Painting models with photoshop

uk_resistant

Hi folks,



I was just wondering if anyone had used Photoshop's 3d OBJ paint mode to paint models akin to mudbox.

I have watched a couple of videos and think at the very least it could be useful for painting seams but I was interested to see if people have adapted it into their workflow and if there was any tips or practices they employ.


Cheers

nyx702

I used to use this for LP models often when it was first introduced. It was clunky but it was just about my only option at the time. It's been awhile but here is the tips I remember from using it.

- Make sure to use the camera move tool not the mesh move tool. If you ever want to snap back to the ortho views and you have been using the mesh move tool your mesh will be all wonky at the ortho views.

- Dont paint on the mesh itself. Always do it on a new layer and merge it down. For some reason the projection is much much cleaner.

- I had OBJs cause alot of problems. Missing faces and areas where the I just couldn't paint. At the time using a .3ds format fixed these issues.

- It's been awhile but I "believe" your color picker picks up material color as well which is really dumb. I believed I made a couple actions to switch to unlit and wireframe materials. Using actions is way faster than digging in the menus for it.

- You can move cameras numerically which I found really helpful for lining up patterns wrapping around objects. Just duplicate your layer, move/rotate your model along 1 axis and merge down your layer unmoved.

You can also do this to make some quick and dirty gradient maps for your stuff. In front ortho drag a gradient from the bottom of your mesh to the top. Duplicate your layer. Merge one down. Switch to back view and merge the other one down. Depending on your object you might have to do sides as well.

I'm sure there are other nuances I just cant remember now.

kurt_hectic

This tool doesn't work.
Try to use:
-3ds max viewport canvas
-body paint 3d
-3d coat I believe can paint too

Shadownami92

Blender also has pretty nice painting tools, they even have a test build out that specifically focuses on improving the paint tools.

Moosebish

I use it a lot for hand painted props. I love that I can use all my same brushes/hot keys/layers/etc. rather than switching gears between programs. But I only use CS5.5 Extended, I can't stand it in CS6.

uk_resistant

thanks guys.


I have used sculptris a bit to paint over seams or fix edge work.

Thinking about trying out substance painter too to see if it has any kind of straight forward painting tool set.

Mitch Cosgrave

I find it's pretty useable in CC. It's still got some issues, but it can still produce some good results. The biggest thing it has going for it painting over UV shell seams seamlessly. That said, the brush system is still quite laggy and takes a bit to get used to.

lysaara

It takes some getting used to and the overall interface could use some work, but I really enjoy hand-painting my models in PSCC now. I have access to all my usual Photoshop tricks, brushes and layer styles and it makes dealing with seams much easier than painting on the flat. It's not perfect - deals rather badly with glancing angles and brush strokes don't always cross UV seams well, but you can always switch over to the flat texture to handle tricky bits when needed.

Michael Knubben

Nothing currently beats 3dcoat, in my opinion. Substance Painter may beat it in the future (and certainly has some lovely features), but I'm still using 3dcoat.
The Blender painting tools are okay as well, but fairly slow and simplistic (although as mentioned there's work being done in that area). Photoshops 3d painting never managed to please me in either speed or workflow, and I just gave up trying since 3dcoat is so nice.

There's a hotkey to open the layered file in Photoshop, and you can send a projection to Photoshop with one keypress as well. It's great.

3dcoat 3dcoat 3dcoat.