UV Texture Vs Poly Paint

Doctore

Hello everyone, Im still fairly new and really enjoy looking at a lot of the amazing work you guys put up on a daily basis. My question here is, what is the difference and which is more preferred in the case of adding colors/textures to meshes/objects between poly painting and all other forms of poly painting that are offered in todays software and UV texturing?

I personally have not had an opportunity to do any poly painting but from what I saw in the videos Ive watched, it seams to be the more simpler, detailed way to go rather the having to unwrap UV's and size textures up perfectly while worrying about seams. Id simply like some insight on what you guys think of all this and why one may be better then the other or if they can some how work together.

Elmo

Hey Doctore
you'll still need to uv themif you ever want to get the textures out from inside of zbrush.Zbrush has automatic uvs now so its pretty quick for that,but for gaming i still do my uvs in my 3d app.With polypainting you can paint over your seams and be more accurate becuase your working in 3d.Now the tradeoff is,you are painting per poly so you need to have alot of geo to make it look decent.But the texture will never look as good as in photoshop

Bigjohn

Polypainting is just that, you apply color (paint) to verts (polys). zBrush uses it as a method of 3D painting. It's pretty cool, but has its limitations.

Since it applies color to vertices, you need a whole lot of verts in order to paint anything detailed. This means that you need to paint on a highpoly mesh, which then means that the mesh cannot be used in a game because of how high-poly it is. Another problem is that you're limited to the tools within zBrush, which aren't that great compared to something like Photoshop or Substance or what have you.

That said, it can still be very useful. Once you create your game-resolution mesh, you can use a program like xNormal to bake the polypaint information from the highpoly to the lowpoly. This color can then be used as a base in photoshop for a texture in UV-space.

Also keep in mind that there are other methods of 3D-Painting besides Polypainting. You can paint in 3D, which means you can ignore seams, even in UV-space on a lowpoly model. Programs like 3DCoat and Mari do that, though I find their tools to be overall subpar compared to Photoshop, but they're good enough that you can do a whole asset with them. So you can get the best of both worlds really.

ZacD

Bigjohn is pretty accurate.

I'd always suggest baking as many map as possible before starting texturing. Then poly painting is awesome for blocking in ideas and getting broad strokes down on the model.

Fwap

3D coat can directly paint textures or color onto a low poly mesh, and the results are decent, if you have a decent UV map.

Has some custom brushes and layer blending options too, that zbrush seems to lack.

But as the others stated, won't ever look as good as photoshop texture.

butt_sahib

deepUV/bodypaint still in the market?

inwar

Fwap wrote: »

3D coat can directly paint textures or color onto a low poly mesh, and the results are decent, if you have a decent UV map.

Has some custom brushes and layer blending options too, that zbrush seems to lack.

But as the others stated, won't ever look as good as photoshop texture.

you can paint direct to texture in mudbox as well, i think

Mark Dygert

mudbox has p-tex which is like giving each polygon its own unique texture normally a few pixels. So you can paint on low poly or mid poly without having to have an insane amount of verts.

In 3dsmax I use Viewport Canvas, this is like bodypaint where you can UV paint on a 3D model in the viewport, it has rudimentary photoshop like tools, layers and brushes but lacks filters and advanced layer options. Which is fine I mostly use it to hand paint and block in textures.

I haven't gotten too deep into zbrushes poly paint tools, I mostly stick to the basic sculpting, someday I'll branch out but for now viewport canvas and photoshop are my go to texture apps.

I still have to check out Substance, it looks like it could be pretty handy, as well as dDo.

D4V1DC

butt_sahib wrote: »

deepUV/bodypaint still in the market?

http://www.maxon.net/products/bodypaint-3d/why-this-package.html
Seams so. :poly136: has a nice update might give it a go again if I can.

Bobby J Rice 3rd

At work I Polypaint everything. Zbrush mask system is second to non. Both in speed/ iteration, and in quality. Since I don't texture props as one offs, I don't really use Polypaint, but I have seen people use Mari.

Moosebish

I don't think its so black and white. Neither is better or worse, just different.

I've been doing prerendered stuff for iPhone game lately and have had great results by using a combination of the two in photoshop. I'm a big fan of CS5's ability to paint right on the model and switch back and forth between 3d and 2d while keeping all the same brushes and hotkeys.

I think its great to use both and have both at your disposal. Switching back and for is a really great way to get rid of seems and locate parts of the mesh on the UV sheet.

TL;DR Use both and have the ability to use both! They're both good at different things!

Cibo

In Mudbox you can Polypaint the Mesh or the UVs. The Vertexcount is not important other then zbrush. In Zbrush its more Vertexpainting like in UDK so you need a high Vertex Count (Memory) and a good usage of Groups for Hiding.

Direkt Painting in the UV is good for cloths because of the wrinkles. Skin or other greater Zones can be polypainted.

Torch

They're a little dated, but you might want to check out Michael Pavlovich's dvd's on Eat3D:

http://eat3d.com/zbrush35_character

http://eat3d.com/character_lowres

He goes into detail about polypainting characters and then baking them to a texture in a latter tutorial, which is pretty cool. I've only textured characters in 3D coat and Photoshop but would like to learn more about the ZB way of texturing, since it seems to have a lot of perks.

EDIT: Having said that, has anyone tried baking matcap information to a low poly, e.g. a glossy surface like a piece of armor for the specular with rust?

Doctore

ohhh wow, a lot of great info here, thanks guys. I hear the term "Bake" a lot but Im not completely sure what it means.. it seems to be very important too.. anybody like to elaborate on that for me?

Torch

Baking is essentially the process of taking your high poly mesh's details and projecting them onto your low poly to create separate textures for enhancing detail, either using your designated 3D app or a separate app such as Xnormal, e.g. Ambient Occlusion, Cavity and normal maps to name a few.

Cibo

@Torch

Maybe Romy can help.
His Pirate Castle has baked matcap Materials
http://www.polycount.com/forum/showthread.php?t=91066

Doctore

Ok I get it, so you would make the high poly not fit for game version of a model first then bake all of the details into a few separate files to apply such as normals and spec maps.. then you apply these to the low poly model do that it can look as detailed with out having all of the extra information on it allowing it to look good and run well in game. Now do you do this sort of stuff for everything or just things that a player will be likely to see a lot or be up close to?

RogerP

Game engines only support so many polys on screen at once, different engines support different amount of poly counts.

Every object on the screen in order to keep the polygon count down has to be (dumbed down) to give it a name and be of lower polygon count.

normally items that the character interacts with are a bit higher in polygon count to give them a more polish look.

Doctore

gotcha, Im learning a lot from you guys, thanks.

Torch

Cibo - Thanks for that link! Also forgot about this one, Seth worked on this model ages ago but shows what you can do with some skilled Polypainting

http://www.polycount.com/forum/showthread.php?t=86202&highlight=seth