3D Coat is a 3D asset creation package that focuses on modeling, sculpting, retopology, UV-mapping, and texture painting.
The software is popular for boutique studios and indie developers alike. But it does not have a rigging and animation toolset, although really it doesn’t need one. What 3D Coat does, it does it well.
With the vast 3D software landscape it can get confusing so let’s simplify it: 3D coat is somewhat of a combination between ZBrush, Mari and Substance Painter – at an affordable price. Definitely worth learning if you can use such a sculpting and modeling tool in your arsenal.
3D Coat For Noobs
Aimed for all newcomers, this three-part video series will teach you the fundamentals in working with 3D Coat.
Remember 3D coat also has sculpting functions, which can negate purchasing Zbrush. However Zbrush 3D coat for sculpting. If your game uses PBR you may want to take Substance instead. They also have a rather nice baker integrated. TLDR: If you are concerned with saving money then pick 3D-coat, it's quite a jack of all trades.
- 3D Coat is a Imaging and Digital Photo application like Easy GIF, Clip Studio, and Movavi Slide from Pilgway. It has a simple and basic user interface, and most importantly, it is free to download. 3D Coat is an efficient software that is recommended by many Windows PC users.
- The purpose of this course is to introduce you to a magnificent multi-purpose 3D modeling tool, called 3D Coat (I cover this using version 4.0.04B). With this program, you can sculpt hard and organic surface creations using Voxels, retopologize your sculptures, UV unwrap them, paint directly on them (while baking high-poly details onto lower.
- 3D Coat is a digital sculpting software for creating free-form organic and hard surfaced 3D models. The program can also be used to modify imported 3D models from various software products.
It’s actually a funny demonstration where you’re greeted by a 3D mascot that proceeds to explain all the basics of 3D Coat.
The video will guide you with creating high poly sculpting and generating low poly models with retopology. You’ll also UV map your model for preparation in texturing/painting – all within 3D Coat.
The author also clarifies that you have two ways of creating models: either in sculpting or in retopology. Throughout this process you’ll learn several tricks such as creating chains, duplicating objects, and creating masks to isolate a modeling area.
The author also shows common pitfalls for beginners and how to avoid them. Be sure to check part 2 and part 3 for the rest of the series.
Learning The Interface
The usual bottleneck for the unsuspecting beginners is not necessarily the software’s features, but actually its interface.
With this tutorial you learn the heart of 3D Coat’s interface: the rooms (or called workspaces in other applications).
You’ll learn about the sculpt, retopology, and UV rooms, among many others. The user interface is dynamic so with every room switch you’ll get different tools and panels.
Later in the video you’ll learn how to customize your interface such as resizing panels and even tearing them off for a floating panel – handy if you have more than one monitor.
Importing Objects For Painting
3D Coat offers several importing options on any particular tasks, say for retopology or painting.
And in this case you’ll deal with the latter. While importing is a fairly easy task, the import dialogue box is a bit heavy handed for new users.
This tutorial guides you the pertinent parameters to change(or not to change) such as renaming UV sets, bringing in an external normal map, or changing the map size. You’ll also get some pointers for the paint tools as well.
Wifi printer for mac. If you need some practice you can download the project file to follow along.
Hardsurface Design
Here you’ll learn how to make a sci-fi gun – a good case study for hard surface design work.
First you’ll import a block out model from Maya. Alternatively you can create the block out in 3D coat with simple primitive tools(if you know what you’re doing).
For the most part though, you’ll create details with voxel sculpting.
You can easily follow along as the author enables a key logger that shows the buttons he presses which is incredibly helpful. You’ll also learn several tips such as cut-off, relocating a selection, and creating rounded corners.
If you want exclusive content from the author you can also check his Patreon page to become a patron.
Sculpting in 3D Coat (Livestreamed)
In this detailed live stream you’ll learn how to speed up your workflow with the transform tools.
You’ll also create pipes, bolts, and screws to detail an asset from scratch. The artist also shows handy tricks such as changing views, toggling symmetry on and off, or using the voxel hide tool in a real-world scenario. Apc powerchute for mac os.
Later in the presentation you’ll tackle a complex sci-fi bust and prepare it for exporting to other applications. By the end of the video you’ll pick up a lot of 3D Coat’s advantages over other sculpting tools such as Mudbox.
If you want to stay updated with any future stream content you can check this Streamlabs page.
UV Mapping
Generally, UV Mapping is a boring process. It’s the time where you put on your headphones and grind through till the end. It’s really bland.
But it doesn’t have to be.
UV Mapping in 3D Coat is surprisingly fun and interactive.
Whenever you create a seam, the UV editor automatically updates both for the 2D and 3D viewer. It will also automatically color in the specific segments.
You’ll even have proper packing features that allow you to pack UV Islands neatly.
And here’s another handy feature not available in other software: when you run a loop seam it knows when to stop when it meets another seam. What a time save!
Even if you bought this software just for UV Mapping it would still be worth the price tag.
