3D Paint Tool for MAX Models???

[dans]

If you don't care to still use Photoshop you might want to look at GhostPainter (http://www.cebas.com/products/products.asp?UD=10-7888-33-788&PID=5) which is a 3dsmax integrated solution and lets you paint directly in your 3ds max viewports. It uses Photoshop for all the image manipulation stuff (you can use all Photoshop tools) thats why it is that cheap. You can get if for 150$.

Daniel

[michaelcomet]

I thought about it, but it seems like you won't see your paint stroke in realtime which is kinda bad...plus not sure will it handle pressure sensitive stuff and smearing etc?

[Stroker]

Painter 3D is a fairly cheap option... if you can find it. Also, it does have a few quirks that will have to be dealt with.

[bonko]

not to be an ace but I hear ghostpainter isn't that great in use and installation.

[dans]

Originally posted by michaelcomet
I thought about it, but it seems like you won't see your paint stroke in realtime which is kinda bad...plus not sure will it handle pressure sensitive stuff and smearing etc?

You see kinda preview line during painting and the real result after the stroke. (Like with the Combustion connection) Pressure sensitvity does not work in GhostPainter 1.0. Besides that all the Photoshop tools work like normal.
There is a also a review on Gamasutra (http://www.gamasutra.com/features/20021115/rosas_01.htm).

Maybe wait for GhostPainter 2.0 which was announced for Q1 2003. (This is said to include psd-manager 1.0 (http://www.cebas.com/products/products.asp?UD=10-7888-33-788&PID=38) )

Daniel

[dans]

They have announced it and the first features are online. Unwrapping to Photoshop paths looks promising (watch the Demo video).
Ghostpainter 2.0 website (http://www.cebas.com/products/products.asp?UD=10-7888-33-788&PID=5)

Daniel

[michaelcomet]

That's nice that it brings the UV layout into Photoshop for you...tho I still don't see how that will help get pressure sensitivity etc into the painting inside of max...heh.

And if you are going to pay $245, you might as well pay a full $400 and get Zbrush or C4D etc to do real 3d painting...

[dans]

There is only "Part 1" on the GhostPainter 2.0 website so the details about the new 3D-painting stuff is still to come. Comparing prices is always difficult but if you tweak rendered stills in Photoshop, psd-manager is a great thing to have (e.g. it creates antialiased masks without rendering additional passes).
psd-manager price is 150$ alone and it will be included !

But not everybody is a Photoshop fanatic as I am :p

Daniel

[chrisWhite]

Hey Stroker,

I'd love to find Painter 3D if it's still out there, but I haven't seen it being sold anywhere, do you recall where you saw it?

[thomaspecht]

don't beat me for suggesting this one .. ;)
what about the deep paint 3d version that is said to be shipped with the pc-game unreal tournament 2003?

i did only see screenshots of it and don't know if it could be used together with max (and not the game's editor) - but it might be worth further investigation.

another option: http://cgi.ebay.com/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewItem&item=3600988304&category=185

[michaelcomet]

I saw the Ebay one..

What is the deal with unreal tourny combo? Where did you hear/see that?

[thomaspecht]

i've read about it on epic games' developer mailing lists some time ago and have seen screenshots in game dev forums soon after the ut2k release, so it should be there.

chances are, that it is very limited regarding channel support and integration and does not feature projection paint.

[Nima-3dman]

If you want to buy "the best" 3D painter for max 5 (Just max 5 with new Unwrap uvw),
I recomand to use "deep paint 3d" without deep uv,because you don't need deep uv with max 5...
Just buy it and you will get the best result....but ,as you said, it is very expensive...
You can test it with a demo,and you will accept my opinion

by the way,you can save 100$ here :
http://www.id8media.com/framesets_3dprod/DeepPaint_3d_2_frame.htm

Regards, Nima NF

[dans]

Deep Paint/Deep UV is at least $1000 i think which is out of my range....

We get a little off topic here, Michael Comet was looking for a cheaper solution.

Daniel

[michaelcomet]

Yeah FWIW I've figured out a solution that simply uses Max and Photoshop and will pretty much let me simulate projection painting with just that, using screen grabs and mapping channels.

The problem I was having originally which led me to think I really needed a program was that "Show Map On Back" doesn't seem to work in 5.1 which appears to be a bug...but I've found a way around it.

One day perhaps if I have money for Deep Paint, it's definitely on my list...heh.

thx

[Stroker]

This is the only place that I've seen for ordering Painter 3D:
http://newgraphics.corel.com/order/painter3d.html

Link is rather old, and I have heard from several different sources that P3D is no longer available.

