1) > I'd like to be able to do the same in 3D Coat as it 'fills' a hole in my 3D arsenal.
For me too 3D-Coat is the "missing link" between Nurbs (Moi/Rhino) and Poly/SDS (Rocket3F/NVIL).
2) > unless you have mad sculpting skills and a wacom-- neither which I have or intend to have.
If you want to easily work with sculpting software, for some situations a Wacom it's necessary.
I can suggest you the "Wacom Intuos Pro Medium". An excellent product with very good cost/benefit ratio.
I often use it and it's a big time saver.
3) > BTW, as long as you're giving tips, how would you add the flex hose pattern to a hose object created with curve as in this picture. (I know, it's easy to do with flow in MoI!)
Here's a simple tut the I have made for you and it's about the Spline tool.
The example is very coarse and easy, but with the right time it's possible to do sharper and polished models.
I suggest you to do it in Voxel mode and eventually, if you want, you can further transform the object to Surface mode.
Splines works well also in Surface mode but are much, much more heavy and time consuming because
drawing with Spline tool involves boolean operations, that are very heavy in Surface mode.
4) Also, how does one create 'glass' in PBR?
As I wrote some times ago one of the actual features that PBR in 3D-Coat misses it's just materials with Transparency/Refraction Index.
At Pilgway they are working on it.
GREAT tutorial. Thanks. I was able to follow along and replicate quickly. I'll keep that in mind.
I tried a Wacom years ago and it didn't suit me. I prefer a direct drawing approach at this time (and I do so on my iPad Pro with Pencil). Thanks though for the suggestion.
Yes, I did see the glass textures from this same link you sent previously. I wonder how they do it? Any ideas?
> Yes, I did see the glass textures from this same link you sent previously. I wonder how they do it? Any ideas?
Hmmm....no, no idea right now.
My texturing/painting skill is yet very coarse because I'm focusing mostly on modelling.
I can only say that all those stuff was made by a certain "MICHAEL BITSAKIS Lead 3D Artist , Render Expert at Instant Light PBR Renderer",
and looking at his catalog (https://www.artstation.com/artist/michaelgdrs) I think that he is a very skilled man in texturing and rendering :)
Let's take a look at these pages for a better understanding of its products (including 3D-Coat PBR materials) :
P.S. It seems that this upcoming realtime renderer "Instant Light PBR Renderer" it's very promising.
Reading the article at http://www.instantlightrt.com/try-buy.html, this renderer will be a perfect companion for 3D-Coat.
In the article we can read :
"Plugins / Presets for your favourite paint software (3D-Coat).
Officially on next Beta release of 3D Coat
(Paint room -- Export Objects and Textures -- Instant Light )"
thanks for the link for InstantLight renderer. Another one which i like very much and use (under OS X) is Marmorset Toolbag2, which supports PBR workflow from 3DCoat too. Turntables renders super fast and have more settings than 3DCoats render engine.
Ok I already knew Marmorset Toolbag2 and it's an excellent product but it costs about 150USD (or more) while
InstantLight in preorder it's only 50USD.
And it promises a lot....CPU + GPU, AO, CLayRender, etc...
Hi Chip
I seem to remember seeing some discussion around the interpretation of the 3d Coat competition rules. There was some ambiguity and an implication that any other software could be used in addition to 3d Coat. So its possible that some entries would not have been purely done in 3d Coat. I must go have a look.
Thanks for your 3d Coat tutorial. I didn't know about making decals before I watched it.
Regards
Keith
Added many new shaders very useful for prototyping purposes and
a new exporting preset for the all brand new beta InstantLight realtime renderer!!
(I'm a beta tester of this product)
Thanks for keeping me up-to-date. Been working with 3D Coat a bit lately-- still trying to find it's "place" in my workflow...
On another subject, I'm trying to put Octane into my render pipeline and using SketchUp to do the scene setup-- what a mess. Not sure it will work as the SU plugin is of quite dubious quality!
