Release 18 Quickstart Manual
BodyPaint 3D R18 Quickstart Manual The software described in this document is subject to a license agreement and may only be used in accordance with the regulations thereof. Quickstart writer: Glenn Frey Layout: Kai Perschke Copyright © 1989 – 2016 by MAXON Computer GmbH all rights reserved. This manual and the accompanying software are copyright protected.
BodyPaint 3D R18 Standalone Part 1 ________________________________________________________________________________ 1. 2. 3. 4. 5. 6.
BodyPaint 3D R18 Standalone Part 1 Core functions In this tutorial we will explain the most important functions in order to give you a running start in the world of “body painting“. Even if BodyPaint 3D appears to be difficult at first, you will soon notice how intuitive BodyPaint 3D really is. In this tutorial we have also put an emphasis on a fast learning curve and a high degree of user friendliness for this. This standalone Quickstart tutorial manual is made up of two parts.
2. General Information / Interface BodyPaint 3D Standalone offers many functions that will again speed up and improve your workflow. Let’s start with the most important step – starting BodyPaint 3D. After starting BodyPaint 3D you will see an image similar to the following screenshot: 1. Rendered Viewport 2. Texture Window (UV Mesh Editor Window) 6. Icon Palette (modes) 4. Attribute Manager Window 3. UV Manager 5.
1. Viewport Here you can see the object you will be painting. You can rotate, move and zoom the window as needed. 2. Texture Window (UV Mesh Editor Window) This is where you edit your UV mesh. You can relax and restore your UV mesh. If you use the UV Manager’s UV tools you can watch how the texture relaxes. You can also watch the color application process in this window, which will then be visible in the editor window right away. 3.
© Joe Yan – dr_heyjoe@hotmail.com © Anders Kjellberg – www.dogday-design.
Now we’ll get to the heart of this tutorial. Open the file QS_BP3D_01.c4d. Say hello to Claude, our guinea pig for the day. In the course of this tutorial we will alter the color of his right eyelid a little and apply a bump layer in elephantlook to his skin. Select the predefined standard layout BP UV Edit at the top right and to the left of BodyPaint 3D´s main editor window. Click on the Paint Setup Wizard Icon so we can make the necessary preparations to the texture (brush icon with white stars).
3. Quick Tutorial: First Painting Lesson At the bottom left of the Material Manager (in the Materials tab) you will find the texture we just created, right next to Mat. This is the default name for a new texture. Of course you can rename the texture if you like. The first material is the color layer and the second is the bump layer (at the top of the window you will see the abbreviations which refer to these layers – C for color and B for bump). Now Select the Use UV Polygon Edit Tool symbol.
The individual UV mesh polygons of these eyelid edges take up less texture area than the rest of the polygons. That’s why a texture placed into the bump channel appears larger in these places (photograph of elephant skin, for example). We can do without this, though, since we are painting our own skin structures onto the surfaces and not using an existing texture. We can counter any distortion we encounter when painting manually by using Projection Painting.
...and select a pink color using the Preview Active Channel directly below. If necessary, increase the Subdivision Surface level for the editor because the original eyelid polygon object is very lowpoly and edged. Now activate Projection Painting ... ... (You already know what this function does) and start painting. Of course BodyPaint 3D supports the use of graphic tablets such as a WACOM Intuos. Painting objects with a pressure sensitive pen on a graphic tablet is much easier than painting with a mouse.
If you move/rotate the figure now or click on the Apply Projection (click and hold on the Activate/Deactivate Projection Painting button) you will see how the color was applied to the texture (you can see the recently applied strokes of color in the window to the right). You can take the same steps for the bump layer. We will take you one step further, though, in order to be able to explain an important function.
4. BodyPaint 3D UV Edit In this chapter we will show you more about editing UVs. First, though, you need to know what UVs are before getting started. Take a look at the following screenshot: The polygons of the sphere at the left are outlined in orange. Now imagine the sphere has a second invisible skin lying over the polygon mesh. We will cut this skin open at selected locations and press it flat onto a surface. This is our UV mesh (at right).
Now for our screenshot to clear things up: At the right you can see the UV mesh with the underlying texture. We have added a white spot to the texture. If you look closely you will see that two UV polygons overlap. This means that they share the same area of the texture in the area in which they overlap. This result in the white spot being displayed twice on our sphere (left). This can be quickly remedied by manually moving the UV polygons or points or by applying BodyPaint 3D’s Relax UV function.
We have highlighted a polygon (red) on the sphere at left. At right you can see the corresponding UV polygon, also highlighted in red. In order to clearly demonstrate what happens when a particular polygon is much larger than the rest, we have greatly reduced the size of the surrounding UV polygons. Take a close look at the right side of the UV mesh. The highlighted UV polygon takes up much more space then the surrounding UV polygons. However the size of the corresponding polygons remains the same.
