Hey all, I’m interested in what you think are the most critical improvements for the texture painting tools
Here are some ideas
texturing
projection
[INDENT]project from and onto multiple scene objects (so you can paint the whole canvas at once)
project each object as a mask/layer this way you can mask off objects when working on painting
project vertex groups as masks - this way different parts of an object can be masked off
project back onto objects mirror
project back onto objects xrayed (so front and back can be painted at once)
project cavity/depth information as a mask/layer
general
xray painting (paint both sides of an object)
paint across multiple objects
mirroring (already in nicks branch?)
texture stamping, overlay, spacing tools from sculpt
depth masking from sculpt
brushes
integrate brush engine from mypaint
nodes
color adjustment of all textures on an object via nodes
color adjustment of an object/image masked by vertex group
adjustment of brushes via nodes
[/INDENT]
Image layers, that can be flattened down/merged during painting, be great for less destructive workflows.
k. thx. bai. :3
edit:
before someone mention’s using nodes for layers.
Yeah, workflow/UI hell/mess, just saying.
edit2:
if this has a side effect of supporting loading layered image files as textures onto objects
then it would be a enter the forbidden/banned e-word here win.
I think Layers and Blending modes are very important. Layer Masking too, so we can remove/reveal layer parts without actually losing information. Effects per layer can be very useful, like adding blur, sharpen, some basic color correction etc. Effects could even be added as modifiers are to objects.
It’s super important to have a non destructive workflow for real situations, IMHO. Particularly because things change all the time…
Ok, this is a big one but it would be THE feature for me. Support of native .psd files with all it’s layer functions including:
layer masks/vector masks
clipping masks
several layers
layer groups
support for the blending methods
adjustment layers
I know this is a big one ;). The .tif file format supports the same thing. I just said .psd because the workflow is more fluid with Photoshop.
Also what I am missing is a shortcut for the color panel. Not sure if it’s already possible. Going to the side panel to change colors is really annoying.
I don’t think the PSD format is publically available, I’m also pretty sure adjustment layers, etc aren’t accessible outside of photoshop.
JustiBarrett and others regarding layers - my thoughts/plans were to have it be nodes behind the scene but accessible via a typical layers interface from the image editor.
+1 to image layers with blending modes, setting layer visibility and opacity from the UI, locking layers from editing, locking layer alpha from editing. Using nodes behind the scenes sounds fine, as long as there is a convenient way to manage layers in the UV editor and 3d window. In addition, here are more ideas in no particular order:
Have the option to save the image when you save the blend file. Right now you have to save the image separately in the UV/image editor with alt+s and it doesn’t make for the most fluid workflow.
Brush size with regard to the model not affected by zoom.
Brush textures that only affect the brush alpha and use the selected colour in Blender to paint. (maybe I’m missing something here with current 2.5x versions?)
Line tool, perhaps similar to GIMP’s where you click on a spot, hold a modifier key, click on another spot and a line is created between the two points.
Additional colour picker in the toolbar. Right now you can only access other types of colour pickers if you open that small colour dialogue. In the toolbar, you always see the round one.
Right now in paint mode when you restrict painting to selected faces, these faces have an overlay which affects their colour and you don’t see what colours you are actually painting.
Erases tool that affects only alpha value of the image/layer, with this alpha value then used for transparency of the model. Current implementation has “erase alpha” as a blending mode which is a tad confusing and the brush also uses the selected colour when painting.
blur / sharpen tool
stroke methods from the sculpt tool (for example if you want to put decals in a model you could do it via a brush and drag dot?)
Correction of the brush when painting faces not facing directly to the viewer. So a round brush would be painted as round and not stretched on side faces.
rake and anchor are already in ptex branch… but it’d be nice to have them in the the main paint area…
for the new ideas I really like “cavity” masking… would be great to paint into just the cracks orpaint just the peaks for “dry brush” effects!.
