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How do I evaluate 3D COat?


MarkG
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I have been watching 3D Coat from afar for awhile. Last week, I decided to take the plunge and download the trial.

Now, my Trial ends in a little over a week, and I have hardly started...

Some background: I am not a 3D professional, but I have been dabbling for several years now. I have evaluated most of the major 3D packages -- 3D Max, Maya, Lightwave, XSI. I have also purchased a few: Silo, and Messiah being my favorites. I am on the fence about zBrush.

Frankly, I am hoping that the combination of Silo and 3D Coat would keep me from buying zBrush, because I think ZB is a bit over-priced, and I absolutely hate its interface.

But... 3D COat's features elude me. I know they are there. I can see what others are doing with it. But I can't seem to figure it out because it uses terminology and interfaces that I have never seen in any other package.

The first thing I tried to do was bring one of my meshes in and play around with it -- that didn't work at all. I imported it and it wasn't even visible. I could "paint" on it and I saw the results in the preview window, but it didn't seem to "take" -- when I closed the preview window, there was nothing there. I guess I needed to click a "OK Do It" button -- but I never saw one. It seemed counter-intuitive and (as I said) unlike anything I had ever seen before.

So... I decided to follow along with one of the tutorials (adding detail to the helmet) and got very frustrated because although it showed me how to "click this here... select that there" it wasn't answering any of my questions. I didn't feel I was LEARNING, I was just mimicking. (Also, my screens didn't seem to match the pictures in the tutorial!)

Now I am watching my 15 Day trial expiring fast, and I never really got started.

It's really frustrating.

This isn't about money. $140 is a reasonable price, and I don't mind spending it for a tool I will use. I just don't need any more "Shelf-Ware" and I don't have time to frustrate myself trying to learn a good product that is hidden behind a strange interface. (If I wanted to do that, there is always zBrush...)

But I don't want to give up, because I sense this could fit nicely in my workflow.

The workflow I THINK I want is: Build mesh in Silo, Rig and pose in Messiah, Create displacements and paint in 3D Coat, and final render in Messiah.

So... for someone who is looking to build basic meshes in Silo, and then create UVs and Displacement maps in 3D COat -- where should I start?

(I MIGHT want to try the retopology tools, but Silo's are pretty good, and I know them, so I am not sure about learning something new -- unless it is a WHOLE lot better...)

Any thoughts?

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A few thoughts -

Don't buy Zbrush. I used it for years, it's just a waste of time. You'll spend more time learning the interface and RE-learning the interface if you don't use it daily. As you said, it's also over priced. In fact, I just sold my Zbrush license this week in favour of 3DCoat. :)

Secondly. If you plan to do any texturing, displacement maps and normal maps, buy 3DCoat in the trial. You're guaranteed to use it. Considering v3 will ship with a brand new interface, I'd say buy it now, learn it after the interface is new and photoshop-esque.

As the interface stand now, while it's odd, I found it pretty easy to learn and navigate. Maybe you could point out some specifics you're having trouble with?

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I have a question. Are you evaluating the Alpha V 3.0 branch or are you using 2.17?

The reason I ask is probably obvious but I have never experienced that type of behavior from

the 2.0 branch.

I have been a proud owner of 3D-Coat for more than a year now and a user for

longer than that. I have a similar pipeline as yours. I model in modo or sculpt and retopo in Blender. I then

rig in Blender. I use several different renderers depending on what effect I'm looking for. I became interested

in 3D-Coat for the displacement and painting features and so I gave it a try. I admit the when I first opened the program

I was a little put off by the interface. I remember thinking, this can't be serious, in short order though I was

putting out some fairly high quality work, I made the purchase and have never had a moments remorse.

To this day haven't read the manual, do to the excellent tool tips.

That's not to say I haven't browsed it from time to time looking for clarification. Anyway, I guess you can gather

that I am a fairly satisfied customer. It's not perfect yet but Andrew Shpagin is constantly in the forums helping

people and taking feature requests.

I can't comment on Z-Brush. It's obviously a fine product but I gave it a try before the V 3.0 came out and I couldn't

get my head around it.

Anyway, good luck with whatever you decide. I hope that this posting has helped a little and that if you are testing the

Alpha version that you will give the for sale version a try.

