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3DCoat Mega Thread

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  • PyrZern
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    PyrZern polycounter lvl 12
    No sculpting + baking texture allowed in this contest ??
  • Carlosan
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    Carlosan polycounter lvl 10
    3D-Coat is the one application that has all the tools you need to take your 3D idea from a block of digital clay all the way to a production ready, fully textured organic or hard surface model.

    What's New in 3D-Coat 4.8  - Key Features:

    - Possibility to attach Smart Materials to layers!
    Materials managing becomes even easier

    - Smart Materials usage history.

    - Possibility to change resolution of textures, attached materials will automatically be re-sampled!

    - Improved Curvature calculation. This is crucial for Smart Materials to be looking even more realistic.

    - Render scene in Renderman. Yep, you heard it right!

    - Baking Scan. Paint baking depth with brush.
    Now you can define with an ease of a brush stroke how big the depth of scanning will be.

    - New Primitives in Retopo room: cylinder, torus, cube, ellipse, spiral, etc.
    We are getting closer and closer to low-poly modeling!

    - 4K monitors support. Now UI elements and font size will automatically fit your screen resolution.

    - Proxy Slider. Set your proxy degree with an easy slider movement.

    - Rotation mode quick switch - around Y or free rotation.  See navigation panel.
    Need both modes at hand? Now you have the quick swap.


  • kanga
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    kanga quad damage
  • Ged
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    Ged interpolator
    wow the 2d/3d sketching tools for concept work look really fun!
  • Michael Knubben
    What you forgot to mention, but might be important to people on the fence:
  • pmiller001
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    pmiller001 greentooth
    MAN, 3dcoat is at it again. Love it. 
  • almighty_gir
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    almighty_gir ngon master
    Still can't use it, i like making demons, witches, and sexy women.
  • ScoobyDoofus
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    ScoobyDoofus polycounter lvl 19
    3D Coat is pretty awesome and I use it as a regular part of my art pipeline, but I feel there are some fundamental features/corrections they could/should make before packing in more buzzword additions. Things like:

    Supporting multiple monitors. I want to be able to place my palettes on my 2nd (or 3rd) screen. 
    Better "smart" material authoring. (like every competitor)
    Better layer masking/ REAL layer masks like photoshop/quixel and substance painter (like every competitor)
    Antialiasing in the viewport (like every competitor)
    Fixing the frequently broken viewport/lighting controls + Bad UI decisions

    and more that I can't think of at the moment.
    I still own it and will continue to use it, but...it could be so much better for game production.
  • PolyHertz
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    PolyHertz polycount lvl 666
    @ScoobyDoofus Well the 3DC programmers have always treated it more like an experimental piece of software then one meant for production. Generally, if they don't find a feature exciting/fun to work on they wont bother, and wont even fix bugs unless it directly affects something they're working on 90% of the time. Mantis shows just how few issues get resolved: http://3dcoat.com/mantis/view_all_bug_page.php

    Andrew ran a poll about 3 years ago (here) where he asked if the users wanted radial symmetry first or masks, they voted radial symmetry. By the time he was done with that though he had apparently lost motivation to implement masks and so it never got done. I'm still bitter about that one.

    That said, 3D-Coat is still my favorite app for hand painted textures.
  • CreativeSheep
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    CreativeSheep polycounter lvl 8
    Anyone here knowledgeable about 3D coat, I could fire some questions from the manual you're direction ?
  • Michael Knubben
    @creativesheep I've used it a bunch, but mostly the painting. What are your questions about?
    There's also an official forum, by the way!
  • Noren
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    Noren polycounter lvl 19
    @CreativeSheep
    Lack of proper (complete and up to date) documentation is actually one of my biggest gripes with 3D Coat at the moment. The tooltips and (well done) video tutorials can't make up for that.
    There used to be a Newbie section in the 3D Coat forums which alleviated that situation a bit and was screened by experienced 3D Coat users and associates like @Carlosan, but that was removed for some reason. I'd guess posting your questions in the 3DCoat subforum should get you answers from the same people reasonably quick as well.
  • Carlosan
  • Carlosan
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    Carlosan polycounter lvl 10
    New version 4.8.16

    - Retopo via decimation works correctly with objects of non 1.0 scale.