Unwrapping and Texturing
In this free tutorial you learn how to unwrap an organic object (in this case, a bust) as opposed to a hard surface object(which is what the previous tutorial teaches).
Here you’ll find the process intuitive since symmetry also works in unwrapping.
For the most part you’ll get hands-on for texturing. You’ll also discover the many texturing types 3D Coat offers such as per-pixel painting, micro vertex painting, and vertex painting.
Be sure to check out part 2 of the tutorial to pick up even more tips.
3d Coat Sculpting
PBR Texturing
In recent years Physically Based Rendering (PBR) has been the standard of authoring materials.
Originally popularized in games, it has since been used in all types of production. Fortunately 3D Coat is prepared with a texture toolset specifically for your PBR needs.
To practice your PBR work in this video you’ll texture a screw.
Yes, it’s not super interesting. But the techniques are.
You’ll check your UV map first using a checkerboard. Then you proceed with a base metal layer and an additional layer for the paint. You’ll break up the pattern using several brushes and generate procedural maps such as curvature and ambient occlusions maps.
Needless to say, since you are working on a PBR environment, you can see the results in real time and learn very quickly.
Add Your Own Smart Materials
To meet deadlines you’ll often be using presets that you customize for your workflow.
This is where smart materials come in.
It’s technically a material preset but better, as it generates procedural maps automatically. For instance, you can generate the dirt where crevices exist with any model.
3D Coat ships with useful smart materials but the software also provides an option to make your own. You can also alternatively use Photoshop to aid your material creation.
Baking Models For Painting
So you’ve got a high-poly mesh. Yet due to its heavy footprint, you can’t use it in a real-time production environment.
A common workflow is to get those high poly details and transfer them all to low poly. This is the process known as baking and it comes in handy a lot.
In this video you’ll learn how to generate complete baked maps for painting.
As a full example you’ll generate a low poly cage that encompasses the high poly object. The author also shows how you can adjust the baked maps in Photoshop with ease.
Column Destruction Sculpting
In this tutorial you create a worn out column from start to finish.
It’s not as complicated as it looks – and it certainly doesn’t need any explosions.
You’ll convert your mesh to voxels and slowly chip & chisel the edges with the extrude tool using several alphas and noises.
The author gives a few pointers like when using stencils, you should keep a depth of 1% to 2%. Voxel comes with limitations but the author provides a workaround to still be able to achieve a pretty nice result.
Low Poly Debris Pile
Another easy-to-follow tutorial showing how you can quickly create a debris pile.
These types of assets are essential to set dress your environments.
You’ll start the project by creating a base to scatter your debris. You’ll utilize an object import tool to populate your base too.
This tool is handy as it is just like your painting through the base, but instead of color you’re painting with objects.
The technique can also be used to create a pile of rocks that resembles a letter or logo. At the very end you’ll perform retopology for exporting.
Retopology With 3D Coat
Retopology is essential to convert your high poly objects(either from sculpting or photogrammetry) to low poly objects for scene manipulation.
Like UV Mapping, retopology is a bland and tedious process.
Fortunately 3D Coat offers several tools for an efficient workflow.
In this tutorial you’ll learn how to retopo a character. For the most part you will be using the add geometry tool.
3dcoat Vs Zbrush
You’ll also use symmetry to speed up the process.
Using the brush tool you’ll troubleshoot cases where you need to manually modify a point or an edge where 3D Coat’s algorithm fails to detect polygon faces.
3D Coat also offers a relax function to adjust polygon faces resulting in a uniform size. Another handy technique is using strokes that automatically create loops for cylindrical objects such as human arms.
Sculpting a Rocky Floor
One more awesome environment tutorial to keep you going: here you’ll be creating a rocky floor.
While the asset is simple, rocks are ubiquitous in any environment so they can always vary quite a bit.
You’ll learn several commands here such as jitter and merge. The author also makes it look so easy by following a workflow using a build brush and chipping away with a scrape brush using an alpha.
You’ll complete the workflow with the retopology, UV mapping, and finally projection painting.
Arid Arch Tutorial
In this multi-part series you’ll produce an arid rock arch completely inside of 3D Coat.
You’ll start with the block out using the built-in primitives such as cubes and spheres. Then you’ll convert the primitives to voxels.
With just the use of the scrape tool you’ll be able to create the arch close to completion. Along the process you’ll be using the fill and pose tool since the scrape tool does not work on concave areas.
You can continue with the rest of the series in part 2(Medium Forms) and part 3(Small Forms) where you’ll end up doing the retopology and final texture painting.
Related Posts:
3D Coat is a sculpting and texturing package often likened to ZBrush or Mudbox. Though it is similar to these programs, it also has a lot of unique features, like it’s UV unwrapping tools.
3d Coat Download
The big difference that separates 3D Coat from other sculpting programs is that instead of using polygonal meshes it uses voxels.
Voxels are like a 3D equivalent of pixels.