In the scene above we scaled down two UV polygons and subsequently drew a white line on our sphere from top to bottom. You can see how the line width varies depending on the size of the UV polygons. The impression is made that two different line strengths were used when painting, even though only a single line was drawn.
Start by switching to the default layout BP UV Edit at the top left right of your interface. We have just switched to BodyPaint 3D’s UV edit interface. The functions contained in this layout are specifically designed for the editing of UVs. Next we will create a material with the corresponding UV polygons. To do so click on the Paint Setup Wizard tool, located in the Command Palette above.
The Paint Setup Wizard saves us from having to manually peel the UV skin off of our character and has flattened it neatly onto our texture. Our mesh looks quite good at first glance. However, if you look closely, a few spots can be found that need working on, which we have circled for you in orange. Areas 1 and 2 have overlapping and the polygons in areas 3 and 4 are too small. First, zoom in to area 1. As you can see, two UV polygons overlap in the center.
...then activate the Move tool... ...and rearrange the corresponding points until the UV polygons no longer overlap. The remaining areas (2 – 4) can also be corrected using this method.
Once all problem areas have been corrected the mesh can be painted. The method we just described was the manual method of fixing such problem areas. However, BodyPaint 3D also offers tools that will automatically “relax” complex UV polygons and we will turn our attention to these tools now. Open the file QS_BP3D_03.c4d. The geometry in the area of the monkey’s missing nose is perfect for our demonstration (note that no animals were hurt in making this tutorial.
Set Projection to Frontal. Now select other types of projection by clicking on the corresponding button to see the different types of projections that are available. Once you’ve taken a look at them all, switch back to Frontal mode. Frontal mode reflects the active editor view. This is also why we have chosen this mode for our monkey’s face. As you can see, the UV polygons in the area of the monkey’s nose are overlapping. We will now use the BodyPaint 3D Relax UV tool to take care of this little problem.
5. BodyPaint 3D Exchange Plugin Before we get started we want to pass on some important fundamentals to you. By default, BodyPaint 3D saves images in .tiff format, which can also contain layers. When these images are subsequently loaded and re-saved in foreign applications, these layers may be lost. If you use Photoshop for editing your images you can also set your BodyPaint 3D default image format to .psd (Photoshop). The files BodyPaint 3D requires to communicate with foreign applications (e.g.
MAC [Maya 5] Macintosh HD / Applications / Alias Wavefront / maya 5.0 / maya • Right-click on the Maya executable file and select Show Package Contents. The path will be the following: Contents / MacOSClassic / plug-ins. • The scripts belong here: Macintosh HD / Users / Shared / Alias / maya / scripts. [Maya 6] Macintosh HD / Applications / Alias / maya 6.0 / maya • Right-click on the Maya executable file and select Show Package Contents. The path will be the following: Contents / MacOS / plug-ins.
PC [Maya 5] • Plugin: C: \ Programs \ AliasWavefront \ Maya5.0 \ bin \ plugins • Scripts: C: \ Documents and Settings \ username \ My Documents \ maya \ 5.0 \ scripts. [Maya 6] • Plugin: C: \ Programs \ Alias \ Maya6.0 \ bin \ plugins • Scripts: C: \ Documents and Settings \ username \ My Documents \ maya \ 6.0 \ scripts [Maya 6.5] • Plugin: C: \ Programs \ Alias \ Maya6.5 \ bin \ plugins • Scripts: C: \ Documents and Settings \ username \ My Documents \ maya \ 6.5 \ scripts [Maya 7] • Plugin: C: \ Progr
6. Tips and Tricks • A very helpful function can be found in BodyPaint 3D’s preferences (Ctrl+E). In the BodyPaint menu you will find the function Project On Invisible Parts. Which, when activated, can make your work a lot easier. Let’s assume you want to color the arm of a figure or sprinkle color on the entire figure. You would have to apply the color with this function deactivated, rotate the arm, apply the color, rotate the arm and, well, you get the idea.
Here the same rule applies for best results: Try it, don’t just study it! Standalone Part 1 23
BodyPaint 3D R18 Standalone Part 2 Additional functions 1. Introduction The purchase of BodyPaint 3D R18 Standalone lets you do more than just paint objects. With it you can also model, texture, animate and set lights. We will explain a few of these core functionalities in the following tutorials. No matter if you work in the field of print, advertising, design, visualization or film, BodyPaint 3D gives you all the tools you need to make your ideas reality.
The primitives are located in the Primitives command group. It contains all of BodyPaint 3D’s available predefined parametric objects. One click and the world’s most used object is created – the cube. Click and hold to see all available parametric objects. This is where you choose the initial shape you will need.
