a few questions about Mari

gnoop

1.Is it possible already to  paint  projectively several channels at once , like color, depth etc?   Or at lest paint color first and then depth and roughness consequently using same matching on-screen position and deform mesh? 

2.Does it have any better means to scale on screen  image precisely , like Zbrush Spotlight ?   From a chosen  center of transform  being  placed next to a certain detail within the projected image?  

3.Does it have something similar to Substance painter mask generators?

JedTheKrampus

1) No unfortunately. As far as I know you can't even lock alpha on your paint buffer so you can paint over it for the other channels 2) Very yes 3) Check out the Mari Extension Pack

.Wiki

1. You can create your different material channels and then paint a shared mask on all of them at the same time.

gnoop

JedTheKrampus said:

1) No unfortunately. As far as I know you can't even lock alpha on your paint buffer so you can paint over it for the other channels 2) Very yes 3) Check out the Mari Extension Pack

1. What if I don't need alpha and want just switch from painting color channel to depth one ?  I see the  projected image is switchable, but I can't figure out how to use precisely same deform mesh.    Looks like the deform mesh works on buffer only      Does paint buffer contain only one channel info at a time?

2.   I see projected image is scalable only from its center, pretty much like Substance Designer.    I want the center to be in a certain chosen  position within that projected image , like with Zbrush Spotlight.   How can I do so?    For example scale lips image from one corner to another precisely. 

JedTheKrampus

1. The paint buffer can be baked to one channel at a time. If you set your projection to Manual you can switch channels after baking but before clearing the paint buffer, and project that paint buffer to more than one channel that way. I don't know of a way to repeatedly use warp, slerp and pinup tools for multiple channels of a 3d scan.

2. As far as I know there's no way to do that with the Paint Through tool in its current state. The best you could do is edit your image so that the part that needs to be pivoted around is located in the center of the image. Or you can get it kind of close, paint through, and correct the painting with warp/slerp/pinup.

gnoop

JedTheKrampus said:

 Or you can get it kind of close, paint through, and correct the painting with warp/slerp/pinup.

But it would still be impossible to switch to depth or roughness layer of projected psd "material" file for example to make matching projection into model depth or roughness channel, right?       

So I am puzzled how it's supposed to work there?   Every time I try Mari I shrug and move on.    It lacks some very basic features while  offers  so many I would never need.  

JedTheKrampus

As far as I know, yes, that's not currently possible. It might be possible to make a plugin to do that though. Once you've spent enough time with Mari to get some Stockholm syndrome you'll realize that that technique isn't really necessary Or, you've gotten precise enough with the slerp and warp that you can easily match each channel.

A lot of the work I do with Mari uses procedurals to start a texture instead of multi-channel 3d scans. If I'm using Paint Through I usually use mostly grayscale images and tint them with the foreground color. If I need material painting I paint a mask channel with one layer and share that channel to the layer stacks of my BRDF channels. I do a lot of edge control with the brush tool, all traditional-like, which sounds awful but once you're used to it is a very quick way to work on details. Sometimes I project the same paint buffer to more than one channel too. There are a lot of ways to deal with this problem and it's not much harder to get good results if you know which technique is the best for a certain situation. And, you don't have to do 100% of your texturing in Mari if you don't want to. I usually use Substance Painter to make a base, then Mari, then Krita, then Mari for a character.

gnoop

Thanks JedTheKrampus  for more detailed inside.   I also use Substance Painter  as a base.   Couldn't get anything more than a kind of robotic arm painting there and need a bit of more traditional approach for making things look more real and more specific .      In fact Photoshop does  both #1 and#2  but it's such a pain in the ... to work there in all other respects.   To bad Mari is not a lot of  much helpful either.