Methods or alternative apps for direct model texturing?

Support Materials and Textures
#1

I’m trying to create a texture for a creature from a series of animal photographs, and have been having a lot of trouble with UV stretching and seams.

What I really want to do is something identical to Nick Bishop’s Vpaint demo.: paint parts of the projected photos directly onto the model. I can’t tell if that’s been integrated into trunk yet though, or if the intent for PTEX integration sidelined it.

The closest demo I’ve seen to that is something like this tutorial, where the image is painted onto front and side projections of the UV map, then texture-painted onto the unwrapped mesh, but that seems to take a lot of steps, especially if I have to break down the animal photos first in photoshop for the front and side views, THEN paint them together, THEN touch up the final result in Photoshop.

So, if it’s not possible to do something like the Vpaint demo in 2.61, can anyone recommend an alternative model texturing program that could let me paint textures directly on a model, then export the finished maps to Blender? Ideally something inexpensive.

#2

Never noticed that VPaint before, but it looks to be amazingly usefull for texturing.

The other method is called projection painting that is a function available i both 2.4x and current version of Blender, it is indeed a lot more steps than Nicholas Bishop work from the video, you need front/side/and more for even better result pictures but you can end with interesting result.

By example, on a head i modelled, i used those front and side references to end with
http://i.imgur.com/nGVNes.jpg

It’s indeed lot more steps, but fortunately it’s not complicated, the only difficult part is to get your various UV layers correctly aligned to your reference picture (it’s easier if your references pictures are actually what you used to model the head too like in the case i used up there), after that you just paint, and your main texture will built itself automatically.

I hope the V-Paint will one day get into Blender, what is shown in the video is too usefull in the texturing process to be ignored.

#3

So what happened to VPaint?

#4

My uneducated guess is that there was so much changing with the texturing and rendering systems (Cycles, GSoC Onion, and the release of PTEX) he decided to switch to working on integrating PTEX first.

#5

Ah, yes I see. Anyway a good looking tool. I’ll cross my fingers. :slight_smile: Thanks.

#6

Yeah… getting rid of that overlay stuff due to problems with ptex implementation was like throwing the baby out with the bathwater. It’s impossible to do quick detailing without it. Blender’s UV editing, Baking, and Projection Paint/Modifier provisions are considerable, but this omission makes simple decal painting/detailing take forever and completely breaks an otherwise awesome workflow. I’m not sure how it is that this has been ignored for so long.