This is by far the hardest software to get to grips with

[pieralessi]

32 minutes ago, AbnRanger said:

I'm not 100% certain, but in the Modeling Workspace, in the 2025 builds, there is a section being developed called SMART HYBRID, which enables both to work in unison. I hope that is going in the direction you wished for?

 

Since contributions are requested, I'll give mine:
I don't understand the real difference between splines and nurbs, but the former is already in the modeling suite. There are also surface patches, which are great in theory, but as I mentioned above, they haven't generated surfaces truly associated with curves. In my understanding, in the CAD suite, you take a mesh and convert it into nurbs; it's usually the other way around because nurbs generate curves and surfaces that are continuous and seamless, which is why they're widely used in industrial design programs. I think the conversion should be the other way around; although Blender generates nurb surfaces, its options are very limited.

 

It's best to work on the nurbs first. I don't know how to select the generated surface; the curves panel selector doesn't work on it.

Edited June 7 by pieralessi
Image

[pieralessi]

I notice that the patch surface tool behaves better with more open and balanced shapes but not with more pronounced curves as in the previous examples. I would have to try with the swep tools and try to modify the pink lines, something complicated because after a thousand clicks it started to work just like the selection of vertices in the failed tests I did previously. Perhaps applying stop curve editing will work well.

[MJonathan]

For modeling, SubD is an very important feature. Can you please tell to developers implement this? O how can I talk with developers to have this? This is a missing tool that every modeling software have.

Edith: sorry it's not a tool it's a system/workflow

https://youtu.be/S84Cmjfkdyg?si=J57nLnmAXXIQ2_uh

Edited June 7 by MJonathan

[Oleg Shapov]

3 hours ago, pieralessi said:

The surface patch hasn't satisfied me

I have passed on some comments on the retopo/modeling tools to the developer. If you don't mind, please write a post in the corresponding forum thread about modeling. Hopefully, the developer will see it and respond to you.

[animk]

9 hours ago, MJonathan said:

For modeling, SubD is an very important feature. Can you please tell to developers implement this? O how can I talk with developers to have this? This is a missing tool that every modeling software have.

Edith: sorry it's not a tool it's a system/workflow

https://youtu.be/S84Cmjfkdyg?si=J57nLnmAXXIQ2_uh

Is this type of high dense object much easier to be done in CAD if it's going to be baked on a low-poly model?

Edited June 8 by animk

[animk]

11 hours ago, AbnRanger said:

I'm not 100% certain, but in the Modeling Workspace, in the 2025 builds, there is a section being developed called SMART HYBRID, which enables both to work in unison. I hope that is going in the direction you wished for?

 

Thanks. Looks like it, can't wait.  Doing a big shape in direct modeling, then doing boolean and fillet etc. in CAD workflow.

Edited June 8 by animk

[pieralessi]

9 hours ago, Oleg Shapov said:

I have passed on some comments on the retopo/modeling tools to the developer. If you don't mind, please write a post in the corresponding forum thread about modeling. Hopefully, the developer will see it and respond to you.

Ok

[Carlosan]

14 hours ago, MJonathan said:

For modeling, SubD is an very important feature. Can you please tell to developers implement this? O how can I talk with developers to have this? This is a missing tool that every modeling software have.

is not this command ?

[SreckoM]

This is consequence of the path 3DCoat team choose. You opened to many fronts, and it is almost impossible to deliver. You started CAD room, and now ppl are expecting you deliver Plasticity level. Started modeling and now people want you to be Blender or Modo. 

[MJonathan]

22 hours ago, Carlosan said:

is not this command ?

Definetively not! Live smooth creates a virtual sculpt mesh, it's very slow, every command that you do generates an slow response! If you want to create a complex scene this will be a nightmare! 

You can't choose the subdivisión algorithm, for example! The renderers like renderman, Arnold, Vray you set to the objects the render subdivision for every objects AND you choose the type of algorithm that the objects will have, like catmull clark. So for preview the SubD objects you choose the type of algorithm that you want to preview, and It should be the same that you Will choose in the render engines.

 

Live smooth is an insteresting tool, and It smooth the objects but with slow response, in other post I mentioned about the issues with live smooth.

