Projection/Stencil Painting

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shushens
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Projection/Stencil Painting

Post by shushens » 28 Jul 2009, 06:02

Hey guys! I have some questions.

I have modelled a house which I am trying to paint. The house is extremely low-poly and I do not want to subdivide it, of course. So that rules out Zbrush automatically. Since I am using Windows XP x64, Photoshop does not support 3D painting.

In MudBox, the painting process is very simple and I like it, but there are some problems I am facing.

(i) When I try to paint 4K textures, Mudbox acts extremely sluggish and almost haults if I add a second layer. Probably that is due to a bad graphics card. I wish there was an option to lower display quality to make the painting process smooth, but probably there isn't. The card driver is already set to 'high performance' mode, which makes no difference whatsoever in this case.

(ii) If I paint low res. textures, then it does work for 3-4 layers (then gets sluggish again even if I have those layers invisible). But if I only want to paint on a few polygons, and I select those polys and hide unselected, and paint on the visible polys only, when I unhide, I see those hidden polygons also got painted in a weird dotted fashion. As I see it, masking is available only for sculpting. So how does one paint with accuracy in Mudbox?


If I try to explore other alternatives, BodyPaint 3D is the first one that comes to mind. But there I am not being able to find any stencil painting feature. Also, I am not sure how to select a few polys and paint on those only. I have a few tutorial DVDs on BP3D that go on and on about laying out UVs; very little time is spent on explaining painting techniques.

Any suggestions would be greatly appreciated. I really want to stay within my comfort zone without trying all the other painting applications out there. I did try 3DCoat and Blacksmith. Was hugely discouraged by the interface and workflow.
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Leo
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Re: Projection/Stencil Painting

Post by Leo » 28 Jul 2009, 09:05

Create the uvs in xsi then export a lowpolyobj and take it into z brush. Then import the obj and under geometry turn of the smooth. After that you can happily subdivide your mesh as much as you want/need and start painting.

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shushens
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Re: Projection/Stencil Painting

Post by shushens » 28 Jul 2009, 09:53

I know, but unless the total polycount is in millions, I do not get a very good texture quality. And if I try to stencil paint on a mesh that subdivided, it also starts to act very sluggish, so it does not really serve my purpose, so to speak. I do not want great real-time display. But the texture that is getting stored finally should be high. res. Strangely enough, I have sculpted on 16 million poly mesh and never had any problem. It's only painting that causes all the trouble, even if I have flat shading on. The reason, as I understand, is my bad graphics card. So I was wondering, maybe BodyPaint can do it, since Maxon applications are always easy on system resources and I know it can lower the quality of screen shading depending on my card, but the final texture that you save out still gets the high res. detail.

So, that's the reason.
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Taros
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Re: Projection/Stencil Painting

Post by Taros » 29 Jul 2009, 20:39

Just a question: Did you ever tried 3D Coat 3? Maybe this could be a solution? It is worth a try.

Be creative
Chris
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=============== www.christoph-werner.de ===============
====== www.lernfaktor.de - Tutorials in german language =====

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Hirazi Blue
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Re: Projection/Stencil Painting

Post by Hirazi Blue » 29 Jul 2009, 20:45

I can only agree, version 3 is definitively a good reason to give 3D Coat a second try!!! :-?
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Taros
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Re: Projection/Stencil Painting

Post by Taros » 29 Jul 2009, 20:51

Hirazi Blue wrote:I can only agree, version 3 is definitively a good reason to give 3D Coat a second try!!! :-?
oops... Haven't seen it. Sorry for that.

@shushens: I don't know, when you tried 3D Coat the last time, but there are a lot of improvements since version 2.
----> Freelance CG Artist - Germany and international <----
=============== www.christoph-werner.de ===============
====== www.lernfaktor.de - Tutorials in german language =====

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