Member cookepuss Posted January 28, 2009 Member Report Share Posted January 28, 2009 I'm going to be very honest. 3D-Coat v3 has me very curious, but also just as cautious. I'm a self-employed CG artist/animator with about 19 years of personal and professional experience. My day to day work is quite general, jack of all trades sort of stuff. However, I'm also devoting an extra 60-70 hours a week working on a self-financed CG film project. That's been going on for about 18 months. My "weapons of choice" are ZBrush 3.1 & Maxon Cinema 4D Studio R11, which includes BodyPaint3D. I've been using C4D/BP for almost 7 years. I've also owned ZBrush for almost 1 year. I'm very happy with what these apps do and how they do it. Make no mistake about it though, I am in no way looking to abandon them. I've tried the Cuda enabled 3DC v3 alpha already. I'm not quite sure what to make of it just yet. I've got 10 PCs here on my home network. I tested it on my main workstation, which has the following specs: - Intel Core2 Quad Q9550 @ 2.83GHz - 8.00 GB RAM - NVidia GeForce 8800GT 512MB - Samsung 22" LCD @ 1680x1050 32bit - 3.5TB HDD space - Wacom Cintiq 12wx @ 1280x800 32bit - Microsoft Windows Vista ultimate x64 I can forgive the bugs because v3 is still a WIP. The speed, or lack thereof, is slightly... unsettling. Hopefully, that will improve by the RC1 though. With all of that said.... What can it do, if anything, to make my job easier? In other words, without abandoning C4D/BP/ZB, exactly how can 3D-Coat enhance my workflow? I don't want to buy an app that I might not use much. What are the REAL selling points? How will it fit into my current pipeline? Will it at all? The $200+ price point doesn't concern me so much. I've already spent 200x that on my project, not including the cost of man hours. I'm simply looking for straight talk & honest answers - not just the party line or standard PR BS. Should I ultimately choose to purchase 3DC, it'll likely be as soon as v3 is finalized this Q1. Any insights or suggestions that you can offer me would be helpful. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Andrew Shpagin Posted January 28, 2009 Report Share Posted January 28, 2009 What really can help? 1) Good retopo toolset 2) 3D-Sketching with voxel sculpting - sculpting without topological constraints. 3) Painting tool with layers, many powerful tools - peoples can confirm it for sure. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Advanced Member ldzywsj Posted January 28, 2009 Advanced Member Report Share Posted January 28, 2009 What are the REAL selling points? How will it fit into my current pipeline? Will it at all? I think the REAL selling points of 3dc is the developer,Andrew himself,Because whatever you demand,he will work it out for you! I have been in this forums about a year ago,whatever I demand,Andrew worked out it finally! It is really magic and unbeliveable! Now the only need for 3dc and Andrew is time,all the powerful toolset and workflow need to be perfected! Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Advanced Member parel Posted January 28, 2009 Advanced Member Report Share Posted January 28, 2009 Amen to that. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Advanced Member NinjaTaco Posted January 28, 2009 Advanced Member Report Share Posted January 28, 2009 True. Andrew is adept at introducing new features. But keep in mind that he's not going to be able implement everything that everyone asks for. (not everything we ask for is within reason or possible) Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Advanced Member erklaerbar Posted January 29, 2009 Advanced Member Report Share Posted January 29, 2009 hmm, i think its not possible to delegate pipeline questions to this forum, considering the usually complicated pipeline workflow. However as a very fresh user im already very impressed by the sort of cleverness behind some tools in 3DC. Most impressing to me is the voxel technology, but also the retopo tools are the best ive seen so far. Considering the small price and the overviewable functionality (which results in a fast learning curve) I cant see why you dont just buy it After all, from your words, youre a freelancer working in the field, so anything in 3DC that potentially just saves you an hour of work is enough reason to buy it. The only constraint i see at the moment is possibly speed on lower end PCs. But then this will certainly improve with time and finetuning. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Advanced Member Skaven252 Posted January 29, 2009 Advanced Member Report Share Posted January 29, 2009 Add to the above: Being able to paint color, displacement and specularity, and preview it all in realtime. This is not possible in ZBrush, as it doesn't support texture channels the way 3D-Coat does. The Quick UV tool is pretty handy too. Plus, you can change the UV layout non-destructively as it's projected from the micro-polygons on the fly. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Member Autarkis Posted February 10, 2009 Member Report Share Posted February 10, 2009 All the above are great points as to why you should plunge into the 3dc world. It has remarkable texture painting abilities (and i thought i loved polypaint in zbrush!), i've tried the voxel sculpting in 3.0 alphas a while back, and to be able to quickly sketch a 3d model and retopo it will save you so many man hours, you'll wonder how people ever worked with traditional box/spline modeling toolset. But the biggest selling point to me as a few users have pointed out so far is how fast and responsive Andrew is. Features you can think of and post in the forums will most likely make it into a beta version of 3d coat within a few weeks, or even days. Compared with the slow support and feature add that pixologic has (dear god.. we never know when a new version of it will come out, with fixes that should be ridiculously easy for the dev team at pixologic), 3dc is a true winner, with a SINGLE dev that cares about every single one of its users. Seriously. If all software devs were like Andrew, life as an artist would be pure heaven. (dear god, i sound like i worship andrew ~.~) Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Advanced Member ldzywsj Posted February 11, 2009 Advanced Member Report Share Posted February 11, 2009 with a SINGLE dev that cares about every single one of its users. You read my mind! Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Advanced Member GED Posted February 11, 2009 Advanced Member Report Share Posted February 11, 2009 Hi Cookepuss you probably know me from Gameartisans, Ive been experimenting with the 3D coat 3 alpha for a little while now and Im definitely thinking of purchasing it now. Your question is difficult to answer because you ask - how can 3d coat fit into my current workflow? youve already got 1. quality modelling tools in cinema4d 2. excellent sculpting in zbrush 3. versatile painting engine in Bodypaint so if you dont want to use 3dcoat for rough modelling, sculpting or painting then youve already removed the prospect of using 3 good features of the software. The only 2 things I can think of that 3d coat offers which wouldnt require a workflow change are 1. voxel sculpting - you can rough out ideas, create basemeshes with quadrangulate, or even final sculpts 2. retopo which is self explanatory and very useful. If you really wanted to get all the benefits 3D coat offers you would probably have to make some changes to your workflow. what I did for my pooh bear entry to the gameartisans kingdom hearts contest is 1. voxel sculpt pooh bear in 3dcoat 2. hard surface model the armour in c4d 3. import hard surface into 3dcoat 4. retopo the whole model and export low poly and high poly from 3dcoat 5. bake in xnormal 6. paint textures in photoshop and bodypaint Honestly I still havent tried 3Dcoats texture painting tools as Im really still a noob to this program and I really havent explored many of the other features as Im just so interested in the voxel sculpting Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Advanced Member Shawn Driscoll Posted February 23, 2009 Advanced Member Report Share Posted February 23, 2009 The $200+ price point doesn't concern me so much. I've already spent 200x that on my project, not including the cost of man hours. You may have already answered your question here. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Member Ace-Angel Posted February 23, 2009 Member Report Share Posted February 23, 2009 Zbrush is good, but more times then not it screws up the normals and Textures. Stretching and skewing the Colors maps especially. 3DC doesn't have it that issue so far. What you paint is what you get, no extra secrets when rendering. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Member Reactor Posted March 19, 2009 Member Report Share Posted March 19, 2009 Uh, yeah... I don't know about that. A lot of what I export out changes in small ways, annoyingly. It depends on the model, and on some models I just can't get 3D Coat to export out the same thing I've painted on. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
New Member Walli Posted March 30, 2009 New Member Report Share Posted March 30, 2009 @GED -thanks for these details. Could you tell us/me, why you bake the normals outside of 3DCoat? best, Walli Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Recommended Posts
Join the conversation
You can post now and register later. If you have an account, sign in now to post with your account.
Note: Your post will require moderator approval before it will be visible.