3D Coat Version 4 is Out!

[rcallicotte]

http://3d-coat.com/3d-coat-v4/

[Oshyan]

Interesting to see there's a Terragen render as a background on one of their demo images (done by freelancah).

- Oshyan

[efflux]

Interesting to see there's a Terragen render as a background on one of their demo images (done by freelancah).

- Oshyan

Yes, I saw that.

I'm giving it a test now. I haven't used it for a while. This app definitely ties in with TG2 in certain areas. You can sculpt terrain. That will be interesting now because I have a better computer. First time I tested 3D coat I was on a PIV but it had a decent graphics card. Now I have a 3.4 GHz quad i7 with Quadro FX 2000 and 16 gigs of RAM. I could have gone further with the graphics card but to be honest, I'm trying to do more 2D stuff at the moment. 3D Coat needs the graphics card power. So bearing this system in mind, first test was boosting up the res of an old voxel scuplt I did. Initially it was a few hundred thousand tris. I opened it in 3D Coat 4 and brought it to over 40 million tris which was over 6 gigs RAM and I randomly painted a load of textures on. I don't think I would want to go much higher unless I select certain regions to work on. The picture shows detail in the realtime render. Pretty good. This is on a Linux system by the way. That shouldn't be of much importance except I can't use Cuda because for some reason 3D Coat is back at Cuda 3 when I have Cuda 5.

Next I'll test some of the texture painting tools. This was previous a fall down area due to non multi threading.



I absolutely love the voxel sculpting. Not so much for this texture detail but because of the way you can quickly build up large forms. That's where it excells. No polys to screw things up.

[efflux]

Another point is that I found an amazing weapon for designing charactors, especially for ZBrush or 3D Coat. It's Photo Booth HD on OSX Lion with all the distortion effects. It's absolutely amazing if you have an HD webcam. I'm not posting shots though. They are hilarious but I'm worried people think I actually look remotely like the shots I took of myself. I'll have to find a proper reference photo first.

[efflux]

I've been through what were dodgy areas last time I tried.  I don't see any single core painting tool slow downs happening. It performs absolutely fantastically. It was always great in certain areas but now it's all great. I'd rather use this than ZBrush any day. ZBrush is good but it's a poor workflow. This app is heaven on the Cintiq.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=d8D1Kfz4BPQ

[TheBadger]

I think I need to look into this. People keep saying its got balls. And is less trouble too.

Efflux

Another point is that I found an amazing weapon for designing charactors, especially for ZBrush or 3D Coat. It's Photo Booth HD on OSX Lion with all the distortion effects.

Do explain this! Sounds interesting!

[efflux]

I think I need to look into this. People keep saying its got balls. And is less trouble too.

Efflux

Another point is that I found an amazing weapon for designing charactors, especially for ZBrush or 3D Coat. It's Photo Booth HD on OSX Lion with all the distortion effects.

Do explain this! Sounds interesting!

It's interesting for sure but like I've said, the pictures are seriously insane. Since they are me, I'm not posting until I find an actual proper picture of myself for reference.

OK, now for the bad news about 3D Coat. There are bugs. I'll try the Windows version as well. By the way, Modo is the same. Still buggy. This is one reason I use open source apps. They don't have all the bugs. I find it ridiculous when you pay for software and it has these giant bugs wheras open source free is massively more stable and reliable. Alpha version open source beats finsihed proprietary. This is absolutely pathetic. I put it down to the fact that many open source users are building versions straight after the developers release. You can do this via Git. The developers add the changes, you compile it with the new changes and if they have introduced a bug it's found straight away. TG2 is good in this respect. Very few bugs.

[efflux]

I booted out of Linux, tested Windows version, no major problems found except DX version is no good. It seems there is no ambient lighting - useless.  You have to use Open GL version despite advice from Pilgway. Booted back into Linux and the problems I was having are gone. It seemed to be with mouse or wacom pen. Tools were smashing holes in voxels and breaking after turning brush size to zero. I'll have to give this some time. There also appears to be some odd issue in texture painting where layering paint over other paint ends with nasty artifacts. I saw this on both Linux and Windows.

I did get to try Cuda on Windows. Some improvement with that but not earth shattering. I might get older Cuda for KLinux to get that working.

If this app finally works without issues it will be fantastic but I've experienced a few problems in various versions.

[efflux]

Cuda seems to be pretty much a disaster area because every app needs different versions.

[efflux]

The thing with 3D Coat is that it just doesn't get in your way at all. It's a joy to use. Much easier than ZBrush. I'm hoping these buggy things don't keep appearing but I'm not upgrading until I'm sure about this.

[efflux]

Every time I get back into these apps I start to lose interest again. 3D Coat always seem to have fantastic potential but things just don't quite work right. It's the same with Modo and nearly all these modelling or sculpting apps. The best workflow in any modelling app is Wings 3D:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vRsFAk-M_XI

Yeah, I know this looks like something fro the dark age but I've spent hours in Modo trying to do the same tasks only to find it isn't possible. The way the right mouse menu contextualises everything is great. In Modo, doing the same tasks is a nightmare despite the fact that it's not so much box like modelling.

[freelancah]

I can definitely recommend the software. I once had an issue that kept corrupting files and thought my project was lost forever. I sent mail to the dev and he fixed the issue within couple of days and sent me a new build.. never had such customer service

I did this dragon project where I had around 40-60 million triangles before retopo... I do have a pretty fast CPU, 480 gtx and 32gb ram which helps a lot, but still, seeing such numbers run smooth feels crazy I'm not a professional sculpter but I never had any issues of doing anything that I wanted..

[Bjur]

Hmn. In all a very interesting alternative to known heavy-weights out there which was flying under my nub-radar.

It seems to combine the good things of Z-Brush and Mudbox with an easier to learn interface/program structure.

3D-Coat gets also much love from sculpting/modelling professionals according to the props in the cgsociety forum.

Another great thing is the support of Connexxion's 3D mouses..

[efflux]

3D Coat is buggy at this end on Linux. I might contact them about it but Blender is just taking over everything now. You really have ask what is the point in using apps that cost money when the free ones seem to work better. I do really love what 3D Coat can do but I'm just tired of apps with problems. I have Modo. I can upgrade it but I'm actually choosing Blender instead. It's better for a whole host of things.