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I will not be silent this time. Just my opinion !


Rygaard
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Hey Everyone!

I was trying to find workflow information related to games and movies. So I found a video from a YouTube channel called Flipped ...
I started watching and I heard the following comment:

"... so the tools you're probably gonna have to learn here are first Zbrush. If you are character artist Zbrush is to go to tool.
We have people asking cannot sculpt in Modo, Blender, 3D-Coat? Technically yes, practically NO!
Zbrush is by far the most advanced sculpting tool here! "  
"Also because it's just become it is the industry standard..
."

As soon as I heard this, I still tried watching the video, but I stopped and I could not watch it anymore.
It's not because I use 3D-Coat, but I've had a lot of feelings about what I've heard and I'd like to share with everyone.

I can speak and give my opinion very credibly. That's because I've used ZBrush for many years and I've been using 3D-Coat for a long time. So I know exactly what I'm talking about.

First, I was sad to hear that they say that 3D-Coat would be the last choice of tools when it comes to sculpture. And I know that other people also say that because I've already listened.

Secound I was disappointed because ZBrush is not that far from 3D-Coat in relation to the sculpting tools and Brush system.

Thirdly, I was upset , because if you do not know how to use a program properly, it does not mean that the other program is so superior. And probably, these people do not even want to give themselves the chande of sculpting on 3D-Coat.

They are right in one thing, Zbrush has become the standard for the Industry.

In 3D-Coat, I can make sculptures as good or better than when I used ZBrush. I do not see that gigantic difference between ZBrush and 3D-Coat.
If a person thinks that just because he or she will use the ZBrush that will become a Rodin or Michelangelo digital is very much mistaken! Because the program will not sculpt for you!

Zbrush began to develop first and has a great team.

Of course in 3D-Coat the system of brushes and alphas can be improved. In the latest versions of 3D-Coat,  @Andrew Shpagin  has been improving the Sculpt Room, giving us tools that neither ZBrush has.
In the near future of 3D-Coat, I'm sure @Andrew Shpagin will give us an excellent new system of brushes and alphas with features that will allow us an even more refined control of Brushes and Alphas.

Because I use 3D-Coat every day to sculpt, I try to show and demonstrate to @Andrew Shpagin and the whole community the features that are important and that would make a big difference to our work. Maybe @Andrew Shpagin will listen to me, maybe not. I hope so!
I know that sometimes I may be annoying for suggesting features and improvements, but I always have the mindset of wanting to see 3D-Coat be better than it already is!

To complete my thinking, 3D-Coat's sculpture system is very good and the detailing system inside 3D-Coat is starting to have a brightness.
The artist who wants to sculpt in 3D-Coat will have the same success as ZBrush.  Just learn the tool and be happy.
I know there's a lot going on, but I could not shut up this time!
That is my honest opinion!

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6 hours ago, Rygaard said:

They are right in one thing, Zbrush has become the standard for the Industry.

To elaborate this even more.
If one program is already set as an industry standard, probably the industry will not jump to another for the same features. Even if the second program is free. The second program may be an alternative, but it will always be marginal. The jump can happen for unique features, or features that make things much easier or/and much faster. And these features and benefits of the second program should be valuable enough to justify a jump.

But Zbrush is not just the industry standard. At first it was something interesting but weird. It was a 2.5D painting program. There was no 3D features. But version 2.0 was like an explosion. It was like a killer app. And when v3.0 came out, ZBrush has defined the industry to a large extent.

And that youtube channel is about gamedev and the film industry, right?

By the way, 3D-Coat is widely used for concept design in the film industry and gamedev. But why? I mean, what features made that happen?

As far as i know, 3D-Coat is used for hard surface sculpting more often than for organic. Why? Are these disadvantages or unique features? If they are unique features, are they valuable enough to justify a jump?

These questions can be like food for thought.

Can Blender be adopted by the industry just for its sculpting tools? No. Not enough unique features in sculpting tools.
But it is adopted in concept design because of the Grease Pencil (and Grease Pencil to mesh pipeline) in conjunction with EEVEE.

And it's not about the program features only. Art schools and tutorials will be around the industry standard. Most of communities will be around the industry standard. And, of course, most industry pipelines too. And popularization! As you said, you have used ZBrush for many years. Then, most likely, you heard about Ryan Kingslien.
I can recall one thing from one of his tutorials. I think it's pretty interesting. This is the place where ZBrush "feels at home" and where it goes to. Though it was for version 4.7, i think it still makes sense.

ZBrush.jpg.7f91049d3aad17526dd3ea06f72c161f.jpg

That "precise" area is not occupied by ZBrush yet. And probably will not be very soon because of ZBrush nature.

Could this be like food for thought? Probably.

Probably precise sculpting tools will help 3D-Coat.
Probably, precise modeling tools will help 3D-Coat to push forward in sculpting too, if sculpting and modeling tools will work together, in pair.

Edited by druh0o
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2 hours ago, druh0o said:

Could this be like food for thought? Probably.

Probably precise sculpting tools will help 3D-Coat.
Probably, precise modeling tools will help 3D-Coat to push forward in sculpting too, if sculpting and modeling tools will work together, in pair.

Thank you very much for your opinion!

I agree with what you said that the industry will probably choose the program that will give features that make things easier and faster.
But a portion of people choose program A or program B because of very strong marketing. Zbrush's marketing has always been sensational, very strong and well done.
Beginning artists or even those who have experience when they go for information about a program, the first thing they see is ZBrush 95% or 98% on internet searches.
And at the same time, several artists who have a certain weight in the industry use and make a point of showing that their work was done at ZBrush.
It's that story that resembles product commercials. They put famous people so that the image of that product is the only and perfect, and the rest is not good or you become the rule of the exception for using a program other than ZBrush.
The way the ZBrush is seen is as if an artist was using ZBrush he or she will go with a magic step to becoming the best digital sculptor in the world, a Michelangelo, who knows! But in practice, things do not work that way, right?

Unfortunately, with all the respect I have for 3D-Coat, marketing about what the program is capable of doing is very small or almost non-existent.
Information and learning about 3D-Coat is not enough if you compare with ZBrush.
I say this with all respect to all artists who do 3D-Coat tutorials, without you I would not have learned to use 3D-Coat! My sincere congratulations!
If you do a search related to realistic characters, semi-realistic characters, creatures jobs, ie organic sculptures you will only find posts from artists who use ZBrush and a small portion for 3D-Coat.
In the hard surface issue, 3D-Coat is not far behind, but even so most artists will choose ZBrush on this hard surface subject as well.

Do you know why artists' choices point to ZBrush?
Because when you are going to want information, you will hear:
"The tools you're probably gonna have to learn here are first Zbrush. If you are character artist Zbrush is to go to tool... Zbrush is by far the most advanced sculpting tool here! "

If I were starting my way in the 3D world. With this information, Do you think I would like to learn and use which of the two programs: ZBrush or 3D-Coat?

About Ryan Kingslien, yes I know him! Excellent artist who has my respect!
But his story is rooted with ZBrush, as he worked at Pixologic helping develop ZBrush's brushes system.
He has a passion for ZBrush to the point of saying that using ZBrush is as if an artist had manipulated traditional Clay into the ZBrush.

I can agree that ZBrush is powerful in its system of Brushes and Alphas. This can not be denied, but I disagree that ZBrush is as if you had Clay's experience.
I may be called crazy here in the community or not, but that phrase of having traditional Clay experience inside a sculpture program, you would have to give for 3D-Coat.
The reason for this is very simple:

3D-Coat has this experience of Clay through Voxels and in Surface Mode.
You can treat the digital mesh in a very similar way when you handle Clay in your hands.
Tools like Clone, Cut and Clone tool, Boolean operations on Voxels that are perfect, brushes like Sphere, 2DPaint, Snake, Spike, Muscle, Toothpaste, surface mode with Live Clay or Remove Stretching, the possibility to change mode between Surface Mode and Voxels Mode at any time and many other tools and brushes that make the artists to be free in their creativity.

Ryan Kingslien breathes ZBrush!
I remember this tutorial when I was learning about ZBrush's brushes system and I agree that it makes sense.

If you put 3D-Coat on the table you will see that 3D-Coat is strong in several areas that ZBrush is not.
Suffice to say that 3D-Coat affectionately calls Rooms the various programs it has.
An artist who dominates 3D-Coat will be able to carry out all his workflow with great quality within the program. There may be some problems during the process, of course there may be! As with any program.

Unfortunately since my times I used ZBrush I know that 3D-Coat is known or seen as a complement to the work that was performed completely within ZBrush.

