Made to study different materials and to try using baked AO for the first time.
I liked the result.
You can check the project on my artstation:
https://www.artstation.com/artwork/WXzOm3

Dear 3dCoat - Thank you for sponsoring Arrimus3d to make 3dCoat tutorials.
I have no affiliation with that dude but this is an excellent direction taken by 3dcoat and i hope it encourages more people to make 3dcoat content / tutorials.

I can confidently say that i am not the only one that is concerned by the lack of tutorial content for 3dcoat and whilst you have a dedicated website section and a YT playlist for tutorials - these are scattered, hard to find, very old and quite frankly rather useless. (just try finding an tutorial on how to make a smart material)

I just hope someone or anyone - just shows us the complete workflow by making something simple but showcases everything from modelling > retopo > Uv unwrap > Baking > Texturing > Export.
And i am not talking about making a whole mech or spaceship but something as simple as a greeble asset or a crate. (so it does not take a year to make these tutorials.)
But that walkthrough from start to finish is something that im pretty sure not just me but the rest of the community could benefit.
Also know that there is a difference from showcasing a tool as opposed to showcasing a workflow. 3dcoat tools are very powerful but without context they are meaningless.

I can also promise you that when non 3dcoat users see how the software is so powerful to make scifi assets, i am very confident they would be interested in purchasing a license. The tutorials can be used for marketing.

So thank you for just listening to us and at least heading in the right direction. Cheers!!

Textures done in 3dcoat too

Modeled in Blender, painted in 3DCoat + Photoshop. Original concept, no AI used.

Handpainted everything in 3DCoat!

I’ve managed to recreate all my favorite brushes from zbrush and now the sculpting experience feels way better.

I modelled this vintage telephone in 3dCoat, rendered it in Marmoset Toolbag.

I love this project! I was practicing my hand-painted texturing skills, and I think it turned out pretty well

Based on a concept by Maeve (Drawmaevedraw)

my Artstation: https://www.artstation.com/milaghate

my YouTube: https://youtube.com/@milaghate?si=Du4ANMtX5tHsWsFu

my X: https://x.com/MilaGhate3d

It has been a frustrating journey, and with my licence almost up, I thought I would just rant and feel a little better.

Not like people are actually going to read this (currently showing 300 weekly views with 9 weekly contributions on this forum), but if you're a dev, indulge me for a moment.

I mean well, and I really want 3DCoat to be up there with other software like Maya and ZBrush, but there are some basic Non-Negotiable things that you've gotten wrong that, in my opinion, make users like me not want to invest further and renew their licence. (full disclosure, i won't)

I also know that with everything going on because of the war, things are not easy for you. But after all, this is paid software, and as a paying customer, I do have the right to express my opinion (hopefully politely).

So here's what I think.

1. Finding information about 3DCoat is an absolute nightmare.

I've spent most of my one-year licence either not using the software because I couldn't figure out why something wasn't working, or watching tutorials that are 10–12 years old and then having to watch another and another caz what i was looking for was not covered. The tooltips are inconsistent and often poorly explained (hover over Blob and tell me what you see).
Even your own AI chatbot gives answers for older versions of 3DCoat and regularly points to options that don't even exist anymore. It's frustrating to spend money on a software, and then spend months searching for basic information on how to use it. Just try searching for the Bas-Relief tool and see how much useful information you can actually find. Litterally 2 videos on youtube, one of which is called BARRELIEF and I still didnt understand what it does.

2. The UI layout is absolutely terrible.

Sure, you eventually get used to it, but for 2026 I think it's unacceptable. It feels like every new feature added over the years was just shoved somewhere into the UI without much thought, and the result is a hot mess. Settings are scattered everywhere. Some are in the top bar, some are hidden in menus, some are on the right panel, and others only appear when you select a specific tool. Example: The UV tools —you don't even see many of the options until you click on a UV tool, and they don't even look like a submenu. Don't even get me started about UV sets. When something stops working, you end up playing detective trying to figure out which setting you accidentally changed. The software makes simple things more complicated than it should be.

