Hi Marco,

All good points. My ideal concept modeling workflow would be a bit different from yours:

1. Use 3D Coat as a SPEED MODELER to generate forms quickly and easily
2. Paint and decal models IN 3D Coat
3. Magically RETOPO the file including normal, displacement and all PBR maps
4. Export to UE4 / Unity
5. Setup lighting, GI and then use Octane to auto-bake photoreal textures
6. Animate and/or VR to my life's content!

As far as Industrial Design workflow goes, I'd probably use 3D Coat as only a concept modeler, then export a very reduced mesh in MoI3D for 'trace over' to create CAD (I did this same workflow using SketchUp to create the Ambulance Drone). I think 'trace over' should be faster than RETOPO for creating true CAD models. That being said, there are certain to be some models which require the precision of MoI3D to create from the start. Models which focus primarily on straightforward and more simple geometry-- or car body type surfaces.

Do you know if the Instant Light folks can take in a 3D Coat PBR Painted scene?
I'll look into the Proxy Mode. Haven't played much with that yet.

If you look at my videos, I use the Hide Voxel mode as well. It's better than the Split mode as far as creating separate 'PARTS.' Split creates overlapping parts in some instances. It seems like Hide Voxel does have some weird bugs though. Sometimes when I Objectify Hidden, it doesn't remove the hidden from the original model.

Unfortunately, Instant Light will be difficult for me to rationalize learning their very difficult UI as I already have both Octane (a tough UI in itself) and KeyShot. I would recommend they consider going the Octane route and building plugins for other easy to use software, like SketchUp, Lightwave, Cinema4D, etc..