First Impressions; PS CS3 Extended (3d in PS!)

Hi! I don't have much time, so I'm going to be really quick. I'll elaborate on all of this later.

But I just got my copy of Photoshop CS3 extended, and I'm really excited, so I have to tell all you guys before I'll be able to sleep.

Is it wonderful? Yes.

Can you paint/draw directly on the 3D models? No.

However, once you import one with materials, you can open those materials and do anything to them that you would do to any PS file. (They are large format documents, like the ones in Smart Objects.) Change the size, use shapes, styles, all the blending modes, all your filters, drag in whole groups of layers from other documents; anything.

As soon as you Save, you see the changes on the model. If it's not what you wanted, you can use History to back up, or just erase, and draw again. In my tests this morning, this made matching lines across the seams very quick and easy.

It's a piece of cake to view all your layers (skin, undershirt, shirt, jacket) together; just layer them on the file. If you want to keep them separate, I'd recommend putting them in sets, or using flattened files for the ones you're not actually working on.

Best of all; anything that is transparent through the whole layer stack is also transparent on the model. (I made the arms vanish.)

So, theoretically, we should be able to draw on a skirt, and tell what part of the legs will show, right in PS! (I'll try that later today, after I get some sleep.)

You cannot change the names of the materials, but you can change the materials associated with the model. I'm guessing that means that you can reimport it into your 3D program with the new materials, for those who don't do all their work in SL.

e-frontier has a Content exporter here that is free for owners of registered copies of Poser 7. It's a Python script that lets you export .obj files that can be used in PS CS3 Extended. One thing to watch, though; if you get it, you must not have any spaces in the file name, or it won't work. (Which is what I did with 3 hours when I should have been sleeping.)

For those who might have CS3E, or be interested in trying the demos, but don't feel the need to have Poser 7, I'll be linking to some zipped files of exported avatars, with and without skirts in place, later today or tomorrow.

You'll be able to just open those up and go.

But yeah.. it's very, very, very cool. I'm guessing it will save enough time to pay for itself fairly quickly.

If you would be so kind as to indulge, I am curious about the preview rendering engine. Multiple lights? Moveable lights? Tintable? Ambient, specular, or anything fancy?

I can't image the rendering being terribly sophisticated, but I am curious about it.

Sounds pretty cool, Robin. Too bad they didn't go all the way with it. Not being able to see changes on the model until you save the texture is a drag. Not being able to paint on the model itself is a bigger drag. Don't get me wrong. I think it's great that Adobe added these things, but they could have made it way more useful than simply as a previewer. It's definitely not a replacement for a full featured 3d paint app which is a shame, because there's no good reason why it couldn't have been. I hope they make it more robust in future versions.

Abu, there may be more to the lights than I've found, (I hope so,) but, so far, all you can do is pick one of a handful of canned lighting solutions from a drop down menu. There are no lights that you can manipulate yourself at all. At least, not there.

It is designed to use the lights from your 3d program by default. But yeah, it would be really neat if you could manipulate and change lights, and save your own light setups, and so on. Maybe that's one of the things that Adobe is leaving up to third party plug-ins for now. I understand that the whole thing is extensible, and NewTek is already announcing a plug-in that will use the LightWave rendering engine to assign shadows and textures. Perhaps it will do lights, too.

And no, none of the lights cast shadows, within PS. There don't seem to be any ray-tracing capabilities at all.

I'd be disappointed if I'd gotten it as a substitute for rendering.

But I didn't, and if I decide to bring in models to composite in PS, I'll bring them in with their lighting baked anyway, so I'm a happy camper.

Chip, yeah; but once again, that might be something a plug-in could do. In the meantime, I was amazed how quickly having the almost-instantaneous feedback from the single key stroke save translated into painting on the texture, and knowing where it was going to show up on the model.

Not quite as great as having it update in real time, which would be fantastic, but much nicer than I expected.

Kind of like working with an air-brush in RL. You don't actually touch the brush to the paper, but after a tiny bit of practice, you know exactly where that paint is going to land.

