3D painting software.

{scumworks}

As the title state, Ive been looking around for a good 3d painting app. Wanted one that I could either combine (easy) with PS, or be that "all-in-one" solution.

Tried different demos bodypaint/deeppaint/mudbox etc., but none of em really have that WOOW effect. What do you guys use?

For the patient -> Question for mudbox'ers!

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1) Can I paint on a texture plane (like in ps), or do I always need to paint on 3dmodel? I know you can export to ps, just wondering if its possible inside mud
2) Any way to attach UV display (wireframes) when exporting to PS?
3) Cant you re-arrange the texture layers?

Thanks =D

CompanionCube

a combo of bodypaint and photoshop is best, and if u got a decent graphics card u can use the 3d painting in photoshop CS4. in mudbox u can only paint on the 3d surface for now, but i'm hoping for next release u can paint on to the texture like in bodypaint or photoshop

PolyHertz

I've tried a LOT of 3d painting software, and have yet to find one that I felt was completly competent. After using bodypaint, mudbox, zbrush, modo, maya, blender, 3dcoat, polyboost, photoshop cs4, and several others I dont remember the names of, Modo comes out on top. That's not to say modos paint is great, but it did what I needed it to do better then any of the others.

JohnnyRaptor

I'm still using deep paint 3d, it's pretty straight forward, old ui but I never paint in there, I export the screen to photoshop where I got all my brushes n tools. Sometimes I use polypaint in zbrush, pretty basic but I think that makes it feel natural, and it's lack of features doesn't take away the fact that it's still powerful.

Blaizer

i was using zapplink with zbrush 2, but for some reason, zapplink for zbrush 3 destroy all the work i do. So i ended using modo with custom brushes + photoshop.

renderhjs

from this thread:
http://boards.polycount.net/showthread.php?t=60998&highlight=bodypaint

renderhjs wrote: »

I once contacted the customer support of them for more information like PDF`s comparisons ect. but there was not much to offer.
I know deep paint 3d back from the max 4 days (Outcast from appeal was done with it) so very old- and it seems they never really upgraded much ( a sad thing imo). Someone here at polycount mentioned once that he (pior?) designed a new interface/Gui for them but they never used it.

alternative products with the same functionality (e.g not like zBrush just filling quads but real texture projection on texture UV basis):
- modo
- blender (horrible brush tools though)
- mudbox 2
- Photoshop CS4 (unacceptable performance)
- 3dsmax 2010 or poyboost (canvas projection or something like that)
- BodyPaint
- cebas GhostPaint plugin for max & Photoshop (might be outdated by now)
- Enzo, 3d Paint for photoshop

as you can see there is already quite a list of alternatives by now,- in the past bodyPaint was fairly unique and well placed in the industry but they did not pushed it hard lately hence its gone under somewhat.


some other personal sidenotes:
- BodyPaint always shows examples which are deceiving (a rendering supposed to be a viewport capturing), wrong examples from different products of theirs (e.g marketing with monster house, whereas only smal parts were done using BP).
The UV examples in their screenshots are very amateur level same goes for the painting - how should that convince me that it is a professional tool. The gallery is filled with examples that are tuned with PS not with BP (in the texture level).

- modo seems to have a very good and stable performance (unlike BP and DP3d which I tested as well). Their seamless integration with the rest is also very nice - Id say give this package a try at first

- blender is very experimental and not yet very usefull but you can seamless paint either 2d or 3d which is nice

- polyBoost and max2010 are not so advanced in this area but there is a clone brush tool and a simple brush tool that work- but its not a soloution for a advanced painting on 3d

- PS cs4 is a desaster performance wise, even more when it comes to 3d painting. The navigation and interface for 3d is horrible as well. The advantage though is that you can use all the nice features you know from photoshop on 3d projection.

- Enzo is smal (on guy development) and very expensive though very beta non final alike. There are partly some errors in the projection - but the developer seems to know better as others what game artists and alike want. So the implementation and feature list/future is nicer as other packages.

and I am not really happy with any of them,- instead I suggest making readable UV's or get a structure in them so you know better how to paint them.

JordanW

wanna pop in and say that CS4's new patch fixes the performance issues it had. It is actually usable now! and not too shabby!

Michael Knubben

Hah, thanks Jordan, that's good to know. Does this actually make it less picky about your 3d-card, as well?
edit: renderjhs, you worked at Appeal?

renderhjs

MightyPea: I wish I had unfortunately they went down pretty quick. THeir successor never made it
http://www.gamespot.com/ps2/action/outcast2thelostparadise/images.html?om_act=convert&om_clk=gsimage&tag=images;header;more
appeal was one of its kind that actually pushed new ideas in technology and had great art

Ged

3dcoat is getting direct texture painting soon(already has another painting solution), so if it arrives on time the alpha might be even more useful for texture painting during domwar...but the interface also needs an overhaul, hey I guess thats why its alpha

robioto

The CS4 update didn't work for me. There was a marginal performance boost on some brushes at the default canvas size but it's still too screwed up to be useful. There's a thread about it here http://boards.polycount.net/showthread.php?t=61209

It's worth trying out but don't be surprised if it doesn't work out your kinks.

{scumworks}

Thanks alot for the replys! ='D

Oh yes, forgot modo. Didnt think the paint tools would be worth a dagm, but compared to others apps, they're acually fairly good.

Thanks for the list Renderhjs. Would love to use photoshop (3d wise), but CS4 looks like the new vista. Im running on a fairly decent rig, and still have .5-1 secs delay after every brush stroke.

renderhjs

{scumworks} : yes so true,- the whole painting lag started with PS cs3 when they wanted more fancy GUI stuff like forced fake soft shadows for each panel, Opaque rounded edges and other crap no professional would really care to pay for - but I guess they wanted to give at least its GUI it this 'fresh' look and feel.

JordanW

I'm not sure how picky it is about cards, I updated both my home and work drivers before I installed and both machines are using Nvidia 8 series cards. At home I brought in an 85,000 polygon model and was painting a 2048 texture on it and it was workable.

I would recommend hiding all other layers except for the 3d layer, it puts a checkerboard pattern behind it but it came close to doubling my frame rate when rotating the mesh. I also recommend setting up an action that turns off all the lights but one and sets it to white because doing that every time you open a mesh will make you hate life.

I also used Adobe configurator http://labs.adobe.com/technologies/configurator/ to make my own panel for 3d that had all of the rotation tools, import button and hide/unhide polygon button plus my scene setup action. This is a really cool feature of CS4.

{scumworks}

Problem is that PS "think" .5-1s on every finished/completed brush stroke (when painting on mesh), which makes it more or less impossible to paint. This is happening on a 200-1k lowpoly mesh with "1" 512x512 diffuse, no other layers. Im running on a quadQ9550+HD4850, nothing amazing, but should suffice..


They should just make the visual bling*bling*blong de-selectable. PS must be considered a "pro" app, dont know many who would trade performance for dropshadows and a animated zoom >.<. Im even using the old WinNT interface in xp just for that little ++