3D Coat

[efflux]

I never tried Mudbox. One of the few apps I never tried. People say it is good. I think a Mac version is coming and maybe it works on Wine as well but for a lot of time I was looking specifically at Mac and Linux apps. I've looked at people using Mudbox in tutorials etc and it looked quite straightforward. I have used ZBrush but ZBrush has things like the ZSpheres which are pretty cool and it has a beautiful realtime view which doesn't rely on Open GL shaders. However, 3D Coat is like a revolution especially with this voxel painting. You paint 3D shapes out of thin air with a brush. It's simply incredible but like I say it doesn't end there because it's other tools are brilliant. The only down side is that you definitely need a decent graphics card since it does use Open GL but it makes good use of the Open GL shading.

The guy who develops it is also games designer so that probably figures.

I've messed with modeling for years but was never satisfied probably because I come from a drawing background and poly modeling is very tedious. The only modeling app that interested me, at least for organic modeling, was ZBrush.

So now I can start doing modeling. Instead of dreading the tedium, this 3D Coat totally inspires you. You can doodle in 3D. I've found myself sculpting abstract shapes then suddenly seeing a face of something that I can work on further.

The reason it's bad news for a lot of these big industry standard apps is that people are not going to do any organic modeling or texturing in those apps any more. They have become animation apps. This means that something like Blender suddenly becomes very attractive because it's good for animation. All that's left is a good rendering engine.

An app like Silo is now totally redundant.

What we'll most likely see though is other apps suddenly having to take this on board. Poly modeling characters is now a dead concept. Only the topology afterwards needs sorted.

[efflux]

I still have faith in Modo though. The reason for this is the way that app operates across all it's tools but this will not show through completely until animation is finished. For example while an animation is running in Open GL you can change something on a model and you will see that change happening in the animation. It's not like a whole load of separate modes. Luxology got on this sculpting bandwagon though and failed miserably. I wouldn't do any sculpting or texturing in Modo. It's also got an extremely fast renderer which adds to it's potential animation power. I tested Modo on Linux. It works but not completely well. Rendering is fine though and I think even if Lux do not carry on with the Linux version of the whole app they will certainly have to have a Linux renderer.

[lightning]

i bought this a while back because i loved the trial so much and because i was so sick of zbrush i now use mudbox and 3dcoat and they work like a charm usually i do all the sculpting in mudox because thats what its best at then do the texturing in 3dcoat because its so easy to use!

[efflux]

Have you checked out the voxel sculpting? It's still alpha so problems are possible but it's amazing. I have huge faith in this 3D Coat because it seems like the guy totally understands how to make everything incredibly easy.

[efflux]

I've been through so many of these apps you wouldn't believe. First app was 3DMax. I spent ages in Lightwave then Cinema 4D (not bad). I tried Maya bu that didn't last long because by then I had tried other modeling apps with better concepts about how to model. Maya may be good for animation though. XSI didn't make it onto any of my systems and won't due to cost, insane licensing (couldn't even install it on Linux when there is a Linux version) and they ignore your mails. I've been through dozens of modeling apps. Can't even remember them all. Blender is still on my systems and gradually improves all the time. It's free so why not use it and it's pretty good anyway.

The problem now is rendering. That is an issue in Blender. I've tried this new GPL renderer called Luxrender. Great results but it's very slow. OK for stills I guess. Early days though. It may get a lot better. I'm not shelling out big bucks just for rendering. That's why Modo is an option. However there is some new cool stuff in the pipeline for future Blenders. This technology called Lightcuts for example. It all produces excellent results but too slowly.

[efflux]

It's on Apple's site now:

http://www.apple.com/downloads/macosx/imaging_3d/3dcoat.html

Apple diehards won't like that UI. Certainly not the default one. That is definitely an eyesore on the cool Aqua desktop. A new UI is coming apparently.