I'm looking forward to drawing a stroke that crosses seams on one side of a seam, copying it, and pasting it to the other side, then just moving it on it's layer until the two parts match perfectly.

That's one of the many things that was simply too tedious to do when you had to save, move to a different program, look at it, move back, tweak, save, and repeat.

When it's just save, update, save, with all of it open right in front of you, it suddenly becomes simple. Not perfect, granted, but certainly doable.

If u would like to see bits of that in action try

www.digitaltutors.com

or this link to the second part

http://www.digitaltutors.com/digital_tutors/video.php?v=917

cant wait to get my copy of cs3 - still have to talk to my boss

CU
John

How about those zips Robin? I don't have Poser, but can't wait to give this a try

Hi Racer (and everyone else who was waiting for the files. )

Sorry about that. Things were just hitting too fast and heavy over the last couple of days to get the files done and uploaded. But they are there now. Clicking on this link will download them to your machine.

In PS CS3, you can just Open them from the regular file menu. You'll get a dialog asking what size you want to make the image. Type in whatever size you want, and the program will do the rest.

Once they are open, you'll find that they look kind of dim and difficult to see. It seems that Poser doesn't export the lights the way it should, or something. Anyway, you can fix it by double clicking on the Thumbnail in the Layers palette, which changes the Options Bar to the Transform 3D Model Bar.

That's where you reposition the model, choose the lighting, and so on.

Since I need to see the texture clearly, (as opposed to having the model look dimensional,) I've found that changing the Appearance to Hard Lights and Shaded Illustration, with black lines instead of the default white, works the best for me.

That gives me an image that looks like the one below, which I find very clear and easy to work with.



One other quirk that I've noticed, at least on my machine. For some reason, when I use the Slide tool to move the Avatar close enough to see clearly, and then try to use another tool, the Avatar seems to vanish. If you find it does that to you, too, just open the Numeric tools (under the blue flippy to the right of the Positioning icons,) and set one of the values to 0. That puts enough of it back into view so you can grab it, and reposition it however you like.

Other than that, I've used 512x512 jpgs of the Avatar UVs as the textures on these, to save upload time. But you can replace them with anything you want, including your normal layered PS files. You can also change the size of the files, so you can work in 1024x1024, or whatever you're used to working in, of course.

Just double click the texture name in the Layers palette to open the associated .psb file, and go from there.



Anyway, I'll have more about this later, and will be happy to answer questions; but right now, I have an Island to put together.

Enjoy!

Thank you so much for the info Robin.

One quick question when you have time:

I'm unsure as to what machine you have, but I've read that there appears to be a bit of "brush lag" when using CS3 with a Wacom Intuous 2 tablet on a Mac (I have a Mac and use an Intuous 3).

Here is one entry where it is discussed:

http://www.pvponline.com/blog/3280/photoshop-cs3-help

Have you noticed this? Has any one else?

I am waiting to purchase the CS3 until I can learn more....

Best,
~Ari

Very cool Robin, thanks m8!!!
Works even better then I was hoping for. Gonna really improve the workflow a lot!

Edit:
Want to attach your 1024 Vsmart mappings to the object, any pointers how to do that?

Edit2:
NM, resized the existing map to 1024, put all layers of the Vsmart into one folder and
smacked 'em onto the other file... Might not be the best way to do it, but worked fine

BTW: thanks for those UV mappings too.... good stuff!!!

\0/

Hi everyone! You are most welcome.

Arikinui, I have a Mac; a Dual 2.5 GHz PowerPC G5 with 1.5 GB DDR SDRAM, an ATI Radeon 9600 XT graphics card, and the Intuos 3 tablet.

I haven't seen any lag when I'm painting, and I've been using the Public Beta of CS3 for months now. (Long enough that when our power went out a few weeks ago and took my system with it, totally borking my Adobe activations and making the beta un-renewable (it was too close to release,) I kept trying to collapse my CS2 palettes. )

Even with fairly complex brushes on large paintings, I haven't had any problems.

