What is 3DCoat?
3DCoat is one of the most advanced software applications for creating detailed 3D models. Where other applications in this market segment tend to specialize in one specific task, such as Digital Sculpting or Texture Painting, 3DCoat provides High-End capability across multiple tasks in an asset creation pipeline. These include Sculpting, Retopology, UV Editing , PBR Texture Painting and Rendering. So it can be called a 3D texturing software and 3D texture painting software and 3D sculpting program and Retopology software and UV mapping software and 3D rendering software all combined.
In short, 3DCoat removes the need to purchase (and learn) multiple specialty software titles, which happen to be comparatively expensive, by putting all the production-level tools in a single, affordable application.
3DCoat has a free 30 days trial which can be downloaded for the following platforms-Windows-Mac OS-Linux
What’s New in 3DCoat 4.9:
– Possibility of resolution-independent texture locking over the layer. Importing or calculation of normal map, occlusion, the cavity will lock the layer. Texture will be saved to disk. As soon as you change the resolution, the locked texture will be used instead of the current layer state resampling. It is very important when you want to paint the materials in low quality of textures and then get high quality at the end.
– Moving smart materials to other folder takes less space in RMB menu, it is consolidated into a single line with the submenu.
– Support of 16-bit PNG for alphas.
– Edge width correction for Cube mapping, dedicated settings panel for cube mapping.
Sculpt room:
– CutOff in surface mode completely redone. Now the shape of the cut is very uniform and accurate. Depth and back plane limitations produce an accurate sharp cut. Soft booleans supported (see image).
– Soft booleans for all primitives, volumes merging, cutoff.
– List of ghosted, isolated volumes stored into scene file (3B).
– Much more stable and powerful Geometry->Close holes.
– Automatic closing the objects before the voxelization.
– Store pose selection to layer, picking pose selection from the layer. Works similar (to some degree) to poly groups.
– Load/Save option for noise.
– Correct brushing on the edge of the mesh (blob effect decreased a lot).
– Pose tool angle snapping problem fixed.
UV/Retopo room:
– Sharp edges support in Retopo room. Baking, import/export supported.
– Context sensitive RMB menu in retopo room, it is especially helpful in “Select” tool for low-poly modeling.
– In UV settings you may control the default unwrapping method.
– Extrude-like tools in retopo room are more convenient and intuitive, similar to other 3d editors.
– Unwrap method “To stripe” has been polished and set as default within the “Unwrap” command to be used when applicable. This method unwraps strips of quads into accurate and straight lines. Unwrap detects such cases automatically.
New curves (enable in Preferences -> Show beta tools):
– Edge for all curve modifiers can be customized in a really rich way.
– A truly rich set of curves modifiers (RMB over the curv
General changes:
– Possibility to relocate 3DCoat’s data folder in the Edit menu.
– Support of language correction. Press F2 to correct any text in UI. You may also add new languages support within the UI and translate any UI elements.
– Automatic zipping of scenes. It is disabled by default, enable it in preferences to use.
– Create alphas from 3D models updated – fast preview rendering (previously it was software rendering), so high-poly meshes allowed there.
– Image files recognized not by extension (that may be wrong) but by signature. It prevents multiple user errors. Sometimes files downloaded from the internet have wrong extension.
– Correct alpha channel visualization in Paint mode for polygonal models (not voxels/surface!). Polygons sorted from back to front in real time for correct rendering. It works fast, but if you feel it is slow, you can turn it off in the View menu.
– .exr added to the list of extensions, acceptable for pen alpha.
– EPS files import corrected.
– Ref images changed.
– ESC closes guides.
– Edit pla?ement and paint over ref images are separated to different menu commands to avoid unintentional painting.
– Possibility to show plane only for exact views (option in references droplist).
– FBX support up to FBX 2019.
– Importing multiple 3dcpacks.