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Javis
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"Industry Standard" is somewhat of a dubious term. For example, some schools are ardent about teaching only Maya, but Maya isn't the Industry Standard for Games. 3ds Max still is. Directors and instructors can be rather snobbish in this way, with their preferences. For example, I studied Animation at Mt. SAC(about 45 east of LA.) and they were bullish about teaching Maya, even though much of the curriculum was Games based...not film/tv.

 

At any rate, most studios want/require the artist to use the main application(s) they have in their pipeline...and that makes a lot of sense, especially when you have specific plugins/scripts they develop inhouse. But this is not the case for secondary applications like ZBrush, 3D Coat and Mudbox. Practically any studio you could work at could care less if you prefer to sculpt and texture paint in 3D Coat instead of ZBrush or Mudbox. It's affordable enough to be added to any pipeline, and you can use your personal license at work and go home and use it. So, any instructor who throws up the "Not Industry Standard" is just making excuses not to take the time. It's widely accepted now as one of the upper echelon tools to use for Sculpting and Texture Painting

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Hi A. Lynn! I am a freelance 2D and 3D artist just North of you in Albuquerque. I studied animation at SUVA (Southwest University of Visual Arts) and graduated last year. I am in the local SIGGRAPH chapter here, and there is a guy who used to be in it named Thomas DesJardins who graduated fairly recently from NMSU. He is a lighting/rendering guy, who ended up working at Disney for a while. I think he is now freelance somewhere in California. Maybe you know of him?

 

As a matter-of-fact, I do know Thomas :).  Earlier in the semester our NMSU Siggraph chapter organized a big Google Chat with Thomas and he spoke to us about his work on "Wreck-It Ralph". The last I spoke to him, he's waiting for another major project to come along.  He explained to us that work in Cali follows a real "Feast and Famine" cycle up there, or it at least takes a while before Disney begins hiring you on as a permanent fixture.  He's a fun guy, and we are all rooting for him down here at the Creative Media Institute. 

 

As for industry standards; I have to agree with AbnRanger. I've bounced from a HoloProjection Lab, to CMI, and now I work part-time as Multimedia Production Developer, and both the HoloProjection Lab and my current job leverage 3DMax primarily, despite the fact that CMI insisted on teaching Maya.  Fortunately, I'm pretty good at any software package I get a hold of.  I do like Maya's animation a lot more though. 

 

However, zBrush I just cannot get along with.  I appreciate all that they've done, and how they've pioneered certain digital sculpting methods, but I cannot stand their price tag, their policy on students, their GUI, or how they export/import 3D assets (or in most cases, DO NOT import/export).  Overall, Pixologic has become rather pompous.  Judging from their attitude and their lack of affordable student pricing, they seemed to be utterly convinced that there will never be a rival, and that nothing stacks up against their software.  I am a part of the crowd that begs to differ.  I would MUCH rather give my money to 3D Coat. I think their product is a lot more intuitive.  I mean, have you ever tried to merge something in zBrush!? Seriously; you practically have to make an altar, cut off your finger as a sacrifice, summon Cthulu, and THEN still find the right chain of commands in that odious complex they call a GUI, and still hope that it works the way you want. 

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A. Lynn:

It's cool to hear an update about Thomas and what he has been up to. Yeah it seems like there are a lot of short term jobs in VFX/animation, so artists move around a lot following the work, but the long term positions are harder to come by. So far since graduating I've only been doing freelancing, and it's been ok for the time being.

As far as "industry standards" go, I was mostly just referring to the popularity of 3D-Coat. There are still lots of people in the industry who have never heard of it, or at least have never used it. I'm not sure how much of a "problem" that is for getting hired, or being allowed to use it at a studio.

I totally agree with you that 3D-Coat is generally easier to use than Zbrush. Zbrush has a lot of unusual workflows that make it kind of hard to use (at least until you get used to it). Honestly I really like both apps, but prefer to work in 3D-Coat.

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Hi,

 

I'm Ganesha. Maybe a new 3D-Coat user ;-)

I live in Germany/Europa/Earth/Alpha-Quadrant/Material World.

 

Kind Regards

Good morning from the Mountain Time Zone! I used to live in Germany :) In Bitburg!  How are things in your neck of the woods?  I'm sure you'll be a 3D Coat fanatic before long. I know I'm quickly turning into one.

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Hello I am Stephen Ford aka Yam or YamSoup

 

I am a graduate Animator. I have been honing my skills and learning all sorts (including a bit of programming)

I got intrigued as it feels very much like a good in house tool.