I just tested it, with a 599 Mb file, using the default Scattered Maple Leaves brush, which has Shape Dynamics, Scattering, Color Dynamics, Other Dynamics, and Smoothing. There was a lag, but I'm pretty sure there always was using brushes like that on large files. The lag vanished if I disabled Scattering. That file has 82 layers, many with masks, lots of clipping layers, adjustment layers, and so on. So it seems a fair test to me. (And no, it's not for SL.)

Any of the normal brushes, such as I'd use for inking (as mentioned in that thread,) had no lag at all, even when I moved very quickly.

I'm delighted with CS3, and suspect that the poster might have something else going on. Or maybe it's just a problem with the Intel Macs.

(I did have to laugh at the poster who claimed that PS hasn't had any major improvements since PS 7, though. He obviously hasn't found Smart Objects, Vanishing Point, or Extract, let alone Smart Filters or 3D Layers. )

Racer, that's how I've been doing it. Just make the textures I put there into whatever you want. They are really just there to hold the Texture slot, because you can't add new Texture slots to 3D files. But once you have the slots, you can do anything to the textures that you want!

If only it had just a wee bit more functionality for 3D. I'll definitely upgrade but I'm still stuck using PS7 more often than not because Cebas has yet to upgrade Ghostpainter for CS2 (which I have). The CS3E 3D functions don't provide anything I don't already have, alas. Can't wait to see what plugin developers do with it. I imagine Cebas will have CS3 support somewhere around 2012.

I just downloaded my copy of Photoshop Extended today and so happy to see this thread with the files. I don't have Poser 7, so Thanks big time again Robin!! I fired them up and, wow, this is gonna make life easier.

Can I send you a nice tip for all your help? I always felt I should send you some lindens for using your templates every day, and here's another reason! logging in to do so! thanks Robin!!! And you too Chip!! (i used your templates also)

Ok but this is kind off a bummer: It seems to save the UV map to a temp folder... in PS I save, it updates the 3d view nicely, but if I restart it grabs the old 512 UV map again. None of the work was saved. As it looks now I have to save the reworked map as a seperate file and everytime you wanna continue the works need to fill the existing texture slot with the layers of the seperate (reworked) file. This might be the way it just works, but thats far from ideal

Racer, I was just trying to figure out workflow myself and I have it worked out now-i *think*. Robin or others may have a better answer, but from tinkering this is what seems to work for me...

1. Take the .obj file that Robin gave us, do the lighting stuff that Robin suggested to make the 3d model look good
2. open each of the template sections by double clicking it on the layers palette (top, bottom, skirt and head).
3. Resize each of the templates to what you want it at, i resized them to 1024x1024. but you can also leave them at 512x512 -- you'll want to convert to 512x512 eventually before uploading final clothing files to SL.
4. Move over the guide layers from Robin's 2d PSD Template files (also found here in the forum, for those of you reading along). No need to mess with the head unless you are doing skins. I put a basic skin on the head, just so i don't have to look at the UV frame all the time.
5. Save each 2d template and you'll see it on the 3d form.
6. Save the 3 body form as a PSD file wherever you want to keep it and close everything.

And that is now your 3D template. Duplicate the 3d psd file anytime you want to start a new clothing item and it will have all the 2d layers composited over the 3d form. It's like you are working on an outfit now, not just a top or bottom, etc.

The 3D file acts as the entire file for your clothing. All your info is saved in that file and temp files are made when you open it up in order for you to see the 2d maps we've all been using.

When you are happy with your clothing design you can always save out the 2d temp files to a master 2d photoshop file, or simply work from the 3d model sections and save targa's from it.

(I bet Robin will provide a straight CS3 PSD 3d template pretty soon-I would if it's ok with Robin, but they are her templates -- and they are 20meg files)

Hi Blaze!

Wow.. Thank you so much for your extremely generous gift. All I ever really ask is for people to pass on what they've learned, (and tell me if they figure out any really great tricks.) You didn't have to give me Lindens, too. But I deeply appreciate it. Thanks!

Racer, I didn't encounter that problem. I just saved the .psd files, and it saves the new 3D textures along with. It also saves the Appearance and other things, so I can just get to work, as Blaze mentioned.

