3D-Coat Adds Smart Material Features and Improvements to the 3D Concept Sketching Workflow

Pilgway has released 3D-Coat 4.8 that offers a range of new Smart Materials features and improvements. The latest version also touts some additions to modeling that should make retopology and concept workflows much better.

The latest additions to 3D-Coat include attaching smart materials to layers, 4K monitors support, baking scan, render scene in Renderman and many more.

Smart Materials Improvements

Likely the biggest feature is the fact that Smart Materials in 3D-Coat can now be assigned to layers. This will make material management even easier. A new and improved curvature calculation brings new realism to Smart Materials in version 4.8.

Now Smart-Materials has history associated with it, and you can render scenes using Pixar’s RenderMan. Smart Materials now can be resized and 3DC will automatically resample the material for a lossless workflow. This allows you to paint at a lower resolution and export in one that is much higher. Should save a lot of time.

Modeling Improvements

Some new improvements have been issued to the 2D paint tool that will make concept design work a much smoother workflow. It vastly improves “sketching” in 3D space.

The Retopology Room in 3DC sees some new primitives with the latest release. You can now use Cubes, Cylinders, toruses and other shapes such as spirals when retopologizing in 3DC —A small step towards true polygon modeling.