If a polygon object is a Child object of a Subdivision Surface object its polygon wireframe (mesh) will be subdivided to a higher degree. If an object is made a Child of a Subdivision Surface object its subdivisions will be increased virtually, which will give the object a softer look. As you can see in the next screen shot: The outer mesh (light blue) shows the polygon cube’s actual subdivision. The finer inner mesh (blue) shows the subdivision of the Subdivision Surface object.
© Bill Ledger – ToyBox Animation Sample Images 27
© Kevin Capizzi © Anders Kjellberg – www.dogday-design.
© Anders Kjellberg – www.dogday-design.
3. Quick Tutorial: Materials A well-modeled object can make a mediocre impression if the right textures aren’t used. Textures give a model color, highlights, structure and other important surface properties. A texture placed into the bump channel, for example, gives the object’s surface an uneven, bumpy look without actually altering the geometric structure. This effect can be used to imitate skin wrinkles, scars or the surface of an orange.
We will now create our own material. Open the QS_Material.c4d file. You can see in the Object Manager to the right that the object does not yet have a texture applied to it. Click on file/new material in the Material Manager at the lower left. A standard material has been created. If you click on this material its properties will be made visible in the Attributes Manager to the right. In the Basic menu you can determine which channels should be activated for this material.
Click on the material in the Material Manager with the left mouse button and drag it onto the object eyeball in the Object Manager. (When you drag the material over the object you can let go once the little white arrow points down). Alternatively you can drag the material onto the desired object (the eyeball) directly in the Editor. Just make sure you drop the material onto the correct object if there are several in the scene or in close proximity to one another.
Once you have selected it you will see its parameters in the Attributes Manager. Adopt the settings you see in the next screenshot: We have just aligned the texture on the eyeball mesh by changing the Length U and Length V parameters. The offset setting put the texture in the correct position. If you rotate your view again you will see that the iris texture is positioned correctly. Tip: If you want to undo an accidental change to the view just press Cmd+Shift+Z (Mac: Cmd+Shift+Z).
If you own Cinema 4D Visualize or Cinema 4D Studio you can render human skin, for example, very realistically using Subsurface Scattering. The shader Surface Scattering makes it possible. By placing this shader in the luminance channel (click on the small arrow next to Texture and select Subsurface Scattering from the Effects menu/Subsurface Scattering) the effect is created when rays of light meet a slightly transparent object.
Banzi: Lets you depict various types of wood. Banji: Calculates complex lighting situations with glass and even makes rear-projection (shadow casting) on partially transparent materials such as rice- or canvas paper possible.
4. Quick Tutorial: Light If you are already familiar with lighting a scene in the real world then you will feel right at home with the BodyPaint 3D light objects. They can do everything real lights can do – and quite a bit more. In this tutorial we will set up a 3-point lighting arrangement. This type of arrangement is used often in portrait photography to achieve an even lighting and is an excellent method for lighting an object quickly and professionally in the 3D world Open a new (empty) scene.
Now our light source has been transformed to a spot. A spot acts like a flashlight. BodyPaint 3D offers spots with square and round cones of light. This cone is visible in the editor and can be manipulated. Now we will aim the spot at our figure. Position the light at the following coordinates in the Attribute Manager: X= 300 Y= 580 Z= -300 at an angle of H= 45 P= -45 degrees (enter the values and click on the Apply button). Render the scene (Cmd/Ctrl + R).
The light now falls at an angle onto our object (If this is not visible in the Editor it may be due to the fact that your display mode is set to Quick Shading (uses a single default light source) instead of Gouraud Shading (uses all scene lights)). Of course the exact position of the light is strongly dependent upon the camera’s angle. Unfortunately the light is not casting a shadow, letting the figure look like it’s floating.
BodyPaint 3D offers three types of shadows: RayTraced (Hard) – a shadow with sharp edges, Shadow Maps (Soft) – a shadow with soft edges and Area – a shadow that becomes softer the further it’s away from the object, resulting in the most realistic shadow effect. Try the other two shadow types. Careful, the area shadow can take a long time to render! The larger shadow map allows the shadow to be rendered more accurately. The light’s cone is a little too small.
Now we’re happy with our key light. Next we will create a more even lighting by brightening our figure a little from the other side. Create another light source in the scene and name it “Brightener”. Place it at the following coordinates: X= -360 Y= 225 Z= -230 Select Area as the type of light. Since the brightness of the lights in the scene is additive, we must “dim“ the brightener a little. Reduce the Intensity in the General menu to 40 %.
The scene is now pretty evenly lit, but we want to give it a little more pep. Create another light source, name it Color and, in the Attributes Manager, set its type to Infinite. Set its color to turquoise and set its H angle to -160. The position of an infinite light is irrelevant since it always lights your scene in the direction of the Z axis. This is why we will leave it at the point at which it was created. It gives our Amphibian an interesting color edge and sets him off of the background a little.
