Paint mode: Paint absolute depth / replace depth

[Johann]

Hi everyone!

I must be missing something here, but i have read the manual and searched the forum without any result.

Basically, in paint mode i want the brush to replace the depth with an absolute value.

As an example, when i paint with 100% specular, and paint over with 20%, the absolute value of 20% will be set where i paint.

If i paint the depth channel, the depth will always be added or, when "Additive Painting" is off, the maximum depth is chosen. There is however no option to replace the depth with the current depth in the brush. That way i would have to erase the depth first, then paint again. This can't be the way to go, right?

Thanks in advance for any help

Johann

[Psmith]

Sounds like a good feature suggestion. I'll log it for you.

Greg Smith

[simmsimaging]

Sounds like a good feature suggestion. I'll log it for you.

Greg Smith

I have asked about this before. Basically you need to be able to paint with white, or some other colour in the depth channel (or spec for that matter). It's not supported and I don't think I received any indications of whether or not it ever would be. Hopefully you can drum up some interest in it, as it's a major gap in the workflow IMO.

/b

[philnolan3d]

I may be misunderstanding but if you want to change the depth by a certain percent you can do so by adjusting it on the Layers panel.

[Johann]

I may be misunderstanding but if you want to change the depth by a certain percent you can do so by adjusting it on the Layers panel.

Thanks for logging that Greg!

philnolan3d, I don't want to change the depth. I want to draw with brush one, and when I draw with brush two, I want it to completely replace what is under the cursor, be it color, specular or depth. As an example, I draw with a very height-intensive stone brush on a terrain. Then I want to paint grass, completely removing the stone's color, specularity and height. What happens right now is that the depth of both brushes gets mixed together, resulting in a mixture of (in this example) stone and grass - or if the stone's depth value is too high, no grass at all.

As a result, brushes with a very high depth value always paint over others with a low one. I want the ability to completely replace the other brush.

Cheers

Johann

[philnolan3d]

I see, I understand now.

[Johann]

I have asked about this before. Basically you need to be able to paint with white, or some other colour in the depth channel (or spec for that matter). It's not supported and I don't think I received any indications of whether or not it ever would be. Hopefully you can drum up some interest in it, as it's a major gap in the workflow IMO.

/b

To answer my own post here, one may specify an erase mask with a brush. This is documented in the manual and I was dumb enough not to notice it. Once done the erase mask does just what I want. It works both in "normal" and mask/material mode. In most cases, brush alpha = erase mask will do the job. To the developer: It would be very good to include erase masks for the default brushes. There is still the "skip eraser" checkbox if one did not want that behavior. It would also make sense to create an erase mask when loading obj files into brushes.