FWIW, I do like how 3D Coat has hierarchies, instancing and grouping. Michael, you might want to take a peak if you haven't.
Basically, they use "Layers" (as in Pshop) with the standard layer controls (delete, duplicate, new) at the bottom of the palette. You can drag layers around to form hierarchies. Each layer as a 'settable' origin as in translation and rotation zero-sets. This way you can rotate and move wherever you want and still bring it back to zero.
> "...On another subject, I'm trying to put Octane into my render pipeline..."
I see that you are particularly focused on the production of "concept 3d design".
So...why don't you move yourself to the world of the new and extremely powerful "realtime PBR rendering" ??
This kind of product is getting better and better and in most cases they surpass even the quality of standard renderer but at a fraction of time.
I have used for some time Marmorset Toolbag 2, an excellent and very robust PBR render engine, and now they announced their ToolBag 3!
But now I decided to give a serious chance to the all brand new InstantLight, the newest PBR render engine on the market,
that leverages on latest and extremely powerful DirectX/CUDA GPU.
I'm a beta tester of this product and I can say that is very promising and above all its developing team is giving to it a very good
workflow when coupled with 3D-Coat!
And they announced that in the next betas we will have for the first time "VERTEX SHADER FOR VOXELS!!!!"
The developing team is working extremely hard on it and also it's UI is in a beta stage.
And, last but not least, InstantLight it's half the price of ToolBag 3...
Already purchased it. Doesn't work on Mac yet, but that's not a problem.
As you know, it's much more difficult to create full on photoreal images using realtime PBR. Vray, Octane and even KeyShot still do a better job. That said, I have been experimenting in UE4 and PBR and Occulus to work out the best photoreal.
I do plan on playing around with the new beta of InstantLight as soon as possible. :-)
> "...As you know, it's much more difficult to create full on photoreal images using realtime PBR..."
Yes, you're right. In fact I also own a license of the very good Thea Render
that I use for true photorealistic renderings, thanks above all to its wonderfull unbiased engine.
But with my actual config (the best that I can have for the moment), true photorealistic renderings take too much time,
even if with the Thea Render's presto CPU+GPU engine the overall quality of renderings its quite good with a decent amount of time.
(My actual config is Clevo Laptop i7 4790K 4.4 Ghz, 32 Gb Ram, SSD 512 and fair good but not so powerful and modern Nvidia Quadro K3100M 4GB).
But I must say that PBR engines really impressed me because they're getting better and better.
Octane is damn impressive with it's realtime UNBIASED renderer, and runs pretty darn fast on my GTX 1080 + 980ti. Plus it has support for atmospherics and particles, which are key to great scene renders. I look forward to trying Instalight, as I know it has atmospherics and particle support as well. It'll be interesting to see if they can figure out the UX/UI as that's one of the strengths of programs like MoI and KeyShot.
What can I say ?
....both extraordinarily powerful GPUs!!! (..and much much expensive....)
But, I must admit that I love Quadro cards because they're unreachable when we talk about precision and speed for CAD modelling.
Even if they're not so powerful in DirectX PBR as GTX and Titan cards.
I hope that within a couple of years I can save some money to get a brand new Quadro card...but it's hard to say :)
Currently I'm playing with the latest beta 4.7.18 and it seems marvelous!
It also has a preset for the all brand new InstantLight realtime renderer (still in beta).
An update on my continuous journey to work between every know modeler, renderer and video pipeline workflow. :-)
I've been giving 3D Coat and pretty good workout lately. I certainly am no expert, but I have figured out a few things.
Here's what I've created in the last couple days. The larger model took a bit over 4 hours. I think I can do a similar (but better) in under 3 hours easy. This is a marked improvement to my SketchUp and MoI 3D speed concept modeling. I expect this model would take me a couple days in MoI and even longer in SU (due to radiuses).
Here's the first test techbox, then the second:
There is considerable artifacting in some areas-- I'm still learning. I know I can get the artifacting much better, so I'm not too worried.
