Seeking tutorials... Body Paint 3D or Deep Paint 3D

Greetings.

I have already spoken to Chip Midnight about this, and he reffered me to those and to Tattoo. I also contacted Robin Sojourner knowing she uses it, waiting on reply.
Anyways...
I was very disapointed with Tattoo, the tools are awful and after a few minutes it refuses to show what I draw and stops responding. Maybe is it because I use it wrongly, I don't know. I know you can also "make your own brushes" but not knowing exactly how, I did not try. I just wished I could import all my brushes from PSCS2 to there (possible?)!

I have GeForce 6600, 512 RAM, Pentium 4 Intel 2.80GHz, XPSP2.

I have downloaded BP and DP already. DP seemed wonderful and worked quickly and well, except, once again, the brushes got me so mixed up and worked like crap. Also, when I would pass over the side of the tights seams, it wouldn't match 100% perfectly.

So, by now I am pretty desperate to learn a good technique, or at least make any of those 3 programs work properly. But I would need someone VERY PATIENT willing to mentor me.
I speak french and altho I can speak english very well for conversations, technical words get to me and I am easily mixed up.

I'd need at least to know how to make BP work. I have tried opening the SL mannequin .OBJ but unlike DP or Tattoo, nothing shows up. Only a gray square.
If only I knew how to actually view it 3D, then maybe I could start drawing over it.
It's a very detailed and not-so-user-friendly program so unless someone is willing to teach me, I am getting nowhere.

The main purpose of me using any or one of those is to match almost perfectly or totally perfectly (i know from reading many threads that it is almost impossible tho) the seems when using heavy patterns such as leopard print, plaid, hounstooth etc. Wich I can get I'd say 90% perfect by eye/hand in PS CS2 but not enough to make me happy.

I will be looking forward for anyone's hand, here or inworld.
Thank you so very much for your time.

Hi Elka!

I'm sorry that I haven't gotten your e-mail yet. My mail server is flakey today; I haven't gotten any mail at all, although I'm sure that there are several hundred pieces of spam and a handful of actual letters in there, if I could only connect to it.

Okay, about BodyPaint...

There are tons of tutorials out there, as you'll see if you Goggle BodyPaint. But most (in my experience) don't tell you what you need to know to get up and running in SL. So here goes.

First; the .obj models as provided by the Lindens are great for Poser, but not optimized for BodyPaint. It takes a little work to get them ready, so I've done that. You can download them, as C4D files with empty textures associated with them, here. (Clicking that link will start the download, so be aware of that when you click.)

Unzip that file, and put the folder inside it someplace, anyplace, on your hard drive.

Open BodyPaint.

The first thing you need to do is change the Layout, so that you're looking at the same thing I'm going to be talking about.

So, in the Window menu at the top, go to Layout > Load Layout. Browse to the "SLAvatars-BodyPaint" folder you downloaded, to the "Layout" folder inside it, and choose "RW Paint.l4d"

BodyPaint will disappear. Don't be alarmed; it's just changing the layout, and will be back in a nano-jiffy looking a little different.

Now go to File > Open, to the "SL-Female" folder, and click on "SL_Female_Ready.c4d". The familiar mannequin will open in the window, with a white material all over her. At the same time, the grid lines and things will vanish. That's okay, you don't really need them.

To prepare to paint, click on the Brush icon in the toolbar on the left, (about half-way down, on the left side,) and make sure that the 3D Painting Mode icon is also highlighted. (It looks like a Brush and a painter's palette, fourth from the top on the left.)

To pick a color, use the Color palette on the right. (It's probably set to White, so anything you paint will be invisible if you don't change it.) Choose your Hue from the rainbow bar, and the Saturation and Value from the rectangle below that. Or use the sliders if you prefer. The color chosen will show in the Color Swatch on the left of the palette.

You can "save" colors, to make them easy to reuse, by dragging from the Color Swatch to the row of rectangles directly below it. White, Black, Red, Green, and Blue are already there, and the others all look black. Just drag from the swatch to any of those black rectangles, and your color will be there.

The thing below the Saved Colors is a mixing palette. Drag the color from the swatch into any of the narrow rectangles on the sides of it, and you'll see the colors blending in the middle. Click anywhere in that mixing palette, and the color you click on will appear in the Color Swatch (and also become the active color for the brush.)