P. Monk

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I am in the same boat as you MarkG. Fortunately, I found a series of vids at geeksatplay.com. The series isn't finished yet but the aim is to take the werewolf character sample that comes with 3DC, "muscle" him up and then texture him. They've gotten thru most of the "muscle" stuff so far. The vids are very good, not condescending and I am learning a lot from them such that as soon as I can scrape the cash together (I'm unemployed for the last year) I'm getting 3DC.

I too tried the "crown" tut and could not complete it so don't feel so bad.

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A few thoughts -

Don't buy Zbrush. I used it for years, it's just a waste of time. You'll spend more time learning the interface and RE-learning the interface if you don't use it daily.

Totally agree. The interface was the #1 turnoff for me, and the reason I would never purchace after evaluation. They tried to re-invent the wheel in an attempt to make the product easier for artists with no 3d experience to use, but they alienated everybody else in the process (it's more difficult to learn when you have to first un-learn).

3d coat on the other hand... I evaluated it for 20 days and found it so useful and straightforward to use, i purchased it immediately. It does exactly what I need a depth painting app to do, and it does it very efficiently, generating normal and displacment maps on the fly. It's more or less WYSIWYG compared to rendered result (SSS and other effects aside).

Another thing you can do with 3d coat that you can't do with many other painting apps: you can swap out UV layouts at any point in painting with no loss in quality since color + position information are stored in evenly spaced (adaptive subdivision) microvertexes rather than in images (unless you are using pixel paint mode). This is very useful if you want to use a base mesh for a game with one layout, and a high poly with another layout for hires render (no need to retopo)... or if you simply want to tweak the UV positions to reduce distortion manually.

Sculpting (non voxel) is a weakpoint, I think, but it's not so bad considering you've probably already created a base mesh in another program or with voxel sculpting and the retopo tools. Voxel sculpting on the other hand, is amazing. You don't have to worry about topology at all until you retopo, so your main focus is 100% on sculpting, and nothing else. At first I thought voxel sculpting was more or less a toy until I tried to actually use it for something. Fantastic results. The one caveat is that you can't paint or assign materials in voxel mode (at least not that transfer to paint mode), but i'm sure Andrew can extend it's functionality later.

Personally, my workflow is this for voxel projects:

1. sculpt in voxel mode

2. create base mesh in 3d coat's retopo

3. export to blender for uv unwrapping*

4. import unwrapped base mesh back into retopo

5. bake (merge in scene)

6. paint

7. export

8. render.

3d coat also has a special undocumented feature: Andrew. Since the user base is relatively small, and Andrew, the main developer, has direct contact with the users of his program, features can be requested and implemented within days (within reason). Similarly, bugs that are reported are often fixed almost immediately.

* Only reason I unwrap in blender is because it's UV unwrapping tools are top notch. 3d coat's uv unwrapping is better than many packages, but it's not as good as blender's, imo. Blender has live (realtime with pinned targets) lscm unwrapping, which was introduced a few years ago and has grown by leaps and bounds since (such as realtime distortion display by area and angle, choice of unwrapping methods, realtime glsl feedback, etc...). It's sort of like peltmapping in that you can specify where an island's edges stretch to, but it's not a brute force softbody simulation, so it takes into account angles and distortion as it re-unwraps on the fly. It ends up resulting in very low distortion islands while still being shaped the way you want em (within reason). It can also display the subdivided "ghost" mesh on the fly for you.

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Thank you all. The replies have been helpful.

I have been heads down on a project at work, but when the smoke clears next week, I am going to see about getting a 3.0 trial.

That definitely sounds promising. If it takes the feature set of 3D Coat, and mixes it with the basic interface of Photoshop (which I already know) then it makes my decision to purchase a very easy one.

Thanks again!

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Glad to hear that Mark! :)

If you would be so gracious, when the time comes to make your decision, by purchasing through one of the links of someone whom helped you so they may get a discount on v3? ;)

Mine is in my signature.

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Glad to hear that Mark! :)

If you would be so gracious, when the time comes to make your decision, by purchasing through one of the links of someone whom helped you so they may get a discount on v3? ;)

I am happy to do that... but... um... how do I choose? Alphabetically? The person who was the most help... grrr... now I feel pressure!

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Well you don't have to. :)

If you do, just PM one of us and ask for their personal 3DCoat link.

Seriously... I will do that (I should have put a smiley thingie on the end of my post!) If my purchase can help someone else -- why not?

I'm looking forward to renewing my evaluation next week... for now, back to C# programming for me (which is not nearly as fun!)

