modo Painting

Powerful, flexible painting system works in 2D and in 3D, across multiple images and UV maps

With modo, you have an integrated painting system that delivers what many believe is the most pleasing 3D painting experience available. modo leverages GPU technology and multi-threading to take advantage of modern OpenGL hardware, letting you stroke details onto your 3D models with speed, and see Normal maps, Displacement maps and transparency as you paint in the viewport.

There is something about painting directly on a 3D model that is incredibly satisfying. And more than just being fun, it is a highly efficient way to create or modify the textures on your model because you can see exactly where you are painting all the time. In addition to painting on 3D objects, you can also paint in 2D, or paint on the backdrop item — or on image sequences. modo delivers the right combination of performance, tools and feedback for the ideal 3D painting experience.

Nobody wants to work with a brush that stutters or lags behind as you paint. In modo, painting is multi-threaded for maximum performance — even when using large brush sizes modo delivers optimum performance on modern computing hardware. That’s how we are able to provide procedural brushes that work fluidly, along with the option to blend (e.g. color dodge) in over a dozen ways while painting. As you paint in modo, you can be painting across multiple images on multiple UV maps.

Ready Access to Tools

A specialized layout in modo for 3D painting gives you quick access to the tools you need for a rich 3D painting experience. All painting is done with a combination of a tool (e.g. smudge) plus a brush (e.g. smooth brush), and the desired ink (e.g. parametric). A panel below the canvas provides you with an image browser (you can actually paint with images), a color picker and a brush preview. The brush preview even shows you how your stroke will fall off at the end of the stroke. You can paint with any pointing device, a pressure sensitive tablet being the preferred one. Painting with symmetry is supported. Want to change brush size? Just right click and drag out the size of your brush, and then keep painting.

Brushes and Inks

A wide variety of tools are provided, including airbrush, paintbrush, eraser, clone, line, fill, smudge, blur and lasso. Each tool has properties that include not just color but also opacity and blending modes. Several brush types are provided (stamp, roller, text, procedural) or you can supply your own and select the one you want from the brush browser. Finally, there are the inks... these let you do anything from painting an image onto your model (image ink) to using a parametric ink that modulates the color of your ink depending on the height of the displacement you’re painting over. If you like, modo will apply the ink according to the slope or altitude of the surface you are painting on. This makes painting fresh snow on a mountain range or adding pitted surfaces on the leading edges of a wing an easy task. You can also take advantage of real-time mask painting for brush-based control over how two different images (pristine and battle-damaged for example) blend together.

Paint by Layer

Driving the modo renderer is the Shader Tree, which is modo’s user interface for describing the appearance of items and the environment, and how lights and cameras should interact with them. Any images you select in the Shader Tree can be painted on immediately in modo.

With this direct access to modo’s Shader Tree, you can leverage 3D painting to adjust complex surface appearances layer by layer. This isn’t just about brushing on new colors — you can paint bump maps in real-time or paint into channels to affect the specular highlights. modo's Shader Tree also allows you the freedom of painting non-destructively by utilizing the familiar functionality of layer and mask based painting found in popular 2D painting tools. In fact, you can import .PSD files into modo and paint separately on each of the layers found in the file; you can also export UV maps to Photoshop for painting there if you prefer.

Painting Workflow Examples

See more painting video tutorials at Luxology.tv.

See modo 3D painting in action in this Seneca Menard video interview

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