3D painting software

beartraps

Im thinking about getting some 3d painting software because I just cant stand seams =(. I was thinking about either Bodypaint or Photoshop CS4 extended. Im not familiar with either one, or 3d painting in general, so if anyone can point me in a good direction that would be awesome. I need it to run on mac as well.

Thanks in advance

achillesian

something against zbrush? 3.5 r3 has some cool pen brushes, the only thing its really missing is layers, unless it can do color layers now and i missed it...

DEElekgolo

Mudbox has some extremely good texturing tools.

beartraps

What im looking for is something like photoshop where I can use layers and masks on top of 3d objects. I hear great things about bodypaint and the student version is only 150 bucks, I think i may go that route.

Can you use layers and masks with Mudbox?

disanski

[ame]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tfNBFmrTBHc[/ame]
check it out
I am not so familiar but it looks great and it has most of the stuff that photo shop does.I got it just recently cant wait to try it once I find some time.

renderhjs

I hate cs4- the performance is extremely bad esspecially in 3d. Forget anyting that gets close to high poly as you won't be able to paint on it in Photoshop.
Even here on the new Powermacs it works like shit and that on extreme low poly models.

Mudbox has some real nice features and it seems they try to distinguish themselves more and more from zBrush by focusing on rendering, texturing and painting stuff. But... Mudbox is very crappy when it comes to stability and support. Usually they expect you to pay for a fix that fixes massive existing problems. Also Autodesk has a habit of responding at custumer support related stuff. I got them emailed through my Studio here a few times and they were always like "we are sorry but we can't help you at the moment" bullshit.

The one time I tried Bodypaint 3d it was unsaleable performance wise even on low poly to medium poly stuff. I also hated back then the GUI (they changed it now) where every tool consisted of a brush (so retarded).

Blacksmith 3d is another one that is to some extend even free - its fairly use able but the controls suck. Google it if you are interested in free stuff.

If you have either Max2010 or Polyboost you already have a seam fixer in the texture tools. There is a clone brush and projected painting included. As soon as I have some time on my hands I want to start something similar in TexTools that transfers clipboard images between Photoshop and 3dsMax to project textures at a higher precision and convenience as all the tools out there.

Oh and ghostpaint from 3dsmax and Enzo 3d (still the same template website) are additional tools/ plugins that cost money but highly questionable by now since Adobe integrated 3d themselves and offers far better support as the small companies of those.
(I also have better support experience with Adobe as with AUtodesk)

also related:
http://boards.polycount.net/showthread.php?t=61304

edit: yes I also once tested Blenders paint abilities and they are slow + extremely limited - not worth so far imo.

Ben Apuna

I'm also interested in this subject. What about 3D Coat? Anybody use it for texturing?

I tried Bodypaint once, didn't really like it all that much. Probably was just my fault for not being experienced with it.

I own Mudbox 2009. It's far from perfect. Mudbox 2010 has some of the issues fixed but not all of them...

Modo also has 3D painting in it but I haven't used it that much yet so I can't say if it's any good or not. Some have said that it has problems with seams...

vcool

I was gonna suggest 3Dcoat.

It has layer support, and you can import normals on a lowpoly so it's easier to see what you should be painting. Bodypaint doesn't have that, afaik.

ScoobyDoofus

Ditto for 3D Coat. The spec is monochrome only tho, so you'll end up at least colorizing that in PS if your project requires it.

ablaine

I'm going to have to look into 3dcoat. Layers + normals on low poly is what I've been looking for in a 3d painting program. What about symmetry? Thats one thing I like about polypaint in zbrush. And does 3dcoat have some ability to bring in or blend in textures (a la zapplink/photoshop)?

Edit: Also... how are the controls in 3dcoat?

funshark

If you want to do simple texture painting ( I mean without normal map ), as far as I know, the best one is Bodypaint.
I had high hopes in 3Dcoat but the 3D painting side seems always unfinished..

OBlastradiusO

I like Mudbox's viewport inferface better than Zbrush. It seems more roomy and less crowded unlike Zbrush. It took me a while to get use to Zbrush's inferface. With Muxbox it was very easy to navigate.

Ged

3dcoat is really useful for base texture painting and cleaning seams and the normal map depth painting is a bonus as you can easily set up a nice brush to add splatters of mud or dents etc right at the end of the texturing process in a nice non destructive way. Also great at retopo

Ryno

As renderhjs mentioned, Max 2010 has native seam-fixing 3d paint functionality. It's called Viewport Canvas under the Tools menu.

Turbosmooth Operator

Do any of these programs allow for painting on a separate UV channel than is being displayed? For instance, I want to paint a blend map for a large terrain (unique space - UV0), yet want to be able to have a visible idea of how it would look with the tiling diffuses (tiled planar map - UV1). Our in-engine shader uses the blendmap (UV0) to determine where the diffuses are placed, but the diffuses are tiled based on the planar map (UV1). It's hard to paint the terrain with super-stretched 512's over a very large mesh.

Vrav

Blender is feasible for blocking stuff out, then touching up in Photoshop.

[HP]

Ryno wrote: »

As renderhjs mentioned, Max 2010 has native seam-fixing 3d paint functionality. It's called Viewport Canvas under the Tools menu.

How exactly does this work? Do you have any further info on it? Articles or whatever?

