3D Coat

Started by efflux, November 10, 2008, 05:42:13 PM

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efflux

This is fantastic software and not expensive either. Works on Linux Wine as well. Newer alpha versions have volumetric sculpting.

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

Will

interesting, seems like a lighter version of Zbrush to me though.
The world is round... so you have to use spherical projection.

rcallicotte

Efflux, have you tried it?  I remember seeing this before and can't remember much about it.
So this is Disney World.  Can we live here?

efflux

#3
I'm trying it now. On linux but that seems to be no issue whatsoever. At various websites people who use other apps such as ZBrush are raving about this app. I recognize some of these people so it's not BS. I know it's not BS because I'm using it myself.

It's a long time since I tried an app that is simply inspirationally easy to use and that performs amazingly.

$140 and the sculpting in 3D Coat absolutely flies part Modo's chonic sludge of a sculpting tool. There is no comparison. Modo does other stuff of course but it's $895.

3D Coat 3 (not out yet but in alpha which you can test) does volumetric voxel sculpting. It literally is like just sculpting clay out of thin air. I Haven't tried that version yet though.

It also has this easy to use re-topology tool. So you sculpt your form then re-topologize it to make a clean nicely structured mesh. This tool is way better than ZBrush's re-topology too.

This app will be a worry for ZBrush. Finally they have a serious competitor and good that it's the case because although ZBrush is a fantastic app, Pixologic are not such a fantastic company in my opinion. ZBrush works superbly on Linux EXCEPT it appears nobody can license it properly. Pixologic never respond on forms about Linux and they messed the Mac users around something terrible. Closing down any thread in the forum that complained about the ridiculous wait for ZBrush 3 Mac when the users had advance paid. A simple change to the licensing of ZBrush would create the Ultimate ZBrush because on Linux it performs way better even under Wine due to obviously far superior memory management.

I'll test 3D Coat on Windows as well.

efflux

It could turn out that the Windows system is much poorer because 3D Coat does use Open GL and I have a Quadro FX card on my Linux system but I'll test it anyway. I can hear the GPU scaling on this card firing up when I start 3D Coat because of the fan.

efflux

It's $125 if you buy before the 15 days demo runs out. Seems like a no brainer purchase and especially so if you run Linux.

Some of you may have messed with ArtRage. 3D Coat is like the ArtRage of 3D sculpting.

rcallicotte

Thanks for the mini-review.  I remember wanting to try it, but not having time. 
So this is Disney World.  Can we live here?

efflux

I'm learning this app now. I'll almost certainly be buying this unless I come across some major problem.

This app just takes all the hassle out of modeling completely.

Retopologize tools are awesome. It's unbelievably easy to use.

efflux

sayounara ZBrush.

This is some experiments with multi layered brushes in 3D Coat made from Mojoworld texture outputs.  I'm only scratching the surface. Haven't even tried the voxel sculpting. This is not a render but a screen shot of a small detail on a model from the realtime Open GL. 10 million polys no problems on an ancient computer.

This is a texture painter beyond anything. In fact infinite because it has photoshop style layers. You can go on forever with the complexity.

3D Coat is possibly the most awesome app I've come across.


Will

neat. May I use this space to promote another good texture thinger?

http://www.mapzoneeditor.com/
The world is round... so you have to use spherical projection.

efflux

That looks excellent. Detailed textures are really important. If you look at the full scene renders that use textures from Mapzone they are awesome. Mojoworld is pretty good just for textures as a byproduct rather than full landscapes but for me that's just because I know how to use it. It would be another story if you were starting from scratch, in fact highly inadvisable but Mapzone looks really cool. You could also create awesome brushes from that for use in 3D Coat. The point is that if you use procedural generation it means you can create different but related patterns for colour, depth, specular etc. You can't do that with photos.

efflux

It also looks as though the tiling is really nice.

efflux

#12
Bear in mind that TG2 is a pretty good procedural texture generator. It needs more fractal power and basis functions which is why I'm using Mojo for this stuff. No doubt Matt will add this. More fractal power, a curve graph and colour gradient is all that is needed.

Also, this 3D coat can work in a number of cool ways with TG2. You can make brushes from TG2 textures but you can also sculpt terrains in 3D coat for use in TG2. I'm going to experiment with this a bit.

If you think about how you might make or edit heightfields in a 2D app like photoshop then think of 3D Coat as the same but giving you a full real time 3D view. It has all the layer blending, masking etc of photoshop along with a bunch of texturing tools like fractals.

rcallicotte

Efflux, I'd like to see something to better understand where you're going with this. 
So this is Disney World.  Can we live here?

efflux

I'm going to try some other things in particular things that relate to TG2 but!

OH MY GOD I'm now running 3D Coat 3 ALPHA40 volumetric sculpting. Most superb computer graphics app EVER!

By the way, you need a decent graphics card because I tried it on my windows system which has an old radeon. Not too good but then again the app is cheap so a decent graphics card is worth it.