Multi layer painting in Blender

[Aquila Kytori]

If any one else has been struggling with painting in blender especially painting on different alpha layers you will be happy to know that Martin Turner from CGmasters has now produced a very good tutorial explaining how it works .

http://www.cgmasters.net/free-tutorials/layered-painting-in-blender-2-72/

Notes:

I usually run Blender directly from the extracted zip file and in this download there are two Apps, the first doesn't contain the Fill brush so use the second (blender-app)

 

If you are completely new to painting inside Blender at 14:50 he enables  Face Selection Mask. This is just like using Face Select mode in the 3D viewport. The keyboard short-cut key  A  toggles between selecting and de-selecting all, and with right clicking / Shift+right clicking etc you can select only the faces you want to paint on.

If a new layer doesn't appear in the Texture Slots list try tabbing in and out of Texture paint mode.

You can change the paint brush into an eraser by changing the blend mode from Mix to Erase Alpha

 

And one last thing, you do have to have your model UV unwrapped before painting  :)

 

[Pamela Galli]

Thanks! This is very exciting -- would you believe just this morning I was thinking how I wished there was a way to paint layers in Blender?  I really was.  I have tried Substance Painter recently and will probably buy it but I just like working in Blender, which is my comfort zone. 

 

I am still trying to get a copy of 2.72 for Mac but  the link in the tutorial takes me to some 2.71 build, so I dont know if it will work or not.

 

ETA:  I see a lot of info about 2.72 but no place to download it. I downloaded the 2.71 linked in the tutorial but it does not have Fill. Maybe because is is for Mac

[Aquila Kytori]

Yes its a 2.71 version from the Latest Builds page.     2.72 is not yet out.  IF you see the Slots tab when in Texture Paint mode its  the correct version for this layer painting video tutorial.

You don't need the Fill brush , you can still paint the  "base" layer of your mesh all one colour with the regular paint brush, just takes a bit longer. Or you can select your base layer from the layers in the  Available Paints Slots panel and then open a UV editor and in Paint mode paint  the whole layer one colour.

Clicking on (selecting) a layer in the Available Paint Slots panel automatically opens that as the active layer in the UV editor.

[Medhue Simoni]

Hmmm, I caught the video a few days ago when he posted it on Youtube. I soooo wish I had known this before I did my snakes, as it would have make it easy to do each snake's skin, and mix and match them. Here is his video.

Sorry, I tried to make this video show here, but it keeps giving me a service error. I'll try again later, but there is the link to the video.