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Version 4 Manual User Workflow Contributions


Psmith
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With the new version 4 of 3D-Coat will come an all new Manual.

As 3D-Coat has gotten deeper and deeper - supporting more and varied workflow scenarios, it becomes impossible for one man, (me), to know and absorb all of the possible workflows - for every possible use.

Therefore, I am opening up the contents of the version 4 Manual to User contributions. I need workflow examples - laid out in easy-to-understand formats.

Anyone who contributes will be given full credit within the Manual and will be raised to the status of "Fantastic Contributor", automatically.

Please send me a private message if you are interested, or add your feedback to this thread.

Greg Smith

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Very good Greg.

What about the idea to declare you as the manager for the v4-manual?

Means: You manage the chapters and distribute the open manual topics.

This helps avoid receiving double written articles f.e.

I imagine 90% of the people wants to write something about voxels or sculpting and 1% of the users about pixelpainting (just an example and of course I push it a bit...) ;)

You have my support. So tell me what you need and will look how much time I can invest. My 3D Coat skills are placed everywhere, but currently I am strong in the paint-, uv-, and retopo rooms. I like work with voxels too, but I don't know enough about live clay to give someone hints or write articles (until now).

Best wishes

Chris

PS: And maybe an additional point: I am not very well in english, so it would be very helpful if you or someone else as a native speaker would check my hieroglyphics later... :unsure:

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Chris:

The areas of 3D-Coat that seem to be the most mysterious and the most poorly documented are the following (yes, I need help with these):

1) Baking Workflows (So many kinds of "Baking")

2 Retopology Workflows (Especially Manual Retopo)

3) Importing for UV Mapping Workflows

4) High-res to Low-Res Workflows (Sculpting & Retopology)

5) Photoshop Integration Workflows

I absolutely welcome any user contributions that address these mysteries. Even if all someone can contribute is a detailed outline of steps - they can be fleshed out. I'd be happy to act as a manager of all of the contributed content.

The version 4 Manual will be aimed, much more than previously, at How Specifically To Use 3D-Coat, rather than what each tool, command, dialog and menu does. This is where user practices and experiences will really make a difference in the overall content and usefulness of the Manual.

Start sending your ideas in right away!

Greg Smith

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...

The version 4 Manual will be aimed, much more than previously, at How Specifically To Use 3D-Coat, rather than what each tool, command, dialog and menu does. This is where user practices and experiences will really make a difference in the overall content and usefulness of the Manual.

...

Greg Smith

Very nice idea!

Is a release date for the manual known? I would like to help, but must manage my sparetime very carefully... (Too much interests - too less time...)

Thank you

Chris

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Greg are you separating these out between open and closed workflows?

By which I mean 3DCoat in typical/ common production scenario workflows as well as 3DCoat as an enclosed creative tool with it's own rendering solution?

Not sure enough is made of the latter to draw a new audience although it is the former I'm sure that drives the sales for the present.

Sadly my time only allows for the "as and when" videos that I pop up every now and then on Vimeo but it's great to see that this more encompassing task is being tackled at last.

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Mostly I am trying to include the various workflows that involve external applications. These seem to be the most frequent subjects brought up, continually, on the forums. And, since Applinks are 3rd party plug-ins, I'd like to focus on workflows that don't require their assistance.

However, if you have a less than obvious internal workflow that could benefit users - by all means I will try to include it, as well. Even a short outline of steps will do.

Greg Smith

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I could put some things together on

2) Retopology Workflows (Especially Manual Retopo) - I do a lot of this, mostly manual.

3) Importing for UV Mapping Workflows - this is the best part of 3d Coat I do the most of this, now for all models that I UV.

4) High-res to Low-Res Workflows (Sculpting & Retopology) The interesting this here is going from low to high back to low also. Import low rez for sculpting, make it high rez import low rez for retopo and snap. Things like that.

However I spent quite some times trying to bake AO from high to low before giving up and just using xNormal. It'd be neat if someone know how to do it right. I couldn't get a usable map in 3DC for AO which I think is a key baking map.