    - Lasso works correctly in fill tool

    - Correct Transform+pick volumes. Use CTRL/SHIFT to select/unselect.

    - fixed problem of some commands in space menu (at the end of list)

    - Fixed potential instability in Light Baking Tool.

    - RFill (Quad Fill) included into regular retopo toolset, corrected to work as expected.

    Curves:

    - fill by patch remade. Should be faster and more accurate.

    - joining points.

    - reworked RMB menu

    - projecting points on plane

    - Correct EPS/spline import export. IGES supported. But IGES is not included in community version, if you need to test it, send me request I will send special key.

    - possibility to link several points if snapping to points enabled. They will be moved together.

    - many more small changes





  • Carlosan
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    Carlosan polycounter lvl 10

    4.8.18 (expected to be stable)

    - Skip textures export if need (checkbox in export dialog).

    - Axial rotation in text primitive.

    - fixed problem of positioning Tool params window

    - Select visible islands in UV/Retopo rooms with rectangle.

    - Store camera/[panorama data to the preset.

    - Curves "Apply" corrected to work in all tools.

    - Possibility to click to fill in material editor (in fill tool)

    - Better picking corners in all windows where curve edit required.

    - Fixed problems with 8k curvature

     

    Andrew:
    I am working over sculpt layers and other V5 stuff, so only polishing present in this build. Beta version with other features like sculpt layers and joint based kitbashing will be available within month.
  • CreativeSheep
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    CreativeSheep polycounter lvl 8
    3D Coat is very amazing, it's the only software that is equal to zBrush.  How do you customize the User Interface is what I want to know ?
  • Vexod14
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    Vexod14 polycounter
    I can't use anything else than 3DCoat for texturing, it's "just" a photoshop but in 3D and more intuitive, with less lag, more and better tools, which all works as expected. Keep up the great work guys !
  • CreativeSheep
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    CreativeSheep polycounter lvl 8
    I wish 3D Coat would have a super mega deal, I'd buy in a heart beat. 
  • Brian "Panda" Choi
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    Brian "Panda" Choi high dynamic range
    I wish 3D Coat would have a super mega deal, I'd buy in a heart beat. 
    Set up a Google Alert for a 3Dcoat sale.  They do happen.
  • Dataday
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    Dataday polycounter lvl 8
    3D Coat is very amazing, it's the only software that is equal to zBrush. 
    The be perfectly fair here, it is still quite far from Zbrush's sculpting capability. It is an area in 3DC that still needs a lot of development.

    Most people seem to be picking it up for the hand painted texturing and retopology.
  • Shrike
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    Shrike interpolator
    After setting up a good smart material, damn that saves me so much time. Just wish the UI would be more modern. And the UV tools are really nice.
  • CreativeSheep
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    CreativeSheep polycounter lvl 8
    I wouldn't say 3D coat is far from Zbrush sculpting capability, with a user interface clean up; it would surpass ZBrush.  The only reason why ZBrush is the standard is it's well known that most don't consider anything else; that alone shouldn't rule out 3D Coat by a long shot.  You can do everything in 3D Coat you can in ZBrush; either surpass Mudbox, we know Autodesk is to blame for that.
  • Dataday
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    Dataday polycounter lvl 8
    I wouldn't say 3D coat is far from Zbrush sculpting capability, with a user interface clean up; it would surpass ZBrush.  The only reason why ZBrush is the standard is it's well known that most don't consider anything else; that alone shouldn't rule out 3D Coat by a long shot.  You can do everything in 3D Coat you can in ZBrush; either surpass Mudbox, we know Autodesk is to blame for that.
     I have been using 3D Coat for years, but it really cannot hold a candle to zbrush when it comes to sculpting. I wish it that fact wasn't true, but it is. The GUI is rough, but thats not the primary thing holding it back sculpting wise. Brushes + algorithm for displacement, lack of a good polygroup alternative, masking barely functional in the sculpting room (you have to use paint room to get better masking). 3D Coat has a lot of potential, but for sculpting its just not getting the attention it needs to compete evenly with Zbrush.