I’d like to see some controls when using an image based brush allowing randomisation of the rotation of the image per dab… so you with a low “spacing” value you get a less obvious repeat… could be used in low values in conjunction with rake just to add some subtle variation in the stroke (and of course, the random amount should be able to be modulated by pressure!
I already have a working layers system for paint mode which I’ll release (probably as an addon) soon… it uses texture slots as paint layers under the hood, but is similar in feel to a cross between the mari and mudbox layers systems. Good news is that it wouldn’t take much to add ptex support to my layers when that gets into trunk!
There’s a couple of “niceties” like re-ordering /deleting layers that I’d like to make more friendly… and blender has slighty broken PNG alpha so you get some fringing when you render multiple layers of paint unless you manually use “premultiply” which is only available after you save the layers… but hey!
a longer term goal would be merging layers down… currently image handling through the python api isn’t feasible… though a workaround with an auto bake might work…
Projection paint across multiple objects should be pretty trivial. However doing it while in paint mode in 3d view for a single could be a lot more challenging and might not be doable for gsoc.
For bone weight paint this is a must. I am utterly and completely blowed away that I must to rotate myself 360 degrees painting the weight. It would bring weight paint to the sane side of 3D again. Or as some user that is not posting more here would see: In max you have xray weight painting, professional apps are better. LOL
I would love the N panel subpanels there to be closed by default (option in User preferences in case someone likes not this) and when you click a subpanel it opens. When you click another subpanel the former one closes and this one opens, if you want the former one don’t close then you shift+click to open. This would avoid the continue scrolling and rearranging of subpanels in a loaded N panel.
Perhaps more easy would be simply change the behaviour of “a” hotkey that closes one subpanel only and make it close all the subpanels. So I would do a + click and it would do the same.
I just copy-pasted the LetterRip’s idea from the start. When it is easyly realised in projection paint, so be it.
@LetterRip: should i understand that you must choose ONLY ONE idea? If yes, then the layers are the most important one. And you will need more than one summer for their proper realisation, IMHO.
I think this is the most important one. Without it all other features would be kind of useless. Would be great to have Blender a bit more loser to Mari when it comes to performance…
brush dynamics/brush engine: The idea to reuse the mypaint engine sounds like a very good one. This has already been done once in the krita project. But this might easily be a gsoc project on iits own.
paint modes: right now the modes are very limited. I would like to see additional like overlay, soft light, color etc. Just like all the blending modes in the typical image manipulations packages out there. While this could also be achieved by using a layer system with blend modes, sometimes its too heavy to introduce layers for just a quick painting job.
layers/channels: additionally to the layer system a quick way to switch between channels (diffuse, specular, bump etc) would also bring the painting workflow up to speed and ease of use. It should be a hierarchical system where you can use layers inside a channel.
masking: additionally to the already mentioned types, a mask (called ‘Edge Mask’ in Mari) where depending on the angle of the faces you are viewing at, the mask will have more or less effect. With this you can easily avoid the smear effect on faces which are almost perpendicular to the view.
There seems to be lots of wishes for fancy stuff, but Imo the biggest problem are just basic blender paint probems. I like sculptris painting system a lot, so I will be referring to It.
So I made one stroke on blender and I have 4 problems with it:
to slow compared to sculptris, it really lag (GLSL seems bit faster though)
flat paint preview - I don’t see my mesh surface detail, so how can I paint it (would like to see it just as in GLSL mode with hemi light with intensity 1, as default paint view - just like in sculptris)
texture mode is ok, but no alpha mode and possiblity to use it as stencil/stamp.
projection form view, causes distortion while paiting close to mesh boundary (I remember same issue in sculpting, what was fixed by Jason Wilkins in his scultping branch). Painting should use projection from brush ‘point of view’ just like in all other apps.
These are 4 biggest one for me.
You have to set alpha mode on Texture Face panel in Mesh properties for each face of mesh.
Use copy attributes add-on to copy Transp mode.
There are an add alpha and an erase alpha blend mode.
In project paint panel, there is a stencil option to set mask from a UVlayer.
Project paint is enabled by default but you can disable it.
