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Enzo - 3d paint for PS

polycounter lvl 18
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James Edwards polycounter lvl 18
http://www.electriciris.com/

Not sure how good it is...just grabbed the link from the XSI mailing list.

30 day demo.

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  • MoP
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    MoP polycounter lvl 18
    Cool, I'm gonna give the demo a shot now, thanks for the heads up!
    Hopefully it's useable and good smile.gif
  • James Edwards
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    James Edwards polycounter lvl 18
    Crashtastic for me so far =\
  • MoP
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    MoP polycounter lvl 18
    Hasn't crashed for me, but it doesn't seem to be applying paint properly. On a test box OBJ I made with unique UVs, it only applied the textures I painted on to the wireframe lines, rather than the actual polys themselves. Very odd.
    Plus, when I use "Open Textures", it doesn't open them in a new window, it just resizes the main window and doesn't update it correctly. I'm gonna try some other texture formats and maybe a different PC to see if it's a problem with the video card or something.
  • Daz
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    Daz polycounter lvl 18
    Cant even get it to load a textured .obj yet. No matter what I try, it gives me an 'No Texture Assigned' error on load. Then I just get the same result that you do Paul. All seems pretty flakey so far, but I'll keep digging away at it.
  • Daz
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    Daz polycounter lvl 18
    Ok, it's not flakey, it's fundamentally flawed and a little bit broken. It seems that you can't manipulate the model and paint in the same 'mode'. But instead those two things are very seperate modes. It's more like projection painting in Zbrush than true 3D painting as far as i can tell so far. Even so, I can't even get the painting I do to update. Must be doing something wrong.

    I think I'll stick with Mayas 3D paint tool for now, but thanks for the heads up Gwot.
  • MoP
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    MoP polycounter lvl 18
    Indeed, it's not true 3D painting, but if it worked the way they show it working in their supporting PDFs, it would be a better replacement than ZApplink or the like, I think, since the viewer is itself in Photoshop and displays normal/spec/reflection etc, plus you can paint either in 2D or 3D mode and not have to switch apps, you just hit F3 (or whatever shortcut key you set) and spin around the object.

    Seems like it might be useful for quick little projects or fun doodling on other people's SDKs, certainly given the amount of bugginess I get on my work PC it doesn't justify a $300 price tag. I'm gonna try it at home here now and see if I get better results.

    I actually managed to get it painting and applying the texture correctly to the object, but it only lasted about 5 minutes then went back into buggy weird painting mode.

    Also sometimes if you hit the wrong key it decides to overdraw your 3d model with an old position of it, which is very confusing since the "Color" mode is fullbright and has no shading, so you can't really see where you're painting.

    I'm gonna mess around with it a little more before giving up hope, I think it'd be really good if it actually functioned the way the authors seem to have intended it to ... maybe they only tested it on one PC or something smile.gif
  • James Edwards
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    James Edwards polycounter lvl 18
    hehe you guys have made it farther than me... I can't even load an object on this system without it crashing.
  • Daz
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    Daz polycounter lvl 18
    OK don't touch it with a 60ft pole :-)

    I'm now getting out of RAM error messages in photoshop, and worse still, I can no longer drag an image from Perforce into Photoshop. Uninstalling! smile.gif
  • Jesse Moody
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    Jesse Moody polycounter lvl 18
    Lol glad i didn't install this. Thanks for the lessons learned guys.
  • Daz
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    Daz polycounter lvl 18
    I overeacted actually sorry. I'd lost my virtual Z drive somehow which is why perforce and Photoshop ceased to like each other. I'm not absolutely sure but I don't think this was related.
  • Sage
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    Sage polycounter lvl 19
    I tried this thing with several different formats. I'm wondering if it's just a CS2 thing screwing it up, anyone tried this in 7? It doesn't do much except generate vectors from the uv which is cool if you don't have max. It's broken as a crack whore at the moment. The other thing that annoyed the hell out of me is that the short cuts seem to be hard coded. It caused me problems since I already had actions using F3 and F2, plus why don't the other commands have shortcuts.The only thing I like about it is that it has a viewer in photoshop, but the damn thing doesn't snap to default views so that sucks. If anyone can get this to update the texture as it should feel free to post the workflow.

    Alex
  • MoP
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    MoP polycounter lvl 18
    Well, like I said, I got it working a little bit yesterday - when it works the way it says it should, it seems very nice, pretty fast and high quality display.

    However, half the time it just won't accept the painting, or if it does it only seems to apply it to the very edges of the UVs rather than the whole face.

