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.

Hi chippwalters and good morning.

> "...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...

These are the main links :

http://www.instantlightrt.com/

https://www.marmoset.co/

Best!

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.

Anyway...see you and have a nice day!

Marco,

I, too, have Thea! :-)

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.

> "...GTX 1080 + 980ti..."

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 :)

Best,

Hi chippwalters, how are you ? I hope fine.

I was very glad to see that you have started to do some interesting tuts dedicated to 3DCoat beginners.

3D Coat Understanding Voxels
https://youtu.be/N6AFxyCNvPY

3D Coat Live Clay
https://youtu.be/I9qMtMhrRbs

Thanks a lot!

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).

Ciao!

Hi Marco and others,

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:

Hi Chipp and good morning!

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.

Merry Christmas to everyone and see you!

- Marco (mkdm)

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..

Hi Chipp,

> You wrote : "My ideal concept modeling workflow would be a bit different from yours:..."

It's a very interesting workflow, but there's a thing that I don't understand.
The points 2 and 3 (Paint and Magically RETOPO) shouldn't be swapped ?
That is, I usually follow this workflow :
1) Create voxel/surface high poly models
2) Retopo
3) UVing
4) Paint and texture
5) Export all to Render software

> You wrote : "... I use the Hide Voxel mode as well. It's better than the Split..."

I agree with you. I have seen too that Split has that bad behavior.

P.S.
Just for an additional info, some minutes ago the InstantLight dev team has released the FIRST public beta of IL.
(Stable FREE TO TRY PUBLIC BETA DEMO V 1 . 97 E)
It is still currently in uploading and in a few minutes it will be available for downloading.
You can get it using this page : http://www.instantlightrt.com/beta-demo.html

See you and best wishes for all your works.

- Marco (mkdm)

Hi Chipp,

I'm a bit curious how come you have decided to go with 3DCoat instead of ZBrush?

Lately i am considering to learn either 3DCoat or ZBrush and i really just can't decide which one to choose
to learn since i kind of don't want to go through "just try both and see which one you like" process.

I know pros and cons of both software and what is the main differences between those but still, you know,
one day i see someone doing great stuff with 3DCoat, few days later something awesome in ZBrush again.
Or if happens very possible scenario where i start learning 3DCoat, buy licence and then few month later ZBrush 5 gets released
and who knows maybe with Voxels workflows, better painting tools (PBR), etc...maybe not, but i have that type of luck so it's
actually very possible. :)


So why did you decided to go with 3DCoat? Any very specific reason?


Thanks!

Hi klaudio,

First of, to be sure, I'm not a topology modeler expert. In fact, I'm not a 3D modeler expert-- and I say that so that you understand my purpose for using programs like MoI3D, SketchUp and now 3D Coat.

( I also use Lightwave* as a SubD modeling tool-- but for different reasons. FWIW, I'm also now starting to play around with Unity and UE4. I like KeyShot as a main renderer, though Octane is fun, but not finished enough for me. )

The single most important point issue for me w/regard to modeling (and rendering) is simple: It must have an easy to learn, easy to use, and fast to develop with UI. The purpose for this is I don't spend all my time in the 3D world. I use lots of other programs, (Pshop, Illustrator, AE, Muse, Videoscribe, etc.) and even spend time programming from time to time-- plus I am a business strategy design consultant and while sometimes this requires me to use 3D, it also requires lots of other skills as well.

So, if I learn a program, like MoI3D, it may be months before I use it again and I need to be able to jump back in without much help.** In order for this to work for me, the programs I choose to work with may in fact allow for trade-offs. For instance certainly MoI3D's major selling point is the acceptable trade-off of a great intuitive interface vs the ultimate power of other harder to use products, like Rhino (which I also have a license for but choose not to ever use).

Sorry for the long winded soliloquy, but IMO it's important to understand the reasons I use for choosing one product over the other.

So, in looking at both products, and my requirements for hard surface concept modeling and speed, 3D Coat eventually was the correct choice. But frankly, I originally started to look again at 3D Coat (via help at these forums) as the fastest and best way overall to quickly create UV maps for MoI3D, while also providing a decent PBR mapping solution. It's like getting a great UV mapper with very basic PBR capabilities of Substance Painter (and Designer).

