zbrush vs 3d coat

SnowInChina

i would like to hear some opinions
if possibles from users who have been using both at some time

iam most interested in the sculpting aspect, how does 3coat compare to zbrush in this regard ?

Justin Meisse

I find Zbrush a lot easier to use sculpting wise but I haven't put much time into 3DCoat sculpting. I use 3D coat as a low poly texture painting tool, which it excels at.

Ged

3d coat has a lot of features but a lot of them feel a bit unrefined, especially in work flow or ui. The retopology and voxel sculpting is quite strong and the texture painting and normal map painting/editing is pretty cool but the standard sculpting tools dont really compare to the versatility and power of zbrush brushes.

MagicSugar

3dCoat's auto quad remesher and retopo tools used to be the main features that attracted me to paying a license for it even though I already use zbrush. But after Zbrush's dynamesh, zremesher, curve and IMM brush updates there's really no practical reason for me to pay for the latest 3dC upgrade.

I find that you also need a beast rig to get the most out of it's voxel sculpting potential.

bounchfx

I'll echo some of the statements already here; 3D coat is a great 'all in one' (pretty much) solution, with strong topo, sculpting, uv, and painting tools, but the while theres tons of really cool sculpting tools and features, it's always felt a bit weird to me. ZBrush has a complex learning curve but there's plenty of tutorials out there to learn fairly easily nowadays, and if you're interested in sculpting I honestly think it's the best option.

Jason Young

If sculpting I'd choose zbrush, if painting textures I'd choose 3dcoat. I use 3dcoat at work and zbrush/3dcoat at home, so feel pretty comfortable with both.

EmAr

For sculpting, ZBrush is the way to go if you can afford it.

Voxel sculpting is so much fun but it requires a good rig as mentioned by MagicSugar. When I used 3DCoat for the last time, it was impossible(the program would crash) to get the detail you can create in ZBrush with my machine(AMD FX6100, 550Ti, 8gb ram).

Jeff Parrott

Ditto. Straight sculptin ZBrush or Mudbox.

Actual texture painting? 3D Coat all the way. So much easier than other options. Photoshop 3D stuff is horrible.

bugo

kinda the same here, i use 3dcoat for a lot of stuff tho, handpainted textures, tweaking lowpoly models, easy uving, retopo, rock formation shapes, and when I need to prototype hardsurface stuff is also good.

Dan!

3d coat for texture painting- its integration with PS etc is fantastic and effortless.
Zbrush all the way for sculpting-because options

ahtiandr

using both for different porposes. For instance , sculpting in zbruhs and retopo in 3d coat. I know you can retopo in zbrush but its not as intuitive for me and spiral loops are not nice

SnowInChina

thanks for the feedback

it hurts a little bit to buy zbrush though, since i dont really need it for my job and its only for private stuff
well, iam going to think this over

Ninjas

I use 3DC -- the results may not be as slick as Zbrush, but I like that I don't have to waste time with import/export, and can sculpt/retopo/UV/bake/texture from zero to finished asset in one go.

Jason Young

SnowInChina wrote: »

thanks for the feedback

it hurts a little bit to buy zbrush though, since i dont really need it for my job and its only for private stuff
well, iam going to think this over

Have you tried out 3dCoat yet? It's possible you'll like the sculpting as much or more than zbrush. You've got voxel and surface sculpting(more like zbrush and mudbox where you're manipulating vertices), as well as live clay which acts like sculptris dynamically tessellating as you add detail. It doesn't have traditional subdivision levels like the others, though does have multi-res sculpting. I don't personally like the "feel" of sculpting in 3d coat as much, but it's certainly got a pretty robust feature set.