I can not deny that important things are missing inside 3D-Coat.
So I try to explain and show Andrew and artists here in the community what could make the difference in our work within 3D-Coat. I miss features that could help in various techniques.

So, I can not say enough about functionality that allows for more precise control of Brushes and Alphas, as well as modeling tools and a greater flow of freedom between rooms.

In my creative process I use Sculpt Room, Retopo Room and Paint Room.
In my opinion, the rooms do not allow for a free creativity and a fluent flow between the Rooms.
Lets explain, the mesh I'm working on in the Sculpt Room is not seen in the Paint Room when I want to use specific Paint Room tools.
For example, because the sculpt room's mesh does not accept UVs, if I want to apply displacement map techniques through UVs in the surface room to detail objects or characters it will not be possible.
This will be possible if I make a bake and create a geometry in which the Paint Room can see the Uvs of this mesh. But if I transport this mesh created to the Surface Room, the mesh will lose the Uvs.

So in my opinion there could be some kind of merging of Rooms, so that the same mesh could be used in any 3D-Coat Room that I wanted without there being such a problem or incompatibility.

I think if @Andrew Shpagin, perfect the system of Brushes and Alphas with the implementation of the essential functionalities that artists need to completely control the surface of the mesh and in a way rethink the functioning of Rooms with the use of the same mesh by all rooms and thus enabling artists to use all the tools of all Rooms in their favor in this unique mesh. I would have no doubt that this would all be a turning point in the industry.

I promise nothing, but if I have time and if I can, I will use my youtube channel demonstrating and teaching the strength of 3D-Coat.
I'm going to invite artists from the community who use 3D-Coat and anyone who wants to share knowledge of 3D-Coat for the possibility of realization of Lives so that we can spread what 3D-Coat can do.

 

 

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50 minutes ago, Rygaard said:

Do you know why artists' choices point to ZBrush?
Because when you are going to want information, you will hear:
"The tools you're probably gonna have to learn here are first Zbrush. If you are character artist Zbrush is to go to tool... Zbrush is by far the most advanced sculpting tool here! "

You are right!
But also, artists choices point to ZBrush because... "If you want that job you need to be experienced in ZBrush". Because you have to adapt to studio. But the studio will not adapt to you, if you are not a Michelangelo.

Edited by druh0o
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1 hour ago, Dmitry Bedrik said:

Some people on this forum wrote dozens of letters on this topic to the developer, but most of the proposals remained unanswered. Overwhelming majority. However, the other part was answered. Basically they were in the form of "we can not do everything at once."

And these letters were about the same style and more or less similar content. Pleas to add many features that are in other programs, or some small and nice things.

Hopefully, we will wait for the moment when tens of thousands of users will talk about the 3D Coat. Because I vaguely hear about all the products of the Autodesk, everywhere I hear about you, sometimes even more often, about the blender, but I accidentally found out about 3D Coat from the video of one Russian-speaking user. At the same time, the simplicity of creating an object on that video fascinated me, as the program fascinated me.

Although with all the other advantages, the program has many flaws, and who, apart from users, will be able to popularize this program, make it known? 

I know this topic can be repetitive and may bring some polemics, but it's the only way we artists can share with developers what we think and feel about 3D-Coat.

Now if the developers of 3D-Coat will listen or not to our suggestions, this is with them because they know what they do.
The important thing is that we are trying to help in the best possible way always respecting and guiding them giving them reasons why artists need certain features.
I think there could be a good sense and an awareness of what would be the best way to develop 3d-coat.

I also hope people will talk more about 3D-Coat which is a fantastic program.

I also agree with you that the program has flaws, but which program has no flaws?

Who will popularize the programs?
Simple. It's the people who will give 3D-Coat a chance to do their jobs, without thinking that ZBrush is the first or only option for this.
I hope to do my part as an artist to help other artists by speaking and teaching things about 3D-Coat.
When people's mindsets change, the scenery of this marketing will also change.

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58 minutes ago, druh0o said:

You are right!
But also, artists choices point to ZBrush because... "If you want that job you need to be experienced in ZBrush". Because you have to adapt to studio. But the studio will not adapt to you, if you are not a Michelangelo.

I agree with you!
I will not be crazy to say that you will dictate orders in a studio and tell what programs the studios should or may not have in the studio. You, of course, have to adapt to what is available in case you want to enter this studio.

The 3D world is fantastic because you have complete freedom to choose which programs you will use in your work.
But from the moment you can argue and explain why one program can bring more benefits than the other, things start to change.
Lack of information has a huge weight on the choices.

If a person tells me that a given program will give me a unique workflow and that will give me the quality I need, why am I not going to change?
No one has the obligation to stay with a program forever because at the moment it is considered the industry standard program.
And as I said, it is the artists who influence which programs may or may not become standards. It has always been like this from the beginning and this has always been the best marketing.

It is enough that the program gives the artist what he or she needs to do the job in the best way possible, there will happen the wave of free advertising for the program.
Which artist will not want to use such a program? Which studio would not want to change that way?

In my opinion, if @Andrew Shpagin decides to make the right choices in the development of 3D-Coat, the mentality of studios and industry will change if those changes bring the fruits that artists and studios need.

No one would need to become a Michelangelo for a studio to suit you, the studio itself would realize the benefits and advantages and adapt to the new reality.

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 Excuse my point of view. There is a popular phrase that says every tree is known by his own fruit.

In any forum I can find works made with zb, maya, 3dmax, blender, c4d, modo, houdini... but with 3DC ? The amount of work done is less.

Reading this forum it strikes me to read post by artists with so many technical opinions.

And I always ask myself the same question: why do not they show what they are able to create using 3DCoat ?

 

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55 minutes ago, Carlosan said:

 Excuse my point of view. There is a popular phrase that says every tree is known by his own fruit.

In any forum I can find works made with zb, maya, 3dmax, blender, c4d, modo, houdini... but with 3DC ? The amount of work done is less.

Reading this forum it strikes me to read post by artists with so many technical opinions.

And I always ask myself the same question: why do not they show what they are able to create using 3DCoat ? 

 

Please feel free to express your point of view to us! The opinion of everyone will always be important.
@Carlosan, I totally agree with you!
In my opinion, we could have a better incentive so that the artists could post here in the forum more works done in 3d-coat. Maybe a change in community behavior?

I think we could all talk and find a solution so that the showcase of albums and jobs has more strength and visibility not only here in the 3D-coat forum, but also outside the 3d-coat website.

More information and tips about 3D-Coat. I believe that many people find it difficult to learn 3D-Coat because of how the program works and they confuse with the Rooms.

In my opinion, I think there could be an external website linked to 3D-Coat with the works of the artists.
That way, people who do not know 3D-Coat or who have no habit of joining the 3D-Coat forum could access this site and know better what 3d-coat is able to do through these works exposed.

Therefore, I would like to suggest an investment of a platform similar to ArtStation ( I'm talking about ArtStation just as a possible explanation of what I mean.), in which we could have a training area and possibility of artists to create trainings in a free or paid way according to the artist's choice.

It could be a platform more turned to the Making Of and exchange of information and techniques between the artists.
A true network of artists who would be connected to each other in search of perfection of 3D-Coat techniques and the possibility of exposing their works and thus have chances of obtaining job with companies.

On this platform, different types of competitions could take place for the healthy participation among the artists.
The more information techniques the artist reports, the more reputation and perhaps awards this artist could achieve.

The possibility of opening courses in the platform could be done as I said before, however courses focused on the workflow of 3D-Coat.

On the platform, interviews with the artists could take place. As well as the possibility of a big Live happen during a day of the week with the participation of all and if possible with the developers of 3d-coat and in this way could achieve great visibility.

The works presented on this platform could have interactive tools that other users could interact with submitted works such as videos, turntables, real-time visualization and all good things.

The most important thing in this platform would be that the works of the artists that are in the area of highlights, these works would only be there if only that work was much visualized and commented by the other artists. In this way, all artists would have space equally.

An area aimed at launching new versions of the 3d-coat, explaining to users the tools and functions in an easy-to-understand way.

I think this visibility of a website that is not here within 3D-Coat would bring only good things to everyone and a great marketing in favor of 3D-Coat.

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Well, I understand your frustration, but you must understand something. Zbrush is great not because of the tools but because of the workflows, I mean, people complain about the UI, even Paul has said 50% love it and 50% hate it. and It can be overwhelming once you start, I think it is fine, never had troubles with it. But that's the kind of stuff Zbrush team has to deal with, loud minority complaning about the UI on every new update.

