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Javis
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Hi all,

I'm Matt Howarth, UK based animator, film maker and digital fx artist. My day job is running my company Puppetman Productions, but I've recently started moving more into creating and pushing my own ideas and projects. I still have to pay the bills, so the day job will have to stay for the foreseeable future. Have a look at the website www.puppetman.net for some of the stuff I've been responsible for, but it's well overdue an update and the next time it's updated I hope there will be a lot more of my personal stuff up there.

3DC is fantastic and with me being an animator first and foremost, I am keen to get nicely animateable models out of it and into Lightwave (my 3d weapon of choice). Phil Nolan has very kindly been giving me some pointers and when I have it nailed to the ground I will upload my personal learning curve to help anyone else struggling in the same way.

cheers

Matt

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Hi all,

I'm Matt Howarth, UK based animator, film maker and digital fx artist. My day job is running my company Puppetman Productions, but I've recently started moving more into creating and pushing my own ideas and projects. I still have to pay the bills, so the day job will have to stay for the foreseeable future. Have a look at the website www.puppetman.net for some of the stuff I've been responsible for, but it's well overdue an update and the next time it's updated I hope there will be a lot more of my personal stuff up there.

3DC is fantastic and with me being an animator first and foremost, I am keen to get nicely animateable models out of it and into Lightwave (my 3d weapon of choice). Phil Nolan has very kindly been giving me some pointers and when I have it nailed to the ground I will upload my personal learning curve to help anyone else struggling in the same way.

cheers

Matt

Hi Matt,

I'll be watching closely then, as this is the same area I want to use 3DCoat and Lightwave for.

Ricky.

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Hi Ricky,

and you're just down the road from us as well (relatively speaking). We're based in Halifax, on a worldwide scale we could practically open the window and shout to each other!!!

I'll keep you informed as I progress.

speak soon

Matt

Lol, It is a small world.

I've just finished doing a small wip (it was only a piece of cheese for a laugh) and that process included voxel, retopo, paint and export to UV and then into LW. It's a good workflow, but there were a few things that tripped me up.

Looking forward to your progress.

Ricky.

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Hello everyone,

Well first off my name is Erik and I'm currently living in Orlando, Florida. Prior to becoming a cg artist I was involved in more traditional works outside of CG such as sculpting, drawing, miniature making, and wood working. I was also a filmmaker during both my high school and college years. Most of my films where stop motion animation. I also worked in theater for awhile as a carpenter and set designer. After awhile I decided to engage in programs like Photoshop and Maya which later inspired me to take on classes at the DAVE School to help speed the learning processes. After graduation I took a job at Paradigm LLC. located in Memphis, TN. as a 3D archviz generalist. While there I worked on modeling, texturing, lighting, greenscreen shooting, compositing, and video/photography. Currently I'm between jobs right now working as a freelance artist. Some of my greatest works involved modeling Titanic for a series that aired last year on the Discovery Channel.

Erik

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Hi Erik. I also was in DAVE School about 7 years ago. I was in the Chimera class. I'd love to move back to Orlando. Let me know if you see any extra job openings down there!

That's great to hear. I was part of the class that worked on the Aurora project in 07. I was the team lead in charge of "Team Moscow". It was very exciting to work on it to say the very least and we actually finished on time. That was certainly a miracle in itself. I've got a few other DAVE school friend's hanging around in various places too. Currently I'm also working on a game with another fellow DAVE school graduate who worked on Teddy Scares. He's also in charge of programing the Friend's Hangout site. Also another way I keep track of them is through StarCraft 2....lol.

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Hi, I'm a 2D realist painter discovering the 3d cybernetic world of art and my quest has led me to the pinnacle of 3d sculpting; 3dCoat. I've been studying Zbrush, Mudbox and 3d Coat and after much serious thought I've concluded that Andrew's little program is by far and away the best of all the sculpture programs now available. Andrew has a characteristic that I admire the most in men; he's terrifically industrious but he's also an advanced thinker who isn't afraid to do things in a brand new way, with a revolutionary approach to creativity, that you can find in men like Burt Rutan or Seymour Cray, or Bucky Fuller. This has thrust him to the front of the computer graphics world, even if many don't know it yet. But I know it, and I think you all do too.

Here's some of my work in 3d Coat;

uFTGH.jpgK3ldG.jpg

Wouldn't it be nice if 3dCoat was able to seriously rival Weta Mari as a texture painting program? It wouldn't take much...

xtKOf.jpg

I'm glad to be here.

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Hi and welcome aboard. :)

Nice images, I like the material. Very realistic. :)I presume you painted this with an image of a bone?

