3D Painting Dawn Texture in Photoshop CC 2018?

[Satira Capriccio]

Has anyone used Photoshop CC 2018 for painting skin textures for Dawn in the 3D mode?

If so, how do you unstack the UVs to be able to get to them? For that matter, how do you even select a specific UV? The Teeth layer is the active layer when I import the Dawn obj ... which is great if all I want to do is to paint the teeth :wink: But since I want to paint face, arms, legs, and torso ... I'm rather stymied on how to get to them.

The tutorials I've looked at have a single UV, so they haven't been all that helpful.

 

[Miss B]

I never updated past CS2, so not sure, but from experience with adjusting UV maps in Blender, I've learned that if you change the UV map, such as make one UV map from several, you need to save a "new" OBJ, otherwise the original OBJ won't read the new UV map. At least that's the experience I've come across, so if you create a single UV map, you'll have that issue.

Hopefully someone who has PS CC 2018 can give you some suggestions on how to work in the 3D mode.

 

[caisson]

I haven't used Photoshop for 3d painting, but I can tell you what I know on UVs. First, here's the material list in Poser for DawnSE:

The prefix indicates different texture sheets/tiles/patches, whatever you prefer to call them, so the Feet and Legs are on their own texture sheet as they are both prefixed 3B and so on. As each texture sheet is in 0-1 UV space they are stacked on top of each other, which makes for a real mess when using 3d paint apps. I've used Modo to unstack these here:

I imported the obj for DawnSE, selected polygons based on material zones, then used the move tool to shift all selected UV shells/islands in whole increments. In the screenshot I've deleted everything but skin, so material prefix 3 (ears, face, lips) now occupies 0-1, while prefix 3A (arms, collars, hands) has been moved by +1 U and so on. I know this works for painting & generating maps using Substance Painter 2, Mari Indie & Zbrush which can all handle offset UV data or UDIMs.

I use PhotoshopCC & as far as I can tell from reading docs it requires everything in 0-1. In that case it might be possible to do something like this:

I've moved & scaled the UV patches so they are all in 0-1 (but unfortunately I don't think this step can be done in Photoshop). If you wanted to end up with 4k maps you would need to paint an 8192 x 8192 map & then split it into 4 sections. For that step in Photoshop I would use the rectangular selection marque set to a fixed size of 4096 x 4096 to make sure it's pixel accurate once the maps are applied back in Poser.

So I think that you may need an app that can make selections based on material zones in the obj, then move & scale those sections - I've used both Modo, Ultimate Unwrap 3D & UVLayout Pro to do this, but there should be plenty of other apps that can.

Note that it is important to select & move UV shells by entire sheets/tiles/patches in whole increments. Otherwise things may not line up properly when applying the final maps to the original obj back in Poser.

 

[Satira Capriccio]

Thanks Caisson!

What you've explained and shown certainly makes sense. I use Silo for modeling and UV mapping ... which while it doesn't have all the bells and whistles of other apps for UV mapping, it works for me. (Modo is on my list of things I need one day :wink: )

 

[kobaltkween]

Unless it's changed- and it easily could have, I tried this some time ago- Photoshop's 3D painting doesn't work off of the UV islands like that. It works off of material zones. For each zone, it creates a new texture. Which quickly becomes a load with most content community figures who have loads of unnecessary zones despite the fact that of the literally hundreds of figure textures I've downloaded over the years, only one ever used them: a freebie for V2 on the old RDNA site. For instance, instead of one 4096 x 4096 body texture, you get one for the body, one for the nipples, and one for the neck.

If you're going to change the mesh, just merge those unnecessary material zones into one, so you're not making more textures than you need.

I also found Photoshop's 3D painting so clunky and such a resource hog that it was easier for me to learn to 3D paint in Blender and switch to Photoshop when necessary. Mind, I chose that route some time ago (though I still find PS a resource hog all on its own). Conversely, Adobe hasn't seemed to mention or focus on 3D painting since about a version or so after its introduction.

If you can afford it, I'd say Substance Painter is a better investment because it allows you to paint several types of maps at once. And if you can't afford it, Blender has worked very well for me, without any need to mess with UV maps (it automatically switches between textures as you paint). But I can understand the benefit of getting Photoshop to work for you, so you can switch back and forth between 3D and 2D mode without needing separate applications.

 

[Faery_Light]

I'd love to paint in Blender but still haven't wrapped my head around it.
I have an older Photoshop, CS2, and it works for me but not to do 3D painting.
The Hiverwire figures come with pre-made template maps so I don't need to unwrap them.

 

[Miss B]

And if you can't afford it, Blender has worked very well for me, without any need to mess with UV maps (it automatically switches between textures as you paint).

