Detailed description of new features and changes in 3D Coat 3.3.

New Feature: Ptex Support

Ptex is a texture mapping system developed by Walt Disney Animation Studios for production-quality rendering. No UV assignment is required! Ptex applies a separate texture to each face of a subdivision or polygon mesh. The Ptex file format can efficiently store hundreds of thousands of texture images in a single file.

The Ptex API provides cached file I/O and high-quality filtering - everything that is needed to easily add Ptex support to a production-quality renderer or texture authoring application. (Sourced from http://ptex.us). Ptex technology allows you to increase local texture resolution on selected faces, so you can achieve a high level of detailing on a very tiny part of the mesh. 3D-Coat allows you to paint your assets with this new Ptex system and simply export textures in specified Ptex file format or as a simple texture to render in your favorite render engine like you normally do with UV-set based textures. Thus, you can get absolutely seamless textures!

General Changes

• Special simple method for external programmers to make connector between 3D - application and 3D-Coat has been done.
• Possibility to create/install 3d-coat extensions from File menu. Extension may contain any sort of files - shaders, pens, strips, materials, masks etc. It is just an image of additional files in 3D-Coat's folder. It is a good method to share 3D-Coat's content. The first extension pack was made due to Oliver Thornton!
• Possibility to upload screenshots right from the 3D-Coat onto the web server. It is very useful for sharing your experience with the community.
• Framing improved - you can focus on object or on pen position (scaling depends on radius in this case).
• Text information about current viewport - front/back/left/right.... is being displayed now.
• Now you can assign several actions to the same hotkeys combination. Actions will be performed in consecutive order after each next activation.
• Improved 3DConnexion support.
• Fade on edges in pen options will act on all pens simultaneously.
• Support of big 3B files to open (>4GB)
• Lots of bug-fixes and small improvements.

Paint Mode Changes

• Possibility to pan in texture view with SPACE as in Photoshop. You should choose 3D-Coat preset from [Camera] menu.
• Drawing with CAPS LOCK will hide cursor only while painting, not always. It improves precision of painting and gives better control.
• "Frame" command will move pivot point to the center of the object (and framing itself of course) in custom pivot point mode.
• Much better correspondence between Voxel room and baked color in Paint room.
• Support of multiple SL objects in a scene.
• Splines/Lines in E-panel will not dive into surface in paint room. In such a way you can easily draw over curved surfaces.
• Much better algorithm for limit subdivision surface directly after importing model for microvertex painting and Ptex. Model after import will look much closer to the limit subdivision surface.
• Better padding for PSD files export.
• Normal-map strength in per-pixel mode can be corrected with Depth modulator slider in layer blending panel.
• Eraser will lower normal-map strength when applied over the normal-map layer.

Retopo Mode Changes

• Quadrangulation quality and speed improved.
• In Retopo->select tool Relax will act only on vertices selected in Retopo->Select->Verices. Snap button will work in the same way.
• “Turn off snapping” button in retopo tool.
• Snapping essentially improved! You may choose one of 3 methods of snapping: outer, nearest along normal, absolutely nearest.

Voxel Mode Changes

• New Measure tool in voxels. It allows to measure and define everything in Voxel Mode using physical units like inches or meters. It is extremely useful for real production and prototyping. (SEE PIC)
• Improved 3D grid. It can be customized to work with real units. 3D-Coat will fit much better for precise works. (SEE PIC)
• Voxel primitives will follow grid points while moved with SHIFT (use CTRL, CTRL+SHIFT for smaller step of movement)
• New Pick tool for voxels. It is very helpful if you have many layers and want to select current object visually without VoxTree (SEE PIC)
• Lines/curves in 'E' panel will not dive into surface in Voxel mode.
• Improved cylinder-like manipulator.
• Selection opacity slider was added to pose tool.