Texturing with PS or Deep Paint?

[dividend2]

Hey everyone; I was wondering if anyone has used Deep Paint 3D for their texturing and if it's as good as I hear it is?
Is it also possible to do the same thing in Photoshop? I do understand that Deep Paint 3D allows you to paint on the actual "maps" so it's real precise.
By the way, I'm new to all this and I am very pumped about learning Lightwave!
If anyone can give some feedback, I'd appreciate it.
Thank you fellow Ligtwavers! :)

[hrgiger]

If you are just learning Lightwave I would definately reccomend holding off on making a major purchase like Deep paint for a little bit. First, it's good to understand LW's current texturing tools and secondly, they'll be announcing LW8 at Siggraph this year (in July) and who knows what texturing tools will be in 8. You might find that you don't need a $500+ program at that point. Just my .02cents.

I've tried the demos though. What it does is different then photoshop. With deep paint, you paint on the model itself so you can rotate it as you're painting.

[dividend2]

thanks hrgiger,
Yeah, I don't want to spend money if I don't have to. I am looking forward to LW 8. By the way I saw Alien Resserection last night and it has given me some ideas! HR Giger's the man!

[hrgiger]

Well, H.R. Giger is the man but he had nothing to do with Alien Ressurection. (Thank god). What a horibble movie. Other then using the conception of the Alien he designed for the first Alien movie he had nothing to do with it. As far as I'm concerned, Alien and the second movie Aliens are the only two to see. Alien3 being the worst one of all.

[dmg3d]

I thought I read somewhere that HR Giger was involved in the first one, then wasn't consulted for the next two (which ticked him off), then asked to consult on the fourth one (probably after the audience outrage about the third one).

-Dave

[Mike Pauza]

I demoed deep paint and was not impressed. As was mentioned previously you can do an aweful lot just with the tools in LightWave, but...

I do love Photoshop, but I would reccommend Photoshop Elements if your like most people and on a budget. I just taught a class using Elements and couldn't believe how much Photoshop stuff they crammed into the "lite" version for only $100...I even saw it on sale at Best Buy for $50 with rebates!!!

Do beware though, if you do use a paint program you can easily spend as much or more time texturing as you do modeling, but sometimes the added control you get is worth it. :)

[prospector]

DP is only good for the UV part of it that I could see,after using for 2 years. Actualy that's all I use it for. Photoshop has much better controls and workflow.

And DP triples all the polys from LW, sends everything to co-ordinates 0,0,0 so if you paint parts of models, they come back at the 0 mark in LW and ya have to re-alighn all the parts. The parts also come back with illumination turned on to 50% and full reflection, so ya have to go thru and reset all that.
Now this is an older version so it may be all fixed in newer, but as I said I just use the mapping part so no real need for me to get newer version.

just my .01 worth :)

[Mike Pauza]

prospector:

How good are DP's UV tools? I mean can it save you the trouble of unrapping a garbled UV mesh in LightWave...that's something that would be nice to eliminate or streamline.

[prospector]

It absolutly does !!!

doing a Human is rather easy.

Map in front view

select fingers, map them cilindrically,same with arms,legs,feet,
grab head, map spherically
grab lips, map them planer from top or cylindrical

and it puts all maps onto 1 texture and send to Photoshop and ya have a flat picture of all the polys in model.

[dividend2]

I thought Deep Paints idea of being able to rotate your model and paint directly on it without having to "unwrap" the skin was a big step forward. PS can't do that...right.
OK...so Deep Paint is good obviously for a lot of things, but when used with LW, I'll only use it for a few of them. If I can do the same stuff in Photoshop, then thats cool; I already have that. I know I won't be painting directly on my models, but here's what I want to be able to do:
Just like "prospector" was saying, I want to have the polys of a model "flattened" so I can paint them in detail and then "wrap" that back on the model. How's this done in Photoshop? Anybody?

:confused:

[dividend2]

Alien, Aliens - classics
3, Resserection - I need money movies
:D

[prospector]

Almost forgot...
When I said planer above, you can do a planer map projection from ANY angle...Not just top or sides or bottom


Photoshop dosen't do UVing...sorry

All other UVing programs I have seen so far only let you UV in the most basic positions,
Top or bottom
Left or right
Planer, cilindrical,spherical,atlas (which throws the polys anywhere on map they fit :mad: and no sence of rhyme or reason to it.

[Mike Pauza]

You can UV map fine using LW, It's just a bear somtimes "unwrapping" the mesh in the 2D mode:

You basically pick a projection method (box, sphere, cylindrical, plane, etc) to get you started...then you move vertices around in 2D to flatten out the mesh as best you can(that can be a lot of work if the object has a lot of curvature to it)...then you have to deal with the "seams"...then you should load up a checkerboard patterns and mess with vertice positions some more to make the texture "flow" like you want it too...then screen grab the UV mesh and open it up in modeler and paint over it on a separate layer (with some opacity)...that works like a charm, but is a lot of work...I got a decent hang of it after about 20 hours...hehe.

There are a few good UV mapping tutorials on the LW site. You should check them out.

[Lamont]

Originally posted by Mike Pauza
You basically pick a projection method (box, sphere, cylindrical, plane, etc) to get you started...then you move vertices around in 2D to flatten out the mesh as best you can(that can be a lot of work if the object has a lot of curvature to it)...then you have to deal with the "seams"...then you should load up a checkerboard patterns and mess with vertice positions some more to make the texture "flow" like you want it too...then screen grab the UV mesh and open it up in modeler and paint over it on a separate layer (with some opacity)...that works like a charm, but is a lot of work...I got a decent hang of it after about 20 hours...hehe. Eww... that's a horrible way of UV mapping... like trying to unwrap a ball of aluminum foil...

Why don't you use the morph technique? Or UV map parts?

[Mike Pauza]

Lamont's probably right. :)

The only UV mapping I've done was for game props that required only one texture for the entire object.

[Lamont]

Yeah, I do the same thing (game textures), but the technique you described was just.. I can't exsplain it..

There's some tuts around here somewhere...

[Lamont]

I would say Photoshop over Deep Paint. I have a copy and don't even use it. If you are going to use a 3D paint app, use Body Paint.

[Mike Pauza]

Thanks.