3d Coat Sculpture Modelling, Retopo , UVs and Paint

An introduction to voxel sculpting and setup for the modelling process. Whats the difference between voxels and surfaces? A look at basic tools like pose and smooth. Remember you can use control to make the effects of the brush negative or shift to smooth automatically

Managing resolution and a review of basic tools such as build, extrude, sphere and grow.

Blocking out the shape with the pose tool and softening it up with some simple sculpt tools

We continue with the sculpting tools and learn how to use primitives to create new shapes

The basics of the symmetry tool. Its so important but can be quite tricky to get it right.

Fixing problems and using curves to make a tail. The curve tool is incredibly powerful. We use it to make tails but you could make whole character templates with it like zspheres in zbrush.

The amazing preset tools have a lot of stuff which works like and has the feel of famous zbrush tools like damian standard. If your coming from that environment these will make you feel more comfortable

Some more issues about perfecting symmetrical copying operations. These are vital tips to avoid frustration.

We add toes and fingers using the very flexible primitive tool. Of course we go through a variety of adjustments using the transform tool for positioning and the symmetry tools to copy back and forth form one side to the other

This video covers some proxy object errors and then move on to show how to add custom curve shapes both by using the presents and by making your very own custom shapes. Seriously this tool is amazing

We do some smoothing out of the model then a first pass of adding details with the awesome surface presets

A continuation of the last video. More smoothing and details anbd the crocodile really starts to emerge -- FINALLY!!

This video is a rebuild of the feet. I end up rebuilding them again becaus eth forms didnt really work out the way I wanted. But i left it in for continuities sake.

Another foot rebuild which is much more satisfactory

We integrate the fingers and the tail spines directly into the main body model using the amazing merge and boolean tools. Sooo easy!

We check out the amazing autotopology tools and how to optimize the process as well as look at some of the limitations to explain whey we probably need to do it manually in this section

Here we begin the manual retopo portion by establishing the fundamental edge loops of the face and then connecting them. Primarily using the points and face tool and the quads tool.

Another foot rebuild which is much more satisfactory

Now that the main body retopo parts are blocked in we fill in the gaps and get the tail retopo started

We do the retopo of the belly and use the strokes tool to block out the feet.

We fix a trick spiraling problem on the foot. This is a useful technique because it often occurs in automatic retopo and its the kind of thing that comes up all the time. Then we move onto the toes and combining them in with the feet.

In this video we scrap the original topology of the fingers and remake them more simply then block in the polys for the hand

Whwre we continue to resolve the edge lops of the hand to get half decent retopo

Where we separate out the tail spine geometry from the main tail so we can make sure we have consistent clean edge loops

Because the model is not perfectly symmetry we have to do extra work to get the tail as symmetrical as possible while respecting the design

This video is interesting. It shows how to export and import different retopos and how to combine them by copying and pasting from different retopo layers

A highly important lecture for dealing with non symmetrical geometry. Keep some parts symmetrical and other parts asymetrical. We also do a first pass of the UV maps so that we can start painting textures. Very useful information! There are some crashes of 3D Coat at the end of the video. We resolve them in the next video

Discovery of why 3D Coat was crashing. Then a second pass at UVs and unfolding

We look at methods of baking, discuss some interesting paint possibilities. We still have to juggle back and forth a bit between paint and retopo to find the right bake export settings

We get a useable bake and start discussing some of the basic paint tools

We continue our discussion of masking techniques and look at alpha channels and the variation tools and the AMAZING gradient fill tool

How to use stencils and a first look at the amazing physically based smart materials

Basic Smart Material Editing, interactive noise applliactions and some interactive mask applications. These are so awesome and one of my favorite tools

How to use the color to pick from reference images and we start to paint the real texture for the crocodile using colors picked form the image. We also add some nice deformation style effects using the normal map.

Using alpha channels to add specific styles of details. Easy but very, very useful

We pain in the purple tail scales and then add some color to the fingers and body color variations using the gradient tool

Adding subtle variations to the colors using the tools we have already discovered

We start adding in some specular and normal map details to increase the visual interest in the 3d, not illustrated, model

We add some mouth and eye details

We export the textures out to Photoshop so we can use the blur functions. This always works very seamlessly in 3D Coat - another amazing feature

Some highly important details regarding paint symmetry and the gradient tool that skipped my mind as I was grabbing the videos. Not to be missed.