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Hot link to 3d Coat


kac

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I use 3d Coat quite a bit for texturing models and thought it would be good to have a hotlink to 3d Coat which has advanced uv mapping and painting.

 

Right now the workflow is OBJ from FZ into 3d coat but you end up doing the rendering in 3d Coat. There is no way back other than using the obj files with are now polygons.

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Hi Ken, 

 

To clarify, if you export your formZ model as OBJ does it not work properly in 3D Coat?

 

Also, following up with our original question, are you inquiring about having a formZ Plugin for 3D Coat, or does 3D Coat use a specific feel extension that you would like to see formZ support?

 

Please answer these questions so we can further assist you. 

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I can bring the obj files into 3dc. But they will be poly models thereafter especially if any uv mapping was altered. What I was hoping for is to be able to use 3dc for painting the models and bring those back into FZ but be able to keep the nurbs info not poly.

 

What 3dc lacks is any animation tools so flythrough of a scene would be non existent. They do have applinks to other programs if you follow the link I posted in previous post.

​Down the road I may pick up either Renderzone and weighing my options. If I am only exporting out obj files then I can choose an outside renderer like Electric Image. Thought it would be more convenient to be able to send the model to 3dc, uv map it, paint it and bring it back into FZ and render within FZ.

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Nurbs and other smooth objects are more for engineering than for rendering/animation. 3D coat is geared for creating high detail, low poly assets for gaming and rendering or for creating very high poly assets for 3D printing. While obj files can contain smooth information, 3D coat can not import smooth objects. Any object being processed by 3D coat will be exported as a poly object. This is not a limitation of FZ. In fact FZ is one of a limited number or softwares which can utilize both smooth and poly (and Sub-D) objects efficiently.

 

I use FZ and 3D coat. It is a great combination. I prefer to model in smooth objects and I typically make a "rendering" copy of objects I want to paint. I use the polygonize tool to quickly and easily create a poly version of the objects. This gives you the opportunity to adjust and control the smoothness of the facetting of smooth objects as you desire for optimal rendering. 3D coat does not like n-gons (unlike versatile FZ) so as a last step it is important to eliminate them. I use FZ's triangulate tool for this. I then export as obj to 3D coat, create UVs and paint. When done, I export back into FZ for rendering with Maxwell. Also note that many objects don't require complex UVs and can be more quickly and easily mapped with FZs mapping tools. (A note to ADS, I really miss the texture editor fromV6 and ability to edit texture groups; would be great to have it returned). Exporting pre mapped objects (which are converted for you by FZ during the obj export to UVs) can save a lot of time as well being ready to paint/age in 3D coat immediately upon import.

 

I retain both the smooth and poly versions of the files or objects because it gives me the most control for optimization for both rendering and for CNC for which my clients require smooth models.

 

Having said all this, It would be fun to have an app link for FZ but in reality it is pretty easy and straightforward to just use obj especially for Maxwell renders because I rebuil and adjust the materials in Maxwells material editor manually anyway. The app link would be a lot more helpful for Renderzone renders, placing the textures in the appropriate places automatically.

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Right now the obj's exported from FZ aren't coming in well into 3dc and there is now way to just create a new texture and load it back into FZ on the original model.

If I use 3dc for any uv mapping then I am stuck with the obj files for rendering.

Ideally it would be nice to have FZ use the applink to 3dc and have FZ uv mapping be retained (even if it created some proxy object in a temp folder) so users can simply port the model to 3dc, paint it, save the textures and have FZ update the model within.

 

This would make the workflow so much better especially for those using Renderzone.

 

If I need to export out and uv map obj files then I might was well go to a 3rd party renderer such as Maxwell, EIAS3d or what ever.

 

BTW I don't remember any program that can read in an N-Gon very well especially of vertices are welded.

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HI Ken, 

 

Thank you for clarifying, and thank you setz for the workflow you use between the two programs.  We will see if something can be implemented in the future to make this workflow a bit more efficient.

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