3D Coat 3.1 update released!
Available for Windows, Mac, and Linux
Many, many new features.
See here for full details:
http://www.3d-coat.com/forum/index.php?showtopic=3540
Many, many new features.
See here for full details:
http://www.3d-coat.com/forum/index.php?showtopic=3540
Replies
edit:
yes!!! he even added a almost same feature as Silo for quick adding shortcuts:
http://www.3d-coat.com/files/Tut4/DefineKey.htm
you just hit the [end] key and then a combo while you hover over a menu item, kick ass - I will check this app. out
I think it would make better impression to many new users that are from the professional industry. Most other companies basically know how to do that,- making slick websites with demonstration screenshots that look like they were taken from a professional case.
I am starting to wonder tho ... with all these new features requests being implemented after someone asking "hey can you add that, just like in app X" ... there must be tons quite some patent infringement going on there, right? But at least IIRC voxels are safe since it's an old technique only refined. (correct me if I am wrong)
Almost every package these days uses catmull rom interpolation (subdivision, researched at pixar/ ILM), the way 3d data is handled (tris, quads, uv, faces, smoothing vertex, obj) and with all the GI and normal mapping tech in the last years they basically all copied each other and improved on it- thats why the whole 3d industry is blooming so great with lots of niche and special tools, unlike the print industry that quark xPress pretty much killed innovation wise in the past.
So until one company starts suing in this business I don't see much of a problem, because it has been peacefully most of the times, or did I missed some of those court fights in the CG area?
For instance SAI most likely happily violates Painter and Photoshop patents. But for instance Corel couldn't steal an original feature from SAI since they would likely get legal trouble.
It seems like the 3D world is indeed more flexible on that regard (Lazystroke / Easymouse) wich is cool yeah. I hope it'll last, especially for small innnovative devs ...
I agree that the main gallery could use some updates. Have you checked out the galleries in the forum? Some amazing work in there.
From what I've seen Andrew is very careful about patents. People are often pointing out cool white papers they've seen and that's usually one of the first things he asks about. Voxels are not entirely new. Andrew used them to make environments at his previous job at a game studio. It has also been used in a program called Claytools which is very expensive, partly because it requires this hardware haptic device to sculpt with. I think Andrew also uses a different technique I think, a "marching cubes" algorithm. I couldn't explain any of that stuff though.
And also the new PS comes now with tabs,- something (even though they own the patent for tabs, yes thats right) other applications had before. But also the 3d painting stuff in PS,- its not new and it was already available even as plugin (enzo3d).
I think many companies that do great are in a way proud of them anyways and they would not just copy something to have it as well but more to extend it- do it better give it their own spin. At least thats how I see it.
The thing that happened a few weeks ago to Microsoft and its openXML format in word is sad for them,- but when reading the whole story it seamed that the suing company (i4i) worked wit h ms together on the format,- but Microsoft ditched them at some point because they had something on their own apparently.
THe whole story is not yet clear and also what it means for software patents.
Fascinating workflow changes ahead!
Very cool! Was the orange part added with Cut & Clone?
i have that useless piece of hardware here, support it and i'd definitely buy me a copy of 3coat :P
damn i would love to use it with mudbox, zbrush or another modern software, the new update looks good, way better then the last time i tested it
Kite: I just made this quick video a few seconds ago that shows some things that can't be done with polygonal sculpting.
http://screencast.com/t/GMXm6yFDk
Damn this program is starting to looking appealing. The hard surface work here looks more efficient than with Zbrush. I'm probably gonna raise the 7th level of hell for stating that but I could never get really good results doing HS on Zbrush.