 

Try to replicate this easy exersize in the video using live smooth, you will notice the difference! Now scale this to have 100 or more objects using the same system. In videogames this Is not used! But in vfx/Animation/commercials/archviz this is used all the time. Every modeling software have this system in different way! Blender and 3ds Max aré using subdivision modifiers, you turn On or off the modifiers. In maya is with shortcut 3, More easy than modifiers AND it's not destructive. 

 

Edited June 9 by MJonathan

[MJonathan]

In this other video I'm switching all the time between low polygon to SubD in the soccerball! The final subdivision Is apply in the renderers and not in the geometry. 

@Carlosan 

In this trailer of gnomon workshop, the instructor Is switching all the time between low mesh and SubD mesh. It's an standard in the industry.

 

Edited June 9 by MJonathan

[Gorbatovsky]

On 6/7/2025 at 6:38 PM, pieralessi said:

The surface patch hasn't satisfied me.

I'm sorry that this tool did not meet your expectations.
Incidentally, this is the only tool that has been in development for more than 3 years.
From your picture and messages, I did not understand what the problem is.
The mesh, that this tool creates based on the selected curves should not be connected to the one already built. This happens in the smart retopo tool

[pieralessi]

7 minutes ago, Gorbatovsky said:

I'm sorry that this tool did not meet your expectations.
Incidentally, this is the only tool that has been in development for more than 3 years.
From your picture and messages, I did not understand what the problem is.
The mesh, that this tool creates based on the selected curves should not be connected to the one already built. This happens in the smart retopo tool

Thanks for responding. I'm sorry about the situation, but I've tried to understand it better, both with your tutorials and the official ones on the YouTube channel. As I've previously stated in the forum, it's not right to sell something that isn't finished, especially when it can't be resolved in the short term.

[AbnRanger]

On 6/8/2025 at 11:48 PM, SreckoM said:

This is consequence of the path 3DCoat team choose. You opened to many fronts, and it is almost impossible to deliver. You started CAD room, and now ppl are expecting you deliver Plasticity level. Started modeling and now people want you to be Blender or Modo. 

True, but many long time users have wanted a decent set of Polymodeling tools, so they can do an adequate job of creating some objects with polygons rather than voxels. It's always been clear that it's not going to be a replacement for modeling tools that much bigger companies and their 3rd party community have been developing for decades. The CAD development is relatively new because Pilgway wants to diversify and not be stuck in a small (Entertainment) market, competing head to head with a free application like Blender, that is sustained by mega donations from mega corporations. It already made Modo bite the dust and almost Lightwave, too (and may yet do that, also). 

[AbnRanger]

On 6/9/2025 at 8:34 AM, MJonathan said:

In this other video I'm switching all the time between low polygon to SubD in the soccerball! The final subdivision Is apply in the renderers and not in the geometry. 

@Carlosan 

In this trailer of gnomon workshop, the instructor Is switching all the time between low mesh and SubD mesh. It's an standard in the industry.

 

It's already in 3DCoat, called LIVESMOOTH and here is a video explaining it:

 

[AbnRanger]

On 6/9/2025 at 11:50 AM, Gorbatovsky said:

I'm sorry that this tool did not meet your expectations.
Incidentally, this is the only tool that has been in development for more than 3 years.
From your picture and messages, I did not understand what the problem is.
The mesh, that this tool creates based on the selected curves should not be connected to the one already built. This happens in the smart retopo tool

Alexander, could you please check on your end to see if the RMB menu in the Retopo/Modeling workspace is working? On my side, it no longer works. Only the RMB menu from the SCULPT room appears (in the RETOPO/MODELING Workspaces). Can we fix that and also make the SHAPE/LASSO draw modes work with the UV Preview Panel? They have not been working for a long time, even though I reported it.

The CLONE Tool in the Retopo Room also does not Clone a new object with the same UV's and that is a huge problem. If you want to clone multiple objects, you naturally want to do the UV's ONCE > clone however many times you need. But when it will not bring the same UV's, it forces the user to do the UV's for every single object, manually, one at a time. That is totally inefficient and needs to be fixed ASAP. I just had to spend almost 2 hours doing UV's on multiple objects, when it only took maybe 15 minutes to do it once. 