Peace,

Rich_Art. :good:

Yeah, I started trying to use my Nikon 8megapixel 8800 Coolpix to harvest textures and it looked like ass, then I went over to my little Exilim Casio 10 megapixel and it was a bit better (especially at the close ups but it still wasn't enough. So then I went out and bought the texture harvesting camera from heaven; my Canon Power Shot SD1400 IS 14 megapixel minicamera for $200 on sale at Future Shop and then I blew my mind on the close up details I was hauling in effortlessly. I can't recommend that camera strongly enough. Price point/detail means it reigns supreme right now for all texture artists. And it comes in a beautiful leather pouch too. Can't beat that. And the leather holder has a belt loop so you can take it with you everywhere all the time without even thinking about it so you can grab beautiful textures on impulse wherever you stumble across them.

Canon-PowerShot-SD1400-IS-digital-camera-silver.jpg

I'm planning on eventually releasing my entire texture library of the human skelton here...

Here's part one the vertebra... I'm doing big maps of each vertebra...the entire skeleton eventually. They're all reworked in PS to remove shadows, and then dodge tooled etc to remove the colour artifacts from removing the shadows and highlights. 3d Coat is amazing for simultaneously painting diffuse, bump and specularity. Far superior to any other 3d paint program I've tried, though I've yet to use Weta Mari...I'm really hoping Andrew takes on Mari and beats them at their own game. He's in a position to do it...

http://www.megaupload.com/?d=G9XRAO10

This is the fairly random vertebra texture collection I made from the 10mpl EXILIM camera

http://www.megaupload.com/?d=6XHSMB80

This is the final texture made from the lowest lumbar vertebra alone ( I'm in the process of mapping each bone in the body to the highest detail possible) 80 mb or so on one texture sheet made with the Canon 14 mpl. When I was using that 80 mb map in 3d Coat texture it ran perfectly smoothly..

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L'Ancien:

Very nice bones you've got there. I'll bet you'll love Andrew's implementation of Ptex. It generates a regular UV map from whatever is hyper-textured - and can be read by many apps.

Greg Smith

Let me tell you about PTEX and Andrew; I was at a Maya promotion day at a local theatre last March. Duncan himself was there. My friend asked one of the Maya demo guys after the day long presentation when Autodesk was going to enable PTEX in Maya and Mudbox. His reply was that he doubted that they'd get around to it in 5 years. Then I came here and read last December's posts by Andrew where Disney/Pixar released the mere protocols for PTEX and within ten days he had implemented and tested it fully and distributed it to all his users.

OUT

STAND

ING.

That was one of the biggest sale points for me...on a level that transcendeds mere PTEX itself. It showed where Andrew is taking this thing. Within 2 years if this keeps up Mudbox and Zbrush will be left far behind in 3d Coat's dust.

Next step; find the nerve to spend $3500 on Renderman Pro Server 15 and then embark upon the long road to mastery over it. Unless you can think of an alternative render engine that will handle PTEX that is...

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Let me tell you about PTEX and Andrew; I was at a Maya promotion day at a local theatre last March. Duncan himself was there. My friend asked one of the Maya demo guys after the day long presentation when Autodesk was going to enable PTEX in Maya and Mudbox. His reply was that he doubted that they'd get around to it in 5 years. Then I came here and read last December's posts by Andrew where Disney/Pixar released the mere protocols for PTEX and within ten days he had implemented and tested it fully and distributed it to all his users.

OUT

STAND

ING.

That was one of the biggest sale points for me...on a level that transcendeds mere PTEX itself. It showed where Andrew is taking this thing. Within 2 years if this keeps up Mudbox and Zbrush will be left far behind in 3d Coat's dust.

Next step; find the nerve to spend $3500 on Renderman Pro Server 15 and then embark upon the long road to mastery over it. Unless you can think of an alternative render engine that will handle PTEX that is...

Welcome aboard!!

I don't want to derail this topic, but... I do want to point out that there is another render engine out there that will very soon support PTEX. I can't say what program yet (NDA of sorts), but I will mention it as soon as it is available. ;)

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Welcome aboard!!

I don't want to derail this topic, but... I do want to point out that there is another render engine out there that will very soon support PTEX. I can't say what program yet (NDA of sorts), but I will mention it as soon as it is available. ;)

Its too bad you can't used PTEX in a game engine like Unity since I was told that it would totally kill your cpu/gpu while it rendered every frame in real time. I guess the only way you could do it is pre-render everything and then bring it in like they did with Myst. As far as what geothefaust said above I'm betting on either Lightwave Core or 3ds Max. Then again there's always Blender too....

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Welcome aboard!!

