I’ll share here too, collapsed to keep the thread clean:
Click here, choose ‘Customise Navigation’
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Thank you, for the setup
New CAD Room
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Very nice, but I wish the developer had spent all this time on an SDF room. In my humble opinion, SDF is the future of 3D modeling.
With all respect…3dCoat features a wide range of features for modeling, sculpting , uv-ing, retopologizing, painting, texturing, etc.
It has “smart materials” that rival Substance Painter.
It rivals many other tools in numerous categories…albeit with numerous idiosyncrasies.
And I forgive the reader for not knowing that 3d-coat is basically a 1-man programming team working the past few years in war-worn Ukraine.
As for SDF? 3dCoat featured a voxel based option 5 years before the recently trumped SDF modelers.
I know all about 3D-Coat, I own it, have worked with it a lot through the years, know the devs, started this thread, and think an SDF modeling room would perfectly complement sculpting in the voxel engine. I think a NURBS-oriented CAD room is further away from the core of 3D-Coat than SDF modeling, which is a rising modeling method, due to a number of advantages compared to polygons and NURBS. Also, SDF modeling is not the same as voxel modeling. SDF takes place in shader space, and only needs to be voxelized if you want to sculpt on the model.
Have a look at this thread for more SDF info and examples:
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Sometimes I think the 3DC dev wakes up in the morning and just decides that day what’s going to happen to the program.
Aside from how ridiculously inaccurate and hyperbolic this statement is, 3DC has been around for a LOT longer than that and it’s been a design mess from the start. I was there testing the beta way back then. It has always been a very strangely designed program with a very haphazard approach, despite the many great features that it does have. It’s the reason that it has always remained a relatively obscure and unpopular program.
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There’s a small team of 3DC devs, although Andrew Shpagin is the senior developer. The CAD room was designed by Alexandr Gorbatovsky. He’s usually coding the poly modeling tools, and now the CAD modeling room.
I’ve always had a soft spot for 3D-Coat. It’s a great and versatile tool, but I agree that more focus and UI / UX refinement would be beneficial for 3DC to become more attractive to a wider public. In its current form, there are too many options, brushes, tools and options scattered across the UI, and hidden in menus and tabs, making the UI / UX unclear.
This is also why I personally don’t think a suite of CAD tools is what 3D-Coat users were still missing. CAD is very industry-specific, and there are way better tools for that. A set of SDF modeling tools would make 3D-Coat more up to date, and would perfectly complement the voxel sculpting tools.
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Yes, I agree. I imagine the excitement and popularity around Plasticity may have led to this decision. Personally I think it would have made more sense to build a solid bridge tool to Plasticity.
People using a tool like 3DC or Zbrush are more than likely the sort of people who would want to do CAD modeling in a program like Plasticity or MOI or another artist-friendly option, rather than the high-end CAD solutions.
SDF modeling would make more sense, and could be a nice companion to the voxel sculpting tools, just like the route Modeler is taking, and MCSG no doubt will too (as you’ve mentioned it will probably get sculpting in the future)
Plus the fact that 3DC already has tools like Voxhide. CAD definitely seems like just another weird decision in a long history of weird decisions.
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Yes, good points. Plasticity has popularized CAD, while MoI 3D already had the UI accessibility and elegance many years ago. Before MagicaCSG came around, I really loved MoI 3D’s ease of use, and I still prefer it compared to Plasticity, which I also bought.
But MoI’s developer is not an active promoter, and the guy(s) behind Plasticity do a better job in that area.
Yeah, I can’t deny that 3D-Coat’s development direction is a bit wobbly.
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I would propose that 3/4 of 3dCoat’s code has been completed by Shpagin himself. Maybe it’s 1/2. If that makes my previous statement hyperbolic, whatever. If that impression is out-dated or incorrect I welcome concrete info.
And I never claimed his UI is clean, elegant, or user friendly… nor would I. 3DC sure is, however, feature rich and impressive.
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The males in their country are due to the current situation disallowed/barred from leaving/deserting and trying to use the fact that 3DCoat was made in Ukraine, dev residing there to discredit the dev(s) is insane and means you are maliciously acting.
3DCoat also employed at least one developer which worked on ZBrush and Blender (and is back at Blender).
If CAD inside 3DCoat has the ability of importing step and stl files while being resource friendly - allowing texturing those stl files before committing to a polycount and topology would make interacting with CAD Data much easier to work with.
Having the ability to retopologize those files while they are still handled internally as stl files could mean you get to have the best quality output for baking with the highest details.
The less Import/Export an Artist has to do, the better it is.
CAD for the gamedev/film etc sector got soaring user numbers thanks to MOI and Plasticity, it makes imo sense to cater to those Artists.
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I have in fact been been praising and defending 3D Coat and their brilliant leader. I have huge respect and admiration for him for many reasons. Perhaps because of language differences there is confusion about that? Perhaps you are responding to another’s comments? Not only do I respect Shpagin as a brilliant visionary and coder, I also respect his ethical world view and perseverance in Ukraine through a time of war.
My only complaint is 3DC’s UI and user-friendliness, which is a common complaint.
I have purchased the original product and upgraded about 4 times. I have been claiming the product is much his personal creation not as a criticism, but as high praise.
I had not known about 3DC’s STEP importing feature, which makes it that much more appealing, as I’m a recent adopter of Plasticity.
Thanks for that info…and Cheers.
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We want to offer all possible tools for all types of modeling.
CAD room is an optional room with separate license. It use a geometric modeling kernel Open Cascade, but in the future, will switch to Parasolid.
Unifying rooms and tools is very necessary, but it is a gradual task.
3DCoat is not a 1-man programming team.
The development agenda is based on years, it is not written every morning.
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It was regarding what I interpreted your comment could mean.
Of course you are right, English isn’t my mothertounge.
That tends to produce awkward interpretations on my side and much more often than I would like to admit, finer nuances written in English tend to fly straight over my head.
Hopefully you are not angry about this.
Indicators like for example /s for an unserious post or some smileys for evaluating the text are immensely helpful.
Critique on the softwares UI like you wrote can make sense.
I looked at this video and comments from 3DCoats main youtube account indicates that development on a direct cad import is in the works.
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Not in any way. Again: Only best wishes.
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Don‘t hold your breath. Quad based multi res which keeps the vertex order was asked many times, but the devs always made the impression that they don‘t want add this 3D Coat, for unknown reasons.
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That wasn’t the hyperbolic part I was talking about, but I’m not going to go into that here.
The UI/Design/UX is what I’m talking about, not the features. To me it feels like one giant sandbox of haphazardly added features, rather than a coherent ecosystem of tools working together.
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These are the kind of sympathetic messages we Blender Artists moderators love to see! 
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