viewport diffuse, specular and normalmap painting?

_Shimmer

Hey I came up with the idea how cool it would be to paint your specular maps directly in the viewport with realtime lightin in max using a special shader. From this starting point I thought, why not painting bumpmaps and normalmaps too in relatime on the mesh?

While this is just an idea, I am curious if this could be made possible and if yes with what limitations and so on. I worked with a special shader once, to create some assets for the XBOX 360 achritecture. It was a pain in the ass, the realtime stuff was sloooooow.

I am shocked that max still has no projection modifier or something to correct seams really.

Any thaughts about this? And if it could be made possible, whos knows some unemployed techartists

thomasp

why would you want to do that in max? that package is cluttered enough. 3d painters are your friends and actually work.

malcolm

You can use a 3d paint tool such as deeppaint or body paint which allows painting channesl in real time shaded mode. Also zbrush I think? Also if you're using max you may wan to check out ghost painter, seems like an awesome idea although I don't use max, brings photoshop window in to the max viewport.

MoP

I think Dave King uses/has used Ghost Painter, he's probably the man to ask about that.

_Shimmer

Well, it is not really limited to max (though, it would be cool not use 3rd party programs all the time, especially if we talk about the gui nazis at pixelogic)

However, the main idea is NOT limited to diffuse textures. I am perticulary speklaing of normalmaps and specmaps. Why building up a highpoly character if you could actually paint them?

Its just an idea and I understand that hipoly modelling has its advantages (speaking of cutscenes for examlpe or extensions sequels). But when it comes to fixing it would be hella cool.

I mean I always fix my normalmaps in photoshop painting in additional detials without using the normalmap filter (Ok, its crazy but it works for me for some parts).

malcolm

z-brush?

Eric Chadwick

Here's a freebie 3D painter plugin for max.
http://www.max3dstuff.com/max5/3dPainterPrototype/help.html
Very basic, but works. Only one map at a time.

However I guess you'd need to use an FX shader to see the results affecting specular or bump. Don't know if that'd work either. I think Body Paint 3D has a painting mode where you can see the specular being affected in real-time, they call it a raytrace mode or something.

One of the designers over at Right Hemisphere was sharing some of the details about a re-write of Deep Paint 3D, which would have had real-time painting of specular etc., but unfortunately the project got stalled.