I do most of my modeling in Blender, and prefer to do my UV maps in Blender as well, but I didn't realize you could do 3D painting in Blender. Is that with the new 2.8 version, or can you do it with 2.79? I don't know if that's a new feature available in the new nightly builds for 2.8. If it is, I'll have to wait to try it out, as I don't do nightly builds of software.

 

[Faery_Light]

Blender has texture, vertex and weight paint modes.
Here's a link that explains.
I really need to take time to learn this.
Painting — Blender Manual

 

[kobaltkween]

I'd love to paint in Blender but still haven't wrapped my head around it.
I have an older Photoshop, CS2, and it works for me but not to do 3D painting.
The Hiverwire figures come with pre-made template maps so I don't need to unwrap them.

Yeah, I totally understand that. You might find the upcoming 2.8 easier, though. Not only does it have tabs for the different preset interfaces rather than a pulldown menu, those tabs include a sculpting and a texture painting tab. Also, I think they're finally changing to a right click select default, though I'm not sure. If you meant in general rather than specifically, take a look at the Blender 2.8 videos and see if it seems any easier. If you meant 3D painting specifically, getting set up definitely has its idiosyncrasies. At least in 2.79- you need to:

1. Set the renderer to Cycles. You can do this in Blender Internal, but that workflow is more arcane and I don't know it as well.
2. Open a UV/Image Editor window, and create new images for each map you want to paint. It's probably easier to just start with a single diffuse/color/albedo map per material zone before you get into other stuff, but you should know you can work with the specular, bump, etc. if and when you want. Keep in mind that you can make the background transparent if you want. Before you do anything, save the image to your hard drive.
3. Give your object shaders for each of its zones. You probably just need a Principled node stuck into a "root" node's surface input. Set the color of the Principled node to the images you just made and switch to "textured" or "material" view. NOTE: If you made your images have a black background, even if it's transparent, you're going to be painting on black, which will be hard to see.
4. Open the tool palette if it's not already (T). Order the items in the Tools tab so the useful ones are on top, if they're not already. I personally find this order most helpful:
   1. Brush
   2. Texture
   3. Texture Mask
   4. Stroke
   5. Curve (this sets your brush falloff)
   6. Symmetry
   Everything else I just ignore.
5. For texture/projection painting, this is where it gets unnecessarily tricky. You need a property window open. Select texture (the checkerboard), then pull down the top menu to Brush - Texture. Click New, name your texture something useful (like, say, "bodyFront") and then open the file to associate with your "texture."
6. In the tool palette, under Texture, set the mode to "Stencil."
7. Make sure your brush color, strength, size, and pressure sensitivity are where you want it. If you have more than one image associated with your material, go to the "slots" tab and make sure that the image(s) you want to paint on are selected. And make sure your item is in the correct "view" for what you want to paint. For, say, a rock, that's not a big deal, but for a person, you probably want to make sure you're in orthogonal front view if you're using a frontal photo.
8. At least look at your Options in the tool palette to get a feel for how it will treat cavities and the normal angle at which it will stop painting on polys (my default is 80)
9. Paint away. See the manual for how to move, rotate, and scale your "stencil."

It's a somewhat similar process to use alphas (PS style brushes), except

• In step 5, in the Properties > Texture window, you need to choose Brush Mask, set the image color space to "non-color" or "linear" if you can (it will read the color space from PS files), and set Image Mapping to "Clip".
• In step 6, in the Tool palette, under Texture Mask set the mode to "View Plane". You may also want to add random rotation to your Texture Mask settings.
• In step 7, you really want to make sure your Stroke settings are the way you want them. Default is basically a plain round brush with 5% spacing and no jitter. Since we've made a PS style brush, if the alpha is, say, lots of dots, the brush will now give you something like strands of hair or fur because of the low spacing. If you want discrete elements, you'll have to space out the brush.

To be clear, you can use a stencil and a mask (alpha) at once.

Just to note a few of the benefits of painting in Blender:

• You can turn on and off symmetry on X, Y, and Z. Symmetrical painting can really make things like brows or body hair easier. It's easy to add asymmetry once you have a nice symmetrical base.
• You can use dynamic topology or multires to sculpt in details into a high res version, then bake out a normal, displacement, or bump map. See tutorials on this, because baking and working with different resolutions have specific workflows.
• With shortcut keys, you can resize your brush and see how it resizes on your screen.
• You can see an overlay of your stencil
• There are various ways to hide polygons while painting or sculpting, but they can be tricky. They don't always work with other modifiers or states. You have to kind of play around and pay attention to "Hide and mask disabled" warnings.
  
• There's tons of tutorials out there, many of them in video form, about painting textures in Blender.