    Andrew and company simply need to dedicate a lot more time to getting it to the point where zbrush users would not feel like they are losing out by switching. Good news is, there is finally going to be sculpting layers. That helps... a little.
  • Carlosan
  • Carlosan
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    Carlosan polycounter lvl 10

    19.07.2018 4.8.19

    - Snap joints tool introduced, this is kitbashing, lego-like modeling. It is suitable for children and for adults. Only a few models there, we will extend kit by the time. 

    - Huge changes in curves. Filling curve by patch works stable and provides good quality. Filling with holes inside supported. Just add curve in sub-tree of filled curve and it will be treated as hole. Boolean operations between curves in 3D. Many changes related to curves.

    - Tutorials/scripted missions for newbies introduced for fast diving in!

    - Ghost All works correctly

    - AppLink export corrected

    - Import Raw Voxel data speeded up 10 - 20x.
  • Carlosan
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    Carlosan polycounter lvl 10
    version 4.8.20

    - Polished Joints snapping tool.
    - Continuous development of curves.
    - Fixed Cut&Clone tool
    - fixed different multiselection problems
    - Correct volume highlight, there was problem with completely metallic shaders
    - Correct "Run brush along curve" - it was not working for some UI layouts.
    - Fixed problem of metalness painting with custom alphas.


  • Carlosan
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    Carlosan polycounter lvl 10
     Also, early build with sculpt layers, only for real enthusiasts may be downloaded there:

    http://pilgway.com/files/3dcoat/V4.8/3d-Coat-V4_8-20SL-64.exe

    All same features as in 20 version, but with sculpt layers. Sculpt layers are functional even with topology-breaking functions (LC etc), but with some obvious limitations, rather visual than technical (tangent smoothing on previous layers looks not good after hoding non-top layer).

  • Carlosan
  • Carlosan
  • Carlosan
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    Carlosan polycounter lvl 10

    Dear Friends,

    Please, accept our warmest greetings and best wishes of Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year! Thank you for being with 3DCoat and your support! May the inspiration and creativity abide with you! Have a great holiday time and a blessed next year!

    By tradition, we are happy to offer you our special Christmas deals! Starting from 6:00 PM (EET) on December 21 until 23:59 PM (EET) on January 9, 2019 we are offering $100 off on 3DCoat Professional and $20 discount on the Amateur license, therefore lowering the standard prices to $279 and $79 accordingly. Check out the Buy page to make use of this special discount.

    If you haven't yet checked our Beta for the Smart Materials store, you should go ahead and try it! Especially that we have some Christmas offers there as well! Save 50% on your Annual Subscription Plan! Get your Monthly Subscription Plan half-price for the next 6 months as well! Check out the offers available.

    Those are time-limited offers, so hurry up to get those deals before it's too late!

    Happy holidays!


    Sincerely yours, 
    3DCoat Team

  • Carlosan
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    Carlosan polycounter lvl 10

    Summer banner img

    We haven't been in touch for a while and it's time for some good news and announcements! Check out what we've got for you today.

    3DCOAT V4.9 RELEASED!

    We are releasing a new 3DCoat v4.9 Update featuring multiple fixes and new features, including new CutOff tool, improvements to the Paint, Sculpt, UV/Retopo room, New curves and so on.

    Check out the full changelog available here .

    Should you already own a 3DCoat license, feel free to download and install v4.9 here

    SUMMER SALE STARTED!

    One more good news for you: from July 23 until July 30, 2019 we will run our traditional Summer Sale!

    We have some good discounts on offer, so make sure to check those out and buy before it's all over!

    So, here's the deal: 
    1. You get $100 off on your 3DCoat Professional or Floating license!
    2. You get $20 off on your Amateur license! 
    3. Summer Sale discounts will be available from 4:00 PM (GMT+3) on July 23, 2019 until 10:00 (GMT+3) on July 30, 2019.

    GET 3DCOAT WITH DISCOUNT NOW!