To paint in Projection Paint mode (which is the best thing in BodyPaint,) click the Projection Paint icon in the Toolbar on the left (fourth from the top - it looks like a checkered globe with a paintbrush and a square, just to the right of the Brush-and-Palette 3D Painting Mode icon.)

Now when you paint, instead of having the brush circle follow the contours of the model, changing size abruptly when passing over seams and things, it will paint straight on the model from your viewpoint, allowing you to paint smoothly across the various maps.

Be careful with this, though; the stroke can get elongated on the sides of the model. I recommend only painting in the center of whatever angle you are viewing the model from, moving the model around to paint other angles.

To enlarge the Brush tip click the right bracket key (]). This works exactly the same way it does in PS, which is very handy. (And a great relief, I must say. )

To shrink the Brush tip click the left bracket key ([). Once again, just like PS.

To discard the Projection Paint in case you decide you don't like anything you just painted, click the the icon directly below the Projection Paint icon. (Looks like the Projection Paint with a red X.)

To discard just some of the Projection Paint click the Eraser icon, just below the Paint icon. (Flipping the pen on the Wacom tablet won't work, sadly. You have to use the Icon. And the tip size will be whatever the Paintbrush tip is. Unlike PS, you can't have different tips for different tools.) Then erase the part you don't want.

To apply the Projection Paint click the Apply icon, with the Green Check directly below the Projection Paint, or just move the model. Once the Projection Paint has been applied, the eraser won't work on that part of the layer unless you leave Projection Paint mode by clicking the Projection Paint icon again to disable it, by the way. (That one caught me.)

To move the model hold the 1 key and drag to Pan. Hold the 2 key and drag left to Zoom out, or right to Zoom in. Hold the 3 key, or Option/alt, to do the "virtual trackball" thing, and swivel the model around. To restore the model to the default size in the middle of the window, tap H. You can also choose a different camera from the Camera menu under the View tab; if you do, the model will become tiny. Tap the H key to restore it to usable size.

To change to a different kind of brush click the Active Tool tab on the top right (above the Color palette.) The Color Palette will be hidden, and you'll be able to see the Brush Palette instead. There's more there than I can go into right now, but since you're used to PS, you should be able to work with it. Ask specific questions, if you have 'em.

To look at the 2D painting you are making click on the Texture tab, at the top of the viewport. Then choose the material you want to see from the Textures menu under that tab. (Head_Color, Lowerbody_Color, etc.) To see the UV mesh projected on the texture, go to UV Mesh > Texture Tags and choose the only menu item there. (What it says will depend on which model you're looking at.) You'll need to do this for each material, but once you have, it will show properly after that.

To paint on only one Material click the blue pencil next to the material name, in the Materials palette on the bottom right. If the pencil icon is dim, the material won't be painted on. Shift-Click to paint on several at once.

To see the Material Layers, click the + sign to the left of the Material Name if the word Color doesn't appear below it, to show it. If it's showing, click the black flippy triangle to the left to show the layers. Right click on a Layer to get the menu that allows you to add new ones, save the texture, and all that stuff.

To name a Layer click on the Layer, to highlight it, then click on the Attributes tab at the top right (with the Color and Active Tool tabs.) Change the name in the Basic Properties field. You can change other stuff there, too; it'll be familiar from PS.

You can also save the material you're working on, open it in PS, work on it there, and reload it into BP.

To Reload an image after working on it in PS click on the sphere preview for that material, to open the Material dialog. In the middle of that dialog, you'll see the name of the image. (You can change it, if you want, by the way.) Click on the flippy to the right of that, and choose "Reload Image" from the menu.

WARNING! Special layers (Smart Objects, Adjustment layers, Pattern layers, etc.) are not supported in BodyPaint. If you open a PS file that has such layers in BP, they will not display properly, and will be lost forever if you save the file. So work on copies of such files ONLY.

To load a new material texture click on the sphere preview for that material to open the Material dialog, and click on the Image button in about the middle. Browse to the Material you want, and open it. It will replace the material currently there, and show instantly on the model. (DO pay attention to the warning above before you load a layered PS material, though.)

This is the way to Preview the stuff you've already made, by the way. Then just add a layer and paint any corrections etc. on it, save it, and open that file in PS to incorporate those corrections into your layered file. (That's how I do it, anyway.)

There is a lot more to BodyPaint than this, and most of what it does isn't useful for SL (things like painting the Bumpmap, Specularity, and Color all at once, for instance.) But this covers most of the things that had me waving my arms about when I was trying to figure it out, anyway.

