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Home > Blogs > Taking it to the Max! > Sneak Peek: Viewport Canvas

Sneak Peek: Viewport Canvas

Posted by Shane Griffith, 18 February 2010 12:00 am

Did you know that 3ds Max 2010 has a 3d texture painting tool set called Viewport Canvas? Well it's about to get even better!

We now have an interactive painting prototype that can do both 2d and 3d texture painting out-of-the-box. The goal is to allow quick editing of existing material shaders by layering on dirt and grime in a non-destructive manner. You could even use Viewport Canvas as a non-destructive markup tool for art reviews. Plus with a familiar workflow for layers, brushes, and transfer modes there is very little learning curve.

Here’s a short glimpse at some of the tools in action and a few quotes from our beta testers...

 "Viewport Canvas has changed the way I approach a project, giving me more control over the final product."

"Our texturing artists are now enjoying analogous layer based painting workflow between 2D painting software and the improved viewport canvas tool."

 

 

15 Comments

maxer

Posted 18 February 2010 5:30 pm

honestly lots of artist were expecting to see that in mudbox . maybe new mudbox will be mostly focused on sculpting tools and max will close the painting gap with those improvements such as artisan tools in maya . ( i suspect that artisan tools will have some improvements in 2011 too )

thanks for posting the video

Eugenio jr.

Posted 18 February 2010 6:10 pm

To say that viewport canvas got EVEN better than the one in max 2010 is not something to be really proud of to be honest. But this is great anyway, the improvements seems really strong compared to what we have.

This tool is very useful and has lots of room in usefulness and improvements. I hope it just get's better and better and not something that ends up being like Reactor.

And max needs a better unwrapping method, an LSCM method like most programs, much faster and easier than Pelt.

Shane Griffith

Posted 18 February 2010 6:12 pm

Our focus is to improve the ability to edit and modify textures directly in context of your other scene elements. I think Mudbox can offer a superior workflow to the authoring aspects of textures.

Dnashj33

Posted 18 February 2010 8:59 pm

I like the fact that Polyboost/Graphite tools are continuing to be improved upon significantly. That seems to be a departure from past practices, where AD acquires the company/developer and yet you STILL see no major improvements years later...if Character Studio was still a plugin, it would be far ahead of where it is today. No doubt about it. I'm concerned that since the developer of CAT neither works for Softimage nor AD, that the same treatment will occur with it.

AD seems to buy a plugin to integrate, then kills it's development....much like they've killed the development of Combustion...a sweet compositor, and they decide to let it rot.

Shane Griffith

Posted 18 February 2010 9:02 pm

we have people still working on CAT and although Phil has left, his brother Stephen is still here so we also have deep knowledge of the CAT core.

Dnashj33

Posted 19 February 2010 12:03 am

That's great to hear, and I really like where things are going with the Polyboost/Graphite tools...especially the Viewport Canvas. It seemed to be more of a novelty previously, and I never even bothered to use it...but I will definitely give it a run now that it's included more Photoshop-esque enhancements.

I sure hope AD keeps Carl-Michael onboard for a good long time. His Polyboost updates always amazed me.

Dnashj33

Posted 19 February 2010 4:32 am

So, collapse it...I happen to think the Max 2010 UI looks great. Much more modern than what I see in Maya for example (which I would expect to see some changes there soon too). I think the Ribbon will be improved upon...but you can collapse it anytime you want, so why all the fussing?

MatthiasGose

Posted 19 February 2010 11:46 am

Awesome. Up to now I used CS 4 Extended due the limited functions for viewport canvas. But this will change. Really nice and useful

Regards

MattWC

Posted 22 February 2010 9:31 pm

All this tool really needs now is projection painting and than goodbye Bodypaint.

Shane Griffith

Posted 27 February 2010 4:39 am

yes it's full 3d paint if I'm understanding what you are asking YiannisK

YiannisK

Posted 27 February 2010 5:49 am

That sounds awesome! Thank you!
And we can freely move around our object while painting?

Shane Griffith

Posted 27 February 2010 6:04 am

yes

Shane Griffith

Posted 27 February 2010 7:12 am

just for you YiannisK http://area.autodesk.com/blogs/shane/sneak_peek_viewport_canvas_part_2

YiannisK

Posted 27 February 2010 10:10 pm

oh thank you so very much you guys are doing a great job!

Wobi

Posted 1 March 2010 11:11 am

Is it still disabling gamma correction in the preferences? I mean, if I use the viewport canvas, it turns off gamma correction in the preferences and doesn't turn it on when closing the tool, which is a bit... ehm... stupid?!?

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