Even if you do nothing else but UV map MoI3D objects and texture them (a good tute for that), 3D Coat is definitely worth the price.

I had actually tried hard surface modeling in 3D Coat years ago and concluded it just wasn't up to the task. Fortunate for me, Marco and others here on the forums pressed me to give 3D Coat a try for modeling. Just as going from the poly world of SketchUp and Lightwave to the NURBS world of MoI3D, switching over to voxels is a bit mind bending.

I spent a good amount of time researching workflows and purchased several tutorial video series, among my favorite ones include:

• Jama Jurabaev https://www.learnsquared.com/courses/intro-3d-concept-design
• Scott Turner udemyTutorials https://www.udemy.com/3d-coat-robots/learn/v4/overview
• Fuad Quaderi https://gumroad.com/fuad3d

I pretty much viewed them all in that order. I would download them to my iPad and watch them on trips (I got a lot done on a trip to China!).

Jama pointed me to the potential of using 3D Coat as a sketch tool, like Photoshop. He also focused on just enough detail where you don't need things perfect-- which is really hard for a NURBS person to grok. In fact, I saw some Zbrush KeyShot renders and thought they were a bit 'doughy' and wondered if tight models can be had in topology modelers. Jama's tutes showed using scale and complexity to fight 'doughy.' Plus he had some interesting KeyShot hacks as well. Sadly, Jama's 'basic teaching' of 3D Coat wasn't very good. Overall, I was quite satisfied with his tutorials, even though they were the most expensive.

Scott Turners tutorials are great for the basics. While not as exciting as Jama's, he did spend more time going over the tools and how to use them. Also good value.

A 3D buddy of mine on the west coast turned me on to Fuad's tutes. They have no sound or captions, so aren't of great value other than watching and taking notes. At first I was quite disappointed, but then I did find some interesting techniques. I suspect his and Jama's will provide for more insight as I continue making progress.

You know the difference between voxels and pure topology, and I'm told 3D Coats voxels are superior for quickly sketching with geometry. I'm pretty sure those interested in creating cartoon figures, dinosaurs or other character modeling may wish to use ZBrush as I believe it can create even finer resolution maps (normal and distortion) but I think it's more of a Rhino solution than a MoI3D Solution.

One serious caveat for 3D Coat. You cannot UV map a voxel model. That means you can't use the great PBR shaders and UV map tools unless you RETOPO the voxel model-- which for a model like the one above is quite a problem. It has 8 million polys and no UV mapper I know of can auto map it-- including 3D Coat's own auto mapping routines. The same is not true for ZBrush with regard to KeyShot-- as they have a special KeyShot plugin so there can convert the high density models with PBR maps intact. This is a major PLUS for ZBrush. Plus smart PBR shaders can help hide surface defects of topology modelers. All that said, I really don't know how well any of this works in ZBrush and would be interested to learn more.

I'm still trying to figure out the simplest way to get from voxels to UV mapped polys in 3D Coat. The RETOPO function is fairly powerful, and I suspect I'll just have to dive in.

Lastly, one of the more important and new features of 3D Coat is it's Live Clay feature. With this it's possible to create stunning levels of tiny detail which help fight off the 'doughy' look. Oh, and if you're into 3D printing, 3D Coat is really good with it as voxels are solid, unlike ZBrush polys.

Congrats if you've made it through this rather long-winded reply. I'm always looking for faster and easier ways to generate concepts. Below is a couple of concept models I created in only a couple hours today. Could never have done this with NURBS or Polys that fast. :-)

* Lightwave is the exception as I learned it 20+ years ago. It's very complex, but I've put in enough hours to figure my way around when I need to!
** An interesting way I do this is when I begin to learn a program (MoI or 3D Coat), I document some of the most important things I need to learn via YouTube which makes it easy for me to go back and learn them in case I forgot! MoI3D channel -> https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLnK-YGmMYI75_4Bn8HT4HNVkaMp3y1tSw

Chipp Walters said:

"One serious caveat for 3D Coat. You cannot UV map a voxel model. That means you can't use the great PBR shaders and UV map tools unless you RETOPO the voxel model-- which for a model like the one above is quite a problem. It has 8 million polys and no UV mapper I know of can auto map it-- including 3D Coat's own auto mapping routines. The same is not true for ZBrush with regard to KeyShot-- as they have a special KeyShot plugin so there can convert the high density models with PBR maps intact. This is a major PLUS for ZBrush. Plus smart PBR shaders can help hide surface defects of topology modelers. All that said, I really don't know how well any of this works in ZBrush and would be interested to learn more."