But you are right, most people don't know much about 3DCoat and how great it is, I mean, when Allegorthimic got bought by Adobe, I read some people saying that there is no competition to Substance Painter. And I always think, if they say it becuase it is popular or because they have used 3DCoat? while substance painter has few great things for many workflows, the painting part, the core part that is supposedly to be amazing, it is just not great at all. It tries to be so "non-destructive" that it doesn't support features like UDIM today and they just released an update supporting Radial Symmetry. but it's so rigid and awkward and the baker is so awful since you can't see stuff about it, the way you can paint normal map on your model and then be able to get the AO or curvature from it, it is awful compared to 3DCoat, which takes into account the normal map when you bake the AO or curvature map, also you need to bake poisition map and all that, things you don't need to do in 3DCoat. My views on Substance Painter is that it is the only best way to bring and paint what you do in Substance Designer, just like Alchemist has that advantage, but compared to 3DCoat, Painter just feels not great to Paint, which should be good at based on the hype about the program. Of course also the advanatge is Substance Painter records every stroke you make so you can reproject and it will look better  than 3DCoat, but I barely change my document size on either program so never cared much about it unless it's for performance reasons since Substance tend to slow down after too many materials and strokes and all that.


But there is one thing those both programs have in common compared to 3DCoat, the learning part and the workflows part. Zbrush is on twitch and youtube with random people showing people how great Zbrush is, Tutorials paid and free everywhere, you can find information about it everywhere, the Documentation is also complete, Same with Substance Painter, tutorials are everywhere,  that's a vital part of spreading the software to become popular. 3DCoat? You go to youtube and you barely find anything from 3DCoat, there are some few good tutorials besides 3DCoat learning channel, but only one of those people I thought were the best still make tutorials today, Polytoots, and he barely gets any views, his tutorials are nice and people can learn from him, but it's a small channel and a random person won't just find it. But he uses it and gives workarounds and gives informaiton about when a feature has problems and all, he is honest but he tries to teach people Unity and 3DCoat.

But I think the learning part, tutorials and videos and conferences and the software everywhere is what would be the main problem about 3DCoat. Not even the workflows part is as important as the learning part.

Last time I watched this man handpainting in 3DCoat, a new user, and he was so lost about it, he thought 3DCoat was vastly inferior to Substance Painter, and I have to make an artstation account and tell him everything about it. He appreciated my 2 big messages explaining him about features and stuff, I even made him try and use the Smart Materials even for hand painting (since it would be the closest to Substance Painter) and while it crashed for him more often, it still made him happy to work with it. He is still working on it, I never sent him a message anymore and just told him all the main stuff about it. But I am sure by me showing him many features he didn't know that existed, helped him to make his work, learn and get used to the program and dont get discourage for keep trying 3DCoat, even when sometimes it can crash alot, especially with Smart Materials.

 

Now, talking about workflows, that's a really huge advantge for Zbrush and Substance software. They get ways to develop nice plugins for the program, and Zbrush has GoZ and Substance has live connections with Unreal and there is hhpainter+ made by an user, and some people say it is amazing, and since it has live connection it makes things easy. Unlike 3DCoat which hasn't put big effort on the Applink part, and the problem is if the forum user is busy with real life and can't develop something anymore, then it will stop being developed. While Blender applink is nice to have for the people who use Blender, you got to question, how many people use blender in the industry to render or develop games? Maya applink is outdated, 3dsmax one was released some months ago and it looks great, but 3dsmax is not that used on the industry like videogames and movies as it used to be, and now you can see it big on the Archviz industry. None of the applinks are live connections, and to be honest, doing it manually would take me the same ammount of time, especially since Arnold rendered is not even supported even if it supports easy PBR workflow.
But you get what I am saying. it's not a perfect solution for people who want to make use of 3DCoat in their workflows.

 

Another point Zbrush has over 3DCoat is that you can work in polygons and subdivisions, you import them that way, becuase sometimes it might not even matter, especially since Dynamesh appeared and now the Sculptris mode, but it is there for you to do whatever you want with it. Annd you can always make the subdivisions and reproject the high res sculpt to the subdivisions so it looks the same but you have the advantage of making big changed to the mesh on a subdivision level without dealing with millions of polygons. In 3DCoat you import and forget about the subdivisions, you have to work on dense meshes all the time, and it is worse if you import it as voxels and then you get a total different mesh, and some of the details might change and all that.

Features like Live Booleans are also a great thing for Zbrush, plus Zmodeler and the new modifiers and all that, just use Dynamic Subdivisions and you can do great things, without having to work with super dense meshes.


it doesn't mean Zbrush is vastly superior, but it has a great workflow for most people, so it is easy to understand why they say that. 

All this talk 'against' 3DCoat has always been a thing, 3DCoat does great things, brings new updates and all, but then I read in forums and other places "Christian developers", "remember, they won't let you do evil things" blabla. Just like when they used to bring the "oh Zbrush has sculpting layers, 3DCoat doesn't... can't use it in production" yet, most people I know, barely use Sculpting layers in Zbrush, because they are not exactly the easiest thing to work with, you can only work on sculpting layers once you have a layer, even for polypainting. You wanna get out? you have to delete or bake the changes. It's not seamless like Mudbox or what 3DCoat is trying to do now. But I will never know if 3DCoat sculpting layers will be enough, because something new will pop out and as an excuse.

 

Zbrush is not vastly superior but in my opinion 3DCoat needs to do a lot more for people to get interested. Better workflow with other software, better connection with other renderers, fix the UI and unify the UI, having 30 buttons doing the same is just ridiculous. Like last time we talked on the forum about importing for a tutorial for retopo. The Huge reference doesn't work as it should, and there are 4 buttons that can do what you can do with Import Tool inside the sculpt room, I still think the import command should be the one used all the time, so 30 buttons doing similar or the same... not the greatest thing to have even if it was meant to make things easier. You already talked about the alpha and brush stuff, which is important. Like I am sure most people would wish 3DCoat would get rid of the mclp files and just use the normal image files. A great way of making tiling textures within 3Dcoat would be great too, I mean, it has the tiled sandbox but you can't sculpt seamlessly across tiles for a smealess tiled texture map, because the autopick while work is not perfect and 3DCoat doesn't have warp mode or something like that. The small and big things about workflows that can be fixed and only 3DCoat can fix it.

On the texturing side, I only wish 3DCoat also needs substance designer support for making it a better texturing software, I mean, even Marmoset toolbag has support for it, so I wish 3DCoat had it. Also better ways to export maps, not only the normal PBR workflow but also for masking creating masks to be used inside game engines, sometimes you need to make masks for different materials and then make the materials insdie unreal or unity, but then, that's something not easy to do with 3DCoat, unless you take the time to do it, it's not a few clicks thing, unlike Substance Painter that lets you create customized maps slots thing and that you can export them as any other map and map them to the RGB and all that so you can create masks easy and export the all at once.

It's hard to think 3DCoat situation will change, because it sounds impossible when people just use 3DCoat as a retopology tool and nothing else, when people think that 3DCoat paint features are ****** compared to a not so great substance painter, no real easy way of working with other software because the applinks don't do what people really need to speed up the workflow, etc, and when people think Zbrush is amazingly superior even if they haven't tried 3DCoat but since they don't see it on tutorials and around the industry and asked for their job CV then 3DCoat has the obvious and clear disadvantage here. Many of these things can be fixed by 3DCoat, but not the people's mentality.

 

 

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I ve used zbrush since v1.4. It was very unique at the time and its very small sculpting capabilitties covered the need for digital sculpting. So they focused on sculpting instead of illustration and the pixol idea(bad in my opinion). Thats why the ui is the way it is...

3dcoat came many years after and started as a 3d painting and afterwards came the voxel sculpting .

Up to now 3dc has added a huge amount of features over zbrush and z updates are almost non existant, i personally find them a joke. I d be surprized if they dont rewrite the whole thing again.

Rygaard:  companies  asking for z experience depends on their pipeline and internal tools. If the artist can show what he can do with other softwares and how it can benefit them they will switch. Pesonally i work with 3dc because z lacks the features i need to do the job i am asked to do and its not only about "make a nice sculpt" pipeline.

Also softwares are products and marketing is very important. But marketing alone is not enough to cover missing updates..

 

 

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@Emi,

I completely agree with you. Thank you for your great opinion.
I've been trying to explain things and it's complicated.

For example:
When you import a character made in Blender, Maya, 3ds-max to the Sculpt Room and be able to work. The artists are starting to get completely confused.
First, you could import this character through the Retopo Room and then transfer that character to the Sculpt Room.
The confusion starts there. The changes you make in the Sculpt Room do not happen in the character in the Retopo Room. There is not really a direct connection between the 2 meshes (which are actually 2 different meshes).
Yes, there is the Conform Retopo Mesh function, but it is not the same thing that you can change the mesh through subdivision levels or through other tools.


