To accept paint, polygonal
and subdivision
surfaces must have non-overlapping UVs that fit within 0 to 1 in the texture space. In general,
Automatic Mapping produces UVs that can be used for painting. For details, see
Polygonal Modeling
and
Subdivision Surface Modeling (
www.autodesk.com/maya-docs-archive
)
.
Another requirement is that surfaces must have an assigned texture before painting. Texture can be assigned as part of the procedure below.
Note: Be sure to assign a new shader before painting your object; otherwise, you will modify the default shader. If this happens, the painted texture will be assigned to any new objects you create in your scene.
To paint on a 3D object
- Select the surface(s) you want to paint on.
Note:
- In the
Rendering menu set, select
to launch the tool and open the
Tool Settings editor. See
3D Paint Tool settings.
Tip: To ensure that you get expected results when you paint, it is recommended that you reset the tool settings before starting to paint. To do this, click
Reset Tool.
- Beside
Attribute to Paint (in the
File Textures section of the
Tool Settings editor), select the attribute you want to paint. The default is
Color.
- If you have not previously painted or assigned file textures to one or more of the surfaces, the following warning appears on the
Command Feedback line:
Warning: Some surfaces have no file texture assigned to the current attribute.
Also, the brush outline displays an X () across it when you move the brush over the surface to indicate that you are unable to paint on the selected attribute texture.
- If you have previously painted or assigned file textures, you do not get the warning, and the brush displays without the X, so you are ready to paint. Skip to step 6.
- Click
Assign/Edit Textures. The
Assign/Edit File Textures window opens.
-
Enter a size for the texture in the
Size X and
Size Y boxes, then select an
Image Format and click
Assign/Edit Textures. The
Keep Aspect Ratio option ensures that the proportions of the image are maintained. Turn this option off if you want the width and the height of the texture to be different.
The maximum texture size is 16384 x 16384 and must be a power of 2 in each dimension. Textures larger than 4096 x 4096 may yield slower performance.
The
.iff image format (default option) only supports textures up to 8k in size. If you select a size that is greater than 8k, an error will appear in the
Help Line. You can workaround the issue by saving the texture as smaller than 8192 x 8192 or by selecting a different image format.
Tip: To assign different-sized textures to different surfaces, select each surface or group of surfaces separately and assign textures to them. Once the textures have been assigned, you can select any combination of surfaces to paint on.
- Set a base color for the model and save the texture. This establishes the texture you will erase back to. Do this as follows:
- In the
Flood section, click the
Color swatch and select a color from the
Color Chooser.
- Set the
Paint Operations to
Artisan Paint.
- Click
Flood Paint, and then click
Save Textures in the
File Textures section.
- Select a brush to paint, erase, clone, smear or blur. For details, see
Select a paint brush.
- Modify any other settings as required and drag on the model to paint. For information on these settings, see
3D Paint Tool settings.
If you are painting
Single Channel (grayscale) attributes such as bump, or diffuse, the color you paint is automatically converted to grayscale.
- Once you have finished painting one attribute, you can paint another attribute, without leaving the tool, by selecting the attribute beside
Attribute to Paint. The first time you paint an attribute, you will have to assign a texture for it, unless a texture was already assigned in
Hypershade.