It produces a virtual grid in 3D space and the mesh then occupies sections of this grid to form its shape. The word voxel come from combining the term pixel with volume. Low resolution voxels are a common art style in video games, for example Minecraft or Roblox.
While voxels are based on cubes, the high resolution of the grids means smooth curves are still possible. Similar to how polygonal meshes are flat planes that can make smooth curves by having a high number of polygons and using smoothing groups.
Since the mesh in 3D Coat uses voxels, you do not need to subdivide polygons which can give you better performance on some PC setups. The other benefit is that your 3D object is solid and isn’t just a shell like a polygonal mesh. This makes some sculpting and deformation techniques easier, both computationally and creatively for the artist.
What is 3D Coat Used For?
3dcoat 2021
3D Coat primarily markets itself as a texturing and sculpting program.
Its sculpting tools behave similarly to other programs, however there are no topology restraints in 3D Coat that you may face in other programs. This is due to its voxel based workflow.
It comes with dozens of brushes built-in to aid all of your 3D projects, all with the ability to add more brushes based on whatever you need. There’s a nice long list of brushes on their website to check out.
When you’ve finished your sculpt in 3D Coat you then have the option to export it directly for 3D printing using their wizard. This makes 3D Coat an excellent choice for aspiring 3D printers.
Due to voxels making a solid model similar to that in CAD software it’s much easier to convert it to a format 3D printers understand. It’s a useful feature if you want to print off small models of your sculpts.
3D Coat also allows you to texture your mesh. You can create textures up to 16k resolution using their large selection of pre-set brushes and materials. It also uses a PBR material workflow which means it’s compatible with most other 3D programs and game engines.
Similar to Substance Painter, with 3D Coat you can calculate and bake ambient occlusion and curvature maps from your mesh and then use this with smart materials. These materials can do things like add areas of worn paint and rust onto corners of you model where those signs of wear are more common.
It will do this automatically, but you can then use its mask and layer options to add and remove little areas to suit your fancy.
UV unwrapping is where most artists agree this package really shines.
UV mapping can be a tedious task, but the tools in 3D coat make it much easier. It uses a “Global Uniform” algorithm to give you clean spread UV maps.
You can target individual parts of the model and edit them separately if they haven’t quite gone as planned. I strongly recommend looking into this portion of the software since it can really speed up your workflow as you can import models from other programs like 3ds Max or Maya.
Also note that 3D Coat also has powerful tools for retopology. It has an automatic retopologising tool that uses edge loops that you define to generate the poly mesh.
If you’ve made a low poly mesh in a modelling program before moving it to 3D Coat for sculpting and texturing, you can then import that low poly model. From there the geometry of that low poly model will be used as a base for the retopology of the voxel mesh. Pretty cool!
By using Applinks you can quickly and easily move your models and textures between different programs. Applinks need to be downloaded separately and they’re all on the 3D Coat site.
Downsides of 3D Coat?
This is a very good piece of 3D software, but it has a couple of downsides that are worth mentioning.
Firstly its tools for modelling are very limiting. You are much better using a dedicated polygonal modelling program for this task, like 3ds Max or Blender.
Its shaders are also bare bones. This is where software like Substance Painter can work better, especially for more complicated materials that react dynamically to the environment.
It also has no options for baking lighting into your textures, which is something you usually do not want from a PBR workflow anyway. If that is something you’re looking for you can use Marmoset Toolbag or the light baking options in a real-time engine like Unity or Unreal Engine.
The last thing to mention in this section is it’s not as widely recognized by the industry as something like ZBrush. This means that only learning 3D Coat may limit your job prospects. Also the community support is smaller compared to other sculpting tools.
3dcoat Array
However they have a lot of useful tutorials created by the company itself to get you started. We also published our own list of the best 3D Coat tutorials to help newbies get a jumpstart.
But all that said, this program does have the major benefit of a very low retail price. If you are only using it for personal projects the price is only $99, then moving up to $379 for professional projects.
The licence is permanent and only charges a one-time fee unlike many modern subscription models. Also it can be upgraded from the amateur to the professional package for only $280 so it’s really a great choice for newer 3D artists looking for a cheap-yet-powerful sculpting tool.
Who Uses 3D Coat?
3D Coat isn’t as big in the industry as a lot of the big 3D programs we all know & love. But that doesn’t mean it hasn’t found a place in some prominent companies.
The UK based company Jagex who are most known for their MMORPG Runescape use 3D Coat in their workflow.
Another user is the US company Zenimax Media, parent company of Bethesda who makes the Fallout and Elder Scrolls games. So you will find a few large game developers who rely on 3D Coat in their workflows(which means it’s not just a tool for personal projects!)
It is a very useful tool to have in your toolbox, and really a great tool for any 3D artist to study even a little bit.
I use it personally for its UV unwrapping tools. Highly recommend checking it out; a free 30 day demo is available if you want to give it a go.
3dcoat For Mac
Related Posts: