Figure 26. Painting

There is no painting within CySlice itself; what the 3D Paint tool does is provides an interface between CySlice and 2D paint programs. The only requirement is that the paint application can read and write TIFF formatted image files.

In this description GIMP, a free multi-platform application (see www.gimp.org), is used as the external 2D paintbox. Commercial products, such as Photoshop, would work just as well.

The painting process is quite simple:

Figure 27. Step 1: Select View

(1)

Select a view of the polymesh that you would like to paint. In this situation an Ortho projection may be better than Persp as parts of the polymesh further from the camera will be given the same pixel coverage as closer parts. Also consider hiding parts of the polymesh that you don't want to paint. Say you have a whole creature, but only wanted to paint the head, hide the rest of the body. This will speed up the color export and import process.

Figure 28. Step 2: Extract Color

(2)

Click the Extract button. This writes the color and surface shading into two separate files; by default, out.p9999.tif and out.s9999.tif. To change the filename prefix edit the Name field. To change the save directory, click on the right arrow after the Name field. The left side of Figure 28 shows the extracted color, a blank canvas because Clear was used before painting, and the right side is the surface shading.

Figure 29. Step 3: Load Images

(3)

If your paintbox supports layers then load the color file as the background plate, and the shading image as a multiplying overlay (see Figure 30). The shading information can then be switched on and off by showing or hiding the top layer. If your paintbox doesn't support layers, then all you can do is load the color image. Consider using Recolor before you start painting to get some idea of the location of surface features.