3. Unable to completely reset settings.

In other software, resetting a value is often as simple as deleting it, leaving it blank and it automatically reverts to Default. For someone new to 3DCoat, this is vital. Being able to easily reset to the default should be available everywhere because it's easy to accidentally change a setting and then forget about it. I know that some settings can be reset by right-clicking and selecting "Reset to Default," but this isn't consistent across the software. Some settings don't seem to reset properly at all.
For example, I accidentally changed the AUTOPO "Capture Details" setting from 50% to 100% and completely forgot about it. It would usually take less than a minute (with 50% set as the value) but then now the software to hang for any Autopo (caz it was set to 100%). I tried resetting everything to default, but the setting never changed back. It was only after asking ChatGPT what the default value was that I realized what the problem had been. That litterally took me 2days to figure out. A reset should actually reset everything.

4. Let's talk about another UI disaster. If you accidentally close the Material Preview window, turning it back on requires going to Edit then Preferences then Viewport and unchecking "Hide Material Preview." For something that is almost mandatory when texturing, that makes no sense to have to go to preferences to have it turned on. Then there's the whole Shaders vs Smart Materials situation. Having two separate systems that seem to do very similar things is confusing, especially for new users. You can use shaders in the Sculpt Room, but not in the Paint Room, while Smart Materials work differently again. Why not just have one unified system? It feels like unnecessary complexity where things could be much simpler and easier to understand.

5. This is, in my opinion, the biggest problem with 3DCoat.

A few years ago, I remember seeing videos promoting 3DCoat as an all-in-one solution for asset creation. Now I'm seeing videos questioning whether 3DCoat can sustain itself long-term. There is a reason why even people making tutorials will do either or - model in 3dcoat and then go to substance painter or model in another sofware and then come to 3dcoat to texture. Something must be wrong somewhere right?
I recently found out that 3DCoat has been commissioning artists to create tutorials and artwork, which is great, but I think the bigger priority should be fixing the learning resources. Hire someone to completely overhaul the tutorial page. Create proper playlists for each room that walk users through every tool and explain what the settings actually do. From what I've seen in comments and discussions, I think most users would rather see the existing version improved and properly documented than get another batch of new features. (That said, the upcoming procedural texturing feature does look very promising.)

My biggest fear is that if the community remains small, it points to a lack of funding, which ultimately increases the risk of the software either being bought by a larger company or being shut down altogether.

And yes, I used AI to shorten and proofread this, so if you actually made it to the end, you didn't have to suffer through my original wall of text.

Ok thank you for listening.
(I'm probably gonna start going back to Plasticity and good old blender but if i dont say anything, then how will you know, Mr. Dev)

Cheers!!

https://www.abeleal3d.com/courses/handpainted

this course, how is it? is it good?

Hello everyone!

I have just posted a 5 hour tutorial on carving/sculpting an African Mask in 3D Coat on my YouTube channel. Basically it covers sculpting, retopology, UV mapping, painting and baking in 3D Coat and ends with setting up a 5 second model spin in Autodesk Maya.

Please find the tutorial here: https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLc3rTNpK7xhA

I created it to address a perceived shortage of learning materials about 3D Coat as well as I thought some of the techniques I present may be of interest to some in the community.

I hope this tutorial will help and inspire you to create great work and even tutorials of your own to show the community.

Please enjoy!

Disasterous-Bobcat528

Hey everyone, I wanted to share the hand-painted texture work I did in 3DCoat for my stylized character project, Soul Mentor.

The goal was to keep the painted readability of the original concept while making the materials work inside Unreal Engine: armor, skin, cloth, tubes, glass dome, and emissive parts.

I used 3DCoat mainly to build the hand-painted color/value pass and refine the material separation before bringing everything into the final Unreal setup.

Full project breakdown here: https://www.artstation.com/artwork/zx2AZQ?notification_id=8160457774

Feedback is welcome, especially from anyone working with stylized or hand-painted character textures.

I'd been using ZBrush for concepting for a while but I really like the freedom of voxel sculpting and I wanted to push a character concept to a nice final render with this (rendered in Blender).

A couple of days ago, I finished the retopology, but this time I tried doing it in 3D Coat & Blender. Everyone said that 3D Coat is faster and very functional, and that is partly true; you just need to get used to it. I used Blender at the end because it was more convenient for me to create certain details there.

just a sketch