    That said, after I looked at the forums, it seems like it's just one guy developing it, and he only seems to have tested it for an Nvidia GF 6800. I have a 7800 at work and it seems to be almost working, while my ATI card at home won't even paint on the model (then again it is a 9800, quite old).

    I just discovered that PS wouldn't open TGAs here now though, it gave a "Not enough RAM" warning even though i've got a ton spare, so I uninstalled Enzo and it seems to work fine now.

    Really disappointed that it's so buggy, it really seems like it would be good if it worked the way it's supposed to.
  • dejawolf
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    dejawolf polycounter lvl 18
    the guy who made it got greedy.
  • thomasp
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    thomasp hero character
    i haven't tried it so far but apparently the software was written for the photoshop 7 API under the assumption that it would just work with newer releases which it obviously does not.

    this was posted in cgtalk by the maker of the tool.
  • MoP
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    MoP polycounter lvl 18
    So basically if you're using a GF6800 and Photoshop 7, you should be ok? smile.gif
    Seems any other combination of software and hardware will result in crashes and unusable results.
  • thomasp
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    thomasp hero character
    i might test it tomorrow at work - we use PS7. my guess is that the videocard has little influence, it's probably the API that creates the trouble. i guess all you need is pixelshader 3 to meet the requirements. and of course no ATI, but who works in cg and buys that stuff anyway? wink.gif
  • MoP
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    MoP polycounter lvl 18
    Heh, you'd think so - I tried it at work on PS7 and a GF 7800 GT, no joy. It actually worked better in CS2 in that case.
    Didn't work at all at home in CS2 and an ATI Radeon9800 Pro, but that's oooold and I wasn't expecting it to work anyway smile.gif
  • malcolm
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    malcolm polycount sponsor
    I've read photoshop cs3 will actually have realtime 3d update paint built in, anyone else read about this?
  • fritz
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    fritz polycounter lvl 18
    i read bout that over at neogaf. i'm suprised it's taken this long since ps is used for texturing in just about every damn dev studio out there.
  • doc rob
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    doc rob polycounter lvl 19
    malcolm - sounds interesting - linky?
  • Whargoul
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    Whargoul polycounter lvl 18
    yeah I saw a vid of the cs3 model paint stuff. crap vid, just showing a PSD file on a soda can, rotating the can around, and I think sliding the texture or something. the can was all shiny and shit though. I'll have a look at work today and see if I cna find the link in my browser's history. (don't get too excited, like I said the video doesn't show much)
  • Eric Chadwick
  • conte
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    conte polycounter lvl 18
    i can't just upload simple box to photoshop- crash!
    sheat frown.gif
  • Jarrod1937
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    Jarrod1937 polycounter lvl 15
    i just saw this today... but from the sound of things i'm going to pass.
  • buddy the designer
    9800pro is SM 2.0a .

    And I'm testing this thing today.
  • skrubbles
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    skrubbles polycounter lvl 18
    According to the site, Enzo currently only supports ps7... There'll be another version uploaded by the end of the month that'll have support for cs2. Hopefully there'll be a bunch of bugs fixed. This program looks very promising I hope it stays around and continues to grow. It'd be nice to have a bodypaint program that works within photoshop (with the tools we're familiar with) and that also supports normal maps. I'm going to keep a very close eye on this program.
  • Mark Dygert
    Cool idea, to buggy to be useful. I'll check back later and see if the guy has updates, but right now its not even worth the headache if it was free.
  • pior
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    pior grand marshal polycounter
    Okay guys it's working now - only thing is that it does not support Dualview hence you might need to switch it off to make it work. The whole menus/texture editor is still very awkward but besides that its a smooth ride as soon as you start texturing!

    Been into it since a few days now, their forum is rather active and the authors seem likely to add requested features. If it came out earlier I think it could have been an industry standard - now that the focus shifts to highpoly sculpting I guess it's a different story. But still, super useful!

    Some tests :

    enzotest_2007-09-05.png

    wip_bustelutte_002.png

    Yay!
  • MoP
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    MoP polycounter lvl 18
    I found it still doesn't deal with seams and mirroring very well. Also it seems very flaky and dependent on what video card you have. My 7800 GT at work was very hit-and-miss ... sometimes the painting would work, other times it'd just turn into a mess of pixels stretched all over the model.
    At home on my 7900 GS, it worked very well on some models (bobo's demon SDK was my test, it was good), but did the same weird stretching/broken painting on other models. Couldn't figure out what was causing that.

    Also the fact that you have to "switch modes" between 3d viewing and painting is a bit annoying, same with having to press a button to "commit" your painting work. It'd be perfect if it worked in PS the same way that something like Bodypaint does, ie. realtime painting. I guess that's beyond a plugin's scope for PS though.

