Is 3D Coat 4.5 (with PBR stuff) any good?
polycounter lvl 7
Is anyone using new version of 3D Coat? I am using the older version for UV mapping and stuff. The new PBR stuff looks promising. I wonder if it's worth to upgrade? It's 100 bucks for 3 owners.
I have heard rumours that the new 3D Coat support TMikk Space tangent basis so it should fit to my xNormal workflow / Unreal Engine 4. Is this true? Their online documentation doesn't mention.
Also, I wonder if its possible to get a proper calibrated Albedo maps for example using the Smart Materials?
Am I better off investing into Substance Painter?
I have heard rumours that the new 3D Coat support TMikk Space tangent basis so it should fit to my xNormal workflow / Unreal Engine 4. Is this true? Their online documentation doesn't mention.
Also, I wonder if its possible to get a proper calibrated Albedo maps for example using the Smart Materials?
Am I better off investing into Substance Painter?
Replies
Its worth it. You can try it in trial mode btw, meaning just download this:
http://3d-coat.com/download/ or directly via http://3d-coat.com/forum/index.php?showtopic=17076
As for the normal maps, yes it has Mikktspace. You can set it as a standard under preferences.
What you get with 3D Coat vs what it cost is pretty much a steal, worth the upgrade.
For me, it's partially that I do a lot of handpainted stuff, which Substance Painter doesn't really do, but even for PBR I really, really like 3DCoat.
Mari isn't aimed at game art at all (Although has a lot of things going for it), but that may change.
You'll miss out on the non-destructive nature of SP, but 3DCoat just feels like it's good at what it's designed for: painting stuff. And the tools feel like they're limitless. I can use splines to make complex shapes, I can paint on only the edges, I can flatten depth, I can smudge and pinch normals, I can easily copy and paste, rebake things to a new uv-set (which you can also make inside of 3dc) hassle-free, there's a one-click export to Photoshop...
I can see myself using 3DC and SP together though, since Substance Designer is already an essential part of my baking workflow (and I add base materials in there as well)
His name even means 'ordering'.
I've reported it, but given that he has 24 posts already and hasn't been caught, maybe more people should.
Advantage of 3d coat PBR to Substance is performance, its much more stable, materials are loaded instantly while in substance large lybrari can be pain to load each time, it has very robust layering setup-straightforward. I needed several long tutorials to get grip on Substance, while i needed nearly 0 with 3d coat, just jumped in and that was almost it.
As for its TS normal maps i have been exporting them into UE4 without any problems, seem to display fine.
Well the general PBR theory applies to 3D Coat just as much as it applies to say something like Substance Designer.
It really just comes down to understanding how to use 3D Coat and how to texture in general with it.
That said, there's still the question on how to actually create new PBR materials with 3D Coat's Smart Material system... and thats something I think they need to both go into greater detail with and also how do some quick streamlined material creation.
Anyways, this is the best first step:
[ame]
Also be sure to check out their official YouTube page for a big list of videos going over the application.
thank you, will look into it.
I hoped there where additionally some tutorials available in which you were seeing on how to set up a metal and wood brushset etc.
Don't worry. They think the current way is okay, but I'll keep reminding them it's not
You clicking in one place, move your cursor to another, press and hold shift, click - hooray, straight line. This is something I really need in 3d-coat.
Alternatively, you turn on the "2D Grid" and "Snap To 2D Grid", then rotate it as needed with the top right corner options.