DeepPaint... Does it still exist/work?

Tom Ellis

Hey all.

I was looking around for some hand-painting inspiration and stumbled across a few mentions of DeepPaint. I'd heard of it before but never really known what it was.

I've just found Slipgatecentral's vids on it and i can't exactly see how it works but it looks good.

Am I right in thinking that it takes screenshots or snapshots from a 3D view, and then you can paint with standard PS tools inside Photoshop and somehow send it back?

I'm not sure how I'd get on with that workflow but using PS brushes/layers definitely attracts me. I get on ok with 2D texturing but Ive done some photo sourced proj painting in Mudbox and it's something I wanna check out further with a more painterly style, but cant seem to get a nice enough Photoshop standard brush-esque result in Mudbox.

So I did a bit of searching, and found surprisingly little info on DeepPaint, it doesn't seem widely used... Is that for good reason? Is there known issues with it?

Also, does it even exist anymore? I'd love to check it out. Is anyone here using it, if so, with CS4?

Lastly, how does BodyPaint compare? I tried an old release that was integrated in C4D, R9 I think and it seemed clunky and a little broken to be honest.

Thanks

Vrav

If you're willing to stray from "name-brand" apps, Sculptris' PSD projection painting is simple and effective on both decimated sculpts and manually unwrapped models. It does have some quirks, though - such as an inability to paint over shared UVs, resulting in your only being able to paint on one side / one of the locations on the model. Would probably be fixed if development for the app continued, but. (:

Just thought I'd make the recommendation. You can set up projection painting in Blender too.

Tom Ellis

Vrav wrote: »

If you're willing to stray from "name-brand" apps, Sculptris' PSD projection painting is simple and effective on both decimated sculpts and manually unwrapped models. It does have some quirks, though - such as an inability to paint over shared UVs, resulting in your only being able to paint on one side / one of the locations on the model. Would probably be fixed if development for the app continued, but. (:

Just thought I'd make the recommendation. You can set up projection painting in Blender too.

Thanks Vrav, I'm yet to check out Sculptris, it doesn't bother me in the slightest that it's not one of the big names, always open to some useful new software.

I'll give it a shot and see how I get on.

The thing I liked the look of with Deep Paint is that I would get to use a standard PS workflow for painting where I get proper pressure controls for the brush and most importantly alt-click sampling for quick blending.

Thanks again

EDIT: Just saw your response DKK thanks.

So Mudbox does it? I haven't tried 2011 yet but I've got student access to their products so could check it out.

So I can use the same Photoshop snapshot kinda workflow with Mudbox? Or do you mean 3D mesh painting?

disanski

What about zapplink for zbrush. It works in a similar way.

Ben Apuna

As Vrav mentioned Blender 2.5 does this easily as well. They use GIMP in the video but it works with any image editing app (I think) I got it working with PS CS2 without any issues, just set it up in the preferences.

[ame]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KNd54jgesgk[/ame]

moose

If you like to use new versions of Photoshop, forget about Deep Paint. They refuse to update it to newer versions of photoshop, because they do see it as a dead program

Gotta keep an old version of CS3 around so i can still use it.

Zapplink does a great job, but can do odd things when faces turn, and over seams that you have to clean up & do a lot of touch up work to.

reberhart

Your best bet is 3D Coat or Mudbox. They both handle projection painting in Photoshop fairly well.

Zapplink would be great if it didn't collapse your texture layers.

Tom Ellis

Thanks all.

Both the Blender and the ZApplink options look perfect. I'll check out ZApplink since I've never used Blender.

Just a thought though, how does ZBrush render low poly stuff with just a diffuse? Not 'how' technically speaking, but does it look any good?

I'm gonna be painting characters with 1500 tris or less and I've never considered using ZBrush for something like that.

nrek

If you are going to be painting on low poly stuff like that you can actually use the 3d painting tools in Photoshop. Once you get things setup properly it is actually pretty nice. Being able to bounce between painting on the model and painting on the flats while still updating both ways is really handy.