Hope this helps!

OH. WOW.
Robin you are truely some kind of patience goddess. THANK YOU SO VERY MUCH!
1st of all : SOME LINDEN OR RESMOD OR WHATEVER, ADD THAT TO STICKIES! PLEASE!
I am sure it can be useful for lots lots LOTS of people.

Second of all, that is one heck of a big reply haha! As I already mentionned I am french speaking so there is lots of stuff in there that make me go "ermmm O.o" so it will take me lots of time to digest, but I cannot thank you enough, and I plan on reading and rereading it over and over until it makes sens and I can actually reproduce that in there.
Mostly I want to FIX something I ALREADY made into CS2, so I will try to find that part in your wonderful tutorial-reply and practice... I hope you don't mind I bug you more sometimes, because I am sure I will need to, haha!

Once again, thank you so much, you do such great things for the content creator community, I can barely believe it! BIG HI5!!
Have a great evening and ttys!

elka :3

Wow, great post Robin! Add a link to it in the sticky thread, or preferably get Blaze to edit a link into the first post. Excellent information.

Elka, I'm glad someone was able to get you started. I know of BP, DP, and Tattoo but I don't use any of them myself. I <3 my GhostPainter2.

You two really need to stop calling me Elka or I'll cry! It's already hard enough to see you two can understand how all these amazing tool work and I can't EH! LOL Kiddin' but really, yes thank you once again Robin for taking the time to write all this, and to you Chip for directing me to these progs and to her.

Sadly, the demo version does not let me save anything, I was not aware of that.
So for the moment, I guess I will continue to manually do everything in CS2. Mweh.
Thanks for all the support.

I want to like Deep Paint. I really do. But there are two things that I just can't seem to like about DP3D. Projection Paint can leave a lot of artifacts. I hate having to clean up a b/w alpha that was painted in projection. The other thing I hate is how the brush builds up. I'm sure this is good for tablet users that are used to Corel Painter, but my little mouse gets way too heavy-handed way too easily. I just can't find that sweet spot.

Since I am a heavy Photoshop user, I like the PS-esque manner in which Body Paint handles build-up - there is none in the same stroke. Woohoo!

moi perso je reste loiiiinnn de ces deux merdes puantes elka ^_^

Ah oui alors qu'est-ce que tu me conseilles ma grande, outre des 3D SM pas comprenable? Hehe.

Caveat
When painting on the head in 3d mode, beware the empty eye sockets. Might be a good idea to toss a dummy sphere into the skull to catch stray strokes.

Ha ha ha. Aren't you supposed to venerate these people as gods?

Hi! You are very welcome. (Sorry I didn't answer earlier, but I've been too busy with my RL job to do anything else for the last several days.)

I'm sorry that you're not able to save with the Demo. But you can, at least, see if it's worth spending the money for the program.

I didn't mean to upset you by calling you elka. That's the name on the post, you see. Please let us know what we should call you.

Robin

(Still pretty tired from putting in a 21 hour day to meet a RL deadline. )

Oh, haha, don't worry, I am totally not upset, I kid about it alot!! elka IS my name... just not with a capital, is find it gross for the eyes... see Elka, elka, Elka, elka... I don't know, not esthetic to me haha!

As for spending... I wouldn't. There are ways *winkwink* But I am REALLY thinking about ghost painter, seems the best way. Hop from PSCS2 to that, must be heaven!! @__@
But that will require another tutorial XD Haha! Thanks again.

Kyrah meant the two programs, not robin and chip... DUH >__>

i was talking about the softwares, idiot

I really love it, but before you spend any money there are things you need to understand about it. It requires that you also have 3ds Max, and it absolutely requires that you have a dual monitor setup or, if you only have a single monitor, that you can run it at high resolution (1280x1024 at a minimum). I used it for quite a while on a single monitor at 1280x1024 and it was quite usable, but once I got dual monitors it was much nicer.

The way Ghostpainter works is by tracking your mouse movements across the model in Max and recreating that motion as a 2d stroke on your texture document in Photoshop. Once the stroke is laid down in PS the texture updates on the model in Max. That means in order to be able to paint on any specific part of the texture it must be visible in Photoshop without any other windows covering it.

