Texture Paint: how to save it?

Support Materials and Textures
1

I texture paint, I save, I reopen and it’s gone. Repeatedly, reliably, every time, even if I click the F button in the UV editor while that texture is displayed in the UV editor window.

Even if I click the “Save all Images” in the (t)Tools panel of the Texture Paint window.

Even I if I’m in Material painting mode, create a new Material slot, paint, and do all of the above.

Even I if I’m in Image painting mode, create a new Canvas Image, paint, and do all of the above.

What’s the correct procedure for painting a texture on an object and saving your work?

2

In UV / Image Editor window with the painted image loaded use the File / Save Image As menu or shortcut F3

Screen Shot 2015-09-02 at 18.11.46.jpg2300×1384 178 KB

3

Bless you. That works. Thank you so much, Mr. Marklew.

4

Hi

A little explanation.

First time You save a texture/image You have to tell Blender where to save it…You do that the way Richard told You.

Now Blender know where to save The texture…And You can use - Save all - in Texturepaint…And it work…:slight_smile:

You can also use Alt - s …In uv/image editor to save the texture…Just remember to have mouse curser in the uv/image editor window…When You use Alt -s

Btw.

Blender say it can’t save the texture when You use…save all…In texture paint… First time…In top Menu line.

You can see if texture is saved.

In uv/image editor…Menu line…Image - If there are a little star * After Image…The texture aren’t saved.

Press Alt - s Texture saved …)

Tai

5

Thank you, Taipan, for trying, but that doesn’t work. Alt-S does nothing, as far as I can see. Clicking the Save All Images button seemed to work, after I had done that arcane setup tip that Richard described.

6

Hmm

Are You sure Your mouse curser are in the UV/IMAGE EDITOR when You press Alt - s ?

It work here.

Tai

7

I think I understand now.

I must open the UV/Image Editor, and then put my cursor in its image window, or else the Alt-S shortcut won’t work. Thanks!

To sum it up for future readers:

To texture paint, you must tell blender to create a blank texture first. It won’t do it for you. Do it in the Tools pane on the left when you’re in Texture Paint view. Select the Slots tab, then look near the top for a pulldown menu that probably says “Material” but might say “Image.” Make sure “Image” is selected, then click the New button below “Canvas Image” in the same pane. You’ll see a popup pane where you decide the images size (that’s a topic for another time, if you need help with that). When you’re done, click OK.

Then you have to go to another view, called the UV/Image Editor, then click the Image menu, and choose Save Image. Your texture painting will eventually be saved to this separate image file, on your computer (not in the .blend file).

Unless you do this, blender will delete your texture painting each time you save the blender file with CTRL S (CMD S on Mac). It won’t show any sign that it deleted your work. You wouldn’t know until the next time you open the .blend file.

Now that you’ve saved the texture paint image, you can return to the Texture Paint view, do some painting, and, in the Tools pane on the left, you can click the Save All Images button. It’ll save your texture painting to the image file you created.

If you don’t click the Save All Images button, blender won’t save your painting, no matter whether you hit CTRL S or not. Saving is not saving, when it comes to texture painting, it seems. You must save these separately by clicking this Save All Images button, every time you decide want to keep your work. (That’s insane, but true).

If you want to paint another texture on top of this, repeat all the steps above to create a new, distinct image for it. If you want to texture paint another part of the object or another object, repeat all the above to create a new, distinct image for that, too.

Some of it seems perfectly logical, but I doubt a new user would ever imagine that saving the blender file would actually delete your the texture painting work. I want to help others avoid the pain.

8

As a note, if you see Image* in the Image Editor, you have not saved the image


9

Sorry to see that the same flaws are still in blender as of 2.77a. What a shame. It’s the opposite of what a user would expect. It still secretly deletes your unsaved painting work, quietly, in the background, when you save!

The only way to prevent it seems to be the secret background setup steps described above.

I can’t imagine what purpose any of this serves, nor why blender doesn’t warn that it’s not saving when you click save, but instead, it’s deleting your work.

10

Sorry to see that the same flaws are still in blender as of 2.77a

Not much of a flaw in my eyes…
Blender is a different software than other softwares…
all softwares have their quirks…

just because a software has become what some have come to term “industry standard” means nothing really…
that sort of thing is term thought up buy the ‘sales’ division by some of these software firms to help push their product…
“we use industry standard interfaces”…

yet…

even among the most popular softwares… say… photoshop… still doesn’t interface the same as Maya… Nor is Maya the same user interface as Zbrush…
so to use the word ‘flawed’ when it comes to an interface issue…

aaaa… naaaaa… I’m not one to buy that…

I’ve used too many softwares successfully and had to bend my mind around their interface idiosyncrasies…
don’t limit yourself to thinking in that line or you will never get anything done… IMHO…

Blender is only of this past year become a more 2D Art production software…
thus the 2D images created in the Image editor… were never a priority until recent times…

Plus…

Blender having it’s roots in 3D most users… I think… would rather have the dev crew make sure that the 3D part is taken care of first before … any of the other things in blender…

think about it… is Blender a 3D software?
a Game Engine?
a Video Editor?
a Mud box like sculpting tool?
or
a 2D Image tool?

Truth is it’s all those things because everyone wants it to be all those things…

Thus… if there’s an issue that needs to be addressed in Blender that needs fixing…
it’s up to us to get busy and fix it…
not the dev’s…
support the dev’s with your own efforts…

11

Hi

It’s because You have not turn…Automatically Pack into .Blend…Menu line - File -External data…Check it.