    If you are new to 3DCoat, feel free to download and test our 30-day fully functional free trial here to test 3DCoat's toolset, before you decide to purchase.

    As always, you can find some useful links in our knowledge base of video tutorials with tips and tricks on how to use the tools of 3DCoat at their best. We would also like to draw your attention to our Training channel on YouTube, which is perfect for users who just started with 3DCoat.

    Thanks for your time and attention, we hope you enjoy the latest of 3DCoat!


    Sincerely yours, 
    3DCoat Team

  • Carlosan
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    Carlosan polycounter lvl 10
    3DCoat Black Friday Starts on November 29!

    By tradition here at Pilgway we arrange special Black Friday deals on 3DCoat. This year will be no exception: from November 29 till December 2, 2019 we will run our Black Friday sales.

    If you are considering a new 3DCoat license, expect some good deals coming. Make sure to visit www.3dcoat.com this Friday to find out all the details!

    If you are new to 3DCoat, feel free to download and test our 30-day fully functional free trial here to test 3DCoat's toolset, before you decide to purchase.

    As always, you can find some useful links in our knowledge base of video tutorials with tips and tricks on how to use the tools of 3DCoat at their best. We would also like to draw your attention to our Training channel on YouTube, which is perfect for users who just started with 3DCoat.

    Thanks for your time and attention, we hope you enjoy the latest of 3DCoat!


    Sincerely yours,
    3DCoat Team
  • Carlosan
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    Carlosan polycounter lvl 10
    BF banner img

    Our 3DCoat Black Friday Deals will be ending shortly!

    If you haven't grabbed your 3DCoat license at our Black Friday special price yet, you still got a few hours to get one! Make use of the discounts before December 2, 23:59 (GMT+2) to save $100 on your 3DCoat Pro or Floating license!

    Follow this link this link to grab your special offer!

    GET YOUR DEAL NOW!

    If you are not familiar with 3DCoat yet, Download its 30-day trial, it's free!


    Sincerely yours,
    3DCoat Team

  • Carlosan
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    Carlosan polycounter lvl 10

    Web version

    Christmas banner

    The magical and beautiful time of Christmas is coming! On the eve of the holidays we would like to extend you our warmest greetings and the best wishes of Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year!

    All our team behind 3DCoat are deeply thankful for being with us during this year, and we hope our collaboration will continue over the next year and onwards!

    As part of this festive season, we will be running our Christmas specials, including offers across all 3DCoat licenses as well as  Smart Materials . The deals will be offered from December 23, 2019 until January 7, 2020

    Please, keep an eye on our website for further details to be announced shortly.

    Thanks again for your support!

    Best holiday wishes!


    Sincerely yours,
    3DCoat Team

  • Carlosan
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    Carlosan polycounter lvl 10
    Christmas banner

    Dear Friend,

    Hope you've had a great New Year celebrations time. Happy 2020 to you and your folks!

    We are also sending our best wishes of Merry Orthodox Christmas to those of you who celebrate Christmas on January 7!

    We also would like to remind you the clock for our 3DCoat Christmas Deals is counting down. Place your order before January 7, 23:59 (GMT+2) to save up to $100 on your 3DCoat license:
    - Save $100 on your 3DCoat Professional or Floating license
    - Save $25 on your Amateur license
    - Get Indie subscription on Smart Materials at $7 a month
    - Get Company subscription on Smart Materials at $19 a month

    GET YOUR DEAL NOW!


    Yours sincerely,
    3DCoat Team

  • Carlosan
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    Carlosan polycounter lvl 10

    What's New in 3DCoat 4.9

     Introducing you the new 3DCoat 4.9.34 Update adding multiple useful tools and improvements, all to make your 3D art work faster, easier and better.

     

    IMPROVEMENTS:

    3DCoat now has native support of Blender via built-in AppLink!
    See videos on how to install and the export options - Video 2 and Video 3.

     

    Full compatibility with Quixel Megascans added! If you download a Quixel material into "Downloads" 3DCoat will automatically notify you that a new material has been downloaded and will offer you to install it as a material or shader.