Like the idea of a voxel workflow so trying it out.

 

Hoping to get a few very good models under my belt.

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"At any rate, most studios want/require the artist to use the main application(s) they have in their pipeline...and that makes a lot of sense, especially when you have specific plugins/scripts they develop inhouse. But this is not the case for secondary applications like ZBrush, 3D Coat and Mudbox. Practically any studio you could work at could care less if you prefer to sculpt and texture paint in 3D Coat instead of ZBrush or Mudbox. It's affordable enough to be added to any pipeline, and you can use your personal license at work and go home and use it. So, any instructor who throws up the "Not Industry Standard" is just making excuses not to take the time. It's widely accepted now as one of the upper echelon tools to use for Sculpting and Texture Painting"

I agree fully.   I brought my license of 3D Coat to work once animation slowed down and started helping create CG props for some 2D shows and an app game.  Most the people never heard of 3D-Coat but they see me using it and seem impressed.   Unlike animation and FX and compositing packages. . which are studion and pipeline specific. .  sculpt and paint packages are more flexible as long as you can get a professional result in time and export or import must be fully compatible with the major animation packages.

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Hi 3D COAT community, I'm a muture gamer from Dublin here in the Republic of Ireland and I just purchased this Application to pass a bit of time and see what I can create. as a noob I will be in and out of these forums alot in order to gain the knowledge needed to help me in my quest to create something cool looking, see y'all around community :)

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Hi Guys,

 

I'm Robert Ferenczi, CGI artist (what a suprise:)) and have a question: I would like to make concept sculpts for our short film, and i'm not sure about some things...So, the goal: want to use 3D coat texture paint system without retopoing (autopo fails; i'm talking about hard surfaces) and use outer GI render engines, like octane, or blender cycles, but, in UV room voxel sculpt doesn't appear so can't make any autoUV and bake down PTEX onto those. So, i make my sculpt, can texture up but here is a break, as while PTEX only supported in maya and v-ray (not in octane and not in blender yet), so if i export my obj with ptex i can' render...
Now, i have to export without texture painting, go in belnder, render metal pass, other passes, go in GIMP put togeather and make texturing, but that would be nice to do IN 3D coat the texturing as well. Are there any way (WITHOUT retopoing and expensive softwares) to achieve this? Can i somehow bake ptex data onto some kind of autogenereated UV map INSIDE 3D coat? (i repeat without retopoing) My goal is sculpting, texturepainting and exporting a sculpt with textures and auto UV-s with textures and render in a physically correct GI engine.

Thank you for any help or tips!!


 

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Hi Guys,

 

I'm Robert Ferenczi, CGI artist (what a suprise:)) and have a question: I would like to make concept sculpts for our short film, and i'm not sure about some things...So, the goal: want to use 3D coat texture paint system without retopoing (autopo fails; i'm talking about hard surfaces) and use outer GI render engines, like octane, or blender cycles, but, in UV room voxel sculpt doesn't appear so can't make any autoUV and bake down PTEX onto those. So, i make my sculpt, can texture up but here is a break, as while PTEX only supported in maya and v-ray (not in octane and not in blender yet), so if i export my obj with ptex i can' render...

Now, i have to export without texture painting, go in belnder, render metal pass, other passes, go in GIMP put togeather and make texturing, but that would be nice to do IN 3D coat the texturing as well. Are there any way (WITHOUT retopoing and expensive softwares) to achieve this? Can i somehow bake ptex data onto some kind of autogenereated UV map INSIDE 3D coat? (i repeat without retopoing) My goal is sculpting, texturepainting and exporting a sculpt with textures and auto UV-s with textures and render in a physically correct GI engine.

Thank you for any help or tips!!

 

If you have the latest few builds of V4, then the Auto-Retopo should work a REAL treat. That would be my suggestion, first. Secondly, you don't need to fool with UV's at all, if the object is not going to be deformed in animation (ie. a character). 3D Coat's Voxel/Vertex Paint doesn't need UV's, and you have 95% of the same Painting functionality with Vertex Paint as you would a lower poly version with UV's. It's really powerful, and you can simply export the object out of the Voxel room directly (maybe choose Export as dense or projected quads). Projected Quads is somewhat similar to an Auto Retopo result, so it doesn't have to be super dense. You can use Vertex Color maps in your host app to represent the color and spec info on the model, in the viewport or at render time.

 

You could decimate upon export, a "proxy" version that is low enough to work with in a scene, and then when you are ready to render, just hide the proxy and un-hide the high-res version. A sculpted Hair cap would be a good example of this, in practice.