On the other hand, if you want to save the templates with the .obj file for some reason, set it all up the way you want, and then go to Layer > 3D Layer > Replace Texture. It will warn you that this will replace the textures on the disk (at least until you tell it to stop warning you,) and then it will.

So, the next time you open the .obj file, it will have your texture all set the way you want it.

I'd just save a .psd file and use that as a template if I were you, though.

Blaze, I'd rather not provide the templates you mentioned. You can if you want to, but they are very large (as you've seen,) and it's really simple for people to make their own, and set them up to their own taste and workflow.

And yeah, if you want to keep the single finished material files, the way we used to, just open the Material .psb file, and Save As a .psd file.

The .psb (Adobe Large Document Format) file works exactly like the .psd for all practical purposes, though, so you can just work from that, as Blaze said.

Thank you SO much Robin for your insight!

My husband suspected it's an issue with the Intel Macs (which we use), but after reading your posts I don't think I can wait any longer!!

I want to play

Thanks so very much for your time. I truly appreciate it.

~Ari

Ah just shoot me, I wasent saving the object file because I thought it flattened it down to a simple .psd, but it still stores the object + all worklayers in that file....

Works great now... thnx again

I've tried Robin's exported avatars, but for some bizarre reason they look horrible on my computer.

The avatar's shape don't mix well with the textures, and they look sorta displaced in the X axis. See this pic for a clearer explanation


Does anyone know how to fix this issue?

THANK YOU ROBIN

Once again contributing so much for the rest of us to benefit from. You're a blessing.

I am having the same problem as Chenqui is. Does annnnnybody have an answer?

That displacement is really strange. Photoshop is not actually capable of changing the UV map, so I'd say one of two things is going on:

1. The most obvious answer would be that the clothing template got moved in your texture panel. It would be pretty hard to imagine that all three textures got moved by the same amount though, so I don't think that's what's actually going on, but it's worth looking at. When you double click on the material layers to open the texture panels, do the templates look right? What happens if you replace the textures?

2. My guess is this is a graphics driver issue. What graphics card do you have, and do you have the latest drivers for it?

If it's not one of those two things, then I'm stumped.

I have yet to download CS3 and try this myself. One thing I was wondering about is if the 3D previewer in Photoshop handles multiple textures applied to different parts of the model (like the separate head, upper, and lower sections.) From Robin's screenshots it looks like that works just fine; cool! Looks like I did the mac port just in time for slcp to be obsolete

Yeah, no problem with multiple textures on a model.

I don't think SLCP will be obsolete any time soon, btw. Most people probably won't want to spend $999 of Photoshop Extended. The upgrade price isn't too bad at $349, but it's still not cheap.

Also, Photoshop's 3D camera tools leave a bit to be desired at this point. I suspect it will get better in future versions, but for now, it's a little bit awkward to move the POV around. It thinks of every camera movement as a transformation, which makes it kind of annoying. Still the benefits of being able to texture directly in Photoshop without having to bother with a secondary application are huge, and it's worth the little headaches that come with it.

My husband is a genius. *couuuuugh cough*

I unchecked 'Enable 3D Acceleration', and I was fine as frog hair. (file - prefs - performance)

I don't know if this will have any ill effects on other projects, ect ...but perhaps Robin and/or Chosen would be able to answer that one better than I.

Sounds like it was a video driver issue then after all. By turning off 3D acceleration, you're effectively preventing your video card from trying to handle the 3D in Photoshop, and instead you're letting the software take care of it. In most circumstances, this is not desirable as it forces your CPU to do considerably more work, slowing everything down. However, in situations where your video card and/or its drivers are not compatible with what you're trying to do, then a software solution like this is your only choice.

Glad you got it worked out.

Out of curiosity, what video card do you have? Adobe doesn't really give a list of what's compatible (or even what's recommended) and what's not. It would probably be useful to know what cards are giving people problems. It would probably also be good if you alert Adobe to the problem so maybe they can address it in future updates.