Introducing Texture Painting

In this chapter, we will introduce Blender’s powerful and versatile Texture Paint feature. We will learn to use the texture painting workspace and tools, creating our own custom brushes and textures. By the end of this chapter, you will be ready to start texture painting independently and greatly improve your textures and materials.

The following topics will be covered in this chapter:

• Understanding the basics of texture painting
• Improving edges with texture painting
• Creating custom brushes in GIMP
• Creating a bullet hole decal
• Using stencils in Blender

Understanding the basics of texture painting

Texture painting is the process of using brushes and digital painting tools to create custom textures, patterns, shapes, and details on image textures. We will now learn how to prepare a model for texture painting and how to use the basic Texture Paint interface.

First, let’s select the Texture Paint workspace at the top of the screen:

Figure 9.1 – Switching to the Texture Paint workspace

In the Texture Paint workspace, we have the Image Editor window on the left, and the 3D Viewport window on the right. In the Image Editor, there are some extra tools available because we are in Paint Mode, as shown in Figure 9.2. We can also see the UV map of the default cube in the Image Editor:

Figure 9.2 – The Texture Paint workspace

In the 3D Viewport, we also have some extra tools because we are in Texture Paint mode, as shown in Figure 9.3. We can easily switch between...

Improving edges with texture painting

We will now learn how to use texture painting to improve our material by painting over its edges. We will use a simple cube to demonstrate this technique, but you can apply it to any model or texture. In the following steps, we will shade the edges of our cube:

1. First, add some loop cuts near the edges and smooth shading to the cube to make the edges appear smoother, as shown in Figure 9.10.

Figure 9.10 – Smoothing the edges

The loop cuts will automatically be added to the UV map.

2. Open the Color menu in the Image Editor and select the Eyedropper tool, as shown in Figure 9.11.

Figure 9.11 – Picking a color with the Eyedropper tool

Then, click on the dark image texture to copy its color.

3. Increase the Value setting by approximately 0.015, as shown in Figure 9.12.

   This slight increase in brightness will allow us to lightly shade the edges.

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Creating custom brushes in GIMP

We will now learn to create and import into Blender our own custom-made brushes and stencils. This will allow us to texture-paint more realistic and detailed shapes and patterns onto objects. In the following steps, we will draw a brush in GIMP and load it into Blender:

1. Open GIMP and create a new image with Ctrl + N. Set the resolution of the new image to 256 x 256, and click OK.

Figure 9.17 – Generating a new image in GIMP

2. In the Layer menu at the top of the screen, open the Transparency section and click on Add Alpha Channel.

   This will allow us to create a transparent background for this image.

Figure 9.18 – Adding an alpha channel to the image

3. Select the entire image with Ctrl + A, and press Delete.

   This will make the entire image transparent. We now have a background for our brush. Anything we paint over this will be the shape of the brush.

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Creating a bullet hole decal

Decals are images with transparent backgrounds that can be painted onto a texture to look like a sticker. When painting decals, it is useful to have a reference image of what we try to paint. This will help us accurately recreate a shape as a decal.

In the following steps, we will use GIMP to create a bullet hole decal, which we can then texture-paint on any other texture:

1. Open GIMP and create a new image with Shift + N. Set the size to 512 x 512.

Figure 9.27 – Creating a new 512 x 512 image

2. Add an alpha channel using the Layer menu.

Figure 9.28 – Adding an alpha channel to the image

3. Delete the background, set the brush color to gray, and set a large brush size with a diameter of approximately half the width of the canvas, by pressing Ctrl + Alt and scrolling up. This brush will be used to create the shape of the bullet hole.

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Using stencils in Blender

We will now learn how to use the stencil texture painting feature in Blender. This allows us to add custom decals to our textures. In the following steps, we will use the bullet hole decal as a stencil in Blender, by importing from the bullet hole decal that we just created in GIMP:

1. In Blender, create a new texture slot and load the bullet hole decal, as shown in Figure 9.36.

Figure 9.36 – Loading the bullet hole decal in Blender

2. Next, select the bullet hole decal in the Texture section of the Image Editor toolbar, and set Mapping to Stencil.

Figure 9.37 – Using the bullet hole as a stencil

This will load the bullet hole decal in the lower-left corner of the 3D View. We can move this image around by right-clicking on it and dragging it.

Figure 9.38 – The stencil visible in 3D View

If you hold Shift and then click and drag the...

Summary

In this chapter, we learned how to use the fundamental texture painting functions and how to create custom brushes and custom decals. This allows us to create custom texture details and improve the look of our models. We also learned how to paint decals onto a surface using the stencil painting feature, which will give us the freedom to add lots of custom details to our models and textures.

In the next chapter, we will exercise the texturing skills that we have learned so far by creating and applying multiple textures to a model, turning it from a plain clay object into a photorealistic asset.