BodyPaint 3D, thoughts?

Tom Ellis

Hey there everyone,

While looking through some portfolio sites for some tips and inspiration for painting a texture on a character I'm working on, I noticed a couple people, notably Poopinmymouth, had used 3D paint tools to create the textures. Or at least, make a good start on the textures before tidying them up in PS.

I noticed specifically Ben used Bodypaint 3D, and it's not something I've looked into before, it looks pretty good from his video though.

Has anyone got any thoughts/experience on it?

I've never really got too into the whole 3D paint thing but I see more and more people incorporating it into their workflow now.

I have some questions,

1. This is just a question from my very much amateur lacking experience side, but is it 'cheating' to use a 3D paint tool? I always feel like I'm kinda taking an easy route by painting in 3D, but then I guess if it saves time and looks as good, who cares right?

Am I right in thinking that as long as one has the foundation skills for unwrapping and painting well on 2D maps in Photoshop or similar, then 3D painting can be used as an extension to these skills.

2. Does Bodypaint paint channels other than diffuse? Spec, Gloss, Glow etc?

3. Does it work well with Max?

4. Can you bring an obj with UV's into it or do you have to unwrap it in Bodypaint?

Many thanks

PolyHertz

1. No its not 'cheating', and yest painting skills all transfer despite the tool used.

2. Depends on which version you use. In version 4.5 (the one that's part of cinema4D v11.5) it supports: color, diffusion, luminance, transparency, reflection, environment, bump, alpha, specular color, displacement, normal.

3. Not really sure what you mean by this.

4. Yes you can unwrap in any app and just import the obj into bodypaint, no need to unwrap directly in it.

Tom Ellis

Thanks Polyhertz...

I'm not sure what I meant by no.3 either upon reading it back. I guess I just come to expect integration with other apps now and I noticed something about a plugin. I just didn't know what it did.

So when you say it supports all those channels, does it do specular power? I guess the confusion here is coming from the difference in what each channel is known as in each app.

I guess what I'm asking is can you paint a specular map onto your 3D mesh in BP3D, and see the realtime difference, like Mudbox where you can see the surface getting more or less specularity as you paint, then bake just that channel out to a map you would use as a spec in the game engine or Max.

NAIMA

Hi a link on how this guy use the 3dpaint tool ? I am exploring out the field to see what to get for this task ....

Tom Ellis

Do you mean the one I mentioned?

It's at http://www.poopinmymouth.com (genuine address)

in tutorials.

DeadlyFreeze

Its all real time besides normal maps which need to be pre-rendered with the raybrush before you can projection paint them.

Tom Ellis

So I can paint spec intensity onto the mesh in BP and actually see the specular change on the model (as oppose to just painting values on and using them as a specular map later), and save out the map with just that channel information to then use as a spec map?

That's what I want to know, as that would be awesome.

Del

~ Body paint is great, and I've used a lot in the past. The only real downside is that it struggles with seams. It does this weird glitchy thing when you paint over something with a seam.

At GDC they revealed to us the new 3ds Max 2011 which has a built in 3dpainter that can be used with photoshop that has no problems with seams whatsoever. As soon as it comes out I doubt I'll ever bother with bodypaint ever again.

Axios

Yeah, when painting on seams in BodyPaint, it isn't as perfect as you'd like. By default, the cursor will only paint on one side or the other, but there's a Projection mode that will allow you to paint seamlessly which unfortunately is significantly slower. Overall though, after using BodyPaint for a while, it is definitely my standard in my workflow. Photoshop is still very important, but the 3D painting tools make it worthwhile.

Tom Ellis

Thanks for the replies.

It's good to hear some positive comments and while the seam thing sounds annoying, I guess it can be sorted easily in Photoshop.

I will give it a go.

I'm still curious about the specular thing though, anyone know about that?

Tom Ellis

Woah Dreamer thanks for the heads up on that Max 2011 painting feature.

I just checked out a couple of the preview videos of the 'Viewport Canvas' and from I can see, it looks pretty incredible. Granted it is pretty much just Mudbox tools transferred to within Max, but for those of us who don't use Mudbox (myself included) but do use Max, it'll be nice to see those incorporated.

If it works as well as it looks in the demo, it should be a very useful tool.

SyncViewS

BodyPaint 3D can work in full 3D painting mode, which is like the PainterInterface in 3ds Max, where the cursor follows the surface and whenever it finds a seam, paints on one side only until the seam is passed and then paints on the opposite side. This doesn't give very good results. But it can work in Projection Painting mode too, where the color information (and stamp textures too) are just projected on the model and the cursor moves in screen space. This mode disregards any seam and gives very accurate results in matching both seam sides. If I remember well, you can set an edge padding too, to expand color at the seams much like when baking AO and Normals.