Can anybody develop an applik to 3D-Coat?
makma
Posts: 54
Playing with new PBR 3D-Coat V4,5 I'am dreaming about an applink to Carrara. Unfortunatelly the set of applink plug-ins for 3D-Coat misses the one for us. It would be a great change in my work-flow having a plug-in to 3D-Coat. Its sculpting and painting and texture baking features are great and together with Carrara would became a marvellous duo. Is there anybody to make money for this kind of applink? Perhaps Fenric would consider his time to be worth of developing this kind of plug-in.
Still dreaming about plug-in to Thea Studio. Jonstark and myself voted on Thea's forum for plug-in to Carrara, but probably it is at the end of their priorities.
IMHO only the two plug-ins would change Carrara's position on the market giving to the both hobbyists and, yes, professionals affordable great solutions. I've got cheap edu version of 3D-Coat, and Thea's owner has annual sales as well to buy it for a moderate price I bought it.
I think it would be a better solution to develop the plug-ins for affordable prices than wait a few years for Carrara 10 with all the features that the apps mentioned above can give us today. I see that many 3D app developers start to prefer to widen their products accecibility to other apps by plug-ins than spending time and money to deliver the same by themselves.
and still dreaming... applink to Fusion... Eh!
Greetings,
Marek
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Comments
I've tried this before, but no one seems interested even though the developer of 3DCoat has stated that he would help those who do this and they could even get the software for free. But, I suppose it's worth another try.
I may be interested. I got a lot of experience developing an exporter for Mitsuba (even if unfinished).
I have to resume current projects, but could give a look in a month or two.
Would you know who the contact was ? From the website, it seems to be Andrew Shpagin, but who knows ?
I have talked about this before...
If all you wanted was texture painting, it would be quite easy.
If all you wanted was to sculpt on a custom object that wasn't yet rigged, it would be easy (anything goes for an unrigged vertex object)
And this would be vertex objects: not metaballs, splines, hair, terrain, trees.... vertex objects. Some of those things can be baked into vertex objects - you'd have to do that first.
But I have the feeling that you want to make new morphs for Genesis (or Victoria 4, or anything else that came in "already done").
Morphs add a layer of difficulty because of the longstanding Carrara "bug" that if a figure doesn't have a morph area, you can't add one. Now, with 8.5 officially supporting unlocking the figure for editing, it might be feasible to get morphs in - but it would be Carrara 8.5 (or later) only.
I have yet to figure out a way to programmatically update the UV map for a figure - call the functions, nothing happens. Not saying it's impossible, but it's confusing. Re-mapping may or may not be possible.
You can't change the geometry in destructive ways, full stop: no retopology, no adding or removing geometry: Morphs only.
And I don't have the time to do this and not charge for it. So if you're looking for "free", it's going to have to be someone else.
Would happily pay for this!!
And Fenric is right. I'd like the morph possibilities on top of everything else. Dream big, lol.
Fenric,
I totally agree with you. What you said was obvious for me, but it's better said.
A "Go-coat" plugin is, as far as I'm concerned, a glorified (scratch that, an automated) exporter/importer and can do just what you can do in such a way.
If I understand you correctly, there would be no market for this kind of tool. There is one for a much more sophisticated tool that is beyond my possibilities, both in term of time and access to Carrara innards.
Thank you all.
Fenric, I didn't say that I want the plug-in for free! Luxus for Carrara doesn't come free. Thea plug-in for MAX, SU, Rhino cost the money too. You have to pay for VRay plug-in as well. The only exceptions are plug-ins for Blender. It is clear to me that my respect for your time and effort should be justified with some cash for you. That's it.
I always convert spline messy meshes into vertex ones for cleaning and re-topology. So there is no problem with that to me. I don't use morphs in my still-live and arch-viz projects but I see there are many that use it. From my experience there is no a perfect plug-in. It seems to be there a limit at some point. For instance in Thea plug-in for Skecthup there is a feature that converts all scene to Thea format for final work in Thea Studio if one cannot meet the goal in Sketchup using the plug-in only. There are no perfect solutions in this world so we have to accept same kind of compromise with our expectations. For me that is not a problem. The ability to sculpt further in 3D-Coat my shape from Carrara and get it back UVed and painted with PBR materials back to Carrara assembly room ready to render would be a great step forward in my Carrara work-flow. Unfortunately I'm not sure it could be done to such extend. Maybe some surface editing only like Mari or SubstanceDesigner but go for all!