How about this: While in Voxel mode, export your high-res model under "export object" then start with an empty scene and import your high-res model with "import per pixel painting", which then creates an UV Map with the size of your choice and you can use then your PBR shaders. This should give you the results you are after, imho.

Regards
Stefan

Hi Stephan,

Yes, I've tried that but for 8 million poly objects, it just won't work.

I'm trying a new workflow, where I'm decimating the OBJs (by 70%!) before exporting (using the Decimate command under Geometry Window). The biggest problem with this is I really don't know how this will effect my Live Clay topology.

I may consider adding in the really small details in PAINT (normal and diffuse) instead of using D Clay.

More tests...

UPDATE: Amazingly, even a DECIMATION of 86% and the very small detailed polys are kept well. Now this is a superb answer to the issue:-)

Hi Chipp and good morning.

I want to thank you for this HUGE sharing!!

It contains many very interesting points of view, and also the link to the tuts you bought are very useful.

I put your post into my list of preferred :)

Have a nice day,

- Marco (mkdm)

Thanks Marco.

Here's what I've figured out so far>

You can just about retain perfect voxel resolution with a DECIMATE of 70-85%. The problem is you need to do this for each and every layer (shortcut key!) In the picture below are 3 of the same models at various levels of polygon reduction.

The closest part (far left) is the original 4.1M poly model. Notice the little parting line on the side of the top.
The next part is the model with a 70% DECIMATION equaling 1.2M polys.
The next part is the model with an 85% DECIMATION equaling 620K polys.
The last part is if you just EXPORT as SCENE and try and reduce polys then. It is set at 80% and is 831K polys.

As one can see, there's little change on the three on the left. The EXPORT as SCENE option with reduce polys is no good. So, each and every layer should be manually decimated somewhere between 70-85% (as they suggest).

This enables exports that can then be reimported and PBR mapped, then exported again.

Here's the model tests (rendered in KeyShot-- click to view full size)



And here's a quick proof of concept where I created a model, decimated it, then added PBR maps in 3D Coat and exported to KeyShot!

Hi Chipp!

> You wrote : UPDATE: Amazingly, even a DECIMATION of 86% and the very small detailed polys are kept well. Now this is a superb answer to the issue:-)

I tried myself and it works for me too!! Thanks a lot.

For the test I'm using both InstantLight latest public beta and Marmorset Toolbag 3 : All worked fine.

But I'm waiting next tutorials from InstantLight creators to see how to use their new "standard vertex shaders" to directly
render voxel/high-poly objects painted directly in 3DCoat.

I know that, like you said, InstantLight has a very "peculiar" and strange UI.
I don't like it at all and I said this to the developers team, but IL also present here a new Bridge to 3DCoat still undocumented and I'm really curious
to see how it works.

Realtime Global Illumination with IL seems to be much, much faster than Toolbag 3.

Anyway, it seems that all this new tools are helping me a lot to complete a very good and effective workflow that meets my needs :

Nurbs : Moi/Rhino
Poly SDS : NVIL/Rocket 3F and sometimes the old but ever green DAZ Hexagon 2.5
Voxels, High poly sculpt, retopo/uving, 3D paint : 3D-Coat
Realtime renderer : Beta testing of InstantLight while taking a look also at Toolbag 3
OffLine renderer : Thea Render

It seems that all these things are finally getting closer to square the circle!

Ciao !

- Marco (mkdm)

Hi Chipp!!

Wonderful contribution!!! Thanks a lot!!

I suppose that prototype modelling has never been so fast before 3DCoat!!

The decimation quality is superb in most cases!

But I think that we can still do a BIG BIG step about the quality of the Hard Surface and the Hard edges.
3DCoat can do much better in that field and also I have to learn a lot to achieve this task.

I think that the 3DCoat forum and its Youtube channel can help us a lot.

Thanks again and have a nice day.

- Marco (mkdm)

Just a quick render to see how the PBR textures in KeyShot 'take.' There's still work to be done there. I may try it in Octane.