
We learn a few important tools to allow us to quickly manipulate geometry to achieve attractive shapes. Diagnosing problems and using reference.
Explore the 3D Coat interface for hard surface modeling, focusing on voxel sculpting, surface tools, and switching between voxel and surface workflows.
Learn to use the split tool in 3D Coat to cut surfaces and preserve form by increasing resolution with red plus, smoothing as needed. Practice splitting through all volumes.
Use voxel layers to mask and smooth shapes directly on the surface, creating armor pieces. Extract masked area as a separate object, apply boolean edits, and adjust thickness for alignment.
Develop surface forms in 3D Coat by switching from voxel to surface modes, using a single build-up brush and reference anatomy to sculpt muscular shapes and protect key areas.
Refine sculpted form by switching between voxel and surface workflows, using polish, trim, and cut off tools to tighten edges, achieve consistency, and develop a bevelled surface.
Refine arm geometry by fixing design issues, reducing polygons, reassembling parts, and increasing volume, then use split, fill, circle, and symmetry tools to sculpt a stronger hard-surface arm.
Forge a chest design by building a cylinder item, manage layers and hierarchy with duplicate and change parent, and refine belt straps through wireframe checks and iterative detailing.
Leverage symmetry and clone tools to extrude and duplicate parts, add nonuniform detailing, and use primitives like spheres for joints while preserving clean hard-surface form.
Move to the head, perform radical sculpture changes by adjusting resolution, duplicating and hiding surfaces, and using rectangle and curve tools to achieve a more robotic, mechanical look.
Redesign the torso by adjusting the pelvis and bone structures, using the hide tool to shape circles and ellipses, duplicating parts, and breaking the forms to align with suggested anatomy.
This subtractive design lecture explores negative space with the hide tool and cuts, iterating from a blocked-out basic form to refine a three-dimensional relief.
Refine hard surface silhouettes by adjusting scale, axis alignment, and volumes in 3D Coat, using cylinders and primitives to balance negative space and preserve clear silhouette.
Learn to build a hand in 3D Coat using curves to form a base finger, duplicate and clone fingers, and align along the main axis with the center of mass.
Learn to pose fingers and express a model using the pose tool, hierarchy, and volume controls for expressive hands in hard surface modeling and sculpting in 3D Coat.
In the final render, adjust lights, shadows, and color in the render room, explore photorealistic materials, and render at high resolution with 32-bit options, then disable real-time render for speed.
This course explores the amazingly powerful 3D Coat. If you've wanted to explore 3D but been confused by which program to learn I highly recommend 3D Coat. It is so easy, yet so incredibly powerful that you can start having fun without immediately worrying about technicalities.
Some positive feedback from current students:
"This is an excellent course and I really enjoy your teaching style. I've been over section 2 at least 10 times now and there's so much gold in there. As a musician there's noway I could listen to a topic over and over if the instructor was monotonous, condescending or other, but you speak easily and naturally with highly relevant content and an excellent commend of the subject. By working in an almost free form fashion and uncovering limitations and mistakes in both program and design makes the course much more useful and educational."
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"Wow, first of all, I MUST say: I'm 14 lectures in and after the 1st or 2nd ... this series is truly awesome. Feel free to quote me on that. I've even told all my design friends about it."
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"Nobody has put anything together that's quite like this. Some of Javis Jones' tuts are great, but you also add a tremendously strong elements of ideation and practical, captivating design-dev skills along with how the tools work ... kudos, my friend. Also wanted to say: good vocal/video pacing as well, very engaging, never-ever boring!"
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"Such a creative way to use the tools. I am learning new methods for designing complex shapes and I am only about 4 lessons in. I really have to thank you and I am so glad I purchased this course. I've been in a bit of a rut with 3D - Coat, wanting to use it but putting it off and sticking with what I am comfortable with (polygon modelling in MODO) but you have really opened my eyes with your course. Thank you so much"
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We begin the course looking at a variety of ways to create 3D forms. There are lots of tools to use, but we focus on a select few and discover how easy it can be to go from zero to hero - literally!
But I don't want to be guilty of just giving you some marketing blurb. Let's keep it real. Some of these tools can be self explanatory and may not merit a whole video related to it. However, what this video series provides is a real world peak into some of the deeper issues you may encounter. I include a video where I have a memory overload and then i explain why it happened because its a typical error you will run into as you start adding lots of geometry. I look into global space issues which occur and break symmetry from time to time as you use certain tools and look at ways of creating smoothness without losing the form which seems to be typical in a voxel based environment - and lots of other little details which can ruin your day if you are not aware of them.
After I explain our little group of tools, I've tried to make the series project based. I explain my process and at one point get inspired by a small detail which totally changed the direction of the model to great success I think.
This speaks very highly of 3D Coat . It is very flexible to the creative process and extremely forgiving, allowing you complete fluidity as you work. Z Brush gets all the press, but I am telling you as someone who has been committed to 3d for 20 years, 3D Coat is a special program and the quality of your work will improve massively.
But not only that the level of your frustration will correspondingly decline.
Even if you do not learn the program from me, put the effort in and learn this amazing product for your own sake.
I am a professional who has worked in countless commercials and have taught 3D and visual effects for 10 years using Maya and Z Brush, both excellent products.
3D Coat is my secret weapon of choice. You will not regret the time you invest in these videos where I explore many interesting workflows to achieve form and structure which are simple unrivaled in any other program.