The biggest benefit is the same one of all Blender features. If you have an idea for improvement, you can ask the development team or the community about it. Right now they're taking a ton of feedback each day. The more focused, specific, and constructive your idea, the more likely someone is to pay attention to it. Also, the Blender community is paying close attention to the gaming industry standard tools of Zbrush and Substance Painter.

Tricky bits:

• Your brush and it's textures stay the same size when you zoom. In sculpting, there's a way to say you'd like your brush to remain proportional, but you can't do this in texture paint (yet). So you need to either stay at the same zoom level (OK for bits, but obviously no go for a whole project), or scale your brush and/or textures to maintain consistency. This made me get real good with the rotation keys (8,6, 2, and 4 on the num pad).
• Textures are items that have source properties that can be set. If you want multiple textures in your pull-down menus, you have to explicitly make new textures before selecting a new image file.
• There is no default erase brush (though there should be). I think the defaults are Draw, Clone, Smear, Soften, Fill, and Mask. I found it helpful to add Erase, TexDraw, DrawSmooth, and FineLines brushes. They're all variations on Draw, where Erase sets the Brush > Blend to Erase Alpha, TexDraw is for projection painting and has a texture, DrawSmooth never has a mask or texture, and FineLines is just small with very little spacing and a touch of jitter.
• Your mesh resolution affects the resolution you can paint at. If you find that your fine brushes aren't looking smooth (for instance, your brush is spacing in ways it shouldn't), add a subdiv modifier and up the resolution a level or two
• Try to keep your normal angle low enough that you're not creating stretched textures. Also, it's _really_ easy to accidentally paint on bits you don't mean to. As far as I can tell, this is just the trick of learning to paint in 3d.
• You might want to up your number of undos in your settings.
• Once you start working with multiple textures per material, make sure you're in the right texture.
• Save your textures as you go! Unless you pack your images into the file, saving the blend file will _not_ automatically overwrite your image files. If you're like me, this will often be a boon.

3D painting has been a part of Blender since I started using it in 2.4x days. There's tons of tutorials on YouTube covering all kinds of aspects of it. Some of them use a method that involves multiple UV maps. That isn't at all necessary.

I haven't used it yet, but I recently bought BPainter so I could easily work in layers.

My long term goal is to be as good at painting skin detail as this guy.

 

[Faery_Light]

Yeah, I totally understand that. You might find the upcoming 2.8 easier, though. Not only does it have tabs for the different preset interfaces rather than a pulldown menu, those tabs include a sculpting and a texture painting tab. Also, I think they're finally changing to a right click select default, though I'm not sure. If you meant in general rather than specifically, take a look at the Blender 2.8 videos and see if it seems any easier. If you meant 3D painting specifically, getting set up definitely has its idiosyncrasies. At least in 2.79- you need to:

1. Set the renderer to Cycles. You can do this in Blender Internal, but that workflow is more arcane and I don't know it as well.
2. Open a UV/Image Editor window, and create new images for each map you want to paint. It's probably easier to just start with a single diffuse/color/albedo map per material zone before you get into other stuff, but you should know you can work with the specular, bump, etc. if and when you want. Keep in mind that you can make the background transparent if you want. Before you do anything, save the image to your hard drive.
3. Give your object shaders for each of its zones. You probably just need a Principled node stuck into a "root" node's surface input. Set the color of the Principled node to the images you just made and switch to "textured" or "material" view. NOTE: If you made your images have a black background, even if it's transparent, you're going to be painting on black, which will be hard to see.
4. Open the tool palette if it's not already (T). Order the items in the Tools tab so the useful ones are on top, if they're not already. I personally find this order most helpful:
   1. Brush
   2. Texture
   3. Texture Mask
   4. Stroke
   5. Curve (this sets your brush falloff)
   6. Symmetry
   Everything else I just ignore.
5. For texture/projection painting, this is where it gets unnecessarily tricky. You need a property window open. Select texture (the checkerboard), then pull down the top menu to Brush - Texture. Click New, name your texture something useful (like, say, "bodyFront") and then open the file to associate with your "texture."
6. In the tool palette, under Texture, set the mode to "Stencil."
7. Make sure your brush color, strength, size, and pressure sensitivity are where you want it. If you have more than one image associated with your material, go to the "slots" tab and make sure that the image(s) you want to paint on are selected. And make sure your item is in the correct "view" for what you want to paint. For, say, a rock, that's not a big deal, but for a person, you probably want to make sure you're in orthogonal front view if you're using a frontal photo.
8. At least look at your Options in the tool palette to get a feel for how it will treat cavities and the normal angle at which it will stop painting on polys (my default is 80)
9. Paint away. See the manual for how to move, rotate, and scale your "stencil."