This tut covers most of the important info.
http://rezzable.com/blog/rykerbeck/tutorial-painting-avatar-mesh-using-photoshop-cs4-extended

Mark Dygert

I'd just use viewport canvas in 3dsmax2011, its about 3 stages better than DeepPaint ever was.

Poop would probably tell you to check out BodyPaint.

Firebert

moose wrote: »

Zapplink does a great job, but can do odd things when faces turn, and over seams that you have to clean up & do a lot of touch up work to.

*COUGH*mudbox*COUGH*

:P

Justin Meisse

some guys at work are messing with 3dcoat, I hear it's better than bodypaint (cheaper too)

achillesian

i like 3d coat, also has same feature, although crashed when i tried to use a non ps program that supports psd (sai)

Jaco

creationtwentytwo wrote: »

Just a thought though, how does ZBrush render low poly stuff with just a diffuse? Not 'how' technically speaking, but does it look any good?

It looks and works fine for low poly stuff, but there's no smooth shading. So you're basically painting on a model that's either faceted, or has no shading (full-bright), no smoothing groups either.

Tom Ellis

Thanks for the further replies guys, I'm just working through all the different options now and seeing which one I like.

Viewport Canvas works better than I expected, although one thing which may be a deciding factor is whether I can map the color picker to a hotkey? I can't find it in the hotkey dialog but I may well be missing it. Is it even possible?

3DCoat looks good, and most promising from what I can see on their previews. And cheers Jaco, I'll check out ZApplink too if ZBrush previews low poly ok.

Ruz

I still use pshop in 2d and then tidy up the seams in zapplink or whatever.
The problem with zbrush for texturing is that you lose resolution when transferring between programs. If I am not mistaken , deep pain had this problem also, so you end up with a texture which is a bit blurred compared to the source.

oglu

creationtwentytwo wrote: »

..., but cant seem to get a nice enough Photoshop standard brush-esque result in Mudbox.

could you explain this a bit further... maybe there is a solution..?

Tom Ellis

Cheers Ruz, I wasn't aware of that.

Oglu, it's difficult to explain as it's a 'feel' thing. Basically, if I take a standard hard edge brush in PS with opacity/stroke width controlled by pen pressure, a similar setup in MudBox doesn't feel as nice and behaves a little differently. This may of course just be down to the fact I'm painting on a 3D mesh.

Also, as I mentioned, for painterly style textures, it's important that I can sample neighbouring colours with a hotkey. Mud may be able to do this but I haven't tried yet.

oglu

ok... yes painting in 3d space is different...
color picker shortcut is hold down i and klick...

Tom Ellis

Awesome thanks man.

Tom Ellis

Just checked out 3DCoat, works exactly as I hoped, quick and seamless updates in PS and 3DCoat. The mesh painting works well too so it looks like I'll be settling on this one.

Thanks again all for the help!

Tom Ellis

Ok 3DCoats 2.5d proj-painting is awesome, works so well. I'm trying to figure out how to get it set up properly though.

Is there a way to have the 2D texture and the projection open in Photoshop and work with both simultaneously?

So let's say in Photoshop I have the projection snapshot, and my flat diffuse open, I paint a bit on the projection shot and save, is there a way to get both the flat and the 3DCoat 3D view to 'live' update so I could switch between the 2.5D and the 2D in Photoshop seamlessly while they're both open?

BeatKitano

Probably not, the projection tex is a temp file that is "pasted" on the actual uv texture after going back to 3dc. So you can't have your tex file open in photoshop and change it since it will be overwriten by the projection one at the next transfer.

Of course you could just work with your 2d tex, save, re-update your projection, work from there, save the projection , and in the 2d make a stroke, file>revert to get the updated 2d tex and so on. But it can be tedious and quite dangerous if you make the wrong move.

I can be wrong on this one though, didn't try 3dc texturing room much..

Tom Ellis

Thanks man, so I guess it's best to do extensive work using projection, and then tidy up in 2D later when I don't need to switch back and forth.

yangtsur

hi creationtwentytwo,

I wonder what is your progress and thoughts about using those software people recommanded? I recently watched the same video from slipgatecentral and thought the same as you " wow this is so cool and nicely done " and digged into deep paint 3d. However it seemed not working with cs4, slipgate didn't demonstrate how he import/export/switch between softwares. The internet has little information about DP3D and most of all, like the members of polycount have said, the software is considered dead and does not work with cs4. And I don't have time to find cs3 .