I don't want to derail this topic, but... I do want to point out that there is another render engine out there that will very soon support PTEX. I can't say what program yet (NDA of sorts), but I will mention it as soon as it is available. ;)

Let me guess; Autodesk bought Turtle...so it'll be in Turtle..

http://usa.autodesk.com/adsk/servlet/pc/item?siteID=123112&id=15404962

RV has been working closely with Disney lately too;

http://www.tweaksoftware.com/products/rv

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Let me guess; Autodesk bought Turtle...so it'll be in Turtle..

http://usa.autodesk....112&id=15404962

RV has been working closely with Disney lately too;

http://www.tweaksoft...com/products/rv

Interesting, but turtle isn't what I speak on. :)

Its too bad you can't used PTEX in a game engine like Unity since I was told that it would totally kill your cpu/gpu while it rendered every frame in real time. I guess the only way you could do it is pre-render everything and then bring it in like they did with Myst. As far as what geothefaust said above I'm betting on either Lightwave Core or 3ds Max. Then again there's always Blender too....

LightWave also has an "NDA of sorts" since it's not really an NDA but they ask people not to talk about the LW 10 beta.

I can't speak to LW10, CORE, or whatever NT is calling it now... As I'm no longer in "HardCORE".

I just wanted to hint that there would be other solutions that don't cost an arm and a leg, soon. ;)

And yeah, it would be sweet if we could use PTEX in game engines like Unity. Who knows... Myabe eventually.

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We may have to move this to it's own thread since its pretty news worthy. Anyhow geothefaust has helped narrow down the list of possibilities a bit with his last post. Since Ptex is open source then its just a matter of time before everyone's using it. If were talking about solutions that won't cost us an arm and a leg then Blender sounds about right. Heck the discussions over on the forums regarding Ptek support is pretty clear to me. According to this site there is a list of programs out there currently supporting Ptek other then 3D Coat. http://ptex.us/ There are also other software packages that would benefit from this too and won't break the bank either such as DAZ 3D and Bryce. Vue also comes to mind too.

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We may have to move this to it's own thread since its pretty news worthy. Anyhow geothefaust has helped narrow down the list of possibilities a bit with his last post. Since Ptex is open source then its just a matter of time before everyone's using it. If were talking about solutions that won't cost us an arm and a leg then Blender sounds about right. Heck the discussions over on the forums regarding Ptek support is pretty clear to me. According to this site there is a list of programs out there currently supporting Ptek other then 3D Coat. http://ptex.us/ There are also other software packages that would benefit from this too and won't break the bank either such as DAZ 3D and Bryce. Vue also comes to mind too.

My friend who owns his own architecture house is deep into all of this and he's always at the forefront of what is coming next, and he seems to think that with the coming of PTEX, we will see the end of Normal Maps and even Displacement Maps for something far superior. Basically his thesis is that the gaming industry has been dragging down the entire CG world to its rather limited level, retarding the development of the entire industry much to the chagrin of the movie industry, but with the coming of PTEX and other related developments we are on the cusp of a real revolution in CG that's going to totally rearrange the way we do what we do..

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  • 3 weeks later...
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Hello Everyone!

I'm a new 3d-coat user thanks to geothefaust and his posting in the messiah forum :) Although I've been aware of 3d-coat for awhile, I never actually used it before. After a little test to see how it might fit into a pipeline, I must say I'm very impressed. As with any software of depth, there's a lot I don't know yet and will have to figure out, but i managed to make this little skull and rig/pose it in messiah in an evening, and even though there are some problems, i'm off and running ;)

I also hear that there is an applink planned for 3d-coat and messiah, sounds great!

looking forward to learning and contributing....

post-3877-12890267189441_thumb.jpg

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Hello Everyone!

I'm a new 3d-coat user thanks to geothefaust and his posting in the messiah forum :) Although I've been aware of 3d-coat for awhile, I never actually used it before. After a little test to see how it might fit into a pipeline, I must say I'm very impressed. As with any software of depth, there's a lot I don't know yet and will have to figure out, but i managed to make this little skull and rig/pose it in messiah in an evening, and even though there are some problems, i'm off and running ;)

I also hear that there is an applink planned for 3d-coat and messiah, sounds great!

looking forward to learning and contributing....

Nilpup, I am very glad to see you over here! Messiah+3D-Coat is one of the best combos really... I love it. I think you're going to like the Messiah<>3DC plugin, Greg is really doing an amazing job with it. It should be done soon, only thing it's really wait on is a bit more testing I believe (on my end) and we'll have her out and ready to roll.

Anywho, I like your test skull. Got any test animations by chance? :)

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Hi all.

My name is Sandro Borg and I am based in Surrey,United Kingdom.

I'm just getting seriously back into 3d after about an 8 year break,during which time I've been raising my son(my proudest acheivement yet :) )

Now I have some more time on my hands these days,I've rediscovered my passion for 3D modelling and animation.

