Working With Alpha Brushes in Textura - Help?

[Silversurfer1221]

Hello. I have several alpha brushes for things like cracks and peeling paint that I want to use for texturing a game model. The alphas work great for adding depth. However, what I want to find out is if I can use the alpha brushes to add color to some areas. For example, let's say I have an alpha of peeling paint. The peeling part should be the same color as the painted wall and this currently works fine. But the 'exposed' part where the peel is peeling back ... I'd like that area to look like the wall beneath the paint. How would I set up a brush to do this? Any pointers would be much appreciated.

Thanks in advance.

[digman]

One method: 

Showing just the method, not trying to create peeling paint. Only pointing out that the groves do not get overpainted.

I applied depth to the model, then created the curvature map under the Edit menu.

I used a smart material, but this can be hand done by use of "Alphas" too. In the upper tool panel I limited the area that it would be applied to. There is a drop-down list that shows various ways of limiting your alphas or smart material.

In the image marked by red you will see I selected "More on Convex". Plus to the right are settings you can adjust.

The groves, but your case the wall would not get painted as the peeling paint should have a higher depth than the wall.

Hopes this helps some. I do not use Textura but should work there as well.  

There are other methods but check the above out.

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There is the use of true black and white masking and the older clip mask as well but I do not know what is in Textura. Black and white masking was added to the 2024 versions of 3DCoat and you can check Textura if you have the 2024 version. 

Also, the ability to freeze painted pixels.  Your wall color layer could be frozen etc.

[Silversurfer1221]

Thanks for trying to help, but I am not getting this to work with a brush (not filling a layer). What I want to do is create a brush that uses an alpha and that alpha will determine depth (the cracks and peeling paint, etc.) and in the cracks or area revealed by the paint peeling, there be the color of the 'wall' beneath the paint. So, for that area that represents the wall behind the paint, color would be applied, but not for the areas of the peeled paint, etc.

For example, here's some of my alpha brushes:

When I apply one to a surface, I get something like this (ignore the material under it as this is just a test):

The raised area is taking the color (purple) from my foreground color. If I change to other modes (more on convex, etc.), then the alpha when stamped/brushed either shows no color at all, barely any depth, or nothing. What I can't figure out is how to get the center area to be a color or material. So, how would I get this to not show the foreground color at all and fill the interior area with a color or material of my choice? 

Thanks again, by the way. I do appreciate it.

 

[Silversurfer1221]

Also, when I select a brush, I get this panel out to the side:

It gives me things like Color, Alpha, Depth, etc. Is there a way to access these to alter them? Or do I create them outside of 3D Coat/Textura (such as in Photoshop) and import as a brush? In other words, is my solution to alter the alpha/brush itself?

In a program like Substance Painter, it's actually pretty easy to set this sort of thing up, but I have no clue (yet) how to do this in Textura. And, frankly, I like Textura a heck of a lot better than Substance.

[Carlosan]

Hi

Hope this help

3DC documentation: create brushes 

If you need to edit any already create alpha, on Brush Panel press RMB over the brush to edit it on the external editor.  

The order of these Layers in the external editor is important.

They are: 
Color: This contains the Brush color as well as its corresponding Transparency mask. This mask affects the Glossiness Layer, as well. 
Height/Depth: image-based painting affects displacement for sculpting and height/depth. The “zero” height of this Layer corresponds to “middle gray” or (127, 127, 127). Darker values corresponding to the concave areas will create valleys, and lighter values corresponding to convex areas will create peaks. 
Specular: White represents maximum Specular. Black represents absolutely no Specular, with shades of gray representing intermediate values. The Color layer of the Alpha’s alpha transparency also determines where Specular painting occurs. 
Erase Mask: This layer is used to create alphas that ignore certain values in other layers while painting. Remember that this mask affects the lowest Layer in the list and is active when you erase painted areas using Ctrl+Shift.

[Silversurfer1221]

Thanks. I was working with this last night, but ran into an issue. If I save out a PSD of the alpha via RMB and then import the texture right back in, I get severe banding:

The left-side one is the original alpha. The right-side one is the alpha, saved out as a PSD, unedited, but brought right back into Textura as a texture. So, this means I did nothing to it (didn't edit in any software) and I get this banding. I noticed this first because I had edited one and got the banding and thought it came from the software I had used to edit. So, I did a test with saving out the alpha as PSD and then bringing it right back into Textura and still got the banding. Therefore, it looks like the banding is being caused by Textura when it saves out the PSD.

[Carlosan]

At some point the psd lowered the resolution

Try working on 16bits

 

[Silversurfer1221]

All I did was save as PSD from Textura and then immediately bring that PSD back into Textura. I didn't even open the PSD in another application. To me, this means that Textura's export to PSD lowered the resolution.

Edited March 20 by Silversurfer1221

[Silversurfer1221]

I saved the alpha out from Textura as PSD. Then I opened that in Affinity Photo, ensured it as 16-bit RGB, saved it out as both a PSD and a TIFF. The PSD was a mess when brought into Textura and unusable. The TIFF was exactly the same as the 8-bit version that Textura had exported (severe banding).

[Carlosan]

I was testing Photoshop and Gimp but cant replicate this issue.

On both externals editor the export/import process look the same.

Sorry