And REMEMBER to save Your startup File…:slight_smile:

If Automatically Pack into .Blend… Not is on…Blender will still save Your painting…It will be where You told Blender to save it.

And both Alt - s and save image in T -panel Work…At least here… I use daily build.

Hope this can solve Your problem…Puff Puff

Tai

Back hmmm…:slight_smile:

This is right until You reopen the Blend - Then some strange thing happen…Will try to figure it out.
Damn Im a noob Maybe it just Me there have forgot to tic one litle damn Box …):

Tai

12

Hi

Made a little test

When File is reopened to paint some more on.

Save All Images in T -Panel only save to the .Blend File…It remove the little star in Uv - Editor it shouldn’t.
Because the External image File is not saved.!!!

Save as image in Uv - Editor save to the External File not to the .Blend File.

So if You use save as image in Uv - Editor…Save .Blend File and reopen it…It will not show Your last painting.
Bacuse Blender use the packed .Blend File and it is not saved…)

You can reload the External File to get last paintg back…Or save All images in T - Panel before You close.

This is how i see it right now…Hope this make some kind of sense…:slight_smile:

Tai

13

Taipan, your kind attempt to explain this makes sense, but blender’s design choices here make no sense at all. Not your fault. It’s definitely a design flaw, though: even when it gives you feedback claiming that your work was saved, it deleted your work instead. This should Never Happen, period, ever.

14

Agreed. Very frustrating to lose hours of work. Maybe you’d like to chime in here: T45636

I really don’t understand why the developers don’t just link the texture save command with file save, even temporarily until a permanent fix in 2.8. Maybe this is showing my ignorance in programming, but seems like a simple fix for a blatant flaw.

Or perhaps somebody who knows python could link the two commands together if possible through scripting?

15

Again… if no body files a bug report…

http://www.blendernation.com/2013/09/29/reporting-bugs-in-blender/
https://www.blender.org/support/
https://wiki.blender.org/index.php/Dev:Doc/Process/Bug_Reports
Not everyone can be a programmer… not everyone should be a programmer…
but the the coding guys who do work on Blender are not always going to AutoMajically know when and where a bug has come up…
with all the revisions that blender is going through the chances are high that it’s going to get more buggy than what it has been in the past 5 -10 years or so…

Plus… realize that there are no “Developers” for blender…
(with the sole exception of Ton Rosenthal…)
the Developers are us…
if you don’t take responsibility to fix it …
if you don’t take time to report it as a bug…

then it’s really no ones fault but your own…

Blender Artist has been one of the great forums where people would find a flaw in Blenders operation and quickly figure out if others were having similar problems…

But then the Flaw would get added to the improvement suggestion list or people would get together and ‘fix’ it themsevles with addons… (that later would get intergrated into Blender) or if it was a Bug it would get reported and addressed in the next round of coding…

but at no point … Unlike other softwares where you pay someone to do all this for you… do we ever have any leg to stand on and start pointing fingers at the Dev Team…

Also note… no one is lissening to you when all you do is gripe…

unless you file a Bug report…
or start an Addon project…
or throw in some suggestions up on the blender Development pages…

then nothing ever really happens…

…

16

Hey, norvman. T45636 is a bug report filed about a year ago. =)

17

Hey, norvman. T45636 is a bug report filed about a year ago. =)

Yeeeeesssss… and… ? who do you suppose should fix it?

18

I’m not certain what you mean. Presumably someone who knows how to fix it, like a developer.

Unless I misread your rant, one of your points seems to be that nothing happens with just complaints unless someone does something like a bug report. This clearly isn’t one such problem.

19

Not a bug. Not really. You are saving a file with all your 3d data and object data, etc. But in paint - you are then asking the program to make a decision for you, to save the image. But where to? Does the program ‘know’ where to save it to? No, you as the user do. Do you expect that it will save inside the file? That isn’t realistic, since you want to be able to access it from another program that doesn’t read .blend like other programs read .psd files. You as the user need to stop at some point, and think ‘where do I want this at so I can find it?’ and in the Image Editor choose ‘save image as’ and give it a home once you are totally sure you want to save it.

Now, there is a post on rightclickselect.com that asks for a better handling of this, and I gave my thoughts there - like save at intervals to iterations, save it to the tmp folder, save at close to the specified texture path or file path on OS and same for crashes, etc.

There does need to be an improvement here as far as workflow goes, but a bug? I don’t think so since it is a design and implementation issue. The ‘save all images’ button could possibly be given superpowers to write to disk in a specified path like I said before, or at least to the same path as a saved file similar to when a particle cache is written - and depends on a saved file first.

20

Haha, yeah, not a bug, not really indeed (And in this specific instance, it actually wasn’t initially filed as a “bug” but Aaron Carlisle changed it to one).
But it’s so frustrating for the people who lose hours of work that it might as well be, especially since the individual components to even at least temporarily remedy the issue are already in place (namely detection of change in texture and ability to save texture).

For saving of the initial image, until a solid design is in place, it’d do for now to do what people expect Blender to do: Save the image within Blender.
I’d say it’s perfectly realistic. Photoshop saves everything within the file. So does After Effects. So does Premiere Pro. If something needs to be saved out separately, a “save to” prompt will pop up, but in no part of the design do they decide to throw away your work after giving you the impression you’re saving them.

Besides, it’s not like the “Save As Image” command doesn’t exist.

And maybe you can link to the entry on rightclickselect.com for people to check out?