It's a somewhat similar process to use alphas (PS style brushes), except

• In step 5, in the Properties > Texture window, you need to choose Brush Mask, set the image color space to "non-color" or "linear" if you can (it will read the color space from PS files), and set Image Mapping to "Clip".
• In step 6, in the Tool palette, under Texture Mask set the mode to "View Plane". You may also want to add random rotation to your Texture Mask settings.
• In step 7, you really want to make sure your Stroke settings are the way you want them. Default is basically a plain round brush with 5% spacing and no jitter. Since we've made a PS style brush, if the alpha is, say, lots of dots, the brush will now give you something like strands of hair or fur because of the low spacing. If you want discrete elements, you'll have to space out the brush.

To be clear, you can use a stencil and a mask (alpha) at once.

Just to note a few of the benefits of painting in Blender:

• You can turn on and off symmetry on X, Y, and Z. Symmetrical painting can really make things like brows or body hair easier. It's easy to add asymmetry once you have a nice symmetrical base.
• You can use dynamic topology or multires to sculpt in details into a high res version, then bake out a normal, displacement, or bump map. See tutorials on this, because baking and working with different resolutions have specific workflows.
• With shortcut keys, you can resize your brush and see how it resizes on your screen.
• You can see an overlay of your stencil
• There are various ways to hide polygons while painting or sculpting, but they can be tricky. They don't always work with other modifiers or states. You have to kind of play around and pay attention to "Hide and mask disabled" warnings.
  
• There's tons of tutorials out there, many of them in video form, about painting textures in Blender.

The biggest benefit is the same one of all Blender features. If you have an idea for improvement, you can ask the development team or the community about it. Right now they're taking a ton of feedback each day. The more focused, specific, and constructive your idea, the more likely someone is to pay attention to it. Also, the Blender community is paying close attention to the gaming industry standard tools of Zbrush and Substance Painter.

Tricky bits:

• Your brush and it's textures stay the same size when you zoom. In sculpting, there's a way to say you'd like your brush to remain proportional, but you can't do this in texture paint (yet). So you need to either stay at the same zoom level (OK for bits, but obviously no go for a whole project), or scale your brush and/or textures to maintain consistency. This made me get real good with the rotation keys (8,6, 2, and 4 on the num pad).
• Textures are items that have source properties that can be set. If you want multiple textures in your pull-down menus, you have to explicitly make new textures before selecting a new image file.
• There is no default erase brush (though there should be). I think the defaults are Draw, Clone, Smear, Soften, Fill, and Mask. I found it helpful to add Erase, TexDraw, DrawSmooth, and FineLines brushes. They're all variations on Draw, where Erase sets the Brush > Blend to Erase Alpha, TexDraw is for projection painting and has a texture, DrawSmooth never has a mask or texture, and FineLines is just small with very little spacing and a touch of jitter.
• Your mesh resolution affects the resolution you can paint at. If you find that your fine brushes aren't looking smooth (for instance, your brush is spacing in ways it shouldn't), add a subdiv modifier and up the resolution a level or two
• Try to keep your normal angle low enough that you're not creating stretched textures. Also, it's _really_ easy to accidentally paint on bits you don't mean to. As far as I can tell, this is just the trick of learning to paint in 3d.
• You might want to up your number of undos in your settings.
• Once you start working with multiple textures per material, make sure you're in the right texture.
• Save your textures as you go! Unless you pack your images into the file, saving the blend file will _not_ automatically overwrite your image files. If you're like me, this will often be a boon.

3D painting has been a part of Blender since I started using it in 2.4x days. There's tons of tutorials on YouTube covering all kinds of aspects of it. Some of them use a method that involves multiple UV maps. That isn't at all necessary.

I haven't used it yet, but I recently bought BPainter so I could easily work in layers.

My long term goal is to be as good at painting skin detail as this guy.

That is fantastic painting!
I'd love to be able to paint as good as that!

And thanks for these tips, I'll copy and paste to notepad so I can save it.

 

[Miss B]

Blender has texture, vertex and weight paint modes.
Here's a link that explains.
I really need to take time to learn this.
Painting — Blender Manual

Ohhh, now how did I miss these? I guess because I'm so used to UV mapping I never realized it could be done in Blender. Thanks for the link FL.

Yeah, I totally understand that. You might find the upcoming 2.8 easier, though. Not only does it have tabs for the different preset interfaces rather than a pulldown menu, those tabs include a sculpting and a texture painting tab. Also, I think they're finally changing to a right click select default, though I'm not sure. If you meant in general rather than specifically, take a look at the Blender 2.8 videos and see if it seems any easier.

Thanks for these details from me to KK. I'll definitely be playing with them in my 2.79b for sure.