Vertex Painting

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Vertex Painting

Postby boblishman » Tue Aug 17, 2010 10:09 am

I have always used vertex painting extensively with Blender to create depth to my models.

However, when I try to use it with 3dsMax I get an export error. (plConvert) if I set it to the Vertex Colour channel

I have successfully used the vertex ALPHA setting (for blending Plasma Composite materials, but if I use the Vertex Paint Modifier and paint over a textured model and set it to anything other than vertex COLOURS, whilst it shows up ok on the model in the Max 3d view window, and does exports without an error, it does not show up in Uru? ... :(

Has anyone sucessfully managed to actually vertex PAINT (with colour(s)) using Max ... and if so, could you please point me in the right direction (settings, etc)

thanks ...
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Re: Vertex Painting

Postby N. Sigismund » Tue Aug 17, 2010 7:45 pm

I think I answered your question over at the MOULa forums, but I'll repeat it here in short:

1) On the texture you want a VP overlay, set the top layer to use Vertex colour map coordinates. Set blend options to multiply.
2) Unwrap Vertex Colour UV map.

AFAIK there are no other important things. It's 3:45am here though so er I might have missed something.
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Re: Vertex Painting

Postby andylegate » Wed Aug 18, 2010 8:50 am

Okay, already showed Bob this via PM's over at the GoMa forum, but thought I would share here too:

N. Sigismund got it pretty much right, I'm here to add some pics and more detail about this.

In order for Vertex Painting with Color to work you have to give it it's own UV Channel. You can use Vertex Painting for Alpha without this and export fine. But if you want to paint color, you'll get a plConvert error when you try to export.

So here we have a pic of the 3D scene from Bob's test Age here. You can see that he made a cylinder, textured it, and UV mapped it. He then went to the Modifiers Tab and assigned Vertex Paint to it, and you can see the colors he painted (the Cube with the black on it, is Vertex Painting for Alpha, so ignore it):

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You can see in the pic below how the Vertex Painting for Color is set up in the Modifiers Tab:

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Next thing you want to do is, go BACK to your first UV Unwrap modifier, and click on Edit. Select all your verticies in the edit box and click on COPY. This is because you'll want the 2nd UV layer to use the same unwrapping that you used the first time.

Now add your 2nd UV Unwrap modifier. You'll want to assign it a different channel that "1" ("1" is the UV channel for the texture). In my pic below Bob has his 2nd UV Channel set to 3.

Image

Click on the Edit button and select all the verticies in the edit box and click on PASTE this time. Now your 2nd UV channel is mapped just like the first one for your texture.

Now call up the Materials Editor and select the Material you assigned your object. In Bob's case, he has a Plasma Standard Material assigned to the Cylinder. With Plasma Standard you can assign 2 Map layers for textures. Bob has only one texture, but we'll need to use the 2nd (also known as "Top" layer) for the Vertex Painting (If you have many textures assigned to an object and are using Multi/Sub, don't worry, because you'll still be using Plasma Standard for each sub material, and can still do this).
Select the "Top" texture by putting a check mark in it. Set you Blending to Multiply, Multiply, and None (you can play around with these if you'd like to see if you get better results). Then click on the button for the "Top" map layer:

Image

Now you should be in the Top Layer Map. Look at my pic below. You'll want to remove the check mark where it says "Use Texture" (you don't have to pick a texture to use), and change the UV map channel to the same number you gave your 2nd UV Map channel. I gave mine the number 3 remember? So I changed it here to the number 3.

Image

Now that you've done that, go back to the Material itself. Now REMOVE the check mark for the Top layer! If you don't, you'll get a error on export saying that you're missing a texture, and we don't want that!

Image

That's it! Export your Age, Drizzle it, link in and check it out. From this KI shot, you can see that Bob's cylinder has the Vertex Painting on it (you can also see the Vertex Alpha on the cube).

Image
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Re: Vertex Painting

Postby boblishman » Wed Aug 18, 2010 2:32 pm

once again .... Andy to the rescue !! .... :D

Thanks for your help on this .... both of you ... it was driving me crazy. I was so close ... but no cigar ...until you guys figured it out.

As a matter of interest, I now have vertex painting working on a Plasma Composite material as well .... using the second layer of the first material for the vertex colour. ... ;)

thanks again guys ... now I can bring depth to my models ....
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Re: Vertex Painting

Postby GPNMilano » Wed Aug 18, 2010 5:52 pm

Okay, i'm only going to say this one more time...when it comes to the Max plugin can we NOT suggest dirty hax just to do something that is fully supported and easy to do in just a few simple clicks:

First. Add a vertex paint modifier in the stack as shown below. In the three circles you'll see what you need to have enabled. (The vertex paint modifier in the stack. The non-shaded vertex button in the paint modifier. and the vertex color button in the vertex paint rollout.) Now just paint your mesh as normal as seen here:

Image

Next, right click in the viewport and you'll be given a pop up menu that looks like the picture below. Just select the circled option (or you can select the editable mesh option. either works. I usually choose editable poly but both work fine:

Image

This will collapse the stack and you'll be given something like in your rollout:

Image

That is it folks that is all that is necessary to vertex paint. the same can be done with alpha painting. you just select the alpha color rather than vertex color in the rollout. This will toggle between one or the other. The important part is just collapsing the rollout by converting to either an editable mesh or an editable poly.

Once you link in your mesh for example will look like this:

Image

All i did for those results were the three listed above steps.
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Re: Vertex Painting

Postby mookow » Wed Aug 18, 2010 8:15 pm

Colour and alpha values of selected vertices can also be edited directly in the mesh modifiers 'Surface Properties' rollout.
You can also clear, copy and paste these, and other channels in the Tools->ChannelInfo dialog.
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Re: Vertex Painting

Postby andylegate » Thu Aug 19, 2010 4:38 am

Thanks GPN! That does save a lot of time (and taught me something I didn't know either!). Always great to have someone post tips, info and "How To's" on here.
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Re: Vertex Painting

Postby andylegate » Thu Aug 19, 2010 12:41 pm

A tutorial for this is now up over the the GoMa forum. Credit for the info given to GPNMilano on how to do it they easy way :D

Linky:

http://www.guildofmaintainers.org/Forum ... 547#p14547
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Re: Vertex Painting

Postby N. Sigismund » Mon Aug 30, 2010 1:30 pm

GPNMilano wrote:Okay, i'm only going to say this one more time...when it comes to the Max plugin can we NOT suggest dirty hax just to do something that is fully supported and easy to do in just a few simple clicks:


Whoa! Thanks GPN! I'm the same as Andy - I had no idea such a simple way was possible! Thanks a bunch!

(I came to my technique thanks to problems I was having with Cyan's Lightmap component applied to this, because I assumed that VP would work as I assumed Lightmap did... I wonder if my entire work there was incorrect too? I'll check when I get home.)

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