The CUT SLICE tool in the Curves Editor (directly to the left of the CIRCLE shape, and to the right of the PEN CIRCLE) just does not work at all, especially when I try to use it with the CURVES/STROKES tool.

[AbnRanger]

On 6/9/2025 at 8:04 AM, MJonathan said:

Definetively not! Live smooth creates a virtual sculpt mesh, it's very slow, every command that you do generates an slow response! If you want to create a complex scene this will be a nightmare! 

You can't choose the subdivisión algorithm, for example! The renderers like renderman, Arnold, Vray you set to the objects the render subdivision for every objects AND you choose the type of algorithm that the objects will have, like catmull clark. So for preview the SubD objects you choose the type of algorithm that you want to preview, and It should be the same that you Will choose in the render engines.

 

Live smooth is an insteresting tool, and It smooth the objects but with slow response, in other post I mentioned about the issues with live smooth.

 

Try to replicate this easy exersize in the video using live smooth, you will notice the difference! Now scale this to have 100 or more objects using the same system. In videogames this Is not used! But in vfx/Animation/commercials/archviz this is used all the time. Every modeling software have this system in different way! Blender and 3ds Max aré using subdivision modifiers, you turn On or off the modifiers. In maya is with shortcut 3, More easy than modifiers AND it's not destructive. 

 

I agree that a Subdivision modifier perhaps should be available at least in the Modeling workspace, but LiveSmooth is how Andrew tried to implement this in 3DCoat, and it seems to work fairly well...even if it doesn't work 100% the way we are used to in many other 3D applications. The modifier in 3ds Max and Maya is actually creating a second copy of the basemesh also, which is subdivided and displayed with a wireframe of the original low poly mesh. That is the same concept applied with LIVESMOOTH. You are seeing the Subdivided version in the Retopo/Modeling workspace and on my system, performance is fairly good, but isn't exactly LIVE...it updates the Subdivided (Sculpt) Mesh AFTER a transform is applied to the Low Poly (Retopo/Modeling) basemesh. Live would mean that the Subdivided mesh is being transformed LIVE along with the Low poly mesh...but it's not. It's updated about a split second after you make the transform. Not ideal and not true to the name (LIVE), but it's not a deal-breaker IMHO. I am not going to fuss too much over split second update. Much of the time, it updates so quickly that I cannot notice any real delay. 

[SreckoM]

2 hours ago, AbnRanger said:

True, but many long time users have wanted a decent set of Polymodeling tools, so they can do an adequate job of creating some objects with polygons rather than voxels. It's always been clear that it's not going to be a replacement for modeling tools that much bigger companies and their 3rd party community have been developing for decades. The CAD development is relatively new because Pilgway wants to diversify and not be stuck in a small (Entertainment) market, competing head to head with a free application like Blender, that is sustained by mega donations from mega corporations. It already made Modo bite the dust and almost Lightwave, too (and may yet do that, also). 

I am aware of that, but IMO strategy they chose is road to Modo destiny. Similar thing Modo team tried with entering Design industry. And at the end they lost userbase, precious time and rest is history. I think Pilgway team needs to see how Allegorithmic beat them with Painter and use that strategy. 

[MJonathan]

4 hours ago, AbnRanger said:

I agree that a Subdivision modifier perhaps should be available at least in the Modeling workspace, but LiveSmooth is how Andrew tried to implement this in 3DCoat, and it seems to work fairly well...even if it doesn't work 100% the way we are used to in many other 3D applications. The modifier in 3ds Max and Maya is actually creating a second copy of the basemesh also, which is subdivided and displayed with a wireframe of the original low poly mesh. That is the same concept applied with LIVESMOOTH. You are seeing the Subdivided version in the Retopo/Modeling workspace and on my system, performance is fairly good, but isn't exactly LIVE...it updates the Subdivided (Sculpt) Mesh AFTER a transform is applied to the Low Poly (Retopo/Modeling) basemesh. Live would mean that the Subdivided mesh is being transformed LIVE along with the Low poly mesh...but it's not. It's updated about a split second after you make the transform. Not ideal and not true to the name (LIVE), but it's not a deal-breaker IMHO. I am not going to fuss too much over split second update. Much of the time, it updates so quickly that I cannot notice any real delay. 

