SOLVED - Mari & Erasing

Utility

Anyone use Mari? I'm teaching myself it for a possible job, and it's kind of frustrating to learn --

So, I can paint, but I can't erase. I previously was able to, but now I can't. Basically, I painted some green colour onto a mesh - but I can't use the erase tool on it. I'm on the same layer, so what gives? I've also tried painting over it with my paint mode set to 'clear', but when I change it back to 'normal' to resume painting, where I had cleared is now opaque with my paint colour! WTF!

I'm sure someone wiser in the ways of Mari is having a chuckle, but I'm seriously confused. Halp pls.

z3phon

To actually erase anything you have already painted, you need to set the paint brush "painting mode" to clear.
You don't need to select the Eraser tool to erase. The Eraser tool is used for anything that's in your paint buffer (anything that's not baked on to the model yet).

Utility

@z3phon Thanks for the reply! I've been doing that, but if you change "painting mode" back to Normal, the area you used it on with Clear will be opaque instead, and I can't erase it.



So what's happening is:
1) Painted a thing I don't want anymore, erase tool doesn't do anything so I
2) Change paint setting to clear, and it's gone! However,
3) When I change it back to normal, where I painted with clear is back and in my opaque paint colour...
4) So I used the eraser, but it only erases what I just did with the clear tool, leaving me with the original issue.

I know part of what I'm struggling with is that Mari bakes stuff - I think. Is that right? Either way, how would I get rid of something I've painted like that?

JedTheKrampus

The Erase tool is for erasing from the paint buffer. You use it to clean up painting that you don't want to project. You can only use one painting blending mode per bake. Normal mode projects paint from the paint buffer into the layer normally using the Normal blending mode, and Clear mode clears paint from the layer using the contents of the paint buffer and the Clear blending mode. So, to erase stuff that's already been projected, you need to paint into the paint buffer with the paintbrush tool and the painting blending mode set to Clear. Then, bake the painting (B hotkey or Alt if set to auto bake) and keep the painting mode on Clear if you need to erase more from the layer, or change it back to normal if you want to paint again. If necessary (depending on your projection options) you may clear the paint buffer with Ctrl+Shift+C.

If your bake behavior is set to Manual (which is what I prefer a lot of the time) you press B to explicitly bake the paint buffer to the mesh, and Ctrl+Shift+C to explicitly clear the paint buffer.

Utility

@JedTheKrampus AHHHH!!!! THANK YOU!!

That totally makes sense now. I didn't realize that baking works like that in Mari - I did pretty much what you said; used Clear to erase what I didn't want, then baked. When I changed back to Normal, it stayed the way it was. The tutorial I was following didn't really explain the concept that clearly - thanks again!