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I own a zbrush license and I haven't used it much. Although the interface is frustrating, the more frustrating thing is the somewhat illogical workflow. For example painting in layers, if you want to delete a layer you need to make it invisible then delete it otherwise it is applied to the base mesh. Another problem are the zspheres. Zspheres are somewhat broken. In fact you can see Meats Meier break zspheres in one of his free videos, too bad he doesn't tell you the workaround. If all you want to do is sculpt and make normal maps, it's very strong in that area and I haven't had had any problems with zmapper with the exception of speed. If still interested in zbrush. Meats Meier put up a bunch of free zbrush videos in hd quality. http://www.3dartspace.com/index.php?option...view&id=304

As for silo. (I also own a license to this one... regretfully) Although it's cheap. Just be sure you plan to use it for organic modeling. Although they advertise their product as being able to do architectural and hard modeling. In reality it's a very poor hard modeling tool. The snapping tools are somewhat bad, they either work sometimes or not at all. The topology tools are okay but just about every other application with topology tools does it better. Basically silo 2 is a poor man's solution for modeling and sculpting but it does nothing better than any other tool that specializes in those areas. The two programmers at nevercenter haven't updated the software in about 6 months now or maybe longer. There are tons of bugs and silo 2 has been in development now for 2-3 years I think? Nevercenter has recently started devoting their time to making applications for iphone. So given the history, if silo doesn't fulfill all your needs right now, it probably never will. You get what you pay for....

3dcoat has awesome painting tools. Lots of flexibility. Great price. The topoology tools are way better than silo, although it could use some work in this area, it's still very usable. 3dcoat has a very competent and intelligent programmer building the software. I don't own a license yet. But I will very soon. I've been using the alpha and it's much friendlier than bodypaint.

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  • 3 weeks later...
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Hey Ninja, thanks for the information!

In fact you can see Meats Meier break zspheres in one of his free videos, too bad he doesn't tell you the workaround.

I bought a few videos when trying to learn zBrush... I have a couple from Meats. He is a very talented artist. And watching him struggle with a couple of areas in zBrush told me that I REALLY wouldn't manage... I don't have his learning, ability, or patience... if he has to work through things,I figured I didn't stand a chance...

As for silo. (I also own a license to this one... regretfully) Although it's cheap. Just be sure you plan to use it for organic modeling. Although they advertise their product as being able to do architectural and hard modeling. In reality it's a very poor hard modeling tool.

I agree that it is really best for organic modeling... which is fine because that is all I do.

The snapping tools are somewhat bad, they either work sometimes or not at all.

Well, I pretty much disagree with this. I have used Snap to model a lot and it always works for me just fine.

The two programmers at nevercenter haven't updated the software in about 6 months now or maybe longer. There are tons of bugs and silo 2 has been in development now for 2-3 years I think? Nevercenter has recently started devoting their time to making applications for iphone. So given the history, if silo doesn't fulfill all your needs right now, it probably never will. You get what you pay for....

It concerns me that Silo has "gone dark." It does seem as though the developers have decided they can make more money elsewhere. I really don't think there are tons of bugs. I use it for 12 hours at a time, and it has been a stable performer. There are features I wish it had, surely. And there are a few anomalies that I'd like fixed, but as modelers go, it has the best user interface I have ever used. Compared to Modo, Lightwave, Max or Blender, I can do organic modeling SO MUCH faster in Silo, it isn't even close.

That being said, their sculpting tools need work, and -- as you say -- they don't seem inclined to work on it these days... which leaves me looking elsewhere. I don't think I will ever get rid of SILO, but I do need to augment it.

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I am in the same boat as you MarkG. Fortunately, I found a series of vids at geeksatplay.com. The series isn't finished yet but the aim is to take the werewolf character sample that comes with 3DC, "muscle" him up and then texture him. They've gotten thru most of the "muscle" stuff so far. The vids are very good, not condescending and I am learning a lot from them such that as soon as I can scrape the cash together (I'm unemployed for the last year) I'm getting 3DC.

I too tried the "crown" tut and could not complete it so don't feel so bad.

Gary Millers 3DC video tuts at Geekatplay are incredible... He's one of the best... He also has some fine Vue & Hexagon tutorials at Geeksatplay.....

Sadly Gary hasn't posted any new 3DC tuts in a while... I think he is attending to some family matter (parents I believe)....

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