from 2023.32 to 2023.29 worked and removed watermarks. many thanks indeed my file import process kept too, lol

I have read this CC3 Base+ character utilizes the new UDIM layout, instead of the traditional UV overlapped layout.    

good video and showcase, but his options didnt give "me" the proper placement of character... what caused the discrepancy?!? no clue... good video, may help some users... another good video... i need to be able to paint textures for the characters, model clothes, gear and accessories for them, and paint/texture that as well, so i dont necessarily "need" .fbx format, any method or file format that --works-- will do. many thanks carl...

this issue gave a strong sense of dejavu, so i checked my old posts... that particular video didnt help, but i did find others that pushed me to dig further. i mustve done it as some point, i recall making clothes/armor in 3d coat for cc4 characters before, so i just kept trying a few diff export "configurations" until i found 1 that worked. nothing crazy, but not so obvious either, so im posting screenshots of the options during the export process, hope it helps. one thing to note, is that between the various versions of cc3 and 3dc, the method is NOT consistent, and there is no way to except thru trial and error to figure it out. what worked in other videos did not work for me, i can only assume they went thru the same process until they found one that worked. all that means is that when i upgrade, ill have to "find" the process all over again. posted below are shots of my process and export choices, and the final result yielding the correct positioning of the character in 3d space

I'm new to 3D Coat but I have experience with other 3d modelers. STL format is problematic because it contains only facet normals. When it is imported into an application, the normals are typically analyzed to ensure the direction is consistent, otherwise some may be flipped, which appears to be what is happening in the first image above. I do not know if 3D Coat will check and repair normals. Ideally the normals would be recalculated as vertex normals.

Hybrid Mesh after Retopo as a Surface for On-Plane Brush Control Tool. Christmas sale until 7 Jan.View the full article

Oki! Here is my best attempt at explaining what 3DCoat can almost do but can't quite do. I think it has 90% of the tools already, they are just not configured in such a way that I can use them like this. I am probably mega underestimating how much work is involved here but in any case here's "why you would want that". Essentially 3DC is some tools away from being able to produce production subdivision meshes. I think the main missing features from 3DC that would allow this workflow are - Quads in sculpt mode - Subdivision preview - Face sets - A "relax face sets" smooth option which tries to straighten intersection edges between face sets - Autopo using face sets intersections as guides instead of sharp angles Also, face sets are a great way to start UVs because you can usually directly convert face sets -> uv islands and unfold them. It's an awesome workflow because you essentially get your final mesh without ever leaving the sculpt At a high level, for production, I find  you don't want to be using Autopo at the very end after you are done your sculpt. You want to use it somewhere in the middle where the primary and secondary forms are in, but before you add the detail. Then you add the final details on the subdivision mesh -- this expedites the process immensely, because the "midpoint subdivision mesh" is like 90% ready to export minus some minor cleanup, but critically you want to autopo your model before adding the small details that would confuse the remeshing algorithm, then add small details after. This allows you to get the best possible automatic result, while also allowing you to add details once topo is locked down. So voxel sculpt -> curate face sets -> use face sets to control autopo guides -> use the autopo quad mesh sub-d to do your final detail sculpting pass with surface details / alpha stamping. This means you don't have to do a full manual retopo and can directly use your sculpt mesh as input for your production mesh! First, the 3DCoat workflow, and why it isn't quite there yet. And yes, I know autopo has a concept of "sharps" / using edge angle cusp for driving the remeshing algorithm but the issue is that I cannot finely control what it considers sharp edges unless my mesh itself is sharp. If we were able to use face sets to control the remesher guides, then we could manually curate intersections so they are clean and remesher friendly, and sharp in the right places. Further, I have not found surface mode booleans stable enough to support several successive sharp cuts with symmetry enabled. It inevitably loses its validity as a closed mesh after only a handful of cuts. For reference, here is my hard surface workflow in both ZBrush and Blender. However, the actual sculpting part is way less fun than 3DCoat. for me hard surface sculpting in blender and zb just don't feel as fluid and fun as 3DC.  Conveniently, Blender automatically assigns a new face set to the internal faces each time you use a boolean cut selection (box, lasso, polyline) Hopefully this provides adequate explanation! I love sculpting in 3DC and want to use it as much as possible, but i just haven't found a way to get production hardsurface geo out of it in a way that doesn't require a full rebuild. The closest I got was leveraging live boolean intersections for carving with sharp boundaries / using a different material for each boolean object to produce face sets when taking them back to blender (thanks for whoever did that, app bridge person, the fact that materials are preserved from sculpt meshes is _awesome_), but that seems to be crashing right now so I couldn't show it

unrelated: Live boolean basically always crash for me now in 2025.17   2025-12-30 21-47-07.mp4

Hey there! It's more of a workflow thing. I will try to explain it best I can as a workflow rather than a feature request.  Again I am mostly raising some of this because it would allow me to stay in 3DC longer and finish my work more completely in it. It's an incredibly powerful toolset! But there are non negotiables with different 3d pipelines, and depending on requirements of output working with voxels + autopo might get you there fast or really slow. I might try making the same shape in a few different ways to demonstrate Also I should mention that, my particular use case I am trying to use 3DC for is hard surface production modelling, I really love 3DC's fluid voxel cutting tools and that's my main reason for wanting to stay in it, and I totally understand if the particular use case I'm going for is to narrow to matter to the dev team. But I will try to make a case  Another thing that might be considered in the long term is still maintaining having different mesh types, (sculpt mesh voxel or surface, sculpt or retopo mesh quads which might support UV etc) but just having them all available in the sculpt room natively, This would allow user to work in the most optimized way (eg voxel sculpting tris only) but then pay the price of the heavier format if needed, it is also the case that zb is much slower when your sculpt model has UVs especially when it is highpoly and no subdivision levels. It is totally fine if different mesh types have different tool limitations, so long as they are viewable all together. I can see the rationale for keeping all of these mesh types in separate rooms. It keeps the contexts clean and task focused. This issue for me is just that blocks off some workflows that allow more flexibility / preserving certain mesh features that makes finalling easier.  I think 3DC's strongest feature is the fluidity you get out of sculpting freely with voxels, that's what makes it fun and addicting to use. It's just such a pain when I have to redo my mesh from scratch after I already have a good looking sculpt, and there is no intermediate meshes, or re-used geometry elements that makes my final output easier to create

Try older version, as a fast test

nope... my license expiration was 11/23, the version i upgraded to was from 10/23... do i need a complete swipe and clean install?

Sometimes you just need to bring aspects of other apps to show context, but yes, that's not the thread for that.

Hello Try uninstalling and re-installing the license again (on Help menu)

Hi Hope this help  

No "versus" threads. Discussions about tools, workflows or development implementation is fine, but absolutely no "app vs app", or derogatory statements about an app. These bring needless debate that too often becomes contentious.

And my argument was about your argument about dynamesh Nope, I'm actually used to 3DC, definitely more than to typical poly modeling, but I see the benefits of having quads alongside voxels. As much as I hate some aspects of ZBrush, I also see the absolutely strong aspects of this app.