 

 

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Thank you AbnRanger for the tips! ;)

Can you mention someone, who know how to use autopo for HARD SURFACE models? I wanna contact him! That would be a really big help for us...

 

 

I'll try to get a video up on the Youtube channel, focusing specifically on Hard Surface. There was a lot of effort on Andrew's part to improve this, recently.

 

 

 

HI my  names jorge,   i m 42  years old, i was  study  fine arts,, and  now  im  work  sometimes  like  freelance  teacher in university, 

Welcome aboard, Jorge. :good:

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hi,

i go by preecher.  i consider myself a digital artist.  you all are if you are using this program imo.  I've been delving into 3d for a few years now mainly as a hobby.  i live in nashivlle tn,usa.  born and raised in tn.  i don't much like it here but my sis keeps me here.  if i had a choice I'd probably move to western Canada...around bc but that will probably never happen.  i am a spiritualist, a photographer, astronomer, avid gardener, some wood working...i also paint and draw that's really how it all started as a kid.  i like to do a lot of things to keep my mind occupied and helps keep me out of trouble. i am in my 50's and have traveled extensively worldwide.   i look forward to hopefully making a few good cyber friends and learning this program if i decide to purchase it.

 

regards,

preecher

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Hello,

 

  For years I have just had fun with 3D as a hobby, started with Sculpt 3D on the Amiga.  Currently I'm using Blender and Octane Render and want to add 3D Coat to my workflow.  Looking forward to learning how to use it.  :)

 

Grimm

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Hi All,

 

My name is Marco, I live in the South of the Netherlands and just purchased a 3d Coat license. For me the work in 3d is a hobby, as I am an engineer in my day job. I also just purchased a Lightwave license a few weeks ago, and to combine both seems like a natural move. I've been using 3d coat only for a few days, watching many online tutorials (thanks to all the people that invested time in these, they were key to the purchase!), and the deadline of the christmas discount has lead me to take the chance!

 

Take care!

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Hi Everyone,

Happy New Year's Eve!

I'm a 3d junkie and have used Lightwave since version 5.

I've never been a fan in how it works with texturing and mapping. I'm hoping 3DC can help in that area

Just purchased it and have started voxel modeling. Pretty intuitive so far.

Currently using on a rMBP. Is anyone using 3DC on a tablet they would recommend?

Nice to meet everyone!

John aka Vazy

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Greetings 3DCoat people. I am Keryn from South Africa.

 

I purchased the education version just before Xmass 2013 and am truly amazed at this wonderful program. Andrew and the team must be rare geniuses! The program is a lot to learn but the many tutorials are getting me there steadily.

 

I do ceramic sculptor and am used to modelling in real clay; and I also use Carrara, Bryce, Hexagon and Daz Studio (since c. 2010). My real job is in wildlife conservation / ecology, but because I am starting to get a bit too old for running around in the African bush with large and dangerous (but wonderful) beasts, I am moving into 3D CG Art and animation, hoping to use these for wildlife conservation. awareness.

 

I  am beginning my 3Dcoat learning adventure at the beginning of the animal alphabet, with an aardvark model. (Aardvarks are cute nocturnal termite-eating animals the size of medium-sized dogs).  Hope I can do justice to the many abilities of 3D Coat.

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Greetings 3DCoat people. I am Keryn from South Africa.

 

I purchased the education version just before Xmass 2013 and am truly amazed at this wonderful program. Andrew and the team must be rare geniuses! The program is a lot to learn but the many tutorials are getting me there steadily.

 

I do ceramic sculptor and am used to modelling in real clay; and I also use Carrara, Bryce, Hexagon and Daz Studio (since c. 2010). My real job is in wildlife conservation / ecology, but because I am starting to get a bit too old for running around in the African bush with large and dangerous (but wonderful) beasts, I am moving into 3D CG Art and animation, hoping to use these for wildlife conservation. awareness.

 

I  am beginning my 3Dcoat learning adventure at the beginning of the animal alphabet, with an aardvark model. (Aardvarks are cute nocturnal termite-eating animals the size of medium-sized dogs).  Hope I can do justice to the many abilities of 3D Coat.

Welcome aboard, and if you could take some Hi-Res photos of some of these creatures, when you can, it could be an enormous benefit (as textures or reference material) for other artists here, who may be working on such animal models at some point. Elephant, Hippo, Rhinoceros skin or reptile skin textures are pretty valuable and can be used in a number of settings. Hope to see some of your work, on here.

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