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More discontinuities between smart materials and node editor materials: Basically, for sculpt objects, it doesn't work like smart materials and it should work like smart materials. The way smart materials work in 3dcoat is great Anyway, just a reminder: I post all this criticisms constructively in the hope that the interface / design improves, I can see the potential bigtime!

I got some questions: - how can you reference a specific layer's painted color data in a material graph? Like when you bake in voxel mode, that data usually goes into a particular named layer in voxel or sculpt mode. Like Ambient Occlusion. Then I want to reference that layer inside a node graph by name to use in a material for example. How can I ref a layer's data from a graph? I see some layer nodes / in layer, but there is seemingly no way to specify "which layer" - What are these node graphs "assigned to"? They seem to be on layers and on scuptObjects but can they just exist without being assigned to something - is every node graph always unique? Or can they share data? if I take an object with a node graph assigned, and split it into multiple objects, it seems each splitted object gets its own unique node graph dupe. Having node graphs assigned to stuff makes these operations very slow. Is there some way I can have shared node graph data, and not produce new unique node graphs every time an object is splitted? Node graphs should be data blocks that don't care about what they are assigned to. - Why is it ctrl-drag to drag a texture from stencils menu into node graph, and not just lmb drag?  - is it possible to copy paste nodes across different graphs? - Is there a reason why it is gloss instead of roughness? The industry have largely settled on roughness over gloss, and ideally for compatibility this tool would use roughness not gloss. - it seems to be to assign impossible a material to a layer when working with sculpt objects. clicking a material will assign it to the object, but you can't assign it to the layer. In general, its just an observation, but this system seems to be much slower than smart materials! Specifically, if you continue sculpting after a node graph is applied to an object. I reckon this is because every duplication, split, etc, must copy and rebuild the node graph for the new object, since all data is being cloned and rebuilt. If, instead of being bound to the object, the node graph data was persistent in the 3dcoat scene, and applied to multiple objects that shared the node graph rather than being unique per object and cloned all the time, it would be much faster. Then you would only need to build the graph once, and you could drag and drop it on to a bunch of different objects without rebuilding the shader. I imagine this would make duplicating, splitting, etc, much faster in sculpt mode. Also it seems likely that smart materials are bound to layers rather than objects, and layers tend to persist and not be duplicated per object, so that explains why smart materials are faster than node graphs when working on a scene. I see 2 solutions to the slowness problem: 1) make node graphs persistent scene objects that can be assigned arbitrarily to multiple objects (share the data) without being recompiled each time. There is a similar concept in blender's "make unique" or "make single user" -- multiple objects will reference the same shader data unless you specifically tell it to make the shader unique for this object.  2) Allow assigning node graph materials to layers outside of the paint room / a baked lowpoly model. Then we can assign the persistent material to our objects with masking instead of object centric. That would be more in line with Substance Painter: One layer, one smart material, you just paint the mask.  

oh actually, despite the David paths. I was able to fix texture loading from the materials: For some reason my AVIF extension turned itself off, and the node graph materials just appeared broken.

Splitter tool is available in Voxel mode even though it does nothing in that mode.  Solution is to either make splitter work in voxel mode, or remove it from view when in voxel mode. Actually, ideal for splitter tool is that: when in voxel mode, it produces voxel splitter shapes and subtracts from the voxel shape. You should also be able to use splitter to create the voxel shapes for use on a voxlayer set to live boolean subtract mode.  Better option is it works in both voxel mode and surface mode. But having it just not appear to do anything when in vox mode is confusing. And yes I see the "turn voxels into a surface" option, i don't see any reason why this tool shouldn't work in voxel mode as well. Just produce the same shape and subtract it from the voxels. I hope they work this out     123.mp4        

many paths of default material graphs point to a "David" users folder. The textures are loaded first time you assign the node graph to an object, but then they show as missing if you save and load the .3b file for example. in NodeGraphs/NGMaterials/skin_sss.ng: """             <Defines>                 <NGLCustomDefine>                     <DefineType>sampler</DefineType>                     <DefineName>ColorMap</DefineName>                     <Value>1098</Value>                     <StringValue>C:\Users\david\Documents\3DCoat\UserPrefs\NodeGraphs\Textures\Plastic\MTL00719_Plastic4k_4k_2k\patterns\Plastic\MTL00719_Plastic_A4k.avif</StringValue>                 </NGLCustomDefine>                 <NGLCustomDefine>                     <DefineType>sampler</DefineType>                     <DefineName>DepthMap</DefineName>                     <Value>1099</Value>                     <StringValue>C:\Users\david\Documents\3DCoat\UserPrefs\NodeGraphs\Textures\Plastic\MTL00719_Plastic4k_4k_2k\patterns\Plastic\kfixMTL00719_Plastic_H.avif</StringValue>                 </NGLCustomDefine>                 <NGLCustomDefine>                     <DefineType>sampler</DefineType>                     <DefineName>GlossMap</DefineName>                     <Value>1100</Value>                     <StringValue>C:\Users\david\Documents\3DCoat\UserPrefs\NodeGraphs\Textures\Plastic\MTL00719_Plastic4k_4k_2k\patterns\Plastic\MTL00719_Plastic_G4k.avif</StringValue>                 </NGLCustomDefine> """ all the file paths seem to be absoluted to David's documents folder

