Railworks America

I have been snooping around for some 3d moeling programs and ran across 3d Coat on Steam. Anyone have experience with this program? It seems to be able to make higher quality models than 3DC, but all I see in the screen shots are elves and dragons and the like. I'm just curious about it as it perks my interest.

Hi mate

Short answer would be No .. exports are limited to 3DC,Blender or Max (2010-2011 versions or below)

Coat is great at what is was designed for,but is really in the same class as MudBox or Zbrush,fantastic sculpting and/or retoppo tools but not much use for Sub-D,though there's nothing to stop you using Coat or similar to add detail if you want.

That said,anything package you can export as .obj from ( with mapping ) and then import and export ( again ) from the 3 we get to choose from is all good.I personally use the Maya 2 Max route for RW , with some texture work in MARI when the model fits the workflow.

HTH

UP3985 wrote:I have been snooping around for some 3d moeling programs and ran across 3d Coat on Steam. Anyone have experience with this program? It seems to be able to make higher quality models than 3DC, but all I see in the screen shots are elves and dragons and the like. I'm just curious about it as it perks my interest.

3DC can make high quality models (if you have the patience to put up with it crashing on you every 10 minutes or so).

(As I have seen! )

Patience (with frequent crashes) and my having a vast lack of knowledge of how to make basic shapes (in the free program) is where I run into problems. I just got done with a class at my school that teaches how to use auto cad inventor pro software and it is very simple (principally anyway) to use.

Do yourself a favor and "get" 3DS Max.

BNSFdude wrote:Do yourself a favor and "get" 3DS Max.

it's way too expensive for my pocket, and despite Spain being one of the worst offenders, I wouldn't do what everyone else here does.

I graduate from High school tomorrow, that one is a weeeeee bit out of my budget.

UP3985 wrote:I graduate from High school tomorrow, that one is a weeeeee bit out of my budget.

In your case you can get the student version legitimately for free. Go to their web site and read about it. What Mike is talking about is he could cheat and get it but because he is honorable he refuses to do that.

buzz456 wrote:

UP3985 wrote:I graduate from High school tomorrow, that one is a weeeeee bit out of my budget.

In your case you can get the student version legitimately for free. Go to their web site and read about it. What Mike is talking about is he could cheat and get it but because he is honorable he refuses to do that.

Yeah,but even should he qualify for the Edu program the only release of Max available is the current one i.e. Max 2014,so he will still have to export from either Blender or 3DC.The only way to I get to use the 2011 release is by way of the Subscription system rollback and come April/May next year even I (@2.5K Sub fee P.A. for the suite) loose that option,so it's the Blender exporter (if it's still available then) or nothing for me also.RS don't appear to want to update their exporters for the masses.

g_nash wrote:
Yeah,but even should he qualify for the Edu program the only release of Max available is the current one i.e. Max 2014,so he will still have to export from either Blender or 3DC.The only way to I get to use the 2011 release is by way of the Subscription system rollback and come April/May next year even I (@2.5K Sub fee P.A. for the suite) loose that option,so it's the Blender exporter (if it's still available then) or nothing for me also.RS don't appear to want to update their exporters for the masses.

The exporters do seem to be problematic. With 3DC, I almost gave up last year when it seemed that the model was too big for the exporter to handle. Luckily I found out that you have to tweak the 3DC executable to allow it to use more memory (4GB) and then it works fine. However, I still find some animation sequences don't export quite the way they should and have to be messed about with in 3DC until I accidentally hit on a combination of object groupings that works. It's what you get for not using exactly the same tools that RSC use.

mrennie wrote:The exporters do seem to be problematic. With 3DC, I almost gave up last year when it seemed that the model was too big for the exporter to handle. Luckily I found out that you have to tweak the 3DC executable to allow it to use more memory (4GB) and then it works fine.

Really ? no LAA flag set,seems kinda strange they wouldn't fix that now days

mrennie wrote: I still find some animation sequences don't export quite the way they should and have to be messed about with in 3DC until I accidentally hit on a combination of object groupings that works

Is Paul Gausden still writing the exporter for Amabilis ? Paul is a real nice guy,if he still does the exporter maybe he can help some.

I got another question , can you use BVH files in 3DC ? .A few years back Paul was talking about getting biped features in 3DC using BVH and I sent him links for a bunch of files,I was wondering if it came to anything,don't seem to find anything at Amabilis site and not seen Paul on train type forums for ages.
.

I sometimes post on the Amabilis forum, but it's like you said, it seems to be almost dead. I have my doubts about whether there'll ever be another version of 3DC or any improvements (I could be wrong of course).

Animating people is something I've got to get to grips with sometime. I haven't seen anything about 3DC+BVH.

mrennie wrote:I sometimes post on the Amabilis forum, but it's like you said, it seems to be almost dead. I have my doubts about whether there'll ever be another version of 3DC or any improvements (I could be wrong of course).

Animating people is something I've got to get to grips with sometime. I haven't seen anything about 3DC+BVH.

Thanks . I guess the idea didn't go far then.