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2021 Q1


Jburk
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On 3/6/2021 at 1:55 PM, 3DC Support said:

Still no set date here as we are finalizing the release... we should have more clarity on it within the next couple weeks. 

Keep you posted!

:o

Edited by Artomiano
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I think we may need to respect the devs a bit on this as - in the end - product timetables are difficult at best...Last thing we need is a wave of new features that are unusable for production because of bugs....So I'm asking them to take their time!!!

(however I do desperately desperately want the Modelling Room, can't wait)

PS - Guys/girls please make sure the Factures mesh exports (and the FBX exports in general) are scaled properly (currently all over the place for what I've seen in 2021 so unusable in an external renderer :(

Also, would be great to be able to assign names to Factures Materials (currently you can't name them)

 

- Rich

Edited by -rb-
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55 minutes ago, -rb- said:

I think we may need to respect the devs a bit on this as - in the end - product timetables are difficult at best...Last thing we need is a wave of new features that are unusable for production because of bugs....So I'm asking them to take their time!!!

Hm ... you're right but ... I think they should do it like Pixologic: Publish it and polish it. ZBrush users get regularly updates because this program was also not perfect at publishing date. So what ... nobody expects a perfect piece of software (at least not me :hi:). But if many user could take their hands on the new version Pilgway would get a whole bunch of feedback (and bug reports) to polish the program. Just my two cents. ;)

But on the other hand ... we are here ... have no clue what's going on behind the doors of the hard working software engineers of Pilgway. So @Pilgway: Keep up the good work!

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I get where you are coming from. I just prefer not to be strung along. I only made the purchase for 3D Coat anticipating them to keep their word and publish it in Q1. I am sure I am not the only one. If it will get delayed again then they are using a promise that they cannot keep to continue to pull in funds for a project that may be stuck in dev limbo for an indefinite amount of time. The fact that they already pushed the deadline back is not an encouraging precedent either.

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That's the problem with making announcements at all, with something that's not as clearly defined as programming and software dev. You estimate how long something will take, but when you do it, you find it breaks five other things, and in fixing those you might find something is now totally incompatible with what you have and what you're planning so now it takes longer to come up with a replacement for THAT. They could have just told us 'we're working on it' and not given a date but then we'd be dissatisfied with *that*. They could launch in a buggy state, but then we'd say that the software is broken and complain, so there's really no solution that will make every single user happy, other than waiting for a  hopefully smooth and feature rich release. The software as it is now works fine, so its not like you have a 'useless' piece of tech till the release, either.

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It does work 'fine' but it is borderline obsolete (I said borderline). With Zbrush and Substance and Blender it's falling behind. I bought in because I liked that they were believers and I thought the update would bring them into a more competitive position.

About the release date, I think you develop a software until it gets to a nearly polished state and then you give people the tease and then a release date. You can even say, "hey guys, were developing this in the background but its going to be a while because its a massive update." 

I think jumping the gun, postponing, and using it as a marketing ploy burns a lot more people. Of course you have a small group of people who swear by it and they are happy with whatever. But then you have people like me who are on the fence, or people who ideally you convert from other software who look at it and go, "Oh yeah. I heard about 3D Coat, they're decent but didn't they make an announcement about a revamp a couple years ago and it never happened." Or like me, "I invested in it because I believed in what they are doing but it doesn't look like they are ever going to come through." So when its released appreciation and excitement are replaced by feelings that a debt has finally been payed, or worse, it can't possibly live up to what's expectation and hype it built.  It's just not a good look for a company trying to make a mark imo. 

It would be better if they just said, "We jumped the gun, it's going to be a year." Because moving goal posts creates disillusionment and frustration.  Break our hearts once and give yourself time, don't do it over and over and perpetually put yourself in a state of panic.

My fear is they are trying to be too much. If they are trying to beat Zbrush, Substance, and a modeling program like Maya and Blender I think that's bad news for us. Those programs have niches and a much larger base for funding so they can hire more devs and develop those areas much quicker than 3D Coat can which will leave us waiting and the dev's never quite "done."

 

This is all conjecture of course, they could totally meet their deadline. 

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Best to take a wait-and-see approach.  For those of us who have been around longer, the lack of communication tends to happen when the team is crunching on a deadline...We'll see if it's ready for the end of March or not, but as a longtime Blender user, the same thing happened with the 2.8 release...but it might have been even longer of wait with more missed deadlines than we've seen here.  Megascans was even worse still.  But look how well those have been received.

Good things take time and software development is very unpredictable.  When quality is the focus and if things are truly innovative and useful, people quickly forget how long they had to wait for it.  