On the other hand, this type of 3D-Coat workflow has a mentality for the artist when using the Sculpt Room not to worry about the mesh topology and the artist only cares at the end of the process to conform Retopology in the Retopo Room with the changes in the Sculpt Room mesh. This works to some extent.
But, in my opinion, several techniques can not be applied with this type of workflow.
Similarly, if you make changes to the mesh with the Retopo Room tools, these changes will not propagate to the mesh that is in the Sculpt Room. If you want to have these changes in the mesh, you must transfer this mesh from the Retopo Room to the Sculpt Room again.

I would like to work freely with 3D-Coat. What do I mean by that?
I want to say that I would like to have a single mesh to have access to all the tools of any room in my favor. If I wanted to make a cut with the Add / Split tool from the Retopo Room, in the mesh I'm working on I could. If I want to have a mesh with topology and UVs I could. If I wanted to detail my mesh through projection techniques to create my Displacement Map and be able to apply mesh I could.
If I wanted to do a lot of operations with the tools of Paint Room and be able to apply in the moment I wanted in my mesh I could.

For me, the definition of Rooms that I have is that:
"Different programs are located in a single program that do not communicate in a way that the artists would expect."

I am in favor of a free workflow between all the rooms so that the artists could apply thousands of techniques without being restricted or unable to do.
In my opinion, the workflow of 3D-Coat is linear and if you want to make some changes you can do but with great difficulty. This type of workflow is great if you follow step 1, step 2, step 3 until the final step.

I have already said that 3D-Coat is only used for Retopology. And that's the truth. You can say no, but since my time in ZBrush 3 I've known people who talk about it and others who are talking now.

When I tried to learn 3d-coat it was very difficult because the reality is that there are not many videos or training related to 3D-Coat. Just existing the 3d-coat channel and some users I always thank the effort.
When a person searches for Zbrush or digital sculpture, then you see a gigantic difference.
The lack of information is a lot, which causes the difficulty and confusion of people to learn correctly what 3D-Coat would be able to do in a production.

So I think it would be time to change that.
Developers could pause and think if the current path is correct. I think if so many artists talk about it is because they have a certain reason, and so, if I were a developer I would stop to listen and reflect if this all makes any sense.

I think 3D-Coat is fantastic, but it has a very confusion workflow and it still lacks essential functionality.

Sometimes the mesh appears in a Room and does not exist in another Room, I know the reason, but new or intermediate users know the reason for this 3d-coat behavior?
How many 3D-Coat artists and users appear on the forum asking the same things from many years ago?
I think this is a point of reflection for things to start to change and in my opinion, it is never late for you to improve something for much better.

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@micro26,

Thanks for your comment!

You are right in your statements about the origins of the programs.
Andrew has done a great job in developing 3D-Coat by implementing fantastic tools and in the near future the improvement of the 3d-coat brushes system will take place.

Some ZBrush releases, I noticed a certain familiarity of tools that already existed in 3D-Coat. But this is another subject...
I agree with you that if you present solid reasons for the benefits that a program can give to a company, they will certainly reflect on the subject.


True, marketing alone will not help much. But in case 3D-Coat would help!
The lack of marketing and the dissemination of information necessary for people to know the true power of 3D-Coat.
This means that there is a lack of information on production processes, techniques, and learning about 3D-Coat's tools and functionalities.

If you search for zbrush on youtube, you'll see what I'm talking about.

I'll be honest with you, until today... I did not find out what the window called Fractures in 3D-Coat located in Windows / PopUps is. :D

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@Rygaard Yes that's pretty much the issue. Like I said, workflow and learning & documentation. your example pretty much summarizes the main problem about 3DCoat. I am not saying different rooms don't work, but that's what is affecting 3DCoat the hard separation between one room to the other.

Lightwave suffered from this issue, and while I think there are positive things about being disconnected, there are more negatives about it.

 

But how would you be able to fix all these things? the tutorials and all that might get fixed someday, maybe conferences and all, I think one of the problems is how the company is not close to USA or Canada where most big events happen, but it can be fixed.

But what about the workflow part? unless everything works like Maya or other 3D software, where everything is in the same workspace, what other solution would 3DCoat team have? I would think that the Sculpt room would be the most complicated to integrate, because to me Retopo Room, Paint room, and Tweak room should be all the same, UVroom wouldn't even be needed since we already got the same stuff on Retopo. Like I don't understand why why you can't just create retopo the retopo or any object and and be able to paint directly on it, you know, work like any other software. About the sculpt room, well, there could be Polygons to Voxels conversion like now, but I would guess that Surface would have to also support Subvision levels, that way you can create shapes like you do with Zmodeler and dynamic or normal subdivisions. That would be the only way. And I don't know if 3DCoat team will take the time to do that.

3DCoat surely has more positive than negatives about the features and all, but it seems like it is a complicated software for many people to feel comfortable with. And I think it needs alot more to really be taken as a tool for big productions in Hollywood and AAA games for character design and all that. Competing against Mari and Zbrush and Mudbox and Substance Painter.

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@Emi,

Exactly! In my head, the most important thing is for the artist to have total control of the workflow throughout the creation process, alterations or changes in the running of the project and its delivery or completion. This is pretty much the essence of the freedom I was referring to.
Of course, the current 3d-coat workflow works, but I believe that the artists would like things to work in a different way because we are dealing with a project as a whole in different areas such as Games, Movies, 3D Print and etc. That's why a linear workflow is not ideal. There is always a need to use different types of techniques for solutions to possible problems during the work process.

Unfortunately, I do not use Lightwave. So, I'll let you speak more properly what happens with Lightwave, since you are familiar with the program and know the positive and negative points.

I think most of the problems could be fixed and solved, this will depend a lot on the behavior of the users of 3D-Coat itself, as well as in relation to the developers.
You're right about the big events happening in the USA or Canada, but I believe that the location of the company does not so much influence the solution of the fixes of all these things. I think the dialogue between artists and developers would have more effects and could direct the path of 3D-Coat with strategies and correct choices.
Regarding the tutorials, information and techniques of 3D-Coat, I believe that this would be solved with more tranquility.

In my opinion, the workflow of 3d-Coat is confusing and I think it would be necessary to rethink the way the 3d-coat works.
I know that it is not an easy and quick decision to be implemented by the developers, because it is necessary to make extremely responsible, correct and punctual decisions.

The funniest thing is that when you use the Retopo Room and create new polygons, this new geometry is not seen by the Paint Room until you transfer that geometry that is in the Retopo Room to the Paint Room. As well, the Sculpt Room does not see this geometry of the Retopo Room until you also transfer this geometry to the Sculpt Room.
After you transfer the geometry to the Paint Room or the Sculpt Room there is no connection between Rooms. It's as if you use different programs and you find it difficult for things to flow between them.
When you say that the Retopo Room, Paint Room, Tweak Room and UV Room could be joined in a single Room, I agree to a certain extent, because if you stop to think the Sculpt Room would be isolated in another Room and practically we would continue to have the same current workflow problems.

You are right about the existence of the same tools and features that Retopo Room and UV Room have.
The main reason for this is the same problem that I do not get tired of talking about  a workflow that a Room does not see one geometry while the other Room sees.
A current example of linear 3d-coat workflow:
When you import a geometry into Paint Room, you can only create or change UVs of that geometry in the UV Room. If you realize this geometry is not seen in the Retopo Room, even if you wanted to make some changes to the Retopo Room, you will not be able to.
Just as if you import a geometry into the Retopo Room, this geometry is not seen in the Paint Room or Sculpt Room until you transfer that geometry into theses Room.
I hope I have not disoriented some new user with all of this. It's simply the current 3d-coat workflow that I consider Linear (step 1, step 2 .... final step) without communication with the other Rooms.

Regarding the Sculpt Room, I would like to be able to work with subdivision levels and with the possibility of having my UVs in the mesh that would allow me to perform different types of techniques. I would like to be free in my creation process, from beginning to end.

I would like to suggest the existence of a single mesh that could be seen by all the Rooms. If that means for you a possible merger of Rooms (Sculpt, Retopo, Paint, UV, Tweak) whatever.
The only room I suggested keeping separate would be the Render Room.
This all means that it is not necessary to redo the 3D-Coat codes for this merger, I think it would be more a matter of code adaptation.
Thus, the Room would let the so-called Menus Sets or Layout of works arise. This would give you the chance to experience complete freedom to customize the interface, menus and popups by users. A user-friendly usability and complete speed for the artists' work with all the features and tools that artists would most need and would use in their work would be visible on the screen and without problems with the pollution of thousands of tools put together from all Rooms on the same screen.

