Is there any feasibility in merging the vertex and texture paint modes into one?

General Forums Blender and CG Discussions
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When using Blender it is well known that there are different modes that have their own UI and tool sets, and it is known that to use the functionality in those modes you had to switch to them in the mode menu.

Back in the early 2.4x days there were different modes for UVmapping and editmode, the UVmode has its own drawtype and toolset, the caveat is that when you wanted to do any UVmapping, you had to go to the UVmode.

Later on the UVmode was merged into editmode, and as a result really sped up the workflow for modeling the UVmapping, you could unwrap your object, model a bit more, fix that part of the UVmap, and do it again in a much shorter time.

Now I was in the ideology that if there were similar Blender modes, it may be feasible to merge them so we have less modes to switch to and allow us to do what used to require the use of two modes to do. I believe that, at the least, it may be feasible to merge the texture paint and vertex paint modes in a way that won’t add a lot of complexity, won’t clutter the UI, and will speed up workflow.

Take the similarities for example.

-They have the same brush system and the same brush code
-The toolbar UI is very similar
-They both involve painting colors under different blend modes onto an object in the 3D view.

Now the differences

-One works on verticies, the other on one or more UVmapped images of one of more map types.
-Vertex painting can start right away, texture painting requires the loading of an image

The point is there’s not really that much in the way of differences, perhaps similar enough that they can be merged, a possible way to do it is to add a simple UI toggle that switches the painting target from images to verticies, your image choice(s) are stored for you to come back to painting on when you use the toggle again, but will be unavailable for you to paint on since the painting is now vertex based.

What do you think, should the modes be merged, is it feasible to do it, it’s probable that the UI wouldn’t have to change much to switch from texture-based to vertex-based painting in the same mode?

NOTE: This thread however doesn’t concern merging in weight painting as well, as the function done in that mode is likely too different to make that feasible.

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I recall something where you could bake vertex colors off of a texture, but I might have dreamed that… But that’d be one way to do it. But you’re more interested in the UI being the same?

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I see your point, I think that paint mode really has much more in common with sculpt though…and if the two or three(paint, V_paint, sculpt) of these modes were streamlined, that would indeed be “neato!”, but I’m not sure how much alike they really are under the hood…I’m not against it, but I think it would lead to a whole new world of issues…but I vote “yay”.

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I’m not sure of how feasible it would be to merge in sculpt-mode as well, sculpt mode has its own unique set of brush types, options, and tools and thus is quite different from vertex and texture painting (the brush types in the vertex and texture paint modes are about the same meanwhile).

It may be possible though, though the question is how to merge in the sculpt-specific options cleanly and in a way where it doesn’t make the internal code too complex and speeds up workflow through unification (providing if it’s even possible to do that)

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You have raised a valid point AD, one I hope which raises more discussion on this particular subject.

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well if bump map painting ever makes it in, then sculpt/paint is very much similar, do not forget they are both also texture driven…unlike Vpaint…and in that respect, they use curve, fall off, textures, and pressure sensitivity…unlike Vpaint, if anything Vpaint is LESS like it than sculpt in a function and UI perspective.(that is function as in VOID, INT etc…)…
but this is all fanboy speculation…I have no clue what is under the hood…I have not looked at any code from blender so I do not know…the more I am here though the more I think I should…time is always an issue.

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I had this idea that Timeline, graph editor, Dopesheet and NLA should be merged into one. They are basically the same thing, only in different scale. Not sure yet how exactly put this together, but here’s a sketch:
So basically, Graph editor and dopesheet could be a subeditor for NLA (Both of these are the exact same, just that one displays a curve, and the other doesn’t). NLA could also be displayed in a minimal view, which is Timeline.

Or a little less drastic:
Merge Graph editor with dopesheet
Merge NLA with timeline.
And have two editors…

Just speculating…

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I think this might be a good idea if done right.
Also one thing I’ve been thinking about:
Currenly the vertex paint is very separated from all the other textures. This might be because it’s a very old feature that uses the vertex shaders of the GPU for realtime rendering and therefore has a very fixed place in the shading pipeline (just guessing, correct me if I’m wrong). Imagine, however, if vertex paint was just a type of texture like any others (although it would lack options for mapping), which could use any of the blending modes available to affect color, specularity, reflection, emit etc. or be used as a stencil for other textures. I think this would make the vertex color much more useful, especially when combined with sculpting and high-density meshes.

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That reminds me of Ptex. Without UV maps, painting on faces with no limit in detail.

Thats just it.
All you need is a single button:
“Migrate paint to texture”.

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I agree Jorzi, it would be a good texture, as in located in the texture drop down list… I think it is already a texture node…but I am not 100% sure.

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Imagine, however, if vertex paint was just a type of texture like any others (although it would lack options for mapping), which could use any of the blending modes available to affect color, specularity, reflection, emit etc. or be used as a stencil for other textures. I think this would make the vertex color much more useful, especially when combined with sculpting and high-density meshes.

Material-wise, you can already do these things with the vertex color channels (the geometry node in the material nodes has a color output for vertex color channels).

Though you have a point with how it can be done to be able to use vertex color channels in painting and sculpting (as those features do not use material node trees)

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(the geometry node in the material nodes has a color output for vertex color channels)

Thanks for the tip! I’m not that good at material nodes, they really currently feel a bit unintuitive to use. I guess they are still work in progress, otherwise we wouldn’t need the traditional material editor at all…