     

    The same happens if you download a Smart Materials pack from the 3DCoat PBR Scans Store.

    Real-time Cloth Simulation in 3DCoat is now at a new level of quality and speed!

     

    Sculpt room got a new Bend tool added.

     

    - Possibility to bypass dialogs in Autopo menu.

    - Completely new Alphas creation mechanism.

    - 3DCoat imports external maps during PPP import in a much smarter way now. It recognizes gloss/roughness/metalness maps and puts them to the corresponding layers.

    - Full path to the texture shown in the Smart Material's hint.

    - If several UV sets use the same name, the user will be asked to rename, so the confusion could be avoided.

    - Tweaking vertex position with RMB updates mesh normals correctly now.

    - Correct text via F9 moved to the Help menu.

    - Correct symmetry support for all retopo/select commands. Split selected edges supports SHIFT snapping.

    - "On plane" constraints made accessible in the Retopo room.

    - Correct support of TIFF files (4.1.0) added, including Zip compression.

    - Removed old-style gizmos from the Curve/Text tools.

    - Baking of intersecting objects without "blur" between layers now.

    - Res+ works correctly for really large meshes (can subdivide up to 160m with 32 GB RAM).

     

    NEW IN BETA TOOLS:

    "Bend volume" tool to bend objects in-scene along the curve added.

     

    Jitters in the Bend Volume tool. Now, this tool can be used as an array of bent objects. For example, for scales or spikes over the skin.

    BaseBrush as a new universal mechanism to create custom brushes.

    Smart pinch brush as an example of a new brush system. It detects the crease point automatically.

     

    - 'H' hotkey works in curves editor as well.

    - ENTER in Curves editor will lead to fill area using the current tool for closed curves and brushing along the curve for open curves. It is exactly like it was for the old-style curves. If you need to run the brush along a closed curve - use the RMB menu for curves.

    - Eraser/Slice tool in new Curves.

    - Correct work of Strips in BaseBrush derivatives. "Stitches" brush as an example.

    - Curves editor window tweaked a bit - better control over points, snapping with SHIFT.

     

    FIXED BUGS:

    - Fixed Retopo -> Connect for vertices, now each pair of vertices split face only once per operation, it allows to create edge loops in sequence Edges->Cut->Connect.

    - Lag when navigating a 3D mouse fixed.

    - Fixed holes in the coverage of "Fill entire layer", "Fill layer" commands.

    - Fixed Retopo Import/Export - previously all edges were marked as sharp when importing, sometimes a crash was possible at export.

    - Fixed painting with smart material using the airbrush tool.

    - Correct Res+ for layers if layers' opacity is partial (slightly darker spots at the edge).

    - Paint->Transform tool works correctly with freeze.

    - Fixed painting with a rectangle over UV window.

    - Invisible faces in "flat" mode issue fixed.

    - Fixed problem of choosing new attached material by single click.

    - FBX & multiple UV sets problem fixed.

    - Fixed crash in the Magnify tool.

    - Fixed free-form primitives UI in retopo room.

    - AUTOPO from the main menu fixed.

    - CopyClay restored.

    - Restored pinning menu items.

    - Corrected running brush along the curve (no gaps).

    - Preventing the unexpected voxelization of the mesh when autosaving.

    - Holes problem in the toothpaste tool fixed.

    - Fill holes tool recovered.

    - Fixed surface corruption in voxel mode when the user switches from surface deformation to the move tool.

    - Fixed zero-ing eraser degree problem with hotkey.

    - Correct saving of cached volumes in case of huge scenes.

    - Fixed disappearing mode selector in Pose tool.

    - Fixed voxelization with auto-closing holes problem (mesh destruction in some cases).

    - Fixed problem with double undo after "Remove stretching".

    - Clone and Degrade under VoxTree restored.

    - RFill and seams problem fixed.

    - Correct stamp in the sculpting room.

  • Carlosan
  • Carlosan
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    Carlosan polycounter lvl 10

    As promised,

    for MacOS has finally been updated to 4.9.37 and available now! If you don't own a license yet, you can save $100 on it within the next 3 days: https://3dcoat.com/v4937/

  • Carlosan
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    Carlosan polycounter lvl 10

    Introducing our Nodes Editor, to be added to 3DCoat soon!