If 3D Coat can close the gap a bit with Zbrush in sculpting, then I think you'll see a lot more people willing to give it a try.  Especially with Zbrush's new features trying to emulate much of what 3D Coat does so much more easily with Voxels.  It's already the king of 3d kitbashing for concept and handpainted texturing.  

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I believe it will be a good program and I have no regrets. I purchased the pro version on steam to get the new version. I am preparing a web system with PHP myself and I had to deliver it to my clients 5 months ago. Programming is a really difficult process, and nobody should blame anyone for taking it too long.

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9 hours ago, Jburk said:

But then you have people like me who are on the fence, or people who ideally you convert from other software who look at it and go, "Oh yeah. I heard about 3D Coat, they're decent but didn't they make an announcement about a revamp a couple years ago and it never happened." Or like me, "I invested in it because I believed in what they are doing but it doesn't look like they are ever going to come through." So when its released appreciation and excitement are replaced by feelings that a debt has finally been payed, or worse, it can't possibly live up to what's expectation and hype it built.  It's just not a good look for a company trying to make a mark imo.

The thing is, some software says they have an update and you never see anything for a long time until it comes out. But 3DC is constantly getting updates with new tools and features. You might see 30+ updates between purchases.

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15 hours ago, Jburk said:

It does work 'fine' but it is borderline obsolete (I said borderline). With Zbrush and Substance and Blender it's falling behind. I bought in because I liked that they were believers and I thought the update would bring them into a more competitive position.

About the release date, I think you develop a software until it gets to a nearly polished state and then you give people the tease and then a release date. You can even say, "hey guys, were developing this in the background but its going to be a while because its a massive update." 

I think jumping the gun, postponing, and using it as a marketing ploy burns a lot more people. Of course you have a small group of people who swear by it and they are happy with whatever. But then you have people like me who are on the fence, or people who ideally you convert from other software who look at it and go, "Oh yeah. I heard about 3D Coat, they're decent but didn't they make an announcement about a revamp a couple years ago and it never happened." Or like me, "I invested in it because I believed in what they are doing but it doesn't look like they are ever going to come through." So when its released appreciation and excitement are replaced by feelings that a debt has finally been payed, or worse, it can't possibly live up to what's expectation and hype it built.  It's just not a good look for a company trying to make a mark imo. 

It would be better if they just said, "We jumped the gun, it's going to be a year." Because moving goal posts creates disillusionment and frustration.  Break our hearts once and give yourself time, don't do it over and over and perpetually put yourself in a state of panic.

My fear is they are trying to be too much. If they are trying to beat Zbrush, Substance, and a modeling program like Maya and Blender I think that's bad news for us. Those programs have niches and a much larger base for funding so they can hire more devs and develop those areas much quicker than 3D Coat can which will leave us waiting and the dev's never quite "done."

 

This is all conjecture of course, they could totally meet their deadline. 

This is a very cynical view of things, from start to finish. 

1) There was no "Jumping the Gun"...a lot of what was being developed for 2021 is in 4.9 as a open Beta. Major releases only happened about every 5-6yrs. This is by far the biggest. One reason for that is the fact that Pilgway hired almost a dozen new developers in the past few years, to help bring this major version to fruition. There are major new features, that all have to go through a period of refinement and testing and then more refinement and testing. A new Sculpting Brush engine was shown in the 4.9 latest releases (in the Custom section), and it was implemented in all the default Surface mode brushes, for 2021.

2) There were was no "Marketing Ploy." A decision not to try and rush the release was made and Pilgway was very candid about the change of the name and time of release. A lot of this is because there is a new node system...not just for Smart Materials, but many other functions in the app. There is also a GPU brush engine being worked on for the Paint Workspace. The new Sculpting brush engine is also a major new advancement in the application. There is also a lot of new Retopo tools (as requested by many to offer similar functionality as some of the newer Retopo tools in the market...as addons, usually) and modeling tools.

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In the past I've worked for a hardware/Software Company. Announcing any release date was always a problem. If you miss the date people screamed, if you were early then you clearly didn't do enough beta testing. The only time people were happy is when you released it on them like an early unannounced Christmas present.

      Release cycles used to be dominated by Siggraph marketing. If you didn't have, or announce, a new release or a .5 update every Siggraph then you were clearly going out of business. And if you didn't have a very large , and extremely expensive booth at Siggraph, then you must be out of business. Fortunately that seems to have stopped and developers can take some time now. They are still stuck with finicals and quarterly cycles though.

     Imagine if you were told that you were going to get paid for your job but it was only going to be maybe once a year? That's what developers face, aka Publish or die. Software companies only make money when they release. One of the reasons most companies went to Subscription services is that you have a steady constant stream of income as a company. It's either that or hope your software gets sold to a larger company. If you look at Modo's marketing they wanted to hoping to get bought out by someone like the Foundry or Dassault. 