If I recall correctly, a "demo" of P3D comes with Poser 4. ("Demo" because it's crippled, but it's not.)

If you do find P3D, it should be well under $100.

Quirks:
1. No real multi-material support. In your workflow, you will have to chop something up if you are using different materials for different parts of the mesh. Can be a real pain if you're not careful. P3D does, however, support several different channels, like colour, bump, specular, etc.
2. Doesn't paint seamlessly across seams in the 3d view. You will get streaks across the 2d canvas if you're not careful.

Pseudo-Quirks:
1. Because it's so old and getting older, you might run into backwards compatability issues. Maybe. While I had the demo from Poser 4(?), I didn't have any problems at the time.
2. It uses the Painter engine. Personally, I've never been able to work with the Painter engine comfortably. Too much of a paradigm shift from PhotoShop for me.

Other than that, it's an excellant program for the price. That is, *tons* of whiz-bang for the bucks.

[Stroker]

I just installed UPaint that comes with UT2k3. It will only open UPP and PSK files. Looks like you are out of luck with this route. Well, I supposed you could use UPaint if you really, really, really wanted to.

Well, I'm off to un-install UPaint.

[EricChadwick]

There are a couple freebie 3d paint plugins/scripts in 3ds max. Basic though, no cloning or true projection paint.


Peter Watje has 3D painter.
http://www.max3dstuff.com/max5/3dPainterPrototype/help.html

Chuggnut has the much simpler Obj Paint.
http://www.chuggnut.com/
(BTW his unwrap tools are a must have)


When I say projection paint, I'm talking about where you paint in 2d and the painting is then warped onto the 3d surface to "ignore" bad UVs, i.e. to avoid distortions when laying a pattern onto the poles of a sphere. Only DP3D and Zbrush do this AFAIK. Yes, IMO ZBrush is clunky when using it as a 3D painter linked to Max. Although the freebie Texture Master script is pretty cool.

HTH

[michaelcomet]

Yeah I may have to play with watje';s again. As a side note that showmap in back does seem to work...not sure what the issue i was was now....heh....whatever.

And yeah Zbrush from the demo i used way back seemed really clunky...heh...tho it did work.

[Nima-3dman]

If You can't pay this much money ,you can use peter Watje's 3D painter or other cheap one ,
and for projection paint,you can buy "Power stamper plugin" just with "50 $".
If you want to buy it,I can talk with Mankua team and change this money to less.
www.mankua.com:)

[dans]

Cebas added new stuff to the GhostPainter 2 website. You can use Photoshop inside 3ds max as viewport with it !

Photoshop Viewport (http://www.cebas.com/products/feature.asp?UD=10-7888-33-788&PID=5&FID=373)

Watch the demo video at the bottom of the page.

Daniel

[robioto]

I think you can purchase the BodyPaint standalone for around $300 which is supposed to work well cross platform. No OpenGL though <although that may have changed with new versions> I have a friend who uses it successfully with Maya.

Painter 3d is quite a bit long in the tooth I'm not sure it's worth messing with at this point. If you can find it online you should be able to pick it up for less than $50. I paid $35 plus shipping.

If you found a work around for 3d painting I'd love to hear <or read> about it if you care to share the info.

Robert

[EricChadwick]

In my experience, Bodypaint has a nice UI, but no projection paint. Deep Paint has projection paint but a clunky UI. Both integrate well with Photoshop and 3ds max. I prefered the brush dynamics in Bodypaint to those in Deep Paint.

Ultimately I do most of my work in Photoshop, and use Deep Paint for any painting work that is too difficult to do in 2D, like painting a pattern across UV edges or painting something with flow like painted fur or wrinkles.

The painting tools just aren't there yet in any of the 3D painters I've tried. ZBrush comes the closest to offering a ton of painter-friendly tools, but the UI is a bit unhelpful, and using OBJ files is a pain.

My 2 cents.

Oh, forgot to add that 3ds max 5 now has the auto-update function which is pretty cool, updates the viewport everytime the bitmap changes (when saved from PS). Also allows use a PSD files (auto-flattening it or using a specific layer) although it doesn't see alpha channels in PSDs. Small bummer.

[thomaspecht]

seems pretty much like the way i do/prefer it.

but i always thought that bodypaint features projection paint, too? didn't mess around with it a lot, though. if it didn't have projection paint, that would be a really major drawback.

zbrush on the other hand is so damn strange in comparison to all the "usual" apps... the features are cool but - good god that constantly changing ui with all those tiny buttons is killing me!

[michaelcomet]

Yeah i've been using the new autoupdate now for my model...it's very slick.

Not too bad paint switch render, paint switch render..... We'll see what happens when I get to my seams.....

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