Therefore, with this merger or freedom of a single mesh by all Rooms, the implementation of what we know as Vertex Groups with weight influence could happen.
This functionality could open the door to many other features such as different types of Modifiers (non-destructive) that exist in Blender, 3ds-max, and other programs.
It would open the way to the influence of painting the weight on the mesh for the following new features: Particles (Objects in the mesh), Hair system, best simulation in the Cloth, and a possible Rig system. And of course there are a number of possibilities for implementations such as brushes, Move Brush and Pose Tool to have a topology influence control, that is, they could only deform certain areas without deforming everything around the brush.
Of course there are many other things, but I will control myself and stop here. :D

I agree with you, if 3D-Coat were not so good, I would not have bought the license and would not make it as my main program.
I love 3D-coat because it just has excellent and unique tools and functionalities. That's a very positive point for me.
The problem as you mentioned is the confusion that the program causes in people with the current workflow, even people who use the program and have some knowledge still have doubts regarding the use of the program and how would solve a certain problem if it happens. Maybe, this makes people unsafe and does not feel comfortable with the program.

I'm not the voice of truth and reason, but in my opinion, the little I've said about 3D-Coat's suggestions, features, and workflow changes would be more than enough to draw enormous attention in the 3D world to 3D-Coat. It would be a change of game.
My intention is only the best for 3D-Coat helping in the way I can.

 

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1 hour ago, Rygaard said:

 

Subd is a very old concept and it has a lot of weaknesses , also subd lives mostly in the modeling realm. Eg sculpting a base mesh with uneven polygon sizes adds resosultion to specific areas.Thats what 

dynamesh(remeshers) and voxel concept solves but this destructive. Its ok for sculpt but not modeling.  Modeling needs non destructive workflow and by the new curve additions a nurbs approach combined with voxel concept would be awesome for  coat.

Right now both z and coat have sculpt but not much for modeling .Zmodeller is not so advanced comparted to other packages .

Rooms aint so bad,  most software have either "rooms"  or separete windows ,z doesnt have rooms and thats bad in my opinion.Check how many times you have to scroll the tool pallete on the defaul ui.

I think 3dc move to experiment on different features than the rest is a very good move to make it stand out .

 

 

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  I feel comfortable working with current blender 2.8's workspaces.  They are similar to rooms, switching workspace enables all the tools just for that specific task.  It's one room, no sending objects between rooms.  Personally I never use "tweak" and "UV" rooms.  I am confused  by the uv room because I can do the same tasks in retopo room.

I want topological grab so badly.  Now blender 2.8 has it https://blenderartists.org/t/pablo-dobarro-reveals-his-master-plan-for-sculpting/1150731

I feel smoothing surface in surface mode is not as easy as other programs.  The anti bump smoothing works best to me but still not easy especially sculpting with live clay.  Dissolve tool works great for most cases, but it has problems when symmetry is on or near crease areas.   Many times I need to convert object to voxel with HIGH resolution (to preserve detail), then convert back to surface mode for even topology, then decimate, then do the smoothing.  In blender's dynatopo and zb sculptris mode I can get smooth surface easily by just holding shift.

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Great post @Rygaard and nice points @Emi

3D Coat is such a joy to work with, but it does have some significant flaws, especially with the sculpting workflow.  A lot of them seem like fairly easy fixes, which is the frustrating part.  3D Coat is easily more innovative than just about any other sculpting program, but it's still missing things that we expect from working with other tools like topological move, repeat last action, and non-destructive subD sculpting.  Better smoothing and better surface picking would be on my wishlist as well.  I also find that 3D Coat doesn't handle certain edge cases/situations very well.  Things that Zbrush nails.  Things like snapping the brush into one along the centre symmetry seam is a massive help.  Also, lack of topological move in 3D coat makes it basically impossible to do movements on the inside of a character's legs if they are close together.  My workaround is to separate the legs into two separate symmetry instances and sculpt on one or the other with symmetry turned off, it works great, but it's not something a new user would ever think of.  Whereas in Zbrush it just works.  Also, in terms of picking, it's hard to smooth a part of a mesh without blowing away the forms on an adjacent part of the mesh and for me at least, solving some of these problems requires a good understanding of the tool and coming up with innovative workarounds that don't feel like sculpting anymore.  Further, they feel like workarounds that are needed due to the limitations of the sculpting toolset.  I'm patient enough to jump through those extra hoops to get the results I want, but I can't see most people sticking with it long enough to figure those things out when they can just use something that just works the way they would expect.

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Yes. Better smoothing. It's such fundamental tool and it dosen't give the good results at the moment. There is different hacks to make smooth surface but it really should be as easy as pressing shift key. And there is so many different smoothing modes in 3d-coat. I have used this app many years and I'm still confuse how to use all these different modes together. That sums it up. There is too many tools in sculpt mode. I like mudbox and blender way. Very few tools and then there is extra settings to modify them.  

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10 hours ago, micro26 said:

Subd is a very old concept and it has a lot of weaknesses , also subd lives mostly in the modeling realm. Eg sculpting a base mesh with uneven polygon sizes adds resosultion to specific areas.Thats what 

dynamesh(remeshers) and voxel concept solves but this destructive. Its ok for sculpt but not modeling.  Modeling needs non destructive workflow and by the new curve additions a nurbs approach combined with voxel concept would be awesome for  coat.

Right now both z and coat have sculpt but not much for modeling .Zmodeller is not so advanced comparted to other packages .

Rooms aint so bad,  most software have either "rooms"  or separete windows ,z doesnt have rooms and thats bad in my opinion.Check how many times you have to scroll the tool pallete on the defaul ui.

I think 3dc move to experiment on different features than the rest is a very good move to make it stand out . 

Levels of subdivision may be an old concept, but we can not deny that it is efficient for the purpose that this type of method provides us.
It's just another way of doing things, another kind of methodology that artists can or can not use according to the workflow they choose. In all working methods, there is the positive side, but there is also the negative side.

In blender, using the MultiRes modifier (which is equivalent to subdivision levels), you can make your UVs, if you want for some reason to use the modeling tools even after subdividing your mesh and with UVs, you can. This means that the artist has the freedom if he wants to add cuts manually, make extrudes, insets and etc., that all these modifications will be accepted when you return to your sculpture process. One cool thing about this is that your UVs will try to respect these changes as much as possible on this system, but depending on the changes you've made, you're going to have to redo the UVs, but that's not a problem, because in reality you will only fix the errors.
The conclusion of this is that you have another alternative and efficient creation, even though old is very powerful. You do not have a workflow break. And at worst, you can reproject every detail in the mesh. I particularly love this method as well.
1686637610_extremecaseinlevelsofsubdivion.thumb.JPG.45de64bb6f0f0e30dae6b7d17cd5ecd6.JPG

The use of Voxels and liveClay is another method I love, in which you can sculpt the mesh freely without worrying about the topology of the other method, and add details only in the places you want, making your entire process light and optimized if the artist knows what he is doing. A very controlled and efficient method, however far as I know, there is no possibility of you using UV's in this type of method. In my opinion, it would be interesting that UVs would automatically adapt to the process at the same time the artist was sculpting. I also do not know if something like that would be possible. As I already said I love this kind of method too, but after I sculpt, I will have to do the retopology process, UVs, if need be I will have to reproject the details in this new mesh and carry out the Bake process.

Voxels is an excellent and fantastic method for me to create a base mesh so that I can sculpt with more control in the Surface Mode (where magic happens). But it allows us to switch between Voxels and Surface at any time as needed. However, the user should pay attention to detail loss when a surface mode mesh is converted to Voxels again.

The modeling method is something else. You may or may not have a non-destructive system of your mesh. I think this type of modeling is mostly associated with the subdivision level method that supports modeling tools.

Now with the implementation of Curves, which is very similar to NURBS (nurbs is an old system too, but you may realize that it is extremely powerful). This kind of non-destructive method is great and allows us to perform a more intuitive and complex modeling process in an easy way, and it would be even more interesting if some kind of communication with the other methods I mentioned above happened.

In ZBrush, ZModeler is an interesting and intelligent system that massively uses the Polygroups system to perform modeling in a fast and efficient way. The success for ZModeler's modeling will depend on the artist. What I want to say is if the artist really knows how to use ZModeler's system, he will be happy. If he does not know this system will not be efficient and this person will be frustrated because you have to understand the system to succeed. I really like the kind of modeling of the Blender, 3DS-Max, and others programs, it's pretty much the kind of modeling presented in the Retopo Room. I feel that way, I have more control and it is more intuitive for me. This is not to say that this type of modeling is slow depending on the artist can be very fast, but for that in my opinion, the modeling tools could be smarter and with more options for the artist to perform while that polygon, edge or vertex is selected.