While I'd like to see the 2021 version I'm in no hurry. I found that most people calmor for new features and whatnot when they don't know how to use 75% of the current version they have. Whatever you do don't release on a Friday. Do it early in the week when you have time to respond to any problems that pop up. Also keep in mind Forum comments are only a very small, tiny vocal minority of the users. Most of the users you will never hear from. 

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1 hour ago, AbnRanger said:

This is a very cynical view of things, from start to finish. 

 

You wouldn't be the first person to accuse me of being cynical. And I 100% agree this is the most cynical viewpoint I can have. But as forums are small portions of vocal people, it doesn't mean that my, however inaccurate, concerns don't reflect the concerns of the silent users who daily check to see if we have an update. And I have no problem being corrected. Kept to yourself-or worse, exposed and left unaddressed is where cynicism festers.

I hear all of you about timing, resources, and development. And I confess to a severely limited understanding of software development. Thank you all for bringing that fact to my attention, I confess to potentially being too hard on our guys. This is, as I said, all speculation since we haven't come to the end of the quarter.

 

2 minutes ago, Artomiano said:

Maybe we forgot an important thing in this discussion. Actually I do not want to talk about but ... it's corona time. :( So, that may occur some trouble - less active employees!?

Things are hard, projects are tough and the world is on fire. I get it. But that's the case for everyone right now as our friend Artomiano pointed out.

My sore spot is the investment I made in the promise of a product. And in a time like this, investments are legitimate sacrifices. I am not demanding a product, I am asking for a clear answer on a delay.

 

To bring us back around to the initial post.

On 3/4/2021 at 8:21 PM, Jburk said:

Hi, Q1 is coming to a close pretty soon. Still no mention of a release date. Should we be be preparing for another delay?

 

So after the battle of optimism, cynicism and speculation I think we can agree, most people are okay with the timetable and process that Pilgway is undertaking to give us their next great product. The small minority like me are still eagerly awaiting an answer to the question, should we be preparing for another delay?

 

Oh would you look at that, their was a typo in that first post...

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I too am anxiously awaiting the new release, but in these times, have learned to be patient. I'm curious to know if there will be a nanomesh equivalent. I have a Pro license for 3D Coat and will always use it as my primary sculpting software of choice (I love 3D Coat), but have recently considered adding a subscription of z-brush for features like this. I'm waiting for this next release before making any further purchasing decisions. But first and foremost, I hope everyone is staying healthy, and I will remain patient.

Edited by GMG3D
miss spelling
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1 hour ago, L'Ancien Regime said:

Is there any demo of the subd capabilities of the new polygonal modeling tools? What mathematical topology model was used? Good old Catmull Clark?

It's all looking good. I like what I see. 

To model the body and ears, a surface was constructed using a cubic spline.

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Nice, the spine tool looks really powerful.

I can't help but think that it would be helpful to add a circularize function to quickly make a  patch of quads into a circle...it would have been helpful on the horns and the legs.

Also, gesture or hotkey based transformations, so that you don't have to use the gizmo every time.  Otherwise it looks great!

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For the Rhino demo is is possible to adjust the spline post Apply mesh and have it affect the shape of the mesh?

Adding the ear looked a bit painful though modeling wise. It would be easier if you could select a vertex and have it split into an 8 sided hexagon. Or select a square of vertexes and have them rounded off into a circle. For an example of what I'm talking about look at the loop tools (circle) in blender or Hard ops Circle where you select a vertex and a circular polygon is created and you can adjust the divisions by mouse wheel. 

 

Edited by mash
removed dumb question :)
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10 hours ago, gbball said:

I can't help but think that it would be helpful to add a circularize function to quickly make a  patch of quads into a circle...it would have been helpful on the horns and the legs.
 

Thank you, we are already thinking about it

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9 hours ago, mash said:

For the Rhino demo is is possible to adjust the spline post Apply mesh and have it affect the shape of the mesh?

Adding the ear looked a bit painful though modeling wise. It would be easier if you could select a vertex and have it split into an 8 sided hexagon. Or select a square of vertexes and have them rounded off into a circle. For an example of what I'm talking about look at the loop tools (circle) in blender or Hard ops Circle where you select a vertex and a circular polygon is created and you can adjust the divisions by mouse wheel. 

 

1. is possible to adjust the spline post Apply mesh and have it affect the shape of the mesh?

Yes, we will do it after the release.
This will work like creating surfaces in the Sculpting room.

 

2. Adding the ear looked a bit painful though modeling wise. 

Yes, it was quite painful for me.
I was thinking about easier ways.

 

3.  For an example of what I'm talking about look at the loop tools (circle) in blender

Thank you, I am already carefully studying   loop tools (circle) in blender.

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