    Check out the video of this wip feature to see how it's coming along.  


    https://youtu.be/JDvDYU3nUAE
  • gnoop
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    gnoop polycounter
    It's  great news.   Make  your node system  Blender styled  with bypass M  and ability to scale final result  like Filter forge.      And be working alltogether with 3d coat layers, paintbrushes and  smart materials.             I am super tired of Substance Designer  and need something fresh.
  • Vexod14
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    Vexod14 polycounter
    Wowowow !! Huge addition to the already amazing texturing toolset guys ! I already love it ! ♥
  • Carlosan
  • gnoop
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    gnoop polycounter
    If  only 3d coat could do so by composing  decals/floaters/layers ,  could move /scale/ rotate them around  and blend together by depth info  being kind of "smart" object  not loosing resolution after each scale  or be just vector objects/shapes with bitmap fill.

    If  such miracle would ever happen  I ll forget about Substance Designer instantly and  would recall it only as a dreadful nightmare :)

    like this I mean

  • Vexod14
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    Vexod14 polycounter
    You can actually use height to constraint where to place your strokes, I did this on some tiling textures by simply loading height as curvature, then set a contraint to paint more on caveats and you're done

    For decals at some point you need to have a dedicated mesh or UVSet and in the case of a dedicated UVSet, being able to choose it when you paint your decals, as well as its resolution. 3DCoat probably does this but I'm more accustomed to add decals from a specific decals packed texture and directly tweak them in engine using heightmaps, paint maps, or far more optimized and simpler to use : one single Vertex color channel (if the game look relies heavily on such technique, else I may rather keep the precious vtx color data for something else ;))

    Just my thought on it =)   
  • gnoop
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    gnoop polycounter
    By decals I mean rather  something like Photoshop smart objects.    It's kind of possible to make them blend same way as this Mari video shows ( through  groups clipping)   but Photoshop is so slow and layer stack is insane for that.    

    As of tweaking in engine  I am talking not about actual in game decals  but rather texture compositing from ellements/ libraries.     I just don't understand why it's so much of a problem to recreate same approach  in a  texture soft.      It's a torture and a pain in  your ass to do so in Subs PAinter for example .  Even if it allows to switch off tiling  for a fill layer  and do depth blending in-between layers.

    I love how  3d coat allows to select a number of brush dabs and scatter things in a way you like , not relying on some procedural "splatter" that never does  it exactly  what you need.   But it seriously needs  that Mari style pick and scale gizmo  to move things around and  node network to blend layers  and masks.      I very much hope their recent  node video is about this.

    I dream about a soft where I could just drop some things from a library, re-shuffle them with repeating  through texture borders  and depth blending    and then scatter few small things along  vector guides  splines I could ever edit.

    In fact many vector graphic soft  is very close to that  but they never cared about  CG  or texture art .     So  my guess it would never happens during my lifetime.  :)



  • Carlosan
  • Carlosan
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    Carlosan polycounter lvl 10


    So, given we are in late August and still finalizing the next @3DCoatOfficial, we decided to launch it as 3DCoat 2021.
    It will be shipped within Q4 2020.
    More news soon.
    Thanks for your support, guys!

  • Carlosan
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    Carlosan polycounter lvl 10
    19.08.20 4.9.57 (stable)

    - Essential render update! Screen space reflections and lights! Much more realistic render. Works if Beta tools enabled and corresponding checkboxes enabled in render room.

    - Stencils supported in brush engine.

    - Angular pinch modified to change pinch and flatten independently. Roof pinch brush introduced.

    - A bit slowed translation with Space mode for better control, especially in ortho mode.

    - Boundary green ref image gizmo part works correctly.

    - Opacity slider for the color of the smart material layer. It solves the old standing problem when layers with white color are becoming transparent.

    - Fixed problem of N-Gon primitive in voxels when the inner radius is zero.
  • Carlosan
  • Carlosan
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