I tried Zapplink but somehow the function doesn't work on my computer. And the live 3D painting Zbrush provides doesn't give the same softness as if painted in photoshop. They look more...solid. I've read through the thread and 3D coat seemed like a good tool to achieve the same effect. [ame]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hg5XI5dGnZY[/ame]. This is a tutorial demonstrate how it worked found on youtube. But I would really like to know how you feel after using the program 2 months and if you have a workflow to share about. We both inspired from slipgatecentral and I think we are aimming for the similar result of textures.

Thank you and hopfuly ppl still reply this thread after 2 months inactivated.

Tom Ellis

In all honesty, I didnt really do much with it after I created this thread. 3DCoats on-mesh painting works great but I didn't like the projection paint.

If you have the lighting model set to shaded, it sends an overlay layer to PS with the lighting info on and defaults to that layer, so you have to switch layers and delete the lighting layer to actually see what you're doing which got annoying.

Deep Paint still seems like the king for that exact workflow but it just won't work with newer versions of PS, at least in my experience anyway.

yangtsur

First of all thanks for replying me. And yes I was just going to ask the questions about 3D coat. Color bleeding and that light map is quite annoying...

So what software are you using now to achieve that same effect? Which version of photoshop could link with Deep paint 3D? CS3? Could you share your workflow by your experience in using the software?

Tom Ellis

Well, as I said, I haven't done much projection based stuff at all since I created this thread.

There's plenty of options, as discussed in the thread, each with their own pros/cons.

ZBrush projection painting works awesome with Photoshop CS4, really smooth and you don't get the annoying layer issue you get with 3DC. Of course you're limited to the ZBrush viewport render which you may or may not like for previewing low poly, painterly style models.

My favourite solution is the 3DC on mesh painting, with edits in 2D alongside it. The brushes in 3DC are great. Murph did a video recently on him painting in 3DC, a great way to see what it's capable of.

As for DeepPaint... I only have CS4 on PC, but from what I could see from researching a bit, DeepPaint only works with CS2 + earlier. And even if you can get hold of CS2, getting standalone DeepPaint and it's PS plugin wont be easy since it's no longer available.

ghib

Yangtsur & creationtwentytwo: I replied on the 3DC forum but not sure if you caught it. As far as the lightmap thing goes. It's actually quite handy having the lightmap there (just not full on 100% as it blows the detail out)

I made a few really quick photoshop actions that you can download here.
They're pretty self explanatory and you can easily add a hotkey to activate them. Just 1 keypress and you can paint away.. Not so bad eh?

I made the actions so that it creates a new layer for you to immediately paint on but you'll probably want to collapse that down before sending back to 3DC.

I agree with you that the streaks & artifacts that are left around the edges of the model are an issue. The developer apparently fixed these but it still isn't perfect.

yangtsur

-creationwentytwo: Nice I've found his post on his blog and it looks realy coo. Don't know if the brushes are custom brushes or defult brushes. But now I think I really need to go watch some tutorials on the very basics of 3DC first......for how to import multiple objects in one scene, hide/show objects, select... general things you can do in maya.

And yea I used to draw my diffuse map using zbrush but I were never able to draw it a cartoonish feel out of it ( or there is a way but I don't know how?). Recently discovered the use of Zapplink but unfortunetly couldn't get that function to work on my current computer.....so...

Anyway, thanks a lot for the help. ^_^

-ghib: Thanks for the help, you are really enthusiastic and I really appreciate your kindness. I am going to sleep for now (different time zone) and try out that photoshop action later. And also understand how to draw in both photoshop and 3D canvas like murph who creationtwentytwo suggested.

Pre-DV5 is gona end soon... sigh I've been stuck at texturing stage for 1.5 weeks now. Hopefuly I can finish painting out texture and give my model a pose on time.