At Whits End!

[leigh]

Exactly what problem are you having with Bodypaint and ZB3? I use mainly Photoshop and use Bodypaint to patch up seams and do projections. I find it a perfectly enjoyable workflow.

[BUZZFX]

Well where should I start. How long do you have.. lol

Bodypaint
I own BP 2.0 or 2.5 (whatever came with C4D R9) and after going through tutorials I just find there are so many steps. I have written the steps down and I follow them just so I can unwrap my model. Then when I unwrap the model it is in a lot of pieces and trying to stich it back together is impossible for me. I still can't figure out how to paint on the model properly or add an image or graphic to the model.

ZBrush
Well I have used ZB2 and the interface just seems to fight me. I know a lot of people like it but I struggle.

I find I am going to have to do something else if I can't get this 3D painting thing down. It's the MAJOR thing that is keeping me from finishing most all of my model work. it's so frustrating to have a lot of good modeling projects done but not being able to paint them.

Arrrgh!

[monkeynutz]

I can't say that I know of any other solutions for 3D painting on OSX; until recently I'd always used Maya's 3D paint to give myself a VERY rough template, did 98% of the work in Photoshop, and then brought the textures back to Maya's 3D paint to fix any unsightly seams.

I just finished painting a model in ZBrush 3, so I'm decently familiar with that interface. Best I can offer is some advice on getting started there as I don't know of any better alternate means of 3D painting on a Mac. It took me a little while to get the hang of it, but the main things are to turn off your texture. This is important as you will stil be able to paint the model, but you won't see the results of any of your work. Next, make sure that you have turned teh 'Colorize' button on (Tool>Texture>Colorize). This enables you to polypaint. Be certain that you have the RGB or MRGB button turned on and more than likely the ZADD and ZSUB buttons turned off (unless you'd like to paint and sculpt with the same strokes. I haven't tried it, but may be somewhat useful for certain things). Lastly, though polypaint is independant of texture resolutions try to get a good idea of what texture resolution you'll be using and be certain to have at least as many polygons as you want pixels in your texture. In ZB3's polypaint, of course, you are essentially assigning a specific color to each polygon. As such you will want to paint on your highest level of detail pretty exculively. Note that ZBrush will interpret low level of detail results if you switch, but all of your detail remains. When you finish painting, create a new texture (it will automatically be assigned and seemingly overwrite your painting, however, that's merely the display priority) and go into the tools>texture panel and hit the button 'Col>Txtl' to bake your polypaint to your new texture file.

Everything worked wonderfully for me, though I should note that I had several problems with the final step (baking the texture). For whatever reason ZBrush 3 repeatedly baked my texture to a new 1024 instead of the 4096 I had just created. The problem was finally resolved by restarting the program and trying again as normal.

I know this isn't exactly what you were looking for, but I hope you can find it useful anyways! Sorry if I sound too much like the online documentation, lol.

[EricChadwick]

BodyPaint is pretty good actually. Sounds like you're getting stuck on the UV process... but if all you're interested in is the actual painting process, and don't care about the UV nitty-gritty... just use the automatic UV process, and start painting from there. 3D paint means you don't have to look at the 2D image, just paint on the model itself. Try the Projection Paint mode, that's the easiest to work with. Also try the tutorials that come with the app.

[MrObvious]

In my experience painting starts with the means of projection. I tend to figure out if I'll be doing paint projection from cameras or uv textures or a mix of both. I make "plates" of what I'll be painting ( renders in the case of camera paint projection and snapshots of UV for the other). Once I have those I chose my paint package of choice, usually photoshop. It may not sound like a smooth work flow but I'm usually pleased with the results.

[BUZZFX]

BodyPaint is pretty good actually. Sounds like you're getting stuck on the UV process... but if all you're interested in is the actual painting process, and don't care about the UV nitty-gritty... just use the automatic UV process, and start painting from there. 3D paint means you don't have to look at the 2D image, just paint on the model itself. Try the Projection Paint mode, that's the easiest to work with. Also try the tutorials that come with the app.

Eric,

This is good advice. I am trying the interactive painting and liking it so far.

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