smart material inquiry on layer blending in smart materials

[toomanydemons]

I've recently picked up 3D coat to explore its features. I'm extremely new to this and it's exciting to delve into the many features of the software. I've used Substance Designer and Painter extensively and have become accustomed to a procedural workflow. This is a very different approach and I'm slowly getting the hang of it.

I especially love 3D coat's painting tools, but have found shortcomings in the smart material system. Perhaps this is just my lack of knowledge about 3D coat, or perhaps there are features that are missing here. So I have a few questions about this. Any help would be much appreciated!

1. Can I set the blending method for a smart material layer? (overlay, screen, ect.). This is where I feel severely gimped. Being a Photoshop artist, I've gotten used to the results of juggling colors on top of each other in a certain way (such as the result when you use red with soft light over skin tones)... Things just happen in a way that is to be expected. It's a lot more difficult to make complex materials without layer blending options.

2. In the future, I hope there be options to apply effects to smart material layers. (such as Blur or HSL). this goes in hand with layer blending.

3. When I save a smart material, then move the textures used to create it, I get an error that the material is broken. However, if I export the file as a 3dcpack and then import it, it's fine. This is awkward and could be improved.

4. can the "More on Bumped" and "More on Dent" options be local to the height values of the smart material itself?

5. The "Apply Procedural Noise" checkbox could be a lot more useful if I could access other noise types (or upload them). Such as perlin. 

Thanks for your time I hope that these issues are just hidden options I've missed. I really am loving 3D Coat regardless. If they're absent features, then I hope there is a workaround, or maybe they will arrive someday in the future!

 

Cheers,

Allen Grippin