GPU Texturing

Introduction

3DCoat offers a robust, industry-leading toolset for 3D texturing, primarily utilizing a Physically Based Rendering (PBR) workflow. Whether you are creating hand-painted stylized assets or hyper-realistic surfaces with complex material properties, the Paint Room and the Node System provide all the necessary tools to achieve your artistic vision.

Unlike traditional 2D image editors where you paint on flat UV layouts, 3DCoat allows you to paint directly onto the 3D model, eliminating seams and distortions.

Texturing Approaches

3DCoat supports several texturing paradigms depending on your project needs:

1. Per-Pixel Painting: The standard and most common approach. You paint directly onto the texture pixels mapped to the object’s UVs. It is fast, efficient, and supports high-resolution textures.
2. Microvertex Painting: A unique 3DCoat feature that allows you to paint depth/displacement directly onto a highly tessellated mesh without UVs. It is excellent for sketching details that will later be baked down to a low-poly mesh.
3. PTex (Per-Face Texturing): A UV-less texturing method where each polygon gets its own texture space, useful for film and rendering pipelines.

The PBR Workflow

The texturing engine in 3DCoat is built around the Physically Based Rendering standard. When painting, you are simultaneously modifying multiple material channels:

• Albedo (Color): The base color of the surface without lighting information.
• Depth (Displacement/Normal): The physical relief and bumps of the surface.
• Glossiness (Roughness): How sharp or blurry reflections are.
• Metalness: Defines whether a surface is an insulator (dielectric) or a conductor (metal).

You can paint all these channels simultaneously with a single brush stroke.

Smart Materials

Smart Materials are a core feature of 3DCoat’s texturing workflow. They are complex, multi-layered presets that automatically adapt to the underlying geometry of your model.

• Geometry Awareness: Smart Materials calculate where edges, cavities, and occluded areas are. For example, a “Rust” material will naturally accumulate in crevices, while an “Edge Wear” material will scratch the exposed corners.
• Procedural vs Raster: Classic Smart Materials use a combination of raster textures and mathematical masking. However, 3DCoat now features entirely procedural Node-Based Smart Materials (see NGMaterials), which are resolution-independent.

Layers and Blending

3DCoat uses a non-destructive layer system similar to Photoshop, but extended for 3D:

• Each layer contains data for Color, Depth, Gloss, and Metalness.
• Layers support various blending modes (Multiply, Overlay, Screen, etc.) and opacity controls for each channel independently.
• You can use layer masks, clipping masks, and group folders to organize complex textures.

Advanced Texturing with the Node System

For maximum control and non-destructive workflows, 3DCoat includes a powerful visual Node Editor. Instead of painting pixels destructively, you can build materials, masks, and filters mathematically.

• Procedural Masks: Create complex, adaptable masks based on geometry without baking textures.
• Procedural Materials: Build infinite variations of materials that never pixelate.
• Global Index: Learn more about the procedural texturing capabilities in the Node System documentation.

Stencils and Projection

To add specific details like logos, decals, or complex photo-textures, you can use Stencils.

• Screen Projection: Project an image directly onto the model from the camera’s perspective.
• Splines: Paint continuous strokes along a path.
• Brush Alphas: Change the shape of your brush tip to stamp details like bolts, pores, or scales.

Exporting

Once texturing is complete, 3DCoat provides a flexible export dialogue to send your textures to other software. It includes presets for popular game engines (Unreal Engine, Unity) and renderers (Blender, Maya, V-Ray), automatically packing the PBR channels into the correct texture maps.