OBlastradius Id say it is quite powerful for hardsurface but you do have to increase voxel res to get smoothness and you cant decrease voxel res so you cant step up and down and also its easy to end up with very slightly curved or lumpy flat surfaces that you really wanted completely flat...sometimes it feels a bit like sculpting with a hot knife and a block of butter hehe
there we go, another purpose for a tool that I hadnt realised existed haha thanx pior I gotta try that when my pc is working again
i created a 9 million poly model forest with voxels, and tried to make it into a polymesh for painting, but well, i guess i don't completely understand how i'm supposed to work the interface.
model file ended up at 300mb, and doing anything was so slow and unresponsive it was impossible to work with it.
it works better with 4 million polys, although its still slow.
i think you're supposed to rough out the shapes with voxels, and then convert it for displacement painting for the final detailing.
had some slight problems with the brush jumping from one place to another, causing streaking as well.
overall though, the voxel brushes have had a huge update, and are much more responsive.
now i just need to finish up all this other garbage, so i can play around with it properly.
Would quadranglation work on a voxel object?
yup heres one of mine, just hit the quadrangulate button to get the lowpoly mesh, not the best flow but it would work for a static asset, also the quadrangulation settings can be changed to get more large quads or use symmetry
I havent tried baking in 3Dcoat I prefer to export voxels and use xnormal, some of the normal mapped edges are quite scratchy in your lowpoly there is that because of the baked map or what?
Or meshlabbing the quadrangulation?
depends what you mean by better? quadrangulation builds a medium/low poly all quads model based on a voxel mesh, its not like decimation or meshlab in that it doesnt try to retain all the details and doesnt seem to be able to output a very highpoly model.
I was able to get a pretty high poly model with this test I did back in June. Just not sure how I did it.
sweet, good tip scooby, not quite like decimation but it has better flow and its quads, might take quite a few subdivs with some objects I would imagine? must try this later too!
http://www.3d-coat.com/forum/index.php?showtopic=3594
- Doubleclick in Quad tool in Retopo will create triangle.
- Better fitting of stroke to surface in Stroke mode in retopo tool - leads to better work of strokes tool on rough surface. Nodes on strokes will be visible much better.
- fixed: ESC in quad retopo tool leads to appearing of triangle instead of quad on next stage.
- Pose handler rotation handlers will not rotate with viewport, the will remain direction in world space. Up/forward rotation works right too.
- fixed: undo and Pose handler issue (was not returning to previous place after undo)
- Undo/redo problem in voxel sculpting solved. Adding/subrtracting/deleting objects was sometimes destructive with undo/redo.
- Axial symmetry tool will act on child objects too
- fixed: invisible preview of spike/curves/merge problem
- Stability of surface tools improved
- fixed: incorrect work of "Rotate along motion" in voxel mode with symmetry
- There is new checker in Retopo menu - Merge/bake only selected faces
- Quadrangulate will create new layer in retopo tools.
- Add new material improved - like Phil Nolan proposed.
just check out the website and or some youtube videos. It can do many things, is cheaper and might fill gaps between certain techniques better as other tools.
Javis Jones does most of the official videos, here are his on Youtube
http://www.youtube.com/user/javisjones#play/uploads
Getting quite familiar with voxels now. For some very specific things, it blows out Mud and Zbrush altogether!
http://vimeo.com/6382944
Here's the download link (can be used as a demo version)
http://www.3d-coat.com/forum/index.php?showtopic=3594&st=0
i know, i did, becausevright now it is useless to me
By the way guys I was thinking of something (will suggest it later on the 3DC forum) :
You know how when sculpting with voxels, there is a little pause at the end of most strokes for the stretched geo to 'find' the corresponding voxels in the 3D grid. Quite often I feel like that pause stops me in my modeling flow. I wish I could just sculpt/stretch things, but only update to the voxel grid only whenever I need it. When doing organics, maybe once every 5 minutes, at the press of a button. This would really make the Voxel modeling much more fluid. I don't mind it at all for mechanical stuff, but for organics I find that pause to be quite a deal breaker.
What do you think? Maybe there's also a better way to formulate that?
I remember wondering where the feature went when I tried V3 first anyways. There were seperate sets of buttons for voxel scultping and surface sculpting. Would love to see this back!