Radial painting (2D)

Snowfly · Jan 2013

Anyone know of a tool that supports radial painting? This is what I'm trying to achieve. The sketch updates in realtime on the rotated version of the image, making it much easier to work out the composition.

At the moment I'm 3D painting in Blender. I could probably wing this workflow and use it only at the sketching stage before bringing it over to Photoshop. But ideally I'd like to have a proper suite of painting and 2D editing tools, and no wonkiness from z-sorting.

JR · Jan 2013

If I was you, I'd make a PSD file, with two smart objects as layers, sharing the same content. So, when you edit contents, they will show up on the reflected painting, every time you save, as you can see on this snapshot.

I made a test PSD file, you can download it here:

https://dl.dropbox.com/u/71921025/test.psd

Eric Chadwick · Jan 2013

Another possibility too, would be to setup a model with mirrored UVs, and 3D paint on that. You could offset the seam like JR did, to avoid the Rorschach effect.

equil · Jan 2013

the only one i can think of off-hand is celsys illuststudio, which has a whole bunch of symmetry rules and guides, including radial ones.

Snowfly · Jan 2013

Thanks for the suggestions!

JR - Yeah, being able to work in Photoshop would've been my preferred option but Smart Objects aren't realtime enough unfortunately. Thanks though!

Eric - That would work. I'm using Blender's 3D paint tools but they're pretty basic, so I've got to hunt down an app that actually provides decent brushes.

equil - This might be what I'm looking for actually. A colleague showed me Illuststudio before, the paint tools handle great. Didn't know it had radial symmetry built in as well.

PolyHertz · Jan 2013

Sketchbook Designer apparently lets you do this:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=endscreen&v=W0hmSVhssUc&NR=1

Snowfly · Jan 2013

But not exactly, since it crops off the image at the edges of the mirrored zone.

Closest I've found is a freeware called Urban Painter, but the drawing tools have no anti-aliasing. I've emailed the developer to see if he could add that.

https://sites.google.com/site/ivdovin/up2

matthew · Jan 2013

corel painter 12 has a mirror mode and a kaleidoscope mode. I believe the mirror mode is what you are looking for. It also has layers like PS and you can even save your files as psd's. Mirrored portion updates in realtime and it has a ton of painting tools. I hope this helps.

Mark Dygert · Jan 2013

What was that leaf monster making app... Alchemy? It had symmetry of some kind if I remember correctly.

Autodesks Sketchbook pro has symmetry also.
[ame="

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_enqb1K6KOI"]Symmetry in Sketchbook Pro 11 - YouTube[/ame]

Snowfly · Jan 2013

Thanks guys, I decided to run with Blender for the time being and see how far I can push the brushes. Painter XII seems like my best bet if I get stuck.

NateMasterFlash · Jan 2013

You can use Zbrush and paint on a plane assuming you have it. You can set the axis you want to mirror which will probably be Z or Y and select radial symmetry. There is also an option for the number of symmetries, which would be 2 in this case.

throttlekitty · Jan 2013

If you have the extended license, I'm sure that poly planes with stacked/flipped/mirrored UVs would make an effective canvas for painting realtime with any kind of symmetry you can dream up. From there, you should be able to capture what you've painted and create a normal 2d document from that.

Radial painting (2D)

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