3DPainter

Hi Sean, Using A:M's spherical mapping for such a rather complex head will not give good stamps (especially if you don't tweak the created stamps manually). I you right-click on the decal in the project workspace of A:M and select 'Edit' you can see how A:M maps the decal onto the patches. If you have places on you texture that are mapped to different parts of the model, you will get artifacts in the texture. For example: suppose the cheek and the ear are mapped to a certain region of pixels on the texture by the A:M spherical mapping. Now you want to paint the cheek green. Because the ear is mapped to the same pixels on the texture, the ear will also turn green... I think that's what you are experiencing right now. BTW, did you try 3DPainter's auto decal mapping tool (see pg 29 of the manual)? It ensures that you won't have any overlapping patches on the texture.

Hi Sean, Could you post a screenshot of the decal viewer of that model. Maybe you have overlapping areas or other strange things. Or sending your model to me could also help me find out what goes wrong for you. BTW, for the head you should also take a look at the options 'Opacity falloff' (paint opacity decreases for parts of the model that face away from the camera), 'Front and Back Side' (paint both front and back-facing parts of the model or not) and 'Only paint visible pixels' (only apply paint to parts of model that are visible). This will be solved using the 'Opacity falloff'. Without this option turned on, the paint you apply in front view would also fall on the sides of the model (and thus be stretched out over there). You can see an illustration of the effect of 'Opacity falloff' on page 24 of the manual. As mentioned in the manual, the option to auto-decal the model is only available if the application is launched using the A:M plugin. The reason is that 3DPainter can then instruct A:M to add the stamps etc... Best regards, Filip

I'm exploring the options. It would definitely be cool to have these things in the future. Filip

No, not in the current version. But you could use the standard paint tools to paint grayscale displacement or bump maps. Filip

Hi Eric, You should update the drivers for your graphics card to the latest version. This is most likely the same problem as in this thread: http://www.hash.com/forums/index.php?showtopic=28416 Filip

You should point 'Extensions (hxt files)' to the 'c:\Program Files\Hash Inc\v14.0\hxt' folder instead of to the 'c:\Program Files\Hash Inc\v14.0\Libraries' folder (and then of course put the 3DPainter plugin in that folder). That's where all plugins are located (including those that are bundled with A:M). Filip

Hi Eric, Did you make sure that this folder is in the list of folders that A:M looks in for HXT plugins? You can verify this by going to 'Options...->Folders->Show Folders for:Extensions (hxt files)'. Filip

Congratulations! Great atmosphere and animation! I look forward to your next piece. Filip

Hi Steve, Before you can start painting, your model should have a decal. You can either do this in A:M (as described in William Sutton's tutorial at http://www.zandoria.com/uv.htm) or you could use the automatic decal tool in 3DPainter (as described in chapter 4 of the 3DPainter manual or http://www.hash.com/forums/index.php?showtopic=23896). Best regards, Filip