Here are the PROs for working first in 3D Coat:
1. You can create unimaginable shapes and iterate extremely quickly. These designs are much harder to conceptualize in poly or nurbs modelers.
2. FAST and forgiving. Like working in a 3D version of Photoshop
3. Renders pretty good in KeyShot and Octane
CONs
1. I don't know if you can RETOPO the more complex one at all. I suspect if you try, all the speed gains you will then lose.
2. You can PBR texture it, but you can't export with the textures UNLESS you RETOPO (at least that's my understanding)-- kinda sux because the PBR textures are truly stunning.
3. HUGE file sizes. The more complex one was 8 million polys. The other around 4 million. Ouch! That's why they're unable to be UV mapped for PBR.
4. Other than 3D printing they can't be used for CAD or really anywhere else unless you figure out how to RETOPO.
5. Can only be rendered with textures and decals in 3D Coat and KeyShot AFAIK. Perhaps Instant Light, too. Trying to learn more but it's a strange program with a very strange non standard interface (which I'm not all that interested in learning-- I wish other people would take a page out of Michaels book on using standardized and simple interfaces!)
For those interested, here are some videos of the journey so far:
For what I see I can say that you're traveling the right way with 3D-Coat and your knowledge of that software is steadily growing!
My compliments!!
It's true that I'm a fan of 3D-Coat and then I know I'm a bit partial, but I think that 3D-Coat in some specific areas is becoming a very powerful
product, deserving to be inlcuded in every semi-professional or even professional 3D pipeline.
It undoubtedly still lacks in some specific area, like for example its loss of support for super high texture resolution
or its retopo editor a little bit limited, but in Pilgway they're thinking to expand the retopo editor to make it a TRUE polygonal (and maybe SDS) editor.
And, above all, we are talking about a software that for the full version costs only 379 USD !!!!
A super low crazy price!!!
For what is my (still) little experience with 3D-Coat I see that the major difficulty is to use in the correct way the workflow voxel-surface and vice-versa.
The best is always : starting with voxel to model the main body and then jump to surface mode with LiveClay or "Remove Stretching" option for model
all the details.
Also I've been practicing with "Proxy Mode", a largely unknown technique that can save a lot of time jumping back and forth from macro and micro modifications of the models.
During my experiments of hard surface modelling I often use this workflow :
1) I first model the main bodies using Rhino/Moi or NVIL/R3F (Poly/SDS)
2) Import the models into 3D-Coat's Voxel room using the obj file ONLY as a "mold", just to FILL the voxel area.
3) Into 3D-Coat I work with high-poly voxel models
4) I use often the "Vox Hide" + "Objectify hidden" or "Split" commands to break the main body into the various parts.
> You wrote : "...Can only be rendered with textures and decals in 3D Coat and KeyShot AFAIK. Perhaps Instant Light, too. Trying to learn more but it's a strange program with a very strange non standard interface (which I'm not all that interested in learning-- I wish other people would take a page out of Michaels book on using standardized and simple interfaces!)"
I totally agree with you about InstantLight's UI.
Although I'm a beta tester of IL and I think that it's a very powerful software and a new "fresh air" into the RealTime renderer panorama,
I totally don't like its absurd UI.
But from tests I made so far, it seems to be more powerful and faster than the famous Marmorset Toolbag 3, especially regarding the Global Illumination.
Furthermore there's one thing that seems to be very promising : The creators of IL announced that the next first official version of IL will have
the support for Vertex Shaders!!
In that way it will be possible to import high poly voxels and directly assign materials to them without the need to do a retopo low-poly version
of the models.
All good points. My ideal concept modeling workflow would be a bit different from yours:
Use 3D Coat as a SPEED MODELER to generate forms quickly and easily
Paint and decal models IN 3D Coat
Magically RETOPO the file including normal, displacement and all PBR maps
Export to UE4 / Unity
Setup lighting, GI and then use Octane to auto-bake photoreal textures
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..