One flaw in the way Ghostpainter works is that you can only work on a single texture at a time, so you can't paint across the waist or neck seams. I got around that problem by combining the UV mapping for the avatar in to a single long vertical sheet with the head, upper body, and lower body templates stacked vertically. That way I can work on a single texture and then easily cut it up to make three individual textures for upload to SL. In order to do this I had to manually edit the UV mapping of the avatar which you wouldn't need to do with a 3d paint program that allows you to paint on multiple textures.

The best thing about Ghostpainter (provided you already have Max and know how to use it well enough to manipulate models in its viewports) is that you're basically just using Photoshop so there's not much learning curve involved.

ghost painter sounded like the way to go to me too, although i haven't been really deep in it

I have 2 screens and I know my computer supports dual, I'd just need to learn how to configure that, altho, I can run my screen at 1280x1024 just fine, it's tiny but possible!

Only thing is I do NOT know ANYTHING about 3D Studio Max. I had it once on my computer, for rapid prototyping stuff, but I deleted it because it felt so complicated for me. But I guess if I knew exactly what to do to accomplish exactly what you said... it could work. I don't need to learn anything else really then how to run it with Ghost Paint + CS2. And CS2 hides nothing from me anymore so that part is also dealed with already, heehee...
If I ever get around that, I will bug you for your special UV map and tricks Yay!!

To use Ghostpainter in Max you wouldn't need to know Max very well. Just enough to be able to manipulate the viewports. To make it easier for single monitor setups Ghostpainter allows you to put PS inside a Max viewport. This is what I did when I was working with a single monitor. I used a viewport configuration that gave me two long vertical viewports (instead of the normal four). One was the model which I could rotate around and paint on, and the other was PS. The only big drawback to that is you constantly have to scroll your texture in PS to make sure the part you want to paint on is showing.

It's very unlikely that I'll ever give my custom UV mapped avatar model away since I did a lot of customizing to it (the ability to morph between male and female, built in edge bleed, normal maps for baking in more complex shading, alternate mappings for problem areas, etc) but I'd be happy to explain what I did to get the basic setup you'd need if you end up needing the help.

Oh, one other thing you'd want to check is what version of PS Ghostpainter2 works with. I'm using it with PS7 so I'm not sure what the most current version of PS is that's supported.

It's a joke, silly.

can body paint be used for baking textures? can poser? i wanted to try baking, but dont own any of the typical 3d programs. i do have body paint and poser, though

okay, amendment to my previous question.

I discovered the "Bake Texture" option under the "Render" menu, but when i click the "Start" button, i get the lower, upper, and head textures all overlapped on top of eachother when i save it out, no matter what format i save it as.. so.. in my case, i was trying to make a top.. but the lower body template was sitting on top of it. so it was useless. how do i avoid this??

Robin Two words

GREAT WORK

, I am happy to get now the SL Objects to my preferred Apps

Ty

Sorry, Charlotte. Looks like we missed your question so this answer is a few months late! There are two ways to avoid that problem. The easiest is to cut the model into three parts that correspond to the three textures, then bake them out individually. The downside of that is you might get some seam artifacts at waist and neck that will have to be fixed. The other thing you can do is remap the UV's so that instead of a square UV map representing a single template you have the three templates stacked. Then after you've baked out your texture you can simply cut it into three sections. I did that to my own models since Ghostpainter only handles one texture at a time so I can work on all three textures as a single texture. I'm not sure what bodypaint's UV editing features are though.

Body Paint was covered well, but what about Deep Paint 3D?

There is a feature in BodyPaint that I really like to use that I don't think was mentioned here yet.

Don't have BodyPaint up and I have to run so need to be quick so have to quess at what the menu option is. I think it is on the View->Edit->3D Freeze.

What this will do is freeze the view and you can export this out into a PS file. You can then load that into Photoshop and paint on the model with all the tools and filters that are available in PS. When you are done you save it back and reload the texture into BodyPaint and then Apply Contents Projection.

I really like BodyPaint a lot but it doesn't support all of the PS layers, at least I never got it to work with them, and so it would loose them when you save back out. So what I do is I work on the full body things in BodyPaint then I load those layers into PS as smart objects to finish any details that I prefer to do in PS.

One other thing I think Cinama4 and BodyPaint are the same product now, the lower level version. Reason I say that is I ran into one plug in for Maya that did work because it was looking for an install of Cinema4 not BodyPaint. Probably was a way to make it work but you may want to actually get Cinema4 than BodyPaint. Just something you may want to look into if stuff like that will be important.