely use". Do you have any sources or numbers ? (Are you saying than it's nice to have a good renderer in a sculpting app ? O.o)

3 If you argument if "3DC dev team are lying, this take dev time await from the sculpt and paint room" I don't know that to say, I have no info on the subject.

I missed the post where they said than 3DC will be more expensive because of the ability to plug a external renderer. Can I have a link to this post ?

4 See answer 3

Once again, I don't think "you can do that by exporting to an external software" is a good argument.

That's nice to see a lot of peoples are discussing what the software mean to them :). I understand than an external renderer is useful for a concept artist, but almost useless for someone who texture assets for a video game.

 

I feel like you didn't read my post objectively.

On 1) I said that its both a matter of saturation and "realistic" competition. Maya, Modo and Blender are not the "realistic" competition for sculpting at this point.  They do not add to the "saturation" of the said market. Mudbox could claim to be part of that, but its facing its EoL (end of life) while Autodesk slowly ports some of that functionality into Maya. Realistically this means Zbrush has the monopoly with 3D Coat being the closest thing to the only competition it has. It is an area that has high demand, but low supply.

You mention these applications, but I wonder do you have the license for them or have used them extensively? I have a license for zbrush, mari, modo, substance designer/painter*, NDO (quixel)... so when you say "lets be honest, I love 3DC, but Substance, quixel and mari are better for pure texturing." It tells me that you probably haven't actually used these applications. What is "pure texturing" even mean? You don't realize how good 3D Coat is compared to them, especially on a workflow level. For actual painting, 3D Coat does not have much in the way of competition. The market is not over saturated.
*(Regarding Substance Painter acting like a coloring book, this is due to painting vector like masks which in turn show the substance associated with the them. This allows for dynamic scaling, but the actual painting quality is low. They just recently added basic brush opacity layering (link). Hard to suggest its a better "pure texturing" solution when something like that had to be added so long after its release. Its quick for pumping out substance based content, which was the purpose for painter in the first place.)

I already explained quite a bit in the first post, but that seems to have been glossed over for whatever reason.

3D Coat has 3 major features that are not part of an over saturated market: Texture Painting, Retopology (with autoretopo) and Sculpting. One (or all of) these were the main reasons 3D Coat was picked up both in the past and in the present. They are important parts of the pipeline that do not have much in the way of competition. Again, its about saturation relating to realistic competition.

2) Zbrush "BPR" render is widely used. Many zbrush artist rely on it to render out their sculpts, often times with fibermesh being a part of the asset. In fact its probably the most used rendering solution for dedicated zbrush artist at this point. Spend some time at zbrush central. If you know what to look for, it is easy to spot. Not every sculptor is going to be dropping $350-500+ on keyshot + the bridge, which is a still a recent addition to zbrush.

As for whether it is nice to have a good renderer for sculpting applications. Obviously yes. However for sculpting applications, the sculpting quality/capability is far more important than the final render options. What is in 3D Coat now is satisfactory, otherwise 3rd party solutions work just as well, but the core features need to be matching the to tier competition first. Sculpting and painting especially, as well as over all workflow.

3) Where are you getting this "3DC dev team are lying, this take dev time await from the sculpt and paint room" from? Read my post again because more the half of it appears lost on you. I offered two perspectives as to why people would be against the move to add a 3rd party rendering solution at this particular point. You said you didn't understand, so I explained it to you precisely so you can understand.

When you say, "Once again, I don't think "you can do that by exporting to an external software" is a good argument."
It is a good argument depending on the conditions at play, including but not limited to what is perceived as a priority. This was already explained in point 3 and point 4.  Its a bit redundant to mention it again but since you skipped over it, I ended the post with "More info is probably needed, and if Pilgway tackles some of those prereqs to work well within a new renderer, that wouldnt be a bad thing for users as whole ".

Cheers.

Edited by RabenWulf
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Allow me to add a little clarity to the issue about whether or not to even add plugin support for external renders. It does NOT take away development resources from areas of the app, like Painting, Retopo or Sculpting. Why? Because Andrew is pretty much the only person who can work on 3D Coat at a deep level to redesign Paint layers, extend functionality to the UV room (UV tiles?), or improvements to sculpting. He has Carrots working on the rendering side of things, and it's my understanding that rather than rebuild the Render environment from scratch, they chose to put their development efforts into 3rd party plugin integration.

Renderman integration is already underway and expected soon. Andrew is still working addressing the feature requests he promised a few years ago (Paint Room layers/layer masks/Smart Material adjustments per layer, etc.). It's deep, core-level work and is taking time for him to get through all of this, and beyond those features by themselves, there is a little GPU goodness treat that will come with it (can't say anymore than that). :D 

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1 minute ago, puntoit said:

@AbnRanger thanks for clarification.
Interestingly though this subject has brought up a lot of wishes of the users what they/we would like to see in further development in 3dc.

Yeah, I've been waiting for years for Sculpt room improvements...especially Sculpt layers. But it seems the folks who want Paint Room work done, have the next number in line. Andrew is the only one who can do deep, core level work on the app, so those of us waiting for some Sculpt room love, will have to wait awhile, it seems.

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AbnRanger, thank you.

Maybe we customers/artists should know a bit more about future development, while I see a roadmap of things to come in Trello, I don't have a clue about what actually is in development. While I have no doubt of using 3DCoat now and forever, even if I met some flaw, it would be nice to have some news about the next features shared with the world, also for fueling focus on the product, making customers happier and let artists sharpening their creativity.

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yeah. Sculpt layers would be great.

But if the Paint room is next, here are some ideas:

- last year I tried to texture a modern train in 3dc and had problems using the rectangular mask in the e-panel. To cover the whole wagon I had to zoom out and this resulted in very fuzzy borders. The Zoom - Resolution ratio could use some work.

- Often I paint a whole layer with a material and then use another layer as a mask. Here it would be nice to hide the mask layer, but still be able to work on it and then see the result of the layer to be masked in the viewport.

- let us use Substances (.sbsar) in Paint room and Sculpt room for painting, stencils, brushes, materials and so on.

Edited by puntoit
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