 

Quote

The modifier in 3ds Max and Maya is actually creating a second copy of the basemesh also, which is subdivided and displayed with a wireframe of the original low poly mesh.

This is not true!! In this other post I added PIXAR Papers with alot of information about how it should work. 

By the moment I'm going to use Live smooth, but the main issue with this tool is that I made a lot of Ctrl+Z and I need to press it twice  or more to get reversed my change! If developers fix this bug will be great for work with live smooth, and I hope that in the future we can see in realtime the change like an other softwares

Edited Wednesday at 12:37 AM by MJonathan
I notice that live smooth can do a good job but it need improvements

[AbnRanger]

1 hour ago, SreckoM said:

I am aware of that, but IMO strategy they chose is road to Modo destiny. Similar thing Modo team tried with entering Design industry. And at the end they lost userbase, precious time and rest is history. I think Pilgway team needs to see how Allegorithmic beat them with Painter and use that strategy. 

Understood. However, in this case Pilgway is developing/offering a NURBS/CAD workspace (I guess as an alternative to Plasticity) and trying to leverage that with the ease and speed of Voxel Modeling for rapid prototyping (see the attached video). I hope they make it easier to get a clean mesh when converting from Solid Surface formats to polygons. I tested some MOI conversions that appeared to be clean at first, but when you look closer, there were tons of N-Gons and tightly bunched edgeloops in the beveled edges, which results in terrible UV's. The developer of the NURBS/CAD tools in 3DCoat has a background in CAD application programming, so we will see where it goes.

I agree about Substance Painter. I told Andrew that Pilgway needed more than any other business strategy, to have a dedicated developer working on PAINT tools and another working on the Sculpt tools, continuously. Substance caught and passed 3DCoat because there was never consistent, continuous development of 3DCoat's Paint tools. Development was spread sporadically over all the different areas of the application. That may allow Blender to surpass its sculpting capabilities also. 

[SreckoM]

Exactly. This is going to happen, again. 

 

[Gorbatovsky]

15 hours ago, AbnRanger said:

if the RMB menu in the Retopo/Modeling workspace is working?

RMB menu in the Retopo/Modeling workspace is working.
But, in the smart retopo tool, the right mouse button is busy with other work. It moves the edges or vertices

[Gorbatovsky]

15 hours ago, AbnRanger said:

The CUT SLICE tool in the Curves Editor

CUT SLICE tool is working.
In the Sculpt Room, making a crossing of the Sculpt mesh.

In the Retopo Room, making a crossing of the Retopo mesh.
 

[Gorbatovsky]

15 hours ago, AbnRanger said:

The CLONE Tool in the Retopo Room

You wrote about this?

[AbnRanger]

38 minutes ago, Gorbatovsky said:

RMB menu in the Retopo/Modeling workspace is working.
But, in the smart retopo tool, the right mouse button is busy with other work. It moves the edges or vertices

There is something wrong with my config files, then, because it is not working on my end at all.

[AbnRanger]

14 minutes ago, Gorbatovsky said:

You wrote about this?

Yes. It copies the mesh, but removes the UV's of the mesh. Why, I have no idea.

[Oleg Shapov]

16 hours ago, AbnRanger said:

Can we fix that and also make the SHAPE/LASSO draw modes work with the UV Preview Panel? They have not been working for a long time, even though I reported it.

I refreshed the developer's memory about this bug. Спасибо!

[Oleg Shapov]

30 minutes ago, AbnRanger said:

It copies the mesh, but removes the UV's of the mesh. Why, I have no idea.

This is how it works for me

 

 

[AbnRanger]

3 minutes ago, Oleg Shapov said:

This is how it works for me

 

It has not been doing that for me. Perhaps the GPU test build messed up the configuration files of the normal build of 3DCoat, because this is the second time a feature works correctly on your end and Alexander's, but not on my side. It's totally kaput.

 

[Elemeno]

1 hour ago, AbnRanger said:

It has not been doing that for me. Perhaps the GPU test build messed up the configuration files of the normal build of 3DCoat, because this is the second time a feature works correctly on your end and Alexander's, but not on my side. It's totally kaput.

 

mine does the same as oleg