[lightning]

why don't you use Indigo renderer for blender you can get it on linux as well
its very realistic here are some shots


go to http://www.indigorenderer.com

[efflux]

I saw that and I know a lot of people use it and results are good. It's supposed to be reasonably fast compared to the others. However, I did read that it runs with Wine. Not that this is necessarily a problem but it seems that it's integration with Blender is not as good as Yafray and Luxrender. There is now another Yafray called Yafaray but you need a special Blender build meaning you have to step back several versions of Blender. Luxrender looks very hopeful for two reasons. It's integration with Blender is very good and easy. The other reason is that it's being developed by a studio that specializes in animation. That obviously means they will make it good for animation. It also runs as a standalone UI app with some control of threads etc. There is one minor downside. I can't presently run it in it's icc compiled version but only gcc which apparently is substantially slower. It says my CPU is not supported when I try to run it despite the fact that specs say it is. Since this renderer uses some heavy rendering techniques then every second counts or you wait ages.

Blender is not necessarily a must have part of the pipe but I'll be using it more soon. This is an area I will finally be starting to produce some work in due to decent software at last.

[efflux]

The Blender renderer is actually OK for some purposes. It's quite fast and would be fine for say something like that Big Buck Bunny movie they did but if you want realistic lighting it's not too good. No GI for a start. They just need to improve Blender's internal engine or use one that can utilize all of Blenders internal shaders etc seamlessly. Then Blender becomes a very serious app.

[efflux]

I'm loathed to spend a lot of money on software. The successful models seem to be small companies with sensibly priced software and now open source. I've spent money on audio software in the past. Protools and Logic Pro for example. Both now ditched for superior almost 100% free software. The only exception being occasional use of FL Studio. I've been through every terrible sequencer there is. This is why earlier in this thread (actually somewhere else on the forum I think) I said 99% of software is terrible because in my experience that is true and it's often entirely due to terrible UI.

[efflux]

Check out some of these renders from Luxrender. Most are modeled in Blender. Makes you wonder why anyone who is doing this kind of work is paying for software. Yes there are faster renderers but they'll cost you a fortune.

http://www.luxrender.net/gallery/main.php?g2_itemId=208

[efflux]

I looked at videos of Mudbox 2009. It looks good. I can understand why some people would choose this over ZBrush but let me get this straight. Mudbox is a painting app or at least that's part of it's function now but it has no color palettes and calls up the windows color picker!

[rcallicotte]

Don't be too excited.  For the price, they need to fix a whole lot of bugs.

Those Luxrender images are amazing.

I still have faith in Modo though.

[efflux]

I know of a big bug in my version of Modo 2.0.3 and I hardly even use Modo. The tabs at the top are supposed to change the layouts from model to paint etc. Try changing to your own layout and it doesn't save it right. It reverts back or something like that. Can't even remember but it's a bug that destroys the whole UI concept. Does Blender have a bug like this? No it would probably never get past the testing phase.

It's all hype and lack of substance.

This is the color controls of 3D Coat which is actually in flux at the moment because the bar on the right and the large color picker are becoming redundant. The large color picker opens when you click the small color boxes like Gimp or photoshop but it doesn't function quite right (doesn't choose colours until you click OK). You use the floating popup version on the left. Right click chooses primary colour and left click chooses secondary. These two colours can be randomly changed as you paint - gradations between these colours if you want. Then you have your palettes to save colour combinations. Notice that you can also bring a picture into the colour pickers. This is how any app calling itself a painting app needs to be. I watch Mudbox demo videos where people are opening the OS color picker then closing it to choose a single colour. Absolutely absurd. TG2 uses the OS colour picker but TG2 is a landscape app. It's not a priority but maybe we'll get colour gradients in the future.

[efflux]

I watched some videos of someone using Maya last night, not because it was Maya but I was just interested in a technique. Unbelievable and these people critique Blender. Maya may be very powerful but the UI is dire. Hundreds of icons and buttons everywhere and this guy (expert) was clicking on icons. What happened to keyboard shortcuts or do icons make you lazy. Windows everywhere then he had to use ACDSee image viewer because the Maya browser wouldn't preview some picture types. Of course he had the usual errors and virus software popping up in the Middle of this tutorial.

Blender has an image browser. It open as a panel in the main UI same way as a 3D view does. Easy but Blender is a disaster area apparently?

My feeling is that a lot of these people are justifying spending a whole shed load of cash rather than making any sensible arguments as to exactly why these apps are so superior.