The Current update info on 3D Coat.

ok, it seems beta update postponed again... Too much changes and too raw still. The upcoming list of changes:

1) selecting packs of faces/verts/edges and operating them
2) subdividing individual faces, incremental subdivision (if you have subdivided some face and want to subdivide neighbour face later, it will be subdivided like they was subdivided at once)
3) splitting any configuration of edges, nor only edge rings
4) merging vertices together
5) making retopo mesh from current low-poly mesh
6) import retopo mesh
7) interface adjusting
8) cursor flicking fixed
9) GMA945 issue fixed (i hope)
10) importing mesh with 3 types of uv-smoothing (smooth but keep edges, smooth all, smooth but keep corners)
11) baking tool improvement (speed, bugfixes and possibility to work with input meshes with many uv-sets)
12) maybe something forgotten....

Will.
Most apps seem to dislike ngons. The quality of MoI .obj saves without ngons seems just perfect to me.
Are Ngons something that really are of value?----

Brian

.

Hi Brian, nope, in lieu of "Export Zen" (all quads), my models typically have NGons.

From past experience, I just try to avoid triangles like the plague since they always caused ugly facets in my surfaces when trying to render.

Granted, this avoidance was developed in "earlier generation" applications, Rhino v2 for example - the exports from there were so ugly going into lightwave at the time it made it unusable for me. (Of course now we know that LW has it's own issues with how it's not all that great with surface smoothing or working with surface normals)

However, majority of times I don't need to subdivide my models, just load, perhaps a bit of retopo, and paint.

Local subdivision and sculpting is nice (dents and dings for example) but not always necessary for me. 3D-Coat immediately wants to subdivide your model upon import (unless I'm missing something on that import dialog...)

I'll take your advice and see what triangles and quads will do for me (ultimately everything reduces down to tris anyway...)

I'll pop in and ask if there are any plans to better support hard surfaces - no import subdivision, just working at the poly level; retopo, and some minimal poly edting (which seems to be in there already.)

-Will