Of course V4 beta testing was started long time ago in 3.7 thread. Now we will continue it there.
Windows [BETA15A]:
3D-Coat 32-bit
3D-Coat 64-bit
Mac OS X [BETA15A]:
Mac OS X Download Link
Linux [BETA15A]:
Linux Download Link
Changes:
18.05.2013 BETA16
- Bake occlusion tool may bake direct light
- flattern tool in Paint tool will work correctly for PPP
- a lot of work done to fix bugs reported by mantis, crash reports, issues sent to support
- ptex painting speed improved, random quads issue fixed
27.04.2013 BETA15
- fixed problem of using spline stroke with small pen radius (there was radius when nothing was drawn)
- fixed problem of seams over UV pieces that are outside of [0..1] UV square
- fixed different problems related to seamlessness of painting
- boolean operations shuld work faster. It is especially related to merging surface volumes. Color information will be correctly transformed. It is recommended to merge small volume->big volume, it will work faster.
- a lot of mantis related problems fixed.
14.04.2013 BETA14A
- possibility to specify distance between UV islands when packing (see command in left panel with settings)
- a lot of major mantis-reorted problems fixed including dots and falloff problem.
- when loading model with extenal textures each texture will be placed on separate layer, better support of bump in ext textures.
- lwo import improved, now if multiple surfaces refer the same texture they will be gathered to single UV set.
6.04.2013 BETA14
- Main problems of ppp are solved. Now possible to paint even deep displacement without artifacts. Before you were able to paint only small bump-like displacement, now the normal map is calculated correctly for deep displacement, too. Painting quality comparison - http://www.3d-coat.c..._comparison.png
- Seamless painting in ppp mode improved a lot. Compare seams quality - http://www.3d-coat.c...s/SeamsV3V4.png . Baking voxels -> ppp displacement is not tuned well, but will be improved in next build.
- LC reduce reduces more powerfully, cap turned off, LC tools are working much better on mixed big/small triangles scene.
- Primitives gizmos polished a to act more convenient and look better.
- Clone, Cut&Clone extended to surface mode too.
- Auto pick option in most tools will allow to switch to other volumes automatically while drawing without need to switch there manually.
- Split tool extended to surface mode too. It allows to split through all scene, split instances. <-- good for making broken objects.
- Rendering semi-transparent objects improved, now will be rendered correctly (sorted from back to front) almost always.
- Painting conditions preview will work correctly for all conditions and all paint modes (ppp/mv/ptex/voxels)
- A lot of mantis reported problems fixed
15.03.2013 BETA13
- Important! Baking settings improved a lot to get full control over the baking - http://bit.ly/154tlJd
It allows to set different scan depth for different areas of the mesh.
- Baking will take into account externally loaded normalmap
- Tiled voxel space introduced to produce tiled textures in voxel room. It is easy to export result via File->Export->Export depth along Y. See wizard in Start menu->Surface mode
- File->Export->Export depth along Y may be useful to produce textures, masks and alphas too.
- Huge amount of typos fixed.
- improved compatibility with LW11, now textures will load automatically.
- Auto seamo will act on current group only.
- A lot of mantis reported problems fixed, a lot of work done for stabilisation and cleaning.
19.02.2013 BETA12
- Main intension of the build is bugfixing, big amount of mantis reported problems fixed. A lot of critical problems solved. Often mentioned lags problem fixed too.
- camera position will be stored in save file, it is convenient to open file and occur in last saved camera state.
- Important change in masks painting - there is volume preserving mode that is now default. In this mode instead of just modulating effects by mask surface may be displaced in both sides - back and forward so that in average volume will be approximately preserved. It is very important if you use mask for detailing. This mode allows to avoid constant surface growing when painting.
- Models palette is now available in Retopo room to be merged directly in retopo room. Retopo layers may be dragged to that palette.
- E-mode circle/lasso/rectangle/spline etc will work closer to PS style - SPACE + LMB will move whole shape.
- Render room got improvement - prossibility to render blended states between several saved scenes. In so way short animated illustrations may be easily rendered. It was done mainly for my son's personal project, I think it will be helpful for community too. I expect to be criticized for this little animation support, but it was my personal needs, not just new feature, so I will be really sad in case of critics.
- a lot of small but important changes that I forgot to mention because stopped to tweet last couple of weeks. Seems should start it again.
28.01.2013 BETA11
- с++ like script langualge (angelscript) will be available soon within 3D-Coat's shell.It allows to perform batch actions, create macro commands and interactive tutorials. It has very basic functionality now and will be extended on requests. c++ like scripting chose becaus of speed, possibility to include good scripts directly into 3D--Coat's engine.
- Transform gizmo related changes:
1) Leave rotated axis turned ON by default
2) Gizmo direction&position stored for each volume. Both are correctly transformed when parent gets some transform
3) "To main axis" button - same as in retopo room. Retopo room's button renamed to "To main axis" because it has no relation to any local space.
4) Mannequin model rearranged - correct parenting, pivots and axis direction. It was very easy with new command. Now posung mannequin is pure joy.
