Any tips for using 3D paint to give an object a material??

[underdog]

As long as you have a good layout of your UVs it should work fine. Make sure your UV are layed out good with no overlapping areas etc..

[FloydBishop]

Originally posted by underdog
As long as you have a good layout of your UVs it should work fine. Make sure your UV are layed out good with no overlapping areas etc..

Anyone care to walk me through the process? I'm new to this area of Maya?

[MDC]

Basicly, you need to intelligently select groups of faces of your model and apply a UV coordinate set to them from. Edit Polygons->Texture. You have 4 coordinate types. Planar, Cylindrical, Sphereical, and Automatic. For most purposes, Planar and Cylindrical will be the sets you want to use. Say you select your character's leg faces. You apply a cylindrical coordinate set then go to Panel->UV Editor and adjust them. Repeat the process until the whole model is laid out nicely. UV editing is an art of it's own. It can't be easily explained on a message board. Look here for a tutorial

http://www.eliteops.com/sama/uv_tutorial/index.htm

The end result of this tutorial is pretty nasty, but the process is correct.

[Ckerr812]

My advice is not to use 3D paint packages, I mean it's ok for a quick texture, or if you don;t have time to set up UV's. But if your just learning, use a 2d paint program, and layout your UV's nicely. else your just cheating your own knowledge of texturing. And tecturing is one of those things were, as sson as you learn it, it becomes second nature and very easy. Especially in maya. With selection sets and planar mapping.

[CitizenVertex]

Ummm, Maya has 3D Texture Painting built in. Why would you not use it? I don't understand how using it is "cheating" yourself and relying solely on a 2D paint package is better. I think you're cheating yourself if you don't take advantage of all the tools your software has to offer. The tool is there, it's very useful, why not take advantage of it? You still have to lay out your UVs, but it makes the painting process a whole lot easier.

[Ckerr812]

Originally posted by CitizenVertex
Ummm, Maya has 3D Texture Painting built in. Why would you not use it? I don't understand how using it is "cheating" yourself and relying solely on a 2D paint package is better.

Well. For one thing, if you ever try to make anything that actually resembles a good texture using maya's 3d paint, you will quickly find out how inferior it is to Photoshop.

Second off, if your talking about artisan, yes it is great for painting attributes for fur, or even specular stuff (things that don't require great detail). But to say that it would be as good as a deep Paint 3D or phototshop is just fooling yourself.

Third off, to paint with 3d tools, all you have to do is click auto matic mapping. That's what it is there for. Then you can 3d paint to your little hearts desire, but try to take that into photoshop, or even paint effects, you can't paint detail, you could only paint colour. Or maybe a smiley face. but hey, if detail, is not what you are looking for, then by all means the 3d paint tool is good.

[FloydBishop]

Originally posted by Ckerr812



Third off, to paint with 3d tools, all you have to do is click auto matic mapping. That's what it is there for. Then you can 3d paint to your little hearts desire, but try to take that into photoshop, or even paint effects, you can't paint detail, you could only paint colour. Or maybe a smiley face. but hey, if detail, is not what you are looking for, then by all means the 3d paint tool is good.

This is actually the technique I used. I'd post my results, but it's a top secret project at this point.

The automatic mapping worked like a champ. Photoshop came through as well. After applying the UV Maps however, I noticed some instability in the file...fatal errors every once in a while.

[CitizenVertex]

Originally posted by Ckerr812


Well. For one thing, if you ever try to make anything that actually resembles a good texture using maya's 3d paint, you will quickly find out how inferior it is to Photoshop.

Second off, if your talking about artisan, yes it is great for painting attributes for fur, or even specular stuff (things that don't require great detail). But to say that it would be as good as a deep Paint 3D or phototshop is just fooling yourself.

Third off, to paint with 3d tools, all you have to do is click auto matic mapping. That's what it is there for. Then you can 3d paint to your little hearts desire, but try to take that into photoshop, or even paint effects, you can't paint detail, you could only paint colour. Or maybe a smiley face. but hey, if detail, is not what you are looking for, then by all means the 3d paint tool is good.

LOL! That's mighty condescending of you. Where do you get off insinuating that I can't make a good texture not knowing who I am or having seen any of my work? I wasn't suggesting using 3D Paint alone without PS, although you could if you really wanted to. I'm just saying it's there, it's useful, take advantage of it. You don't have to use automatic mapping with 3D paint, they have nothing to do with each other. Automatic mapping is just a UV coordinate tool like any other, and if you use it you still have to edit the UVs by hand to make sure your object is textured properly and to maximise your use of texture space. You can paint as much detail as you want with 3D paint. You can use Photoshop, Painter and the 2D PaintFX tools in conjuntion with 3D Paint, and you can use all the Paint FX brushes including any you might make yourself. All the brushes are completely adjustable, they can even be smaller than a pixel in texture space, and you have several blending modes. The 3D Paint tool has several advantages over Deep Paint. It's included in Maya so it functions flawlessly within Maya and doesn't require you to switch back and forth between applications. You can paint on any attribute of your shader right within Maya at any point within the process of building or even animating a character. It respects UV boundaries. It doesn't cost anything extra, and it's hardware accelerated so it's not completely useless on higher res models. Press F1 and learn more about it. It's a great tool to use in conjuntion with PS or Painter or whatever your 2D app of choice is.

[Ckerr812]

Originally posted by CitizenVertex


LOL! That's mighty condescending of you. Where do you get off insinuating that I can't make a good texture not knowing who I am or having seen any of my work? I wasn't suggesting using 3D Paint alone without PS, although you could if you really wanted to. I'm just saying it's there, it's useful, take advantage of it. You don't have to use automatic mapping with 3D paint, they have nothing to do with each other. Automatic mapping is just a UV coordinate tool like any other, and if you use it you still have to edit the UVs by hand to make sure your object is textured properly and to maximise your use of texture space. You can paint as much detail as you want with 3D paint. You can use Photoshop, Painter and the 2D PaintFX tools in conjuntion with 3D Paint, and you can use all the Paint FX brushes including any you might make yourself. All the brushes are completely adjustable, they can even be smaller than a pixel in texture space, and you have several blending modes. The 3D Paint tool has several advantages over Deep Paint. It's included in Maya so it functions flawlessly within Maya and doesn't require you to switch back and forth between applications. You can paint on any attribute of your shader right within Maya at any point within the process of building or even animating a character. It respects UV boundaries. It doesn't cost anything extra, and it's hardware accelerated so it's not completely useless on higher res models. Press F1 and learn more about it. It's a great tool to use in conjuntion with PS or Painter or whatever your 2D app of choice is.

Sorry friend, didn't mean to offend you :P No need to get defensive.

[anthonymcgrath]

a smiley with a handbag would work well here!

:curious:

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