It looks interesting, but very very basic and a bit buggy after a few minutes of fiddling with it. But It's more than enough to fix seams, yeah.

MRico

I have a question on 3d painting...like bodypaint...

Do you need your models to be subdivided pretty high in order to paint them? Like zbrush's polypaint?

Or can you take a lowpoly and paint on that?

Ben Apuna

In Mudbox, Modo, and Bodypaint you do not need to subdivide your mesh to paint on them as you are painting actual textures. It is my understanding that ZBrush requires you to subdivide your mesh because you are painting vertex colors rather than texture pixels. Sorry, I don't know how the other apps mentioned here handle it.

MRico

Thanks Ben, yeah that's how Zbrush does it. I never tried it anywhere else so didn't know how it worked on other applications.

renderhjs

zBrush is the only freak, anything else does it the way its supposed to be. Sadly most apps are slow as hell unlike zBrush.

Btw. has anyone tested Modo's painting capabilities? like how they compare performance wise to the others?
http://www.luxology.com/modo/features/painting/

James Edwards

Personal preference for me over all of the above for painting is 3dcoat. It's also the cheapest solution out of the commercial stand alone options and offers the most amount of features for what you pay for. It's not perfect, but you can take a project from start to finish in it if you want to. I've used it for just painting stuff, as well as building something from a voxel sculpt all the way up to retopo'd, uv'd, baked and then painted within the app, with a bit of back and forth to photoshop along the way (excellent compatability there).

ablaine

Are there any great tutorials out there for 3dcoat? I downloaded the trial but the interface is taking quite a bit to get used to. I'm mostly looking to use it for the following:
Introduction to the interface layout and workflow (including layers)
Painting on the object in 3d space on the diffuse/spec channels
Importing to/from photoshop
Displaying the normal maps while painting so I have guidelines to work with on my low poly

Any suggestions for good tutorial sites/vids for 3dcoat?

Avanthera

The way this sounds, I would love to get my hands on 3d coat or mudbox. unfortunately, both will not run on my computer at all. though zbrush will take a subtool to 1.3 mil with little problems on my aging machine.
If you can stand the hassle, i use the projection master in zbrush, just assign a texture to your model, and enter projection master, and you paint directly onto the texture. no need to subdivide your model. I use this extensively to get rid of seams on everything, high to low poly.

Joshua Stubbles

3dsmax's viewport canvas really doesn't work very well at all. Every time I've tried it, there are always gaps and clipping when I try to paint.

James Edwards

If 3dcoat will not run on your computer I would highly recommend you submit a bug report or contact Andrew directly through his forums. He WILL fix that. When I first tried 3dcoat on vista 64 it wouldn't run at all. I submitted the crash log and got a response from him the same day and a fix the next day. I'm surprised you can't get it to run at all though - he makes a version for just about any configuration now. Standard opengl, directx, cuda (all in 32 or 64 bit), linux, mac. If you don't let him know though, you'll never get a fix for your problem. He's also amazing at implementing user requests. I've seen several of my own requests added to the software, sometimes literally within a few days of asking. Builds come often and are loaded with fixes and features.

As for tutorials, I don't really use them myself but pretty much anything you could want or think to do in the software probably has a tutorial link here: http://www.3d-coat.com/forum/index.php?showforum=15

Pretty sure also that if you just google or search youtube you'll find a ton of stuff as well. Also, simply asking or searching in the 3dcoat forums will get you answers pretty quickly.

The UI is largely broken up into different 'rooms' where most if not all of the functionality for any given task is found within the tabs at the top of the viewport. It's a fairly fluid and contextual UI once you understand the basics. The tool and layer palettes all change to adapt to whatever tab/room you are working in so there's not much effort required in locating tools... they are usually right there at your fingertips or on the screen in front of you.

Avanthera

wow, I never saw all of the options to download open gl, directx 9 and cuda, even stated that my vid card is supported, (ati 9200)
and now the download link is broken...

just found the proper link in the forums, will try this out tomorrow, thanks.

ablaine

Thanks a lot James, I'll have to spend some time with it this weekend.

elec²ron

I have just downloaded the modo trial specifically to evaluate the painting, looks good so far.
Has everything you need and more. Good brush and tablet options, fast projection painting(none of this viewport dropping nonsense), blending modes, layer masks, multi UV's, realtime normal map and bump, brush strokes are lightning quick and smooth, options for linear or smooth UV's, UV painting mode and unwrap tools, map baking options.

The big advantage it has over the others is the shader tree. Its a bit linear for me ( i would kill for a node based shader editor in a 3d painting app) but still very powerful.

I'm not keen on the openGL shading but it might look better with a proper lighting rig and it was a bit of a downer when i realised blending modes and multi UV's are not realtime but the preview render updates very quick.

I've been a fan of mudbox 2010 for a while. Its feature light just now but so mush easier to use than modo. Modo is one of the most complete 3d app's i have seen but a tad expensive if you just want it for painting.

In my view the best options just now are mud2010, modo401 and 3dcoat.
Bodypaint has a great connection with photoshop but no realtime normal maps and the projection painting is slow. Zbrush isn't in the same league in terms of painting and PS CS4 is pants.

I have never used maya or XSI, do they have any 3d paint features?

Jay Evans

+1 for 3dCoat.

OBlastradiusO

3d Coat is damn awesome! Damn! I have to upgrade my computer so I can play around with these programs!!