Zbrush has been suffering from the interface for years, and many people complained about it. But in order to reduce this type of problem, ZBrush made it possible to customize the interface and to create menus that are also customized by users.

I think the more methods and workflow possibilities that can be given to the artist is the better. And it would be even better if the artist could merge these methods to some extent.

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8 hours ago, animk said:

  I feel comfortable working with current blender 2.8's workspaces.  They are similar to rooms, switching workspace enables all the tools just for that specific task.  It's one room, no sending objects between rooms.  Personally I never use "tweak" and "UV" rooms.  I am confused  by the uv room because I can do the same tasks in retopo room.

I want topological grab so badly.  Now blender 2.8 has it https://blenderartists.org/t/pablo-dobarro-reveals-his-master-plan-for-sculpting/1150731

I feel smoothing surface in surface mode is not as easy as other programs.  The anti bump smoothing works best to me but still not easy especially sculpting with live clay.  Dissolve tool works great for most cases, but it has problems when symmetry is on or near crease areas.   Many times I need to convert object to voxel with HIGH resolution (to preserve detail), then convert back to surface mode for even topology, then decimate, then do the smoothing.  In blender's dynatopo and zb sculptris mode I can get smooth surface easily by just holding shift. 

You are completely correct regarding blender 2.8 workspace.
That's exactly what I said about Layout or Menu Sets. The organization is similar to what we have in 3D-Coat in relation to Rooms.
Exactly! That would provide us with only a single Room, a single Mesh, no mess and no confusions.

A clean, fast, friendly interface workflow (with interface customization, menus and popups), a free flow of the same mesh can use all the 3d-coat tools available in the program (all Rooms) to your advantage. This is something very powerful and it would give us complete freedom and control of the workflow.

Thanks for talking about it: topological grab .... I did not know it. I'll inform myself better about this so I can comment.

I really like the Smooth tools in Surface Mode, but I've had several problems with using them. There was case when I used the Reduce, Decimate, Power Smooth that serious problems arose on the surface of my mesh. Like several holes with different sizes that appeared and also problems of mesh explosion (a vertex that is located on one side to bridge the other side of the mesh).
There is also a certain problem with the performace of the brushes according to the resolution of their mesh.

For me the worst thing that happens is when I need to transform my detailed mesh that is in the surface mode for voxels. I suffer a lot from this, because in addition to having this detail loss problem, my mesh gets extremely heavy, my pc slows down and performance drops because I have to use billions of polygons so I can keep the detailing that I I made it located on my sculpture.

The artists who use the 3d-coat in the 3D printing process (collectibles) should have nightmares. Because you need to perform the Cuts and Keys almost at the end of the workflow, this stage uses a lot of Boolean operations. And everyone knows that in surface mode boolean operations are not effective, they can freeze the 3d-coat and even fail the operation after a long time calculating the Boolean operation.
And there is the problem also of fixing the mesh with the problems of intersection, holes in the surface, meshes that may be floating in, problems of mesh explosion and other things like the concern of the mesh to be completely solid so that serious problems do not happen during the 3D printing.

All this, to be done currently on the 3d-coat surface mode, in my opinion, is practically impossible.
If you want to solve any problem you will be forced to convert your mesh into Voxels and that means you will have to use billions of polygons to keep the mesh detailing.

It would be a dream to solve any problem that might occur in the surface mesh in Surface Mode itself.

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6 hours ago, gbball said:

Great post @Rygaard and nice points @Emi

3D Coat is such a joy to work with, but it does have some significant flaws, especially with the sculpting workflow.  A lot of them seem like fairly easy fixes, which is the frustrating part.  3D Coat is easily more innovative than just about any other sculpting program, but it's still missing things that we expect from working with other tools like topological move, repeat last action, and non-destructive subD sculpting.  Better smoothing and better surface picking would be on my wishlist as well.  I also find that 3D Coat doesn't handle certain edge cases/situations very well.  Things that Zbrush nails.  Things like snapping the brush into one along the centre symmetry seam is a massive help.  Also, lack of topological move in 3D coat makes it basically impossible to do movements on the inside of a character's legs if they are close together.  My workaround is to separate the legs into two separate symmetry instances and sculpt on one or the other with symmetry turned off, it works great, but it's not something a new user would ever think of.  Whereas in Zbrush it just works.  Also, in terms of picking, it's hard to smooth a part of a mesh without blowing away the forms on an adjacent part of the mesh and for me at least, solving some of these problems requires a good understanding of the tool and coming up with innovative workarounds that don't feel like sculpting anymore.  Further, they feel like workarounds that are needed due to the limitations of the sculpting toolset.  I'm patient enough to jump through those extra hoops to get the results I want, but I can't see most people sticking with it long enough to figure those things out when they can just use something that just works the way they would expect. 

Many thanks @gbball, my intention is just to help and make all the artists of 3D-Coat to express themselves and to give their best opinion so that some change, if it is correct, happens.

I also agree with you! I love working on 3D-Coat, but unfortunately we have flaws and problems.
3D-Coat is fantastic and unique in many things! Unfortunately, many features and tools essential and important to artists are not present in 3D-Coat.

Everything you said is important and there would be many other things that could easily be added to that list.
I have separated only 5 functions which in my opinion are essential and important to the system of brushes and alphas. In fact it was very difficult to choose only these 5 functions, because we have others that are important as well as the Topological Brush that you said. But for the beginning you have Plane OFFset (imbed), Sample Bias (midvalue), Size, Adjust, Curves (FallOff) would be great. I'd like to have added the Topological brush, but I did not want to make things complicated by asking or suggesting so many things at the same time.

I try as hard as possible to explain as best I can, demonstrate and argue why the features, tools and workflow would only bring benefits to us artists and to 3D-Coat.

To solve many problems and confusions, I am in favor of a single mesh, a free workflow between all the Rooms which would allow us a whole system in our favor.

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4 hours ago, haikalle said:

Yes. Better smoothing. It's such fundamental tool and it dosen't give the good results at the moment. There is different hacks to make smooth surface but it really should be as easy as pressing shift key. And there is so many different smoothing modes in 3d-coat. I have used this app many years and I'm still confuse how to use all these different modes together. That sums it up. There is too many tools in sculpt mode. I like mudbox and blender way. Very few tools and then there is extra settings to modify them.   

There are still many things I do not understand in 3D-Coat, but this is not because I do not make an effort to learn.
And it is because things are confusing and even become questionable why they function in this way. Sometimes become difficult and freeze your worflow.

Example:
You will want to use Displacement Map in order to physically apply and deform the surface of the mesh.
For this you have to use Microvertex Painting and choose through the File / Export menu - 3 or 4 types of mesh resolution.
So 3D-Coat will apply the displacement map physically in the mesh. After that, you will have to test by exporting different resolutions and then you will import through these surface different resolution meshes to be able to choose which of these resolutions would be ideal for your work.

Would not it be more practical an option that the artist could preview the displacement map, choose the displacement strengh before applying to the mesh surface? Just as it works and happens with the Noise Tool of Surface mode?

Did you realize how complicated and confusing things become?

The funniest thing is that I hated blender, especially in versions 2.4!
Today, Blender is completely changed from everything!
Workflow is getting better and easier for people to use. In my opinion, it still has some confusing things, but they are easy to learn.
You can do everything in Blender: Modeling, Sculpt, Uvs, Painting, using various type of modifiers, Vertex groups with influence of weight, non-destructive systems, several types of techniques to solve any kind of problem and best of all is freedom of work. You have a free workflow.

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40 minutes ago, Rygaard said:

The funniest thing is that I hated blender, especially in versions 2.4!
Today, Blender is completely changed from everything!
Workflow is getting better and easier for people to use. In my opinion, it still has some confusing things, but they are easy to learn.
You can do everything in Blender: Modeling, Sculpt, Uvs, Painting, using various type of modifiers, Vertex groups with influence of weight, non-destructive systems, several types of techniques to solve any kind of problem and best of all is freedom of work. You have a free workflow.

I agree. I watch very closely blender devellopping and it really gaining speed. Right now blender devellop teams get 30 000 euros per month by donation of their users. It's quite impressive number. My suggestion for other 3d apps is watch blender very closely and think what they can offer for blender. That's why I'm not so interested if 3d-coat makes poly room because blender is already nailing that. I think that blender is the only one that is gaining user, other 3d apps are loosing them.

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22 minutes ago, animk said:

 I guess better smoothing technically might not be a simple task for 3d-coat devs,  that's why "dissolve" tool (used to be named "smoother") exists.

I do not know if it would be a complex task for developers. I do not think so, because there are features with a greater degree of difficulty within 3D-Coat.

