BodyPaint 3D - Impressive Texturing and Sculpting

Wave goodbye to UV seams, inaccurate texturing and constant back-and-forth switching to your 2D image editor. Say hello to hassle-free texturing that lets you quickly paint highly detailed textures directly on your 3D objects.

BodyPaint 3D also offers a comprehensive set of sculpting tools that let you turn a simple object into a detailed work of art.

When it comes to texturing tools, BodyPaint 3D is packed with a huge array of popular image editing tools. Brushes, selection tools, filters, erasers and much more. BodyPaint 3D can even utilize Photoshop .abr brushes. Full support for tablets ensures that painting with a pen feels just as natural as it does in popular 2D image editors. And of course BodyPaint 3D can deal with image files as large as 16k and with 16-bit and 32-bit color depth.

Compared to 2D painting, perhaps the most exciting feature BodyPaint 3D offers is projection painting. This powerful mode eliminates the need to spend hours creating perfect UV maps. You simply paint what you would like to see on your 3D model, apply the projection and then BodyPaint 3D will quickly adjust your painting so it fits your UVs perfectly - even if there are differing UV sizes and seems.

BodyPaint 3D was created for all 3D artists and includes free plugins to connect with 3ds Max, Maya and Softimage. All other applications can exchange files with BodyPaint 3D using one of the numerous available file formats (e.g. OBJ, FBX or COLLADA).

Introduction

Why 2D is Not Enough – Why 2D Painting is Never Enough for 3D Textures

Textures can make or break your 3D image and experienced artists know the issues involved with creating 3D textures in a 2D application.

Immediate feedback
Graphics applications designed for 2D do not take into account your scene's lighting or the effect of different material channels. BodyPaint 3D does that and more with its unique RayBrush feature. Rather than saving, reloading and rendering textures you can paint in real-time on a rendered image and see the results of reflection, transparency, bump and more.

Tools, tools, tools
More than 200 presets put a wide array of natural media and special effects brushes within easy reach. Clone, Smear, Sponge, Dodge and Burn, Gradient, Magic Wand, transform tools and more are all available within the easy to use interface.

Distortion-free painting
No matter how hard you try - UVs will never be 100% perfect. Some parts will be slighty scaled, distored or twisted because you are trying to project a 3D object onto a 2D plane. And you have to have this in mind while painting your textures in 2D. Sometimes this produces unpredictable results. BodyPaint 3D's projection painting takes all this into account and projects your texture the way you intended it to look on the 3D object you were painting on.

32-bit color depth and HDR editing
You can paint in up to 32-bit color depth, which gives even more texture control and incredibly smooth color gradations. BodyPaint 3D also enables editing of HDR and EXR formats letting you to use these powerful formats in your 3D scenes.

Painting over multiple objects
BodyPaint 3D can paint over multiple objects using a single stroke. Projection painting allows distortion-free painting across multiple objects to eliminate seams and get the results you want - which is not possible in 2D!

Painting multiple textures at once
With BodyPaint 3D you can paint an entire material with a single stroke. Each brush can paint up to ten channels simultaneously, so a single brushstroke can affect Color, Bump, Specularity, Reflection, Transparency and other properties. There is no need to match the various channels in your 3D application.

Direct connection to your 3D application
Creating textures using 2D applications and including these in your 3D scene involves a lot of manual setup and a lot of application switching. BodyPaint 3D offers plugins to easily exchange models, textures and UVs between BodyPaint 3D and popular 3D applications like 3ds Max, Maya, Softimage and LightWave 3D.

Painting & Texturing

MAXON BodyPaint 3D's exclusive RayBrush technology allows you to paint directly onto a raytraced image.  RayBrush eliminates the need to continually switch applications or perform test renders. You can see the actual rendered effect while painting in any channel, including reflection, transparency and bump. You can even paint on multiple textures at once when in RayBrush mode. This outstanding feature takes advantage of MAXON's award-winning render engine, known for speed and quality.

With BodyPaint 3D you can paint an entire material with a single stroke. Each brush can paint up to ten channels simultaneously. A single brush stroke can be used to affect color, bump, specularity, reflection, transparency and other properties. There is no need to match the various channels in your 3D application.

Painting tools

All your favorite painting tools are available in BodyPaint 3D, including Clone, Smear, Sponge, Dodge and Burn tools. The standard brush tool includes pressure, hardness, size, bitmap, distortion, rotation, jitter and other parameters for hundreds of painting possibilities. The effect of any parameter can be controlled by the pressure, tilt, direction or finger wheel of your graphics tablet. Over 200 presets are provided with BodyPaint 3D, representing a variety of natural media and special effects.

A real highlight of BodyPaint 3D is that it now supports the .abr format for Adobe Photoshop-compatible brushes. BodyPaint 3D artists can now take advantage of vast resources available in the Photoshop community- thousands of brushes are available, many of them are free; and we've even added over 1,400 brushes to the brush preset libraries.

UV Tools

MAXON BodyPaint 3D features an arsenal of UV editing solutions that ensure your models and their materials line up properly.

Painting in 3D is governed by UVs, a set of coordinates that relate polygons to texturing areas. Properly designed UV coordinates are essential to successful painting and quality texturing in 3D. Because almost all 3D models involve contours in 3D space, standard projections like spherical and flat mapping can never provide distortion-free texturing. Each model must be set up with correctly aligned UVs prior to painting, just like taping off the trim in a room prior to painting.

Optimal Mapping and LSCM Unwrapping

BodyPaint 3D includes numerous tools that help you achieve the best UV map for each individual model. You can utilize one of three different algorithms, including Cubic Optimal Mapping, to automatically optimize your UV coordinates and remove overlapping points.

The Relax UV tool adjusts the size of UVs in relation to their corresponding polygons, and the UV Terrace tool lets you easily include additional geometry in an existing UV map. The Store and Remap UV features allow you to easily remap areas of UV coordinates to eliminate seams. Using BodyPaint 3D's powerful Interactive Mapping feature you can generate UVs based on standard projection types for different regions of a model. Of course, BodyPaint 3D also includes Move, Scale, Rotate, Shear and other tools to let you manually tweak individual UV coordinates.

