3D coat is not to be confused with Mesh authoing software. In order to use 3D coat you first have to author the mesh in another package.
3D coat is also not primarily a displacement painter. The deformations that occur in 3D coat are a direct manipulation of the normal rather than the mesh its self. This can cause Big problems in that the resultant exported OBJ is low res and can distort details of the normal you produce. fine for game engines and Real Time rendering but not so great for High res sculpture.
Essentiallly your painting diplacement directly in the form of a normal map. This is very different to ZBrush displacement, which is direct manipulation of high poly mesh. This can be great for certain RT applications where a primary Low Poly mesh is to be drawn in the rendering engine. But is not so efficient if your looking for a High Polycount Ultra detailed sculpture piece.
So let me stress 3D coat is not a standalone solution yet. In order for it to work you need to first author a mesh in a mesh building environment. I prefer to use Silo for its shear speed.
As to the difference in Silo packages I can't tell you anymore than the nevercenter website, but one would assume that the Core is a basic for personal use and the Pro is for commercial use. I purchased and started with Silo a long time ago when it had just one flavour and as such I have a full professional upgrade at every update. So i have never had to concern myself with the core package.
Silo is just getting better and better for quick buliding of bases for sculpture and RT use but its displacement painting is far more system limited than a software such as ZBrush. I can only effectively push around a few hundred thousand or so polys in Silo but in ZBrush i can manipulate 20 mil'+, so though the Workflow tailing to Displacement painting then retopology is possible with Silo. It is still far more efficient to build a base mesh structure with silos regular polygon tools then detail with displacement tools.
Silo for retop is ok but the tools in 3D coat are more intuitive. Silo for UVing appears to have great features but i find that often it give errors and splits each if the UV shells into individual polys, I prefer Headus UVLayout (by far the best application tailored specifically for this).
At the end of the day if you know the tools features inside and out it really does not matter which tools you use for what. Though the desired results are pretty consistent in 3D work as to deliverables to a client, the ways that you get there are completely up to you with no hard, fast rules. I big sell Silo to everybody, but ir does take some learning. However its
toolset is good and it will provide all the basics that you need to
author meshes for use in highend commercial packages, such as maya/max/xsi. With another BIG advantage being that with a bit of knowledge you can
completely rebuild the interface how you want it.
So in my usual basic workflow I use Silo only for mesh authoring. I use Headus UV layout for setting UV's, then I would take the base to either ZBrush or Mudbox and detail, depending on the polycount needed and the level of Detail required I would go ahead and retop using either 3d coat or ZBrush if required. Then on to test rig in animation package.
But certainly one to kep an eye on.
kenmo:
