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2021 User manual in PDF..??


gerykats
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4 hours ago, Carlosan said:

Hi !

We are working on it.

Is it going to just be the same stuff that's online or will it be a more comprehensive manual that actually delves deep into 3D Coat's functionality? The lack of a good manual is really the biggest shortcoming to using 3D coat right now. 

I mean this to me is how a PDF manual for a program as deep as 3D Coat should look. Imagine if every tool in the new modeling room or all the complex possibilities of the texture baking tab  had this kind of vivid instructions in the manual.  Rygaard just threw these out in a  minute or two in response to one of my questions.  A manual encompassing this kind of functionality would really be a huge boon to all the users. Maybe you should pay Rygaard to produce your 3D Coat manual for you.

 

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Edited by L'Ancien Regime
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Settings of each tool can be explained. But the utilization depends on the experiments of each artist in his personal search based on trial and error. 
That's why it is important to generate a common knowledge base that can be shared and increased by all, like forums, discord chats and youtube videos.
A manual alone is not enough to answer all possible workflows and variations.

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2 hours ago, Carlosan said:

Settings of each tool can be explained. But the utilization depends on the experiments of each artist in his personal search based on trial and error. 
That's why it is important to generate a common knowledge base that can be shared and increased by all, like forums, discord chats and youtube videos.
A manual alone is not enough to answer all possible workflows and variations.

That's true but there's several things wrong with it.

1. The user base for 3D Coat is small , relatively amateurish, and reticent to post tutorials and advanced works or share workflows, compared to Zbrush which has an overabundance of super accomplished professional artists churning out superb tutorials all the time.

2. The "common knowledge base" is important but it's also unwieldly for those who simply need to get up and running and desperately need a proper manual that really goes deep into the functionality of the program in an easy to digest manner. We can't all be hovering over this forum looking here and there desperately for information that for the most part doesn't exist.

Making proper documentation isn't something that can be easily dispensed with. As I've said before; go look at Houdini's documentation. This is how a software is supposed to present itself to its users.

https://www.sidefx.com/docs/houdini/

This is a manual to learn from. What we have now here in 3D coat isn't adequate. I'm sorry. I just paid for my update and frankly it's not up to snuff. A one and a half minute demo on the new Modelling Room is  what you get when you go to the manual and want specific info on the Modelling Room.  That's not right. We shouldn't have to go to digman and bother him to tell us how this software works.

 

Pay Rygaard to produce a proper manual. 

Edited by L'Ancien Regime
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Let's look at the Manual for the new Modelling Room for example. Let's look at the Extrude functionality.

 

CaQqjIX.png

 

That's it? That's all we're going to get? Like the developers that created the four different extrusion tools didn't have the time to bang out two or three paragraphs on how it actually works, or take a few screen shots like Rygaard's above to demonstrate it?  How to get it to extrude along a normal?  Really? There was no time for that? 

Edited by L'Ancien Regime
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I agree about the need for a great user manual but the main problem with a graphics based solution is the amount of work to keep it updated if the UI keeps changing, we do  need graphics in the manual, but I just don't think it is a good solution to have a comic style manual (if that is what you are suggesting) where you just have pages of graphics?

Andrew.

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32 minutes ago, Drocket said:

I agree about the need for a great user manual but the main problem with a graphics based solution is the amount of work to keep it updated if the UI keeps changing, we do  need graphics in the manual, but I just don't think it is a good solution to have a comic style manual (if that is what you are suggesting) where you just have pages of graphics?

Andrew.

It should be a mix of both. The UI hasn't changed that much and really how difficult is it to produced an infographic anyway, particularly for a program that is all about graphics. Rygaard produced those two inforgraphics on the brush engine in under 2 minutes.

I'm not asking for something that's immensely difficult here. The people that created this software know it inside out. What is to stop them from just whipping out an awesome PDF that is vivid , easy to read and comprehensive of all the tools functionality?

Snip tool + Photoshop...it's easy to do whether in the initial creation or the updates.

 

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