3D painting/texturing

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disparatedreamer
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3D painting/texturing

Post by disparatedreamer »

H all, I'm new to curvy so trying to figure out a lot at once :)

Wading thru tutorials I'm learning a lot, but I am confused about a couple things-

when I painted something in curvy and save the map, it's a veeeeeeeeeery small bmp. Can I make it bigger?
Secondly I am pretty sure I read in one of the tutorials that you could use different brushes to paint, but I can't figure out how.
Third, I read you could use an image map to paint from?? How does that work?
Fourth, and last, (at least for now!) I'm confused by the smooth brushes- and after I use smooth brush, one of them, and then tried to paint again, I was trying to paint something white but it was only painting kind of transparently, even tho it was fully opaque settings. I had to undo all the smoothing to be able to paint pure white again.

All those confusing things aside, i'm really having a blast in Curvy :D

Thanks so much in advance for the help!! :) :D
Simon
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Post by Simon »

Hi, might be able to help with some of those. All questions are helpful as they can suggest future improvements to Curvy :)

Map Size
Curvy uses the original size of a image map as the size it saves. Usually this will be the "White.JPG" or "DefaultCurvy.JPG" files in the maps folder of your Curvy folder - they are both 512x512. However if you painted on a different image you will get whatever resolution that was - so you might, say, load a tiny 8x8 image and paint on that and it will stay small.
- You can always scale up the saved image in a 2D graphics program then reload it into Curvy.

Brushes
You can paint with different shape brushes (spike,smooth,square edged) by changing the shape slider. It's slightly hidden in the documentation here

Painting From Image Map
This is only on the wishlist for the future. At the moment the best option is to save a map with rough guides painted on, and then add more detailed texture (and use image brushes) in the 2D paint app of your choice.

Smooth Brush
There are several things that might have happened here - First note that their are two sets of paint brushes, the "T" ones work on Textures/Image Maps, while the "S" ones work on the mesh colour of vertices on the surface. Secondly note you might have picked a different texture channel to paint on such as "Highlight Colour" or a Lightmap - the active image for painting is marked by a paintbrush icon.
Finally the smooth and paint brushes save their own settings for intensity, so one might be set to 100% while the other is much fainter.
Beyond that I am not sure what is happening - certainly for me on a new object I can swap between Smooth(T) and Paint(T) without losing intensity.
disparatedreamer
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Post by disparatedreamer »

Thank you very much for the quick reply Simon. :)

I am really enjoying using curvy. i'm still learning a lot of the functions- i think I missed at least half of the info on my first read thru of the pdf. Ha! I like the very intuitive feeling of curvy, for the most part, and while i have to ask questions now and then, I was still able to jump right in and start doing stuff- nothing has been this easy "out of the box" since trying sculptris....So color me impressed. :) I'll go try out the things you suggested, thank you very much!

In the future if Curvy can incorporate user brushes for painting it would be absolutely amazing and worth every cent!!! :)
disparatedreamer
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Post by disparatedreamer »

I still can't figure out how to get it to paint on a different size map :(

EDIT: i can load a larger texture base size, but when i export it only exports as the 512x512 which is reaaaaaaally small....
Simon
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Post by Simon »

When I'm using high-res textures I sometimes make up the image in a paint program with a big "1024" (say) in the middle of the texture. It helps me tell the difference between the several white square textures inside Curvy.

Another thing to bear in mind - your graphics card might be automatically resizing the texture to 512x512 as that is a good size for graphics cards. You might want to try the "Power-of-Two" sizes for your image, ie squares of 256, 512, 1024, 2048. So probably try 1024x1024 for starters.

[Just to confirm - for me loading a 1024x1024, painting, saving, produces a new BMP alongside my cvy file with the correct 1024x1024 size]
disparatedreamer
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Post by disparatedreamer »

this is very strange. even when i load a large 2000x2000 or a 3000x3000 it saves out as a 512x512..... am i saving wrong??
Simon
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Post by Simon »

Did you try a 1024x1024 with a mark on it to check it is the right texture?

It is possible (though unlikely) that your card can't handle textures larger than 512.
disparatedreamer
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Post by disparatedreamer »

I did try, and i def loaded it, i could see it on the figure in curvy... but saving out isn't working...

I think I have a decent graphics card - Nvidio Quadro 600 I think?
Simon
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Post by Simon »

That is odd. So it saves out a 512x512 and squashes the Curvy image to fit in that space... I can't think why it might do that if the highres version is visible within Curvy.

One workaround for this is to get a copy of Dogwaffle - 2D paint program - Curvy can push textures to and from this program skipping the need to save from Curvy.
disparatedreamer
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Post by disparatedreamer »

Oh that would work... I do have Dogwaffle :) How do I do that?

Thank you for your ongoing help!
Simon
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Post by Simon »

First make sure Dogwaffle is open. Then use the one but last menu in Curvy "Extras", and "Send Active Texture To Dogwaffle Buffer"

If you switch to Dogwaffle you should see the curvy texture.

You can also "Fetch" the texture back from Dog to Curvy - but in this case you have to ensure the Curvy texture is the same size as the DW buffer - eg: Send then Fetch on the same texture should work fine.
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