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Home » Features » Product Reviews » Software » BodyPaint 3D 2
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Product: BodyPaint 3D 2
Developer: Maxon
Reviewer: Kelly L. Murdock
Posted: March 8, 2005
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BodyPaint 3D 2
by Kelly L. Murdock

Introduction

Texture maps are both a godsend and a necessary evil of game development. On the one hand, they make it possible to add some amazing details to a 3d object without the need for many additional polygons. But, they can really be a pain to precisely map onto the 3d geometry, which can be a major bottleneck in the production pipeline.

It would be so much easier if you could just paint directly on the surface of a 3d object without having to worry about creating a 2d texture and mapping it onto the 3d object. Well, Maxon has heard the cry of anguished game developers and has answered with a product called BodyPaint 3D.

BodyPaint 3D lets you do just that, you can create texture maps by painting directly on the surface of 3d object or by painting onto 2d texture that is immediately mapped onto the 3d geomety, but there is much more to BodyPaint than simply painting texture maps. Maxon has recently released version 2 of BodyPaint that includes a wealth of new features.

BodyPaint Plug-ins

If you prefer to work in another 3d package such as 3ds max or Maya, then you can still take advantage of the BodyPaint features. BodyPaint runs as a standalone product with the ability to position objects, navigate views and even render a scene, but Maxon also offers plug-ins for 3ds max, Maya, Lightwave, and its own Cinema 4D.

Using the BodyPaint plug-ins lets you transfer objects, textures and UV coordinates back and forth between your favorite 3d software and BodyPaint. For example, installing the 3ds max plug-in makes a rollout appear in the Utilities panel where you can export the current object or the entire scene to BodyPaint (see Figure 1). The exported objects then appear within BodyPaint where you can work on them while a simple dialog box in 3ds max appears stating "Waiting on BodyPaint." Once the work in BodyPaint in completed, you can click on a button to send the scene or object back to the originating software where it reappears in 3ds max with the applied changes.


Figure 1: The BodyPaint interface lets you load objects from other 3d package such as this teapot from 3ds max.

The BodyPaint Interface

The BodyPaint interface includes separate view panels for the 3d object and for the current texture, but you can also open several different view panels in order to see the 3d object from different views or to see several textures at once. Any changes made to a single view panel instantaneously updates the change in all other views. The interface also includes support for several preset camera views and shading methods.

All materials, objects and brush options can be selected from panels to the right of the view panes. Every texture, brush and color is displayed as a preview in the various manager panels making it easy to select the correct item. The Window menu lets you select from several preset layouts, open new object and texture views, or access one of the many different Manager panels including a Browser (see Figure 2) that shows thumbnails of available brushes, patterns, textures and images.


Figure 2: The BodyPaint Browser displays thumbnails of available textures and brushes.

The Setup Wizard

When a model in loaded into BodyPaint, the first step is to create a texture for each different body part. This can be a time-consuming process if your working with a complex model such as a game character, but BodyPaint includes a Setup Wizard that lets you select which body parts or material groups you want to be textured, the channels to include, the UV optimization method and the minimum and maximum size of the textures; and the wizard will create all the requested textures automatically. It will even automatically select the right texture size for each object depending on the object's size. This feature alone can save enough time on a single project to make the software worth its price.

Painting Tools and Filters

With the word, "Paint" in the application name, you'd expect a large assortment of painting tools and BodyPaint doesn't disappoint. There are the usual paint tools that you'd expect like Clone, Smear, Sponge, Dodge and Burn. But, there are also some interesting new brushes such as RayBrush, MultiBrush and you can also use a Bitmap image as a brush to create some unique strokes.

BodyPaint also includes support for graphic tablets and lets you set properties for Size, Pressure, Hardness, Spacing, Jitter, Squeeze and Rotation. There are also a huge number of brush presets you can select or you can add your own.

The MultiBrush lets you define and paint with up to 10 different channels at the same time. This enables you to paint Color, Bump, Specularity, Reflection, Luminance and Transparency all at once providing yet another huge time-saver.

If you are comfortable with the huge assortment of image filters found in Photoshop, you'll be happy to know that all of the available Photoshop filters can be accessed from directly in BodyPaint including any 3rd party filters that are installed on your system.

Selection Tools and Layers

The BodyPaint selection tools include many tools for selecting pixel sections such as the Lasso tool, the Magic Wand, Feather and the ability to grow and shrink the current selection. The Object Manager also provides a way to select and isolate 3d objects.

BodyPaint layers work just like the layers in Photoshop allowing you to separate new brush strokes from existing ones making it easy to throw away undesired changes. Separate layers can be mixed and transformed as needed and BodyPaint also supports Layer Masks.

BodyPaint also lets you copy and paste textures between different layers, so your bump maps can accurately match your diffuse maps. Textures can also be pasted directly into the 3d view using the new Projection Painting mode (see Figure 3).


Figure 3: Textures can be easily copied and pasted between layers and even onto 3d objects.

Projection Painting

Painting straight lines on a curved 3d surface is a difficult task because the lines are distorted as the texture is wrapped around the various body parts. BodyPaint 2 includes a new Projection Painting mode that enables lines to be painted without distortions by relying on the 3d object's normals. The results of using this mode are cleaner crisper lines that look great. Projection Painting mode also includes buttons to Accept or Reject the last set of brush strokes, so you can rotate the view to see how the paint strokes look from different sides before accepting the changes.

Projection Painting mode also lets you paint across multiple object surfaces without any distortion, so a scratch from an enemy car in a racing game can easily run the entire body length without having to alter each object's texture map separately.

Handling UVs

For aligning textures to the 3d objects, BodyPaint includes several tools that make it easy to work with UV coordinates including 3 different UV optimization methods—Cubic Optimal, Angle Optimal and Realign (see Figure 4). There is also a Relax UV option for easing the distance between adjacent UV coordinates, several Projection mapping methods, mapping Transformations and commands to Store/Restore, Copy/Paste, Fit and Mirror UV coordinates.


Figure 4: BodyPaint also includes several helpful tools for manipulating UV coordinates.

Rendering

In addition to BodyPaint, Maxon also offers a popular standalone 3d package called Cinema 4D and they have added the same impressive, and incredibly fast render engine found in Cinema 4D to BodyPaint. The Cinema 4D render engine includes support for Antialiasing, Radiosity, Raytracing, Caustics, and Post Effects including several filters, motion blur, lens flares, color correction, object glows, and cel rendering.

With the RayBrush tool, you can actually paint onto a raytraced image and see the results as you paint. This tool eliminates the cycle of painting and rendering, thereby speeding your results to completion.

Summary

Overall, BodyPaint fills an important niche in the game development production pipeline enabling texture artist to quickly create realistic details using a complete set of image brushes without having to spend valuable time worrying how to map their textures onto the 3d model. The package also includes most the features common to Photoshop in an interface that works directly with 3d geometries.

The available plug-ins make it possible to use BodyPaint as your texturing solution while still maintaining your existing modeling and animation solutions. The Setup Wizard is a huge time-saver for complex models and the Projection Painting mode will make your object textures look better than they ever have.

The one drawback to the software is the poor documentation. You should plan on some time to learn the program whether you're an artist coming from Photoshop or a modeler coming from a 3d package. Also be aware that BodyPaint requires a system with a lot of memory. If memory resources run scarce, the program behaves very erratic and quickly becomes frustrating.

For more information on BodyPaint 3D and the other Maxon products, visit the Maxon web site located at www.maxon.net.


Kelly L. Murdock is the president of Logical Paradox Design, a design firm specializing in 3d graphics. He is also the author of Maya 6 Revealed and several other titles.


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