Thanks for the quick response, Carlosan! I'm going to try that workaround. However, it would be great if we could have disabled the additional viewport lighting/specular highlights by default in Matcaps. That way, artists who prefer using pure matcaps could work without any extra lighting affecting the result. EDIT: It works! here is the correct path to comment the line 149 in every mcubes.glsl: C:\Users\UserName\Documents\3DCoat2026\UserPrefs\Shaders\PbrShaders\#Matcaps

Was not solved by default ? hmmmm  @carrots The MatCap shader hasn't changed since 2022; you can easily remove that highlight by deleting the line C.xyz+=vec3(fr2,fr2,fr2); or by downloading the GLSL file attached. mcubes.glsl

Is there a way to disable the viewport lighting or specular highlights? I'm trying to recreate the SkinShade4 material from ZBrush using its corresponding matcap. The problem is that the viewport is adding extra specular highlights that don't belong to the matcap. As far as I understand, matcaps shouldn't be affected by HDRI lighting. I even tried switching to an HDRI with very soft, diffuse lighting, but the issue remains. I can rotate the viewport light, and the specular highlights move accordingly. This happens with every matcap, not just this one. In short, I'd like the viewport to display only the lighting baked into the matcap, without any additional viewport lighting or specular highlights.   As you can see in the attached video, those specular highlights are present by default in the viewport. I'm not sure if there's already a way to disable them, but if not, I think this should be added as an option. Those highlights make it difficult to sculpt from certain angles because they interfere with the matcap's shading. Anyone coming from ZBrush or Nomad Sculpt who wants to use matcaps will likely run into the same issue. 3DCoat 2026.17NS 2026-08-03 11-46-56.mp4    

Sculpting using lattice structures.3DCoat is on sale until August 5! #3dart #3dsculptingView the full article

@retutca Hope this help  

Try opening this project I did  he next day (there were server issues last night) The file opened and appears beautifully.  so the issue is with me.  And I don't know what it is Error Sphere.zip

Hi, I’ve tested the node editor, but the voxel and displacement functions aren’t working for me. When I click the ‘Apply Pattern To Volume’ button, the effect of the Voronoi node appears as if it had been baked. The displacement doesn’t appear. Latest NVIDIA driver, GPU: RTX 3070. Thx  

Tried to install and run 2026.17 as Administrator and text was still gone, also 3DC still needed permissions to write to data folder, unlike 2025.17.

I forwarded this issue to developers. meantime try to install 3DC as Administrator

I want to check whether the structure of a firearm remains intact after separation. The firearm model was originally a single merged mesh.

I want to check whether the structure of a firearm remains intact after separation. The firearm model was originally a single merged mesh.

Is this for the purposes of "exploding the bake?" If so, 3DCoat uses a different approach to baking multiple parts in one go. It is called SEQUENTIAL TEXTURE BAKING and it works pretty well. Just make sure that there is an exact correspondence between the SCULPT TREE objects name and the POLY GROUPS (Retopo meshes) name. In the BAKE menu at the top of the UI, you will find a check box for NAME CORRESPONDENCE FOR BAKING. There is also an option below that to look for a proper correspondence. If there are discrepancies in the names, it will identify those. With that done, you can unhide all the objects you want to bake and go back to the BAKE menu and choose which method you want to BAKE to the Paint Room with (ie, Per Pixel with Normal Maps, etc.). 3DCoat will then bake each Retopo mesh with its Sculpt Mesh counterpart, and do so in an automated sequence. This way there is no overlapping in the bake, between meshes. If this is not for baking purposes, I am not sure I see the importance in an exploded view. 

You are very welcome. I have also been waiting (banging the table so to speak) a while on a boost in the brush performance, mainly when using larger brush sizes. I hope the entire brushing system (at least for Painting) is totally rewritten for the GPU...not just compiling the same, current brush engine for the GPU. Why? Because I have noticed a problem with the current brush engine, over several years and after multiple PC upgrades within that time span. The paint brush performance does not seem to scale along with improvements in the CPU or RAM. There seems to be some fundamental bottleneck in the code that prevents 3DCoat from projecting (with a single brush stroke) more than some preset number of pixels. The performance is actually quite good until you hit the hidden threshold. I mean, we are now talking about CPU's with 16 cores/32 threads and running over 5.5Ghz, with DDR5 RAM running over 6000Mhz+ ! Why in the world, then, is 3DCoat STILL struggling 10+ yrs later to use a large brush to paint the entire face of a character with one stroke. You can do this easy-peezy in Substance Painter. If I am Pilgway, I am shooting BIG and rewriting the brush engine so that it can now compete head to head not just with Substance (brush performance wise), but MARI, too. Take market share from both of them with the new node network and a GPU brush engine rewrite.

Texture while sculpting. | 3DCoat is on sale until August 5 | #3dcoat #3dtexturing #3dart #gamedevView the full article

OK, a workaround that somehow worked was going back to version 2025.17, any attempt to update to version 2026.17 resulted in the same bug as before. But that's hardly a solution when I can't update software safely.