Philemo, there is a special section in 3D-Coat forum addressed to the peoples interested in making plug-ins:
http://3d-coat.com/forum/index.php?showtopic=5596
I think you should start there. All request concerning cooperation you should address at [email protected]
Cbird, thank you for supporting the idea!
Marek
I'll just do what I usually do then since Zbrush has a Go-Z plugin and 3DCoat has a plugin that can go to and from Zbrush.
FBX has been added to 3DCoat among many other things.
.
"No market" is a bit strong, but "reasonable doubt" is simply from the fact that Carrara isn't really all that popular and AFAIK 3D-Coat is the smallest in that market after ZBrush and Mudbox... I'm guessing that the total number of Carrara users who also use 3D-Coat is probably in the low double digits. Now, upset half of those because I'm going to have to make it Carrara 8.5 only...
But that said... this one has more hope than many suggestions, because I do actually have 3D-Coat myself. I'm not so concerned about morphs - I don't make anything so extreme that Poser's morph brush can't handle it - but the painting would be nice. Carrara's is just a bit too primitive.
Would happy pay for it plus 3D coat would get a new customer.
Regards
Thank you Fenric.
I think it's a mind trap - a small number of Carrara users together with a small number of 3D-Coat users make no sense to make anything worth time and effort. How deep was the market for Luxus? I guess it was very shallow but worth the work.
Who can predict the effect of making an applink to 3D-coat indeed. Painting toolbox of Carrara is rather basic comparing to the tool-set of 3D-Coat and if the applink would make a sensible exchange of surfaces edition between Carrara and 3D-Coat it would be a great step forward for all.
We are living in time of 64 bit CG 3D applications now and making a plug-in to C 8.5 is only reasonable solution to me. My update to C 8.5 this year was very affordable during the March Madness. I think that applink to 3D-Coat should help the others to make decision of upgrading Carrara because it would be a very, very good reason to do that.
There are many applinks to 3D-Coat to download from 3D-C site. Too many for "the smallest in the market". Last update of 3D-C is so huge that I think that it will gain much more interest now than ever. And it deserves it. Panting level seems to be the same with Substance Designer, sculpting features lack little comparing Mudbox and ZBrush. I think it is a case like Thea Studio - week marketing of marvellous application. Almost excluded from 3DArtist pages and the most important 3D artist's forums. Last but not least - it uses my 3D Connexion mouse! I love it! I don't believe it will ever work with Carrara, sorry.
Hope that making plug-ins for Carrara will give it another life. It is a very good app for newcomers to the universe of 3D and it could be a good one together with a handful of plug-ins for professionals too.
So?
Ringo! Welcome to the club!
Marek
I'm a fanatic of Carrara and the other softwares don't interest me.
But, Carrara doesn't follow the evolution of technology and we must call upon bridges between softwares which evolve and Carrara which stay in place.
If we continue with Carrara, it's thanks to plugins which enable us to make the exchange of informations with these programs.
I just receive the mail from the last Lightwave, it's very interresting, but I'm to old too learn it now.
Thank you Fenric, Eric, Sparrowhawkes and Others for your work !!!
theoretically we could be able to achieve these PBR settings with carrara's editor as well ;-)
http://3d-coat.com/pbr-description/
Hey, I didn't immediately bite you all: which is my promised response to people asking for import/export plugins :D
Ok, if a couple of you think you'd not mind sending a few bucks my way, I'll see what I can do.
(And Headwax: the "quick select" ended up such a nightmare that I have given up, sorry.)
Thanks Fenric, really appreciate you trying!
Gee, I use your plugins so much, you are a gem.
I am a little late to this thread. I would purchase, I would love to try to help in the development, though I am very rusty at things. But I would definatly put money towards it as well. I am not sure how much the developer of 3d-coat offers for compensation either. When we discussed it before it was not possible to do the things that were discussed in the thread. I am glad to hear it is now, which would make it more on the level of Go-Z for morph creation?