1) Baking Workflows (So many kinds of "Baking")

5) Photoshop Integration Workflows

I'm interested in this too, I get the feeling there are really powerful ways to work like this. I use it fairly straight forward.

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David:

By all means. We need these workflows explained in detail. Especially WHY a user would take the outlined steps in any workflow situation.

A new 3D student, for example, is not going to know, instinctively, why he needs to use Photoshop in addition to the internal 3DC texturing tools. He is not going to know why he would use a "Baking" process to go from Hi-Res to Lo-Res and back again. Should he use Surface Mode or Voxel Mode? Should he accomplish his detailing of a model with Paint Room Tools? When? Can Surface Mode produce the same results as Micro Vertex Painting? Why not? When does he need to "Clear all caches"? When does he need to work in "Proxy Mode"? When does he need to "Resample"? How do you use all the various forms of "Drag & Drop".

And on and on.

I have to say that I don't even know how some of these things work - after trying and getting what appears to be no result. So I need to be enlightened as well.

Greg Smith

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There is an entire section called "Workflows" for general descriptions and also a "Workflows" section for each Room - so it would be nice to get examples of what workflow you would use in each Room. Graphic "snapshots" of the menus and panels used would be nice - but not necessary.

Also, if you would like to contribute artwork to be featured, here and there, throughout the Manual - I'd be happy to place them with authorship credit below each - granted the fact that the artwork would have to be "approved" first.

Greg Smith

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Probably the easiest thing is for you to email the images, since they might be larger than practical for the forum. Feel free to email the outline (or any text) as well as post it here for the benefit of others. Text can be in .rtf format.

I'll have to reformat whatever you have produced to fit the structure of the Manual.

You can send these to greg@simplyanimate.com

Thanks so much for your help,

Greg Smith

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Can i ask ifs possible to add a dynamic routing workflow ?

Using 3DC there is not an only way to achieve same results.

May be to add a graphical routing can help the new users to understand -in a fast way- what to do.

Dynamic-Workflow-Pattern-I.png

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let me try to example that:

------------

Padding is the subject trunk:

and there is 2 branch:

- File -> Export Model > In the Export options window that pops up there is a check box for "Create Padding".

- Also, in Edit -> Preferences there are settings for padding and padding width.

This is a little example about 2 ways to achieve same result.

------------

What if you need to bake ?

bake from voxels, bake from surface, with an external model, with an external model with UVs, using ppp or ptex from paint room... or from retopo...

see ?... there are some ways. Hard to explain using only words, and to see videos is slow learning.

How its works using routing workflow ? A first Square named BAKE have 2 branches

- 3dcoat model

- imported model

And every branch continue to the next workflow step... the new users only need to follow step by step in an easy graphically learn

---------------

let me back to the first example, see attach (done using FreeMind opensource program)

ty

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  • 1 month later...
  • 5 weeks later...

The Manual is coming along fine, but more user "workflow" contributions are welcome and needed.

May I recommend the videos on our YouTube channel for obtaining the deepest understanding of 3D-Coat? Words simply cannot demonstrate visual principles very well - and in many cases.

Greg Smith

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Well, it's nice (with The Manual is coming along fine)...

And yeah, YouTube is fine too...

And I'd like to help with 'user experience...', but as I was 'out-of-3d-coat' for last year(-and-half),

now it's rather difficult to catch up with 'all-new-stuff' (a great leap BTW [3.5X -> 4beta], we all see it) in 3DC...

P.S. actually I was asking 'couse I'm eager to start translating new manual (at least as much as possible before the v.4 Release...)

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This is very good news; I love 3d Coat. I believe it's the best of the three sculpture programs available (well now 4 with C4D) but it makes me ill to come up blank on tutorials for vital parts of its workflows. The program deserves better than this. Might I suggest at a minimum that with each new functionality that Andrew just toss off a quick video to Vimeo with the functionality depicted in video? This would do a lot to helping users, particularly new users to get a handle on 3d Coat.

I really want to figure out how vector displacement works but I'm at a loss of where to find the info here.

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