5. Quick Tutorial: Rendering You’ve been a busy bee. You have created a scene, set up the lighting, animated objects and assigned materials to them. Now we want to see the result of all this work. What you have to do is to transform this 3-dimensional scene into a 2-dimensional image (in the case of an animation it would be an entire series of images). We will “render“ the images. Open the file QS_Render_01.c4d to work through the following tutorial.
The second possibility is to render only a single object. Select the object “Master” in the Object Manager. Select the command (Render/Render Active Objects). Only the selected objects will be rendered. Rendering the editor view gives us a quick overview of the scene but it does not offer the possibility to process this image further, to save it to the hard drive, for example. Select “Render”/“Render to Picture Viewer” or press Shift+R.
Of course you can also save a series of images as an animation. To do so, change the Type from Still Image to Selected Frames, and set Format to QuickTime Movie, for example. Rendering to the Picture Viewer has the additional advantage that you can continue working on your scene if the image should take a while to render. Close the picture viewer and open the Render Settings (Render/Edit Render Settings).
© Fredi Voss Standalone Part 2 45
Sculpting Welcome to the Quickstart sculpting tutorial. In this tutorial we will show you how to get started with the BodyPaint 3D sculpting tool. We will show you how to create the object in the image below. At the left is the base object. It contains practically no details and looks quite bland. On the right side is the same object after being modified using the Sculpt tools. The comprehensive toolset makes it possible to create incredibly detailed surfaces.
© Augenpulver – http://www.augenpulver-design.
Open the file ‘Sculpting_Turtle.c4d’. At the top right of your interface, select Sculpting from the Layout drop-down menu. To begin sculpting we must first select and subdivide the object. Click on the Objects tab at the right of the Object Manager. Attention: If you start with a primitive object instead, you need to convert it in a polygon object first (with the object selected press „c“ on your keyboard). Select the object ‘head’ in the Object Manager.
This will disable the wireframe display. Any brush stroke we make can be undone by simply selecting Undo. Generally speaking, a graphics tablet is better suited for sculpting than a mouse because it lets you control your strokes more precisely. We will now add a Sculpt Layer to our base object. In the Sculpting Layers tab, select Add Layer from the Layers menu. Next, select the Pull brush and switch to the Stencil tab in the Attribute Manager. Drag the texture Turtleskin.
The Stencil you just selected will appear in the Viewport. You can adjust its transparency in the Attribute-Manager as you see fit but a value of 0.5 is a good value with which to start. If the Stencil is not visible in the Viewport, enable the Visible option in the Stencil menu in the Attribute Manager. Enable the Tile X and Tile Y options in the Attribute Manager (Stencil tab). This ensures that the Stencil will be applied across the object’s entire surface. Finally, we have to adjust the Stencil’s size.
Tip: If you use a graphics tablet you can click on the fx button at the right of the Size or Pressure setting to link the respective function to the pressure-sensitive behavior of your pen. Your turtle’s head should look similar to the image below when you’re done. Leave the Stencil size as it is and zoom in on the object. Use the image below as a reference.
Reduce the brush size to 10 and paint over the lip and eye lid regions. The result should look like this: In the next step we will apply a Mask. Click on the Mask button at the bottom of the Sculpt Palette. Add a new Layer as you did before, leave the Size value set to 10 and set Pressure to 5 %. Make sure you are on Layer 2 and paint across the turtle’s neck to create a surface similar to the one in the image below.
Next, click on the Invert Mask button in the Sculpt Palette and then select the Pull brush. Set the brush’s Size to 50 and its Pressure to 5 %. Paint across the surface of the head as you did before. You will notice that only those regions not affected by the Mask are modified by the Pull brush. Smoothing tip: While smoothing the folds along the throat we don’t want the structure on Layer 1 to be affected. This can be prevented by simply hiding Layer 1 for the duration of the sculpting process.
The final result should look similar to the image below: We will apply one additional brush to complete our turtle’s head: The Knife brush. Delete the Mask by clicking on the Clear Mask button in the Sculpt Palette. Alternatively you can simply hide the Mask in the Sculpting Layers tab, which will make it available for future use. Add a new Layer and select the Knife brush. Set its Pressure to 10 % and its Pinch value to 0.25.
This completes our turtle’s sculpted head! Baking an object that contains objects with millions of polygons can reduce the number of polygons to a manageable amount and will produce exactly the same result for rendering! Baking generates Displacement and Normal textures that, simply put, subdivides the geometry during rendering and lets you work with low-res objects in the Viewport while maintaining filigree details for rendering. Baking will not affect the sculpted surfaces.
© Kornel Ravadits © Simon Hellwig 56 © Kevin Capizzi Sample Images
© Toni Ramon Sanchez © Josh Grundmeier – www.fuseanimation.
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