Clone-brush on multiple layers at once - Photoshop or seperate tool?

Michael Knubben

I'm sure this is something many of us have found themselves wanting at one point or another, so I thought: let's think about this together. I'm talking about being able to use the clone-brush on all of your different textures at once, so normal, spec, diffuse...
This is something I've been thinking about for a long time now, but the only solution I've found in Photoshop is to copy the normal, diffuse, spec (etc.) folders in my psd to a new folder, flatten them and add a mask to paint on. This is a terribly convoluted workaround, but it does work well for some things.
What I'd like to see is this workflow in a more streamlined form. Is there a plugin or standalone program that does this that I missed?

Noors

I know you can do that with cinema4D/Bodypaint by adding maps to your current material and with all maps having the same resolution (and you have a kinda real-time preview on your object)
Now i don't see how it could be done in photoshop without some script recording your strokes.
Bodypaint is awesome for texturing, but it lacks some of photoshop useful tools (curves e.g) and simplicity. So, mix

Snight

Viewport canvas in 3ds Max 2011 is great for this.

kdm3d

Depending on what you want to do... One version of this I do in Photoshop when putting my AO bakes in the diffuse and spec mask. I take all my layers for AO, cavity and anything else I want in both the diffuse and spec, and turn them into a smart layer.

double click on the smart layer, it opens up another file and you can make your changes there, save it, and all the referenced smart layers are updated on your main PSD. These smart layers can also take adjustment layers, as well as filters such as blur or what ever. When you filter a smart layer, the filter effect becomes a layer that you can mask out and such. VERY usefull. All the blending modes and everything work as if it were a regular layer as well...

Not quite what you were looking for, but close:)

CodeFather

One way I would do it is to use a Mouse Movement Recorder (any macro recording program should do that) record your brush strokes one at a time and repeat it using the rest of the layers with different clone stamp sources.

I can't find free macro recorder, I used demo version of Jitbit Macro recorder to that.

Another thing to keep in mind is that you can define up to 5 different clone sources using the Clone Source palette in CS3 and above. !

Karaoke_Warrior

Did anyone ever find a viable solution for this? I have to re-do a texture set and it's becoming increasingly difficult to match things up.

.morph3us

Well, CodeFather, this is a great idea, per se, but how about if you have some jitter going on in your brush? you cannot tell PS to jitter exactly the same with the copied strokes.
would work for standard brushes, though

bac9-flcl

You can make a grayscale mask out of your recorded movement - select your fancy brush, make necessary stamping on one separate layer, extract the silhouette with Ctrl+ layer thumbnail click. It will have all the jittered detail that complex brush left. Remove the layer with modifications. Then you can use that mask to replicate the exact silhouette of a modified area across as many layers as you want. Select a simple circular brush on your stamp tool, assign that mask to layers hosting your modifications, and launch recorded movement again on each one.

Damn, that's complicated.

melviso

Is this now possible in any 2d painting software?

gnoop

It  have been possible for pretty a while, years actually in Photoshop.    Photoshop can record any brush stroke as an action and repeat it on another layer or image.           Although I agree it's still not especially convenient .    It's a bit more handy In Affinity Photo probably with its "macro recorder" panel.

But why would anyone want to use so outdated thing like "clone" tool at all . It's mostly  unusable on normal and height channels.

Try "patch" tool  instead . it would adapt height and normal pixel values to surface you edit.    A thing glorious Substance Painter or Mari are still missing.  

In fact it allows much more control  for a proper texture flow through tiling seams than typical procedural robotic  approach  and in my experience still better then even cool modern AI based solutions like Artomatix

melviso

@gnoop
Cool!! Thanks mate, will try the patch tool.

Michael Knubben

melviso said:

Is this now possible in any 2d painting software?

Well, this is a blast from the past!

It's possible in Substance Painter. You might say 'that's not 2d painting software', but... it can be. I regularly work on just the texture in 2d view for tiling textures, and it's really much better than recording a stroke and repeating it.

I also definitely don't think Clone tools are 'outdated, as @gnoop says. Yes, automatic tools like Patch are great, but if you're working on a scanned mesh's texture, it's great to be able to choose what goes where to fill any holes.

melviso

I just tried the patch tool and its way better than the clone brush imho. It takes into consideration the lighting when replacing. Its dope!!!