I believe this is a matter of code adaptation.
So it's important to say exactly how the bug happened so developers can fix it.
But a big problem happens when users report possible bugs or bugs. It is that sometimes, these errors or bugs do not happen frequently, but that does not mean that the error does not exist.
Therefore, it becomes difficult to repair it when the developers are going to take the test through the steps that the user reported a particular error or bug and on their computer this error does not happen. :(

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32 minutes ago, haikalle said:

I agree. I watch very closely blender devellopping and it really gaining speed. Right now blender devellop teams get 30 000 euros per month by donation of their users. It's quite impressive number. My suggestion for other 3d apps is watch blender very closely and think what they can offer for blender. That's why I'm not so interested if 3d-coat makes poly room because blender is already nailing that. I think that blender is the only one that is gaining user, other 3d apps are loosing them.

I do not think anyone can deny how much Blender is becoming powerful. I started learning 3D with Maya, I used Silo, then 3DS-Max, I went through Modo and now I use Blender.
Blender does everything I need without owing anything to anyone

Now, I do not know about big projects in the matter of stability and speed of Blender Render compared to the big ones like Maya, 3DS-Max that are used in the industry.

In the version of Zbrush R8 or 2018, I was able to identify some things inspired by Blender features. It might not, but if I was not mistaken there was something similar to the Boolean process among several objects in a non-destructive way similar to Blender's Boolean modifier. I'm not talking about the boolean live function.

Soon my friends, you can note there, you will see in the ZBrush system modifiers similar to what exists in Blender, 3DS-Max and other 3D programs.

I think it's important that developers look with a lot of affection at  Blender because great inspirations could be made.
Please forgive me for citing Blender so many times, but it is the program I use today and I have some knowledge. But I believe that other programs also have similar functionalities.

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Haven't had the time to read all the comments, but I did want to chime in and say a bit about this topic. For those who say 3DCoat is missing SubD levels, I have to disagree somewhat with the point being made. I do not see a need for quad-based sculpting. 3DCoat's Voxel and Surface (w/LiveClay) sculpting is a totally different approach, and as such, there are going to be some traditional conventions that cannot exist with this different way of working.

This DIFFERENCE occurs in ZBrush, too. You scrap SubD levels and Sculpt Layers when you Dynamesh, which is a pretty standard way of working in ZBrush, now. You also scrap SubD levels and Sculpt Layers when using Sculptris Pro, in ZBrush. So, the cry for SubD Quads seems a moot point. In both cases, you are generating an entirely different topology/mesh. At least in 3DCoat you have a solid means to step down to lower resolution levels (Proxy mode) and return, without having to worry about trashing your SubD levels. I think Proxy mode is pretty ingenious, to be honest.

For me, the one big thing 3DCoat lacked was Sculpt Layers, and now we have that in large part. It really changes the way a user works and once more people are exposed to it and see that you can do some phenomenal work, sculpting in 3DCoat. We just need support for layer masking with Sculpt Layers. Andrew has already added Erase and Magnification brushes for Sculpt Layers. On the whole, it works better than Sculpt Layers in ZBrush and Mudbox because it lets you work with Dynamic Tessellation and Booleans on Sculpt layers, which is a BIG NO CAN DO in ZBrush. It also lets the user paint with Smart Materials and use Sculpt Layer functionality at the same time...on either a low poly, UV mapped mesh or High Poly Surface Mesh. THAT IS FREAKING AMAZING!!! :yahoo: You cannot do anything like that in ZBrush.

You also cannot use a 3DConnexion device in Zbrush, and to me, that is a deal-breaker. When sculpting in 3DCoat, I can run circles around the ZBrush workflow because of this. In ZBrush, you constantly have to STOP to move around your model. In 3DCoat, I never have to stop. I can smoothly orbit about the model while sculpting, painting and doing retopo work. It's like driving a Ferrari compared to riding a tricycle, and I cannot believe more artists don't take advantage of this.

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@AbnRanger The point is that in ZBrush you can sculpt in Dynamesh or Scuptris mode and you can go back to Subdivision levels if you want when you reproject the sculpting. You can't just expect to make full sculptures with only Dynamesh or Sculptris, and then move on, sometimes it might work, but this is a terrible way of working on many cases. Many people might do thei low poly meshes inside Maya or 3dsmax and then they export it to be sculpted, why should the low poly be thrown away and never get it back?

Sometimes working on subdivision levels is better for making big shape changes to a mesh, because having less polygons is good for many things, so working only on high dense meshes and being forced to that, will never be good for many cases, it will be slower and not precise on many cases. For example, try to pose a character that has millions of polygons vs posing it in the lowest subdivision level. what do you think will look better and it will be easier to deal with? 

What do you think is better? import low poly and do whatever you want with it, dynamic subdivisions, subdivisions, dynamic tessellation and dynamesh, or being limited like 3DCoat does with only surface and voxels? and if you want to go higher, you can't go lower? Zbrush throws stuff away, yes, and I even said many people, especially the ones who make models from a sphere will probably not care about subdivision levels most of the time, but some people do. so what is wrong about wanting to use Subdivisions levels?

In Zbrush you can use Zmodeler and the new modifiers to make shapes easily and they work amazingly well with dynamic subdivision. So when you are making that type of modeling, moving faces and adding faces and Qmeshing things around, would be easy to do as a low poly rather than millions of polygons. It's a way of working, not the only one, you can do whatever you want and don't be too limited by the program.


You even mentioned "smart materials" in the same sentence about Sculpting Layers. This is exactly what we are talking about! a big downside of 3DCoat, you apply smart materials to a high dense polygon Sculpt mesh (doesn't even need to be high) and then what? you can't export it, you can't do anything outside 3DCoat, you can only render it, unless you make a retopo Mesh, and then bake the changes which might not look right depending how it bakes and how the cage is and how it is etc.

And even after you bake it, the Retopo mesh would be different from a Paint mesh, You can't just split meshes, into different objects, change smoothing groups if necessary, you can't do much but just paint and adjust UVs and maybe use the tweak room, but nothing else. While in Zbrush you can use Zmodeler or whatever feature to create objects and it will be the same mesh, you can turn it into a high polygon mesh by subdividing or dynamesh and keep working on it. And then you can just do quick UVs on the low or high polygon and you can paint on it, and export the map. Yes is not PBR, but the point is, it works, it's the same mesh, if they enable PBR someday, it will be a bomb and you know it since you wont need to switch anything, bake anything or do anything to be able to paint in your model, even if it is a big dense mesh.
3DCoat the workflow is disconnected, you can't paint a Sculpt mesh and export the map because you can't create UVs on Sculpt meshes. The only work around to do that is to export the mesh and import whatever million polygons to the paint room, if it can support that high dense mesh. Then you create the UVs and paint your smart materials or whatever, but what if you want to make changes to the sculpture? you would have to go back to sculpt room but then you lose the texture work. Unless you created an autopo good enough to hold the details and materials and stuff and good enough for retopo room not to complain how dense it might be, then I don't see how fast you can paint a sculpt mesh inside 3DCoat and be used outside 3DCoat.

 

Also, it is interesting you mention Layers , I remember the talk about in the past and about how it was a super big missing feature in 3DCoat and why 3DCoat couldn't be taken serioulsy for production but I barely hear anyone using them in Zbrush, yet, they can create amazing things with or without them, so sculpting layers was never the reason why Zbrush is great or a reason 3DCoat was not great. so why is it then?

 

3DConnexion devices are nice but they can't make up for all the fragmentation about 3DCoat, which would slow you down even more than using a normal drawing tablet or display inside Zbrush. Like I said, it doesn't make sense for Retopo mesh to be separated to be different than a Paint object, why you can't paint on what you create. Yeah it started as a retopo only room, now you can create it, now it makes sense to create and paint right away, but to me, it always made sense and now even more. 

 

And this kind of stuff is why most people will choose Zbrush over 3DCoat, because Zbrush fits on every workflow any studio may have, it will fit any way of working for the artist, it will let you do anything. it even has GoZ which helps even more while Applinks in 3DCoat can't be called too efficient, especially the ones that are not even updated anymore like Maya. Zbrush will let you create objects with Zmodeler and use them as booleans, paint the alpha with Snapshot3D and it's a live boolean operation. how can you do that if retopo is disconnected from the sculpt in 3DCoat? Oh and yes, Live Booleans work really good especially with Zremeher v3, they never fail, they work good, they are live so you can move them around. but 3Dcoat you can't dream to do this, because you can't even use meshes you create in retopo to do it. they will have to be converted to sculpt meshes (I guess), and you can't go back and really edit them after making a boolean operation.

