20 - CA4S - Painting with Viewport Canvas
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Autodesk 3ds Max 2012 allows you to paint your textures directly onto models in a 3D environment using the Viewport Canvas. The Viewport Canvas works in a layer over layer manner much like other popular texture editing software applications like Photoshop and GIMP. We can create a layer, paint our texture on that layer and then add another layer of texture on top of it. The process of overlapping multiple layers of texture will allow us to develop a very nice looking texture. Keep in mind that nothing is going to beat an actual image editing program like Photoshop but using the Viewport Canvas will still yield some fairly good results.
The Skyrim engine uses DDS textures. DDS stands for Direct Draw Surface and is the Microsoft standard container format for image files. A DDS texture does not need to be reprocessed by a graphics card and can be loaded directly into the game as it is designed to do. Using DDS textures allows for textures to be loaded much more quickly as they require less processing power to prepare for display. The Viewport Canvas will allow for us to paint our texture and then output it immediately as a DDS which will save us time in the overall workflow.
We will be taking a look at the various options available to us in the Viewport Canvas. Through the use of layering we will apply multiple layers on to the texture and attempt to create a very basic texture. It is recommended that you take a little time to explore all the options within the Viewport Canvas to determine if it is the method you want to use for developing textures.
Links to Required Programs for these tutorials:
3ds Max 2012
http://students.autodesk.com/?nd=home
Nifskope Application
http://sourceforge.net/projects/nifto...
3ds Max Nifskope Plugin
http://skyrim.nexusmods.com/mods/5622
Fall Out Mod Manager
http://fallout3.nexusmods.com/mods/640/
Dimonized UNP Body
http://skyrim.nexusmods.com/mods/6709