5) To center mass/bound center are changing only position, not direction
6) [X] button near coordinates to clear them quickly
7) In primitives ahis directions are hidden by default, but you may show them if need (axis coordinates was cluttering panel a lot)
- masks preview for cubemapping (when navigating)
- lag problem when switching rooms and tools fixed
- different mantis reports fixed
15.01.2013 BETA10
- Magic wand tool in Paint room
- New items in VoxTree->RMB menu: Show all, Shoaw subtree (to make nodes visible)
- All applicable brush jitters will act on merge tool in "On pen" mode - http://t.co/JynOj0D2
- VoxExtruude works now correctly with different combinations of symmetry/extrude directions/flattern
- a lot of mantis reported problems fixed, big work done there
4.12.2013 BETA9C
- Important change! "Ignore backfaces" works basing on Z-Buffer, not on normals direction. It makes possible to work correctly over multilayered structures correctly (example - thin pants).
- Curve stroke improved to work well with thin walls even if b-splines are used.
- a lot of mantis bugfixes
1.12.2013 BETA9B
- fixed major problem of broken SHIFT smoothing in LC tools
- improved Absolute/Extrude/LC Extrude bruhes (how they work with pen pressure), fixed dots in General brush
- some Mantis issues fixed
31.12.2012 BEAT9A
- fixed problems with precission in spline stroke mode
- CTRL in VoxExtrude will invert extrusion
- Smooth all may work over frozen area and will work much faster. It gives good and predictable way to smooth selected areas.
- fixed all reported mantis problems
29.12.2012 BETA9
- Extrude/Flattern area in voxel suraface mode done - http://bit.ly/RlzRts , http://bit.ly/RlzWgw , http://bit.ly/RlzYoG
- VoxLayer/Extrude got nice preview of future shape - http://bit.ly/VbgTU5
- VoxLayer/Extrude will make spots that will create shapes of pen's size - http://bit.ly/VbhpBz It gives much better control.
- Surfacial smooth polished a lot, now it has a lot of useful options and has become very powerful tool - http://bit.ly/RlzKxQ
- all problems reported by e-mail and Mantis fixed (windows storing, occlusion, spline stroke problems and other).
16.12.2012 BETA8
- polished spline stroke. Multiple strokes per pass, closed strokes allowed. Different radius per control point if need (optional). Better spline preview. Progress shown. Good description in hints. Splines shapes tuned to be very nice and predictable.
- selecting islands in UV mode by clicking on object
- Retopo->Export groups for exporting group as separate file
- arrows icons for swapping color
- bugfixes from Mantis, forum and bugreports
9.12.2012 BETA7
- Important! New E-mode - spine stroke mode. It allows to model very nice and accurate stroke with spline and pressure graph in ANY tool where it has sense. Example - http://www.screencas.../t/8RJ8C0g5naY2 It should be very useful for painting and sculpting, you may do predictable, accurate strokes.
- TSmooth tweaked as SHIFT action
- Sevral mantis issues fixed.
24.11.2012 BETA6
- big work performed over stabilizing and optimizing 3D-Coat. I hope LC tools will work much more predictably and faster. Many areas of 3D-Coat including paint, retopo, voxels was tested and a lot of bugs fixed. A lot of Mantis bugs fixed.
- Zooming in/out speed will depend on distance from the pivot point to perform better navigation
- options how ghosting will be treated (see top panel)
- Direct uploading to sketchfab.com done
6.11.2012 BETA5
- new Bridge tool
- Decompose (Separate disconnected pieces) tool
- a lot of bugfixes to stabilize 3DC. Many of them are critical fixes.
- you may choose if material is tiled or not
- Save files will be saved to temporary file an then renamed so that previous version of file will not be corrupted if crash happens.
11.10.2012 BETA4
- Relaxation tool
- better smoothing algorithms
- Reconstruct tool
- a lot of bugfixes and small tweaks, see mantis
5.10.2012 BETA3
- Different actions assigned to SHIFT and CTRL SHIFT - see at top in surface mode. Powerful smooth is not polished enough, will be improved.
- Set of retopo bugs fixed
- Close/make holes improved a lot, but we continue to work over it
- Wireframe rendering speed and quality improved a lot. Now it works according to View->Show wireframe. By default W assigned but F4 may remain from previous install. Then you need to re-assign it manually.
2.10.2012 BETA2
- LC & close holes issues fixed. There is check box "Quality" to determine what you prefer - better quality or speed. Actually speed differs not much.
- some Undo issues fixed
- icons
1.10.2012 BETA1
- At least it looks a bit like V4 
- New start dialog, I hope this time it will be more useful. The main purpose was to expose different workflows there (they was usually hidden deeply in different submenus), it may be useful not only at start but in process too. You may customize it (but it is for experienced users, it is relatively not hard via xml files in StartMenu folder)
- New LC changes from Raul. But we contitue hammering there.
- New fit tool to combine separate pieces that look similar but has different topology. Important to handle scan data.
- Remove undercuts tool.
- E modes improvements: new modes for square and circle instead of SHIFT&drag because SHIFT conflicts with other modes - http://bit.ly/OrVYxS
- Recangle&circle modes will show dimensions, in ortho mode - with real world values, SPACE allows to enter numbers - http://bit.ly/UO5InH
- 3DC got 2 choices how to calculate normals - as before or as in Maya for better compatibility.
- 3D-Coat got most common TBN space used in most 3D-applications (Maya, Blender) - Morten Mikkelsen's TBN space
- N-gons with complex shape will be correctry supported in paint and retopo rooms. It was done by the way wnen solving normalmapping issues.
- a lot of refinements in Primitives tool, especially for surface mode
- Fixed a bib load of mantis repiorted problems + blob tool problems (was working randomly)