Subdivision levels is just one point we are making about the way many artists work still today. But even without them 3DCoat is still fragmented, you can't work as a single program as you expect but you have to keep jumping from room to room with a button that is a small patch on the problem not the fix of the problem. 3DCoat limits the workflow for many people by avoiding an important thing like Subdivision levels, I mean, imagine subdivision levels on those objects you create inside Retopo room, be able to keep editing them, wouldn't that be nice and good for people who want it?. Why would it be better no subdivision levels than having them? Why feel happy about being limited and put it as a "different approach"?

 

In the end, this post is not about if 3DCoat is good or capable of doing great things or not, or what it has that might be superior to Zbrush or why someone who bought 3DCoat and is working on it, shouldn't be ashamed of their purchase because 3DCoat is a good program. 3DCoat is a good software, and it is capable of doing amazing things. But this post is more about why Zbrush would be the one always recommended, why you would have a better bet by going with it as a team, big studio, indie, individual artist. Why Zbrush is the one everyone expect you to know it and use it and not 3DCoat even if 3DCoat has great sculpting tools. Yes, education and marketing play a big role and this doesn't even mean that nobody uses 3DCoat, since I have heard they use it for environment stuff in some studios. Of course, marketing, tutorials and youtube videos and schools curriculums will always play a bigger role why Zbrush is an industry standard, but to this day, Zbrush still offers more than 3DCoat for any type of workflow and artist, it limits you less.

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8 hours ago, AbnRanger said:

For those who say 3DCoat is missing SubD levels, I have to disagree somewhat with the point being made. I do not see a need for quad-based sculpting.

In relation to the system of subdivision levels I find very powerful.
I do not know if you use Blender, but if you do a quick test, you can do the following in your workflow:

- Open UVs (with Uvs in geometry, you will have benefits in your favor.) You will be able to have several techniques in your creative process, this will only be possible if there are functionalities in your favor.

- Choose the Multi-Resolution modifier (it would be the equivalent of the ZBrush subdivision level system).

- You can sculpt and have in your favor all levels of subdivision that keeps any kind of detail you have made.

- You can at any time, if necessary or for any reason, you can perform modeling through whatever traditional tools like: Knife (Cut), extrude, bevel, inset, merge and etc.
That means you do not get stuck with the same topology. You can change the mesh in your favor.
As well as the use of vertex groups and modifiers.

- The UVs that were already made in the geometry will support as much as possible all the mesh changes made by the modeling tools of the program I mentioned above.
Of course, when you add new polygons as in the Extrude operation, UVs will no longer be correct.
The only job you have is to make the appropriate seams on the UVs just on that Island or piece of the mesh and run the UNWRAP only in that region. Okay, you quickly get the correct UVs back on again.

- You can re-sculpt before fixing the UVs or after repairing the Uvs. The job of sculpting will not be interrupted in any moment, it means that you do not have in any moment break of workflow.

- Whatever you wish to do, any technique is at your disposal without any problems, including techniques related to texture maps.
If you want to use modifiers (displacement, simple deform and etc) you can!
The only limitation is if you choose a modifier that stays after MultiResolution, Blender will not allow it because of MultiResolution, but that's no problem! Just apply the modifier and the mesh will normally receive modifier modifications in MultiResolution.
If you want any non destructive modifier you can! You only need to put the modifier before MultiResolution.

- The only problem, which is not really a problem, but how the process works is that the artist has to subdivide the mesh as a whole and if you want more details you have to subdivide the mesh into millions of polygons.

I did a quick test where I stressed the mesh and made radical modifications in the character. I did not intend to make a beautiful sculpture!   ;)
Please see the imagem below:

1657740116_multiresolutionextreme.thumb.jpg.d0e3f9c39cddce159d4454c61f91232e.jpg

 

8 hours ago, AbnRanger said:

3DCoat's Voxel and Surface (w/LiveClay) sculpting is a totally different approach, and as such, there are going to be some traditional conventions that cannot exist with this different way of working.

I agree that with LiveClay, Remove Stretching and voxels is a completely different and powerful process! I love it so much!
But it has its negative points as in any type of process chosen by an artist.

Please do not misunderstand me, but what I'm talking about is that every process, regardless of anything, has both good and bad points.
In my opinion, the important thing is for the artist to have a choice of what he will do, to choose the best workflow that would be the most correct at that moment. You have freedom in your workflow is very important regardless if you like more of one process than the other.

I agree that with the implementation of Sculpt Layer was something very important and essential. It was extremely urgent that 3D-Coat have Sculpt Layers in its system. This was a win for all! :)
Congratulations to Andrew, because again 3D-Coat is being unique and pioneer in allowing Sculpt Layers to accept Dynamic Thessalation and so on.
There are unique features and tools in 3D-Coat that make any artist to have an exceptional quality in their work.

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To echo @Emi,

About Subdivision modelling specifically, it really does become a deal breaker when you want to edit your work after retopo or if you are bringing in assets from another 3d app.

I don't think that people would expect the same level of flexibility with a quad based subD mesh as they would from voxels or surface mode in terms of dynamic remeshing and booleans, but there is the expectation that you should be able to work on a quad based mesh non-destructively.  I think that sculpt layers help with subD sculpting as I imagine they are an important component in terms of storing displacement between subdivision levels.  Hopefully, @Andrew Shpagin can chime in, since I don't know how these things actually work.  I think a lot of the functionality that currently exists in the program could lead to a really powerful SubD Sculpting workflow, TBH, I think the workflow and UI would be the biggest parts to work out.

I, for one, wouldn't mind if when going from a quad based mesh to a surface sculpt or a voxel sculpt (or vice versa) it was a somewhat destructive step.  However, once I've put work into UV mapping something and working out good topology, I want to be able to reuse that work where ever possible by reshaping the geo, subdividing it and sculpting more details without worrying that I might be changing the shape drastically as a result because the low-poly base will automatically keep up. And when more general changes are needed, I can pose it at low subdivision levels and have that propagate to higher subdivision levels, or more importantly, smoothing things out at lower levels and having that translate to higher levels.  

In the past I sculpted a character in 3D coat, then I retopoed it, then I unwrapped it and I planned to leverage that initial character mesh for the next set of characters I was going to create for the same project.  With the idea that I could transfer the same rig weights to all 5 characters.  But when making the second, third and fourth characters I ran into a huge problem.  My first mesh was totally useless.  I tried using conform retopo mesh to sculpt, but it was really slow because 3D Coat had to calculate my high poly sculpt mesh and the lowpoly retopo mesh simultaneously, also not all the sculpt tools have that option.  If I were using Zbrush, Blender or Mudbox, it wouldn't be a problem.  Because of this, I can't see any studio using 3D coat for any kind of production-heavy sculpting workflow unless it's purely for prototyping or early stage sculpts. I want 3D Coat to be at the heart of my studio's workflow, but I have to think of workarounds for this issue in particular.  Since I decided to stich with 3D coat, I ended up sculpting 5 characters, retopoing all 5 characters from scratch and UV unwrapping all 5 characters.  In the end, each of my meshes ended up being slightly different and we couldn't reuse the rig setup.  So instead of saving time, we drastically increased to time it took because I wanted to use 3D Coat.  Sadly, I ended up buying a copy of Zbrush so that I don't have to worry about a similar problem in the future.  

I don't really know if it's feasible to do in the short term, but I really hope quad based sculpting with the ability to step up and down through subdivision levels is somewhere on the roadmap and I hope that @Andrew Shpagin will be able to give his full attention at some point, because I'm sure he'd be able to work some magic if he puts his mind to it.  Even if it's really hard, I know you can do it @Andrew Shpagin, if it will take a lot of work, or if it's difficult is definitely not a reason to avoid it.  It's super important and critical to the growth of the program.

For now, I'm excited to see what Sculpt Layers and Curves have in store as I await the release of version 5.

Also, this isn't meant as criticism...just constructive feedback on my experience using the tool.  I love 3D Coat, and use it whenever I can, but I also am starting my own studio, so I'm not really answering to client or studio requirements.  I feel like Pixelogic and Allegorithmic and Autodesk and Foundry have a good pulse on what industry is doing, Blender not as much, but they make their own films so the tool is production tested and optimized, also they have the benefit of being opensource so the users can also help make the tool, but Pilgway/3D Coat seems to be less geared towards the needs of industry and production friendly workflows.  I want to see 3D Coat become the best possible tool that it can be.  Recognition/acknowledgement aren't things that you can control, but if the tool is solid, stable,  enjoyable to work with and delivers great results in a logical workflow that is production friendly for the hobbyist and the big studio, I'm sure the recognition will come.

 

 

 

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