love the nausicaa wallpaper, i had that one up for about a year
Haha Thanks, I actually had to Content-Aware Scale it in Photoshop to fit my 1920x1200 resolution. The result was not perfect but almost flawless.
Atangeo Team recently released Balancer 1.0,
which allows quickly and easily simplify 3D models.
It also features fast and effective stripification algorithm,
to optimize meshes for rendering based on triangle strips.
Hope you will find Balancer useful.
From the press release:
Atangeo Balancer is a tool to optimize and simplify 3D models.
Its exceptional performance and a novel user interface allow finding
perfect balance between visual appearance and the number of polygons,
quickly and easily. Balancer utilizes a high quality polygon reduction
(aka mesh simplification or decimation) to preserve the visual
appearance of your model. The model features, normals, texture
coordinates, layer boundaries are all honored by Balancer. It can
optimize your models even further to dramatically speed up rendering
of your models. Balancer features a fast and efficient triangle
reordering that can be tuned for various rendering methods like
triangle strips and array/buffer based rendering.
Balancer Lite is a free version. It is fully functional but works with
small meshes only.
The limits for a single mesh are 15000 triangles and 10000 vertices.
Link: http://www.atangeo.com/
That sounds pretty cool, I’ll give it a shot. Thanks for sharing.
Edit: Tried the lite version on a voxel model, pretty impressive! $52 isn’t bad at all for the full version either. Of course it creates triangles, but maybe they can improve that.
A lot has been said about 3dcoat, for me one of the big bonus is that it runs on linux, thats pretty cool for our company members that hate windows.
I’m constantly fighting with Maya over the rotation direction, I can’t get it to choose the direction I want to rotate, how can I get this fixed? I can’t keep fighting with maya to rotate.
http://3.bp.blogspot.com/_LnLtk3_0E1Q/SJ85h-mWyVI/AAAAAAAAEdY/-eeGObGO9HA/s400/Eye_of_the_Tiger_by_jakarutu.jpg
Well i think this is just because the programmer has not to deal with any other guy writing crap code, to add to the program and fix. He’s alone so he can control it all. He’s also fast as hell
Also i think its not a great problem for a very good programmer as he is including new features and tools.
The real problem is to finetune all in a way the program is stable and solid in different OS and hardware configurations.
BTW what I think is he and Ofer too are geniuses. Both ZB and 3D coat are extending the artistic approach to 3D.
Voxels agains polygons?
Voxels seem to offer real freedom to the game especially for people starting from scratch, but for people working on traditional modeled meshes to detail them afterwards as it happens to be now in productions, even polygons work very well.
The question is, IF he can really compete yet. No doubt that he created some very impressive features for 3D Coat but if you read the 3DCoat forum you’ll find that there are a lot of frustrated users who are not satisfied with the way 3DCoat is developed at the moment. “Listening to the customers” at the moment mainly means that he is implementing loads of features which only work half the way. Several program features are bug infested even the ones that were not touched for month. There is only ONE beta tester and all the bug hunting is done by the community. But as long as all the enthusiastic 3DCoat users spend their time dreaming up new features and not optimising the usability of the app and as long as Andrew listens to all these wishes and does not establish a clear roadmap for 3DCoat, the tool will simply not be able to compete with other commercial applications, for which huge amounts of money is invested in testing and finetuning. The fact that hardly any professional user used 3DCoat for a bigger project that could showcase it’s power is surely due to the fact that the tool simply does not feel comfortable enough to spend a lot of time with it. It’s very hard to finetune a software to a good “feel” and you cannot expect from a single programmer to handle such a complicated application all on his own. I totally understand the enthusiasm about 3DCoat and there is a lot of emotion in the discussion in which direction it should be developed. This is simply the case because nobody want such a promising tool to be wasted and therefore everyone tries hard to convince Andrew of is own opinion. I hope that this does not confuse him too much and that he finds the best way to develop 3DCoat.