I spent 5 years before my son was born learning and working with Lightwave.

I've dabbled with Zbrush since,but I'm much happier with 3D Coat's workflow and integration with Lightwave.

My main aim here is to produce models/textures in 3D Coat to be exported to Lightwave for rigging and animation.

I've gotta say I'm having a blast so far :)

I've been impressed and inspired by all the work I've seen on display in this forum,hope I can contribute something to it.

Cheers.

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Nilpup, I am very glad to see you over here! Messiah+3D-Coat is one of the best combos really... I love it. I think you're going to like the Messiah<>3DC plugin, Greg is really doing an amazing job with it. It should be done soon, only thing it's really wait on is a bit more testing I believe (on my end) and we'll have her out and ready to roll.

Anywho, I like your test skull. Got any test animations by chance? :)

Hello geothefaust, thanks for the welcome! I've just started, but so far the messiah+3d-coat combo works really well and I'm excited about the plugin.

Glad you like the little skull, I did very small/simple animation, with just the jaw moving up/down, but I'm off on another project that I hope to have an animation test for that I can share soon!

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Hi all.

My name is Sandro Borg and I am based in Surrey,United Kingdom.

I'm just getting seriously back into 3d after about an 8 year break,during which time I've been raising my son(my proudest acheivement yet :) )

Now I have some more time on my hands these days,I've rediscovered my passion for 3D modelling and animation.

I spent 5 years before my son was born learning and working with Lightwave.

I've dabbled with Zbrush since,but I'm much happier with 3D Coat's workflow and integration with Lightwave.

My main aim here is to produce models/textures in 3D Coat to be exported to Lightwave for rigging and animation.

I've gotta say I'm having a blast so far :)

I've been impressed and inspired by all the work I've seen on display in this forum,hope I can contribute something to it.

Cheers.

Hello Sandro, i'm very new here too, but welcome :)

I'm curious about your workflow with 3d-coat/lightwave... are you using 3d-coat as a replacement for modeler, so just going from 3d-coat->Layout? I'm interested in this kind of workflow and find it very exciting because It's a whole new way of working :)

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  • 2 weeks later...
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Hi Nilpup,

Thanks :)

Yes,I'd like to be able to do all modelling,retopology,UV and painting in 3D Coat ,then export to Lightwave for rigging and animation.

Very impressed with what can be done in 3D Coat,I've only bought it a few weeks ago,so I'm spending most of my time practising and getting the hang of it.

Also,my Lightwave 10 upgrade should arrive in the post today,I've gotta say Lightwave 10/Core looks pretty damn amazing...bring it on!

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Welcome Sandro,

I too have LW10 and recently purchased 3DC. Just the UV mapping part and being able to paint directly onto your mesh is amazing. Also, with VPR in LW10 you'll be able to see just how your models will look without having to press F9 and wait for a render.

Ricky.

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Thanks wave of light,

cool nickname ;)

Yeah, I've just started dabbling with painting directly onto 3D coat models,can't wait to start dropping them into Lightwave 10. :)

How do you find the workflow with 3D coat?

From what I've read so far,3D coat seems very Lw friendly.

I'm getting impatient now,so hurry up mr postman,I wanna get my hands dirty with LW10!

btw, love your avatar! very cool .

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Thanks wave of light,cool nickname ;)Yeah, I've just started dabbling with painting directly onto 3D coat models,can't wait to start dropping them into Lightwave 10. :)How do you find the workflow with 3D coat?From what I've read so far,3D coat seems very Lw friendly.I'm getting impatient now,so hurry up mr postman,I wanna get my hands dirty with LW10!btw, love your avatar! very cool .

He He. Yes, I've had 'Wave of Light' or 'Waves of Light' for a long time on other forums (F3D, Newtek, SpinQuad).

3DC to LW is seamless, as far as I have tested (and vice-versa). Check out the very quick cheese I did by following the link in my sig.

I've got some Arch Viz stuff I'm looking at at the mo, so I've sort of dropped off learning/testing 3DC for a while. However, what I can say is modelling in 3DC (Voxel) and then retopo to create a mesh, then being able to paint not only colours, but depth and detail, is amazing and worth the money alone. I wish I'd have had it, or attempted to incorporate it for my cartoon characters (one of which is the avatar).

I haven't even scratched the surface of what 3DC is capable of and I'm already happy with it. There are still lots more to learn though.

You'll find that the creators and designers of 3DC are quick to update and introduce new features. Andrew is always looking at ways to streamline and speed up the software. You'll also find the forum very friendly.

As for LW10... well, you'll see when you get the package!

Ricky.

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