Vertex Paint Brushes

leechdemon

I've been using Vertex Paint to blend some environment textures for a terrain demo we've been working on. I'm very proficient with Photoshop's brush settings, and I feel like having access to similar tools in Max would be great (Scatter and Shape Dynamics, specifically).

Anytime I'm trying to do anything "smart", I'm basically applying a noise map, baking it into a VPaint layer, then Multiplying a gradient map to cut out the part I don't want, collapsing those layers, and pasting the result on top of my existing vertex data. It works, but it's REALLY time consuming when what I really want is just a simple scatter.

Is there a way to do this, other than the pen pressure settings in the Brush dialogue? I'm thinking with some sort of plugin, perhaps? Alternatively, is Max just a really poor place to be painting Vertex Colors? Should I be taking these meshes elsewhere, and then bringing them back into Max when completed?

cman2k

I have searched exhaustively for better vertex paint tools for max and haven't found much.

However, it is possible to bake a texture into the vertex color channel. If it works with your pipeline, that might be a solution worth pursuing....

Mark Dygert

If its uniquely unwrapped (a quick auto unwrap would work) you can use viewport canvas to paint tighter more well defined maps and have better paint tool/brush options. Then convert it over to vertex paint, it won't translate perfectly but it will give you better paint tools.

Also what about using the paint place/scatter object tools in graphite modeling tools? SoulBurnScripts has a great randomized paint place/scatter tool if you're on 2010 or lower. I think they both even respect pressure sensitivity? But you should check them both out... I'm not in a position to check right now.

You can crank the brush size up to scatter over large areas.
Ctrl+Shift = Resize the brush.
Alt+Shift = Strength, Opacity (in viewport canvas)

Ctrl + Alt = Brush edge Hardness/softness (in viewport canvas)

I really really wish PhotoShop had brush control like this. Once upon a time I found a photoshop script that did it but it stopped working with newer versions and I haven't found anything like it since =(

leechdemon

cman2k - Yeah, I knew about the texture bake. I'm doing that for noise, currently, but you're right; no reason I couldn't use photoshop's brushes and bake them out.

"goz"? will google later..

Dygert - some of the meshes are uniquely unwrapped, some are not. When they're unique, I usually don't bother with the vpaint anyways; it's mostly for when I have tiling textures I'm trying to unuglify.

I read your post in that shortcut file this morning (brush shortcuts), that was really, really good to know. Hardness/Opacity are convenient, I'll have to remember those. Something for color toggling (like X in photoshop) would be swell. Maybe I'll bind one or something.

Wish PS had brush control like what?

[ - Decrease brush size
] - Increase brush size
Shift + [ - Decrease brush hardness
Shift + ] - Increase brush hardness
0
1-9, 0 - set brush opacity

Or is there something else you meant?

Mark Dygert

It's mostly the incremental steps that I don't like. I would prefer, hold key + drag, instead of wildly pound keyboard for 10 seconds to slowly ratchet it up or down to the right size. It also makes wild jumps the bigger it gets, 400-500, hold on there I need 425 or 450...

And pressing the number pad... ugg... first you have to know what your opacity setting is, I have to take my eyes off what I'm doing, then you have to guess what a little more or a little less is then hit the right key which pulls not only your eyes off of what you're doing but your mouse cursor also. Just let me hold a key and drag... why make things hard.

So many other apps work that way (hold key + drag) both mudbox and zbrush allow it, so does art rage. Photoshop? Oh hell no... but we need more flash-esk bloat ware features! HELL YEA!

At least with Incremental brush size set to a keyboard shortcut you can bind it to the touch strips on a tablet so you get something sort of similar. But there isn't any such way to do that with opacity... which is sad I have two touch strips... one for brush size and one for... oh... not opacity... I guess hardness will have to do, Lame.

Not bitter at all... not at all, not in the 10+years I've been using photoshop heh =P
It's worse to have it for a while then have it ripped away, like someone stole your thumbs.

Mark Dygert

Oh yea I got off on a rant and forgot...

If you hold alt it inverts the strength of the brush, I forget if that works in vertex paint or scatter. It works when painting vertex weights in Skin... very handy.

leechdemon

Yeah, incremental steps can be obnoxious when trying to go from one extreme to another. I set up a few brushes that are a broad range of size; 2, 10, 50, 100, 500. That way I can just right click, grab 100, and go up or down a few steps and get to soemthing useful that much faster.

As for opacity, I've been working with a reduced Flow Rate lately instead of Opacity (nice for scatter brushes, since you can still build to 100% with a 30% flow brush - not true with Opacity). A nice side-effect is that if your flow is set to 50 or something, then Opacity will modify that value. That's SORT OF like being able to jsut go up or down from your original value. Kind of. O.o