Painter: Turn off reprojection on import?

PollySong

I usually sculpt and paint textures in parallel, I adjust both continuously while working. I always have the same UV's and just want to update the model in Painter, but instead everything gets screwed up because of the weird forced reprojection. Please tell me that this can be turned off? I just want to import a new model and keep my layers.

Sorry if this has been answered, I've searched this forum and google, couldn't find a good answer.

Jerc

All 3D paiting in Painter is recorded in 3d space, so there is no way to turn off reprojection. This is the downside of being able to change your UVs at any time without losing your painting.

PollySong

Jerc said:

All 3D paiting in Painter is recorded in 3d space, so there is no way to turn off reprojection. This is the downside of being able to change your UVs at any time without losing your painting.

I see. That's a pretty big drawback and a deal breaker for me. That means that you have to have the super final locked down model to start painting in painter and keep all functionality?
I rarely need to change the UV's and if I do, there are many ways to transfer textures in other software. From what you're saying I get that it would be a pretty big task to change this, but are there any plans to bridge this somehow?

Not trying to be combative, I was just starting to enjoy Painter and this was a disappointment.

Jerc

You can change your mesh shape to an extent but drastic changes will require you to retexture the parts that were changed. As long as your mesh has the same scale and position, most of your work should remain untouched.

Also, projection is done based on the bounding box of the scene, so if you intend to change significantly the shape of your asset, I'd recommend adding a "virtual" bounding box to your asset by adding 4 small objects or triangles in a box shape around your asset, far enough that any change to your mesh wouldn't spill out of that bounding box.

There is currently no plan to change that behavior which is at the core of the Painter engine (we could do something about the bounding box though).

poopipe

The bounding box thing is definitely worth a look,  we've had a few issues with custom shaders utilising bounding box based calculations at the office that could have been avoided if there were some sort of reference bb to work around. 

PollySong

Jerc said:

You can change your mesh shape to an extent but drastic changes will require you to retexture the parts that were changed. As long as your mesh has the same scale and position, most of your work should remain untouched.

Also, projection is done based on the bounding box of the scene, so if you intend to change significantly the shape of your asset, I'd recommend adding a "virtual" bounding box to your asset by adding 4 small objects or triangles in a box shape around your asset, far enough that any change to your mesh wouldn't spill out of that bounding box.

There is currently no plan to change that behavior which is at the core of the Painter engine (we could do something about the bounding box though).

Aw shoot. In all the places I've worked, (character) UV's are locked down at the beginning of the project and are rarely touched, but models change constantly. Even on small model changes this workaround would mean cleanup and checking for errors, resulting in messy textures and wasted time; it's just not a good workflow. You would probably make a lot of people happy (including yourselves, sales-wise) if you at least made it easier, somehow, to update the model.

Jerc

How can the model change without any UV modification though? For slight model tweaking I understand but any deeper modification of the mesh should trigger some kind of change in the UV surely?

PollySong

Jerc said:

How can the model change without any UV modification though? For slight model tweaking I understand but any deeper modification of the mesh should trigger some kind of change in the UV surely?

I guess it depends on what you're doing. I do characters and had a contract as a face modeler, for example, and the UV's were locked from the start, even though the models themselves were very different. It was necessary for the pipeline to work. I use the same setup at home; one basemesh that I build my characters with, that way I can reuse textures/everything else and build stuff quickly.

Jerc

Ok makes sense in this case. One thing to note: everything you paint in the 2D view is saved in UV space, so that would stick to UVs even if the mesh was modified.

PollySong

It's that time of year again. Any updates to this? If I want to update a model (keeping the UV's) or load a pose, is there still no way to do that while maintaining paint strokes - turn off reprojection basically? Or is there a new workaround? 

Thanks.

thomasp

Just bumped into this thread since it was at the top of the subforum. Wow, that sounds like a pretty big issue for doing characters indeed.

So you can't for example paint your body in the default stance and then do another pass on a posed version to compensate for stretching at the joints without triggering reprojection on import? Neither can you import a new head shape sharing the UVs of your base mesh and just work on top of the existing texture for that? Sounds mental if accurate.

PollySong

thomasp said:

Just bumped into this thread since it was at the top of the subforum. Wow, that sounds like a pretty big issue for doing characters indeed.

So you can't for example paint your body in the default stance and then do another pass on a posed version to compensate for stretching at the joints without triggering reprojection on import? Neither can you import a new head shape sharing the UVs of your base mesh and just work on top of the existing texture for that? Sounds mental if accurate.

That is my understanding, yes, and I agree with you. I don't know how this isn't at the top of the things to fix. It's a dealbreaker for me, which is why I keep checking back, only to find it ignored still.

poopipe

This stuff is fundamental to how the painting works. Every brush stroke in 3d is recorded from the view angle in relation to the model. 

This is how they get uv independence which is hugely valuable in arguably the majority of situations. 

I do agree however that allegorithmic should add a button to bake the projected strokes into UV space for just this sort of situation - it's not like the information isn't there already.

PollySong

poopipe said:

This stuff is fundamental to how the painting works. Every brush stroke in 3d is recorded from the view angle in relation to the model. 

This is how they get uv independence which is hugely valuable in arguably the majority of situations. 

I do agree however that allegorithmic should add a button to bake the projected strokes into UV space for just this sort of situation - it's not like the information isn't there already.

Sure, I get that. But that means you have to have a super final mesh to start texturing in Substance Painter, or am I missing something? Not being able to make changes to the mesh seems like a fundamental design flaw to me, I've never worked in an environment where that would work.

Edit: Genuine question from someone just tinkering with the trial: how do you work in a pipeline with substance painter? Looking for a reason to try it more seriously.

poopipe

Pipeline wise. I heard the same concerns when we introduced it at my studio and now there's 100odd people who would literally fight you if you tried to take painter away from them .
You just have to use it the way it's intended. 

80% of your texture gets done using colorID masks and generators - at this stage mesh changes just require a quick rebake . 

When you're at the stage where you're manually masking out bits of generator you don't like or applying handcrafted details you kind of want to be working on a final mesh anyway 

The way people generally get around the issues thomasp mentions Is to export textures, import them and work on top. The same way you would in Photoshop 

I will say though that manually painting specific things like realistic faces isn't really what painter is for.  Mari and Photoshop are far more suitable for that sort of thing. 
Painter is fundamentally just a really nice way to apply and layer materials

PollySong

poopipe said:

Pipeline wise. I heard the same concerns when we introduced it at my studio and now there's 100odd people who would literally fight you if you tried to take painter away from them .
You just have to use it the way it's intended. 

80% of your texture gets done using colorID masks and generators - at this stage mesh changes just require a quick rebake . 

When you're at the stage where you're manually masking out bits of generator you don't like or applying handcrafted details you kind of want to be working on a final mesh anyway 

The way people generally get around the issues thomasp mentions Is to export textures, import them and work on top. The same way you would in Photoshop 

I will say though that manually painting specific things like realistic faces isn't really what painter is for.  Mari and Photoshop are far more suitable for that sort of thing. 
Painter is fundamentally just a really nice way to apply and layer materials

Thanks. I might give it a try when I have a more suitable project to try it on.

thomasp

poopipe said:

I will say though that manually painting specific things like realistic faces isn't really what painter is for.  Mari and Photoshop are far more suitable for that sort of thing. 
Painter is fundamentally just a really nice way to apply and layer materials

Agreed, that was my impression too (and the reason I dropped it years ago). More for spray painting of masks to get those premade substance materials applied quickly than an actual Painter to create textures with.

Problem is Mari means working from one projection to the next, is there a way to work even slower than that?