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More 3DCoat Tests

I’ve been using 3DCoat quite a bit since I started testing it. I don’t think I can comfortably go back to using Blender’s sculpting much having used it; it just lacks a lot of the features 3DCoat has by default, or, it has them, but they’re awkward to set up, and, at least on my device, the performance is far better in 3DCoat than the equivalent polycount in Blender, and its painting and retopology tools are very convenient.

But, I’m still not entirely solid on how I should be using it. What level of detail to use, how I should block out limbs. The voxel sculpting is convenient for making a base mesh shape by putting together some primitives, but I don’t like that method. It doesn’t feel good for me, and I find it awkward, especially in the absence or convenient transform hotkeys like Blender, where I just have to press one button and move my mouse. Or it could have those, and I just haven’t discovered them yet. I wonder what the best resolutions are to work at when doing various things, such as blocking out, starting to get more detailed, etc. I’d prefer to be able to sculpt without thinking about that, but if I went to a high resolution straight away, I’d end up with something lumpy. Although, that also depends on the brush size.

For starters, I’ve been doing more faces.

I’m not very good at faces. That was one I did a few weeks ago, and it’s quite poor. I didn’t reference, since I was just doing it for practice with the software, mostly, but it’s still bad. It also looks too much like the same face I do if I do a head without thinking about it. I’ve been wanting to gain variety, so I tried doing different heads, too.

I quite liked how that one came out. I like wider noses like that better than sharp and narrow ones. I still need to tackle eyes more, though. They’re something I’m awful at. I should practice more on those, too. I think my current experiments with different detail levels won’t apply to eyes, though, since they’re likely to be detailed just by being the way they are.

I also experimented with some torsos. I didn’t reference, so they’re also flawed, but the main point was learning what works better. This first one, I tried a resolution of 2.00, but using smaller strokes. It was a bad one, I think; I found it became lumpy easily even after smoothing, and didn’t really benefit from it. It was slightly clearer crap.

The next one, I tried a similar level of detail, but using broader brushes. I haven’t tried smoothing this out yet, but I feel better about it; I was able to build up the general shapes more easily, while still being fairly clear. I used the General Clay brush to just build this up and carve bits out, unlike my usual method that uses the General Clay brush to make the general shape, then the Flatten brush to make it into the shape I want.

I still have a few days left on my 3DCoat trial that I want to make the most of. And apply this to proper models.

Testing 3DCoat

Recently, I’ve been playing with the trial version of 3DCoat. A problem I’ve been having with Blender that’s been frustrating me is the sculpting performance. When watching timelapses of other people sculpting, I noticed that often, even with single bits like an arm or a leg, they could easily go into hundreds of thousands of faces and above, especially when smoothing, adding creases, etc. In Blender, I can only get to about 100,000 triangles before it starts to slow down slightly, particularly when trying to undo. At a minimum, with the detail level I use, I need around 200,000 – 300,000 for a full body, but the performance really starts to become slow and problematic. It’s just totally insufficient for me. I don’t tend to make extremely high detail meshes, but I’d like the option, and better performance in general, so I started looking at other digital sculpting programs. I’m ignoring ZBrush; though it’s considered the industry standard as I understand it when it comes to digital sculpting, I’m a hobbyist, and don’t need industry standard….And I certainly don’t need industry standard price. There’s no way I can afford it.

I looked at Mudbox first, as it’s immediately the cheapest one that I know of. It’s about £12 a month, last time I checked, which seems to be the most affordable, at least per payment. But, when I tried out its recently added dynamic tesselation, it wasn’t very covnenient or intuitive, and didn’t give me all the options I’d like, and the options it did have weren’t very well explained, though the performance seemed to be alright. But it also didn’t give me as many hotkeys to change as I wanted, which I hate, as I’m really used to using hotkeys for almost everything in Blender. I also had to pay for one month’s subscription to get full access; the demo version didn’t include the dynamic tesselation, which was the thing I was really interested in as I hate to have to make a base mesh first. I suspect it was deliberate, to extract more money from people.

What I’ve been trying now is 3DCoat, which I’m liking. The workflow is different than I’m used to, but I can see the logic in it, and it gives me many more hotkeys to setup. I was easily able to replace most of the default ones with what I’m used to, and, with a bit of practice, familiarise myself with the different ways some of the brushes, such as the Snake Hook work than what I’m used to, and which ones may be the best options to replace the brushes and settings I’m used to using. I’m enjoying it so far, and the performance, as expected, blows Blender out of the water. I’ve found it fairly easy to get used to, though some things don’t work as I’d expect them to.

So, I did a few test head sculpts to practice and familiarise myself with it and work out how I should work in it. I didn’t reference with these; it was more like doodling than any serious attempt to make something. I need to study more faces and gain variety, though. Especially people from various ethnic origins and ages.

I’m going to spend more time practicing with 3DCoat and see what else I can do with it. But I have a good feeling about it. And I definitely can’t go back to Blender’s sculpting the same way after this. I may well end up buying it.