I was interested in 3d coat at first because the ideas behind it are great and it has a lot of potential as you’ve just said. However, a thing that made me turn in a completely differet dirrection was when I’ve read him having ‘issues’ with the projects the program is used in. So he basically dissed INFINITE for making female nudes… it’s like a video camera producer saying he won’t sell his product to porn makers [not that I consider Lee’s work porn - but that’s what Andrew seemed to call it]. I seriously find it ridiculous and quite enought to make me go ‘thanks, but no thanks!’
I don’t want to have to think about what I will make in the next 2 years just in case I cross the magical border between art and soft porn 
Intervain, from what i know this particular issue has led to long internal discussions at pilgrim as well as on the forum. With the outcome that this eula passage was taken out. Which i think is the positive side of the story.
Intervain,
If you take the time to read how the developer has handled (and feels)
about that situation you will realize that you are only serving to further fuel
an incorrect ‘issue’. (His over-zealous employee was the cause of the snafu with
INFINITE while Andrew was on a 2-week vacation.)
Or you could send an inquiry to Andrew himself requesting further clarification.
The reality is it’s a non-issue, and it always has been. The developer (Andrew)
has beliefs and hopes users don’t use his software to promote things like
violence, hatred, pr0n, etc. … same as probably the Pixologic folks don’t really
want their software used. But ultimately, it’s an uninforceable request and not
a stipulation of usage.
Of course, a person is free to choose to invest in a software or not for
their own reasons, but I think one should not spread false fear (based upon
incorrect facts) about something they choose not to invest in…
Personally, I don’t share his specific beliefs and appreciate his request, but
will use the software for art as I see fit…which he has acknowledged as a
probable and likely option that a consumer of his product may take.
Well taking it out to keep the damage low makes sense.
Still just the fact that they once sayd it is a mayor turnoff.
You guys are just small minded and obviously devoid of any serious moral depth.
It is his product and he and his team have every right to say what they did and in many ways I can wholeheartedly agree with him when I see what garbage most electronic games are.
That someone has the intestinal fortitude to REQUEST and not demand that his product be used in a POSITIVE way, is in my opinion very refreshing.
Some of you guys really need to get out from behind your computers and smell the flowers. There is a real world out there!
PS My daughters wanted me to tell you that they find most of these monster images on this site really pathetic. That should tell you something.
While I initially thought that the 3D Coat EULA was silly, I have to admire Andrew for putting his principles before money. There’s a lot of people on this planet that will sell almost anything to make a dollar, so it’s always nice to see somebody like Andrew trying to do the right thing, regardless of whether I think they’re a little misguided or not.
Lol its not about monsters.
Its just that it all sounds like a religious thing behind it.
@krisz now i remember why you are on my block list.
you are right, there is a world out there, it is full of beauty but violence too, oh and naked women. lol. you always make me laugh.
You 2 guys (dissco and spacebaby) are such a pair of losers that it is hardly possible to give you any advice that may save you from your childish and naive little perception of reality.
On the other hand as some kind soul just wrote me - it is an honour to be on either of your block lists.
Well I can agree only partially with you.
First off, even Zbrush was programmed only from Ofer at its start, so a good programmer even if alone, truely can succeed at least till a certain point before he needs help.
Secondly :Zbrush too, has a mixed direction as a tool. It is a 2.5D wonderful app, in which you can sculpt and paint 3d models and do much more, but’s not a specialized app. It is used alot by 3D artists, because of sculpting capabilities, but it wasn’t initially projected specifically for that task.
3D coat seems to be similar. It was intended for detailing and texturing work, and as time passed programmer put inside even voxel sculpting technology together with alot of other useful tools, surely getting inspired by suggestions from users even related both to Zbrush and to other apps.
Where i can agree, is that adding features is lets say relatively easy. Making the app work like a charm is not that easy.
He surely will have alot to polish and finetune.
Probably, since he added tools and features at speed of light, the best thing he will need to do at a certain point, is to stop for a period adding things, and debug, debug, enhance what’s there, making the app an even more fantastic experience.
Agree also on betatesters, but for now he seems to have no money to pay someone to betatest for him.
Andrew was just saying yesterday or the day before how he’s planning to set aside some time to just work on stability and bugs.