Paint directly on the model

chriswrcg

I am currently using photoshop and the models texture and image maps to paint canges that I want to show on the model.  I then use the layered image editor to apply the color overlays and what not.  The issue is that the texture map is sometimes hard to read and get the change right were you want it.  This can lead to hours of chang image, open layered image editor, apply change, see result, repeat until right.  Is there a way to "paint" directly on the model in the preview window so you can get the change right where you want it and see the change in real time?

FenixPhoenix

Substance Painter is the program I used and I really like it. Since you're familiar with photoshop, I think Substance Painter (once you understand the UI) becomes very intuitive (that has been my experience at any rate). Adobe recently also bought Substance, so it's become a subscription program. However, Steam has a perpetual license for sale.

margrave

Blender also has texture painting capabilities. While you can't paint full PBR materials at once like other painting programs, you can create black and white maps to use as opacity masks for PBR materials very easily, once you understand the UI.

Catherine3678ab

There's 3DCoatTextura :-)

MimicMolly

I use the old 3DCoat 4.9. My problem is that it saves out too many maps. But I can always combine them in GIMP.

Before I got 3DCoat, I used Sculptris and a single tile UV map. (A user called Ghastly made one for Genesis 1. Another user called InTheFlesh has made some for G8M and G8F in their developer kit. Both of these freebies can be found on ShareCG. You would need to use Map Transfer though because these UVs aren't like the default UVs since they're laid out differently.) What I painted with Sculptris was a very low resolution 2048x2048 pixels at most but good enough to serve as a guide.

With Substance Painter and 3DCoatTextura, you can paint the figure using whatever UV you exported the figure with. (You don't have to look for a single UV map and use Map Transfer, when using this method.)

ShelLuser

ZBrush for me, once you got into polypainting it's really hard to go back to something else. So basically I can bring in the 3D model, ensure that ZBrush is set up for the right UV map I want to use and then...  I just paint directly onto the 3D mesh and generate my texture ('textured uv map'? ;)) straight from my painting efforts.

Fair note: editing skins for Daz Studio models (so: bringing those into ZBrush) can become a bit tricky (hardly impossible though) because Daz uses textures on a per-surface basis and you need to do a bit of trickery to get that working with ZBrush. But yah...  I'm biased as heck, obviously, but to me this is the ideal method. Also because this also allows me to apply changes to the mesh if needed as well.