    At the moment it has a workflow similar to ZApplink except you can view the model in PS instead of ZB :P

    I still think it's a good idea, but it just needs the bugs ironing out and a more consistent way of working before it would get a big market or audience. Plus its current price seems a bit high for what you get. I'd pay that much if it was actually stable and consistent, but it doesn't seem to be, so it feels a bit premature to me. I'd go with Bodypaint or ZBrush over this any day.
  • pior
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    pior grand marshal polycounter
    Well Mop I don't know, atm I like painting on screengrabs more than painting straight on a 3D model - except for complex modelled folds. Maybe it's just because all the programs I used so far only allowed to paint straight on 3D models with their very own painting tools rather than photoshop's...

    But yeah the bugs are definately an issue, I don't even understands that the guy sells it in this state haha :P
  • Sage
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    Sage polycounter lvl 19
    The stop and go imposed work flow really sucks, I guess you can get over it if you really, really want to, but for the price I feel it just shouldn't be there. The freaking thing jumps out of the viewer now, I guess at least it opens the textures now, so it's made some progress. It looks promising. What I still really like is the generation of vector wires. That almost makes me want to buy it, pretty silly really. I'm going to see how it displays models with mirrored normal maps, if it does a good job it might be worth it. it would be nice if you could save your model to another format and use this plugin as a file converter. I tried to see if it did but no.

    Alex
  • Ruz
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    Ruz polycount lvl 666
    Its a bit annoying really. i gave up pretty quick. Its doesn't seem to place obj files at the default 0,0,0 even after a reset xform in max.
    Perhaps its geared more for the maya obj/fbx exporter.
    if you paint near edges, it bleeds and stretches like zapplink.
    Be nice if it had 'local' rotations like in zbrush.
  • pior
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    pior grand marshal polycounter
    Yeah that's quite weird how it varies from one system to the other. A friend got it to work on dualview and there is no way do to this on my machine. On a similar note I don't have the edge problems you are running into, Ruz - I was actually quite pleasantely surprised last time I painted over edges ala arm/torso connection. However on other places I couldn't get the paint to fill the very last pixels very close to the edge on a forhead split edge. Odd...

    I guess the Enzo author should just come here and get constructive feedback just like Jogshy did.
  • Rhinokey
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    Rhinokey polycounter lvl 18
    I gave it a good try out last nite after work, seemed updating my drivers fixed up the dual view issues.

    In fact last nite it seemed to work almost perfect.
    if there was a few modifications, i think i would posibly purchase this. i want layers to work better, and layer effects and layer propertys to work..
  • Eric Chadwick
    But it's not projection paint right?

    Does the brush size change when you paint across a seam between different UV pixel sizes? That's so old school.
  • Rhinokey
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    Rhinokey polycounter lvl 18
    its projection paint.
  • Eric Chadwick
    Oooh, OK. Worth a look then.
  • gavku
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    gavku polycounter lvl 18
    Seemed to work fine for me, no crashes etc. However it was exceptionally crap when it came to seams. To test it I painted my whole mesh the one colour, and you could see the majority of the seams.
  • Michael Knubben
    It would be excellent if the author would post here, like jogshy did. It seems he really needs to nail those remaining bigs for us to lay down our cash on it. I'll give this a go one of these days, I've been waiting for a good photoshop projection painter for ages!
  • Eric Chadwick
    They have a forum, you could post there.

    For me the app shows promise but it's way too slow, takes a loooong time to lay down the paint before I can rotate the mesh. Maybe a setting somewhere?

    The only things Body Paint 3D is lacking so far are the Layer Effects, and I don't use them on models, so BP3D is still the best, for me. It even saves PSD files. More expensive than Enzo, $895 vs. $299, but well worth it.
  • enzo3d

    Hello everyone,

    Many thanks to everyone for trying out Enzo and providing feedback, suggestions, and criticisms....*Especially* those who did so on our forums on http://www.enzo3d.com . We don't usually monitor all the 3D message boards and provide responses -- We're too busy working on Enzo and providing support to people on our own forum wink.gif

    Even though Enzo is currently being used in production by large companies, it is still very much a "living" piece of software, under constant development and improvement on a daily basis. Some of you may remember version 1.0, and realize the drastic improvements that have been made since then - and the progress continues at the same non-stop pace. We will continue until all bugs, issues, workflow improvements, etc etc have been addressed.

    Just wanted to mention that all the issues brought up in this forum are known issues, and are high on the development schedule. We are currently working on the port to Photoshop CS3, and when that is complete, we will be going through every known issue with a fine-toothed comb.

    Cheers,

    The Enzo Team
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