How do you paint with accurate distances?

[dgoyette]

I'd like to know how people go about painting things with recurring, regular repetitions. Let's say, for example, I want a row of screws along the edge of a surface. I want them evenly spaced. Other than eyeballing it, are there any tools I can use to snap or align things?

The only technique I know of is to set the Spacing of a brush, and to fiddle with it until I get something that's kind of correct. But this involves eyeballing the spacing, and eyeballing the starting point so that it starts and ends at the right spot. This feels really sloppy.

A specific example I'm working with now feels like it should be really simple: A 1-meter long panel, where I want 4 bolts, evenly spaced, at the .125, .375, .625 and .875 marks. (So, it's like dividing the panel into quarters, and putting a bolt in the middle of each quarter.) I've tried using a stencil, but that's more eyeballing. What can I do better?

Thanks.

[CAGameDEV]

I only know of the following:

1. You either add in a mesh with your import that acts as a ruler (Just make sure it has a different mat ID and will not effect your main mesh).
2. You can make those sections their own UV islands so you'll be able to easily separate them off during texturing.

Other than that you'll have to work with whatever tools are provided through the brushes in Painter.

[dgoyette]

Those are actually both things I've done, and they both seemed to ridiculous to me that I assumed there had to be a better approach that "real" artists use for this sort of thing. In that past, I've added more detail to the model to make it easier to paint it the way I wanted, but that seems really bad. For example, suppose the model will wear a striped shirt, and my approach is to model the stripes as individual quads just to make painting easier, that can't be right.

[CAGameDEV]

Those are actually both things I've done, and they both seemed to ridiculous to me that I assumed there had to be a better approach that "real" artists use for this sort of thing. In that past, I've added more detail to the model to make it easier to paint it the way I wanted, but that seems really bad. For example, suppose the model will wear a striped shirt, and my approach is to model the stripes as individual quads just to make painting easier, that can't be right.

Well I don't know of any other way.... Some people will export their UV maps as a secondary texture file to put marks as well then on another layer paint.

I've worked on machinery and clothing with accuracy and never had any issues.

Your shirt example isn't really accurate because normally the UVs would be flat and straight making it extremely easy to paint stripes. I wouldn't paint such things within 3D space, and if I was I would make the masks in 2D space first. If within Painter than I would work on the UV side not the 3D side, but personally I would export the UVs to Photoshop or something similar and make a flat and more accurate version then import back into Painter as a layer.

EDIT: I almost forgot, why not make a 2D image with accurate spacing then project it onto the mesh to mask or mark the area for the spots you want? I've done this when I needed accurate spacing for text.

[dgoyette]

EDIT: I almost forgot, why not make a 2D image with accurate spacing then project it onto the mesh to mask or mark the area for the spots you want? I've done this when I needed accurate spacing for text.

That sounds promising. So, creating a throw-away layer to which I can add a regular grid texture (or something like that) which I hide when I don't need it.