3D-Coat 4.7 Released

Check out the latest capabilities of the updated 3d-painting tool 3D-Coat. It’s got New Physically Based Shader, PBR, GGX exact support, new shaders. Full feature list is attached below. You can buy the product here or download a trial version.

Key Features:

– New Physically Based Shader. Now GGX lighting natively supported.
This means:
– Almost all Voxel Shaders are PBR compatible now. Each shader has rich set of parameters, including different textures, SSS, Gloss, Metalness, Cavity and Bulge settings. Very good support of cavity and bulge is present in realtime.
– All PBR shaders effects (except pseudo SSS effect) are exactly baked into paint room.
– PicMat-s are also present but it is not guaranteed that they will be baked correctly, so use them only on intermediate stage.
– GGX exact support means compatibility with most of current game and render engines.
– Painting over mesh is “as is” without modulation on background shader color.
But painting over layer 0 is disabled for Voxels/Surface.
– Multiple maps Baking, including AO, SSS.
– New Export Constructor. It allows to pack many channels into one texture in custom way. It helps to adopt 3D-Coat’s texture export for any render or game engine.
– Anti-aliased painting introduced everywhere: Vertex Painting, PPP, MV, Ptex. It is applied to stencils, materials, brushes, text, curved pictures.
– New low-poly modeling Retopo Tools: Cut and Connect, Extrude faces, extrude vertices, Intrude, Shell.
– New Primitives Added: screws, spirals, etc with rich Options set.
– 3D-Printing Export function included in PRO version.

Paint Room Changes:

– Per-Pixel Painting speed essentially increased especially for big texture resolution, big polygons, materials dependent on cavity.
– Export of metalness is possible in Gloss/Specular color workflow as well.
– New import option for PPP: Import each material as separate UV set.
– Relative paths to textures in exported OBJ files.
– When paint with Smart Materials depth channel will replace current one on this layer instead of constant growing.
– Color picker gets color from everywhere on screen. In color picker dialog clicking outside the picker window will pick color as well. “V” hotkey works there as well.
– Group # instead of Layer # for default names for paint groups.
– RMB->Share item/folder works correctly for PBR materials.
– Image may be directly dropped onto Smart material editor slots.

Sculpt Room Changes:

– Nice bevel in primitives with “sector” option.
– Smoother/angulator/subdivide got 3d lasso in e-panel.
– Non-boolean merge all/merge subtree.
– “Ignore back faces” works for Move tool in surface mode.
– LMB/RMB/MMB outside of Sculpt RMB menu will close the menu instead of sculpting action.
– Tools in space panel adjusted in a bit more logical order.
– When select a volume via H key VoxTree will be scrolled to show selected volume.
– Geometry -> Retopo mesh->Sculpt mesh option.

Retopo/UV Room Changes:

– Retopo shaders are PBR-compatible, retopo model lit in correspondence with panorama.
– Extrude faces, extrude vertices, Intrude, Shell implemented for retopo/select/faces mode.
– Free extrude command in select/edges retopo toolset.
– “Conform retopo” improved – Undo works correctly and retopo mesh visible during transformations.
– Shift in Add/Split and Quads tools will cap the hole.
– ESC in retopo/transform will not clear selection.
– Flip faces command in retopo/select.
– Clear selection command in Retopo/Select path.
– ENTER in retopo transform/extrude tools will commit extrusion.
– Selection retopo transform gizmo got “Auto in local space” checkbox.
– Edge loops with SHIFT + click in retopo/select/edges mode.
– Move via brush tool in retopo room will not snap vertex to cursor position even if there is only one vertex in brush.
– Contours for cutting may be saved in UV and Retopo rooms, look in Commands->Save contour. Files may be saved as EPS or DXF. It is very useful for real thing production – like shoes or acrylic details.
– Cut and Connect for low-poly modeling in retopo room.
– Material navigation in UV mapping mode tweaked (Speed of transformation).
– There is possibility to bake Sculpt objects onto current paint mesh. Retopo->Update paint mesh. It will keep painted textures and update normalmap and layers related to Sculpt volumes. It simplifies workflow when you need to change something in geometry on very late stage. Also you may bring paint mesh to sculpt room directly using Geometry->Paint mesh->Sculpt mesh.
– Re-organized retopo commands a bit – separated commands applicable to current tool and to whole mesh.

Render Room Changes:

– Rendering quality in render room improved. Now all samples are summarized with gamma correction that leads to much better visual result.
– Corrected diffuse component rendering. It result with more contrast and pretty lighting. Now PBR looks really better and is well compatible with other engines.
– Several new panoramas.

Other/General Changes:

– New splash screen.
– CUDA and non-CUDA version unified, now all choice performed automatically.
– Drag&Dropped 3dcpack files will be installed automatically.
– Faster initial loading.
– Faster switching between panoramas.
– RMB over object during navigation will not trigger RMB menu.
– If you you are in 3D selection E-mode, loading spline will not switch you to 2D spline mode. Transforming 3D spline with gizmo is also allowed.
– Several options for padding method in Preferences.
– More/less button supported for stencils.
Scripting updated, see Vox object and manual.

Several drawbacks:

– Old shaders are disabled because shaders system was completely re-made.
– Old panoramas are disabled, you will need to add them as HDR or EXR files from scratch.

You can download the tool for a free 30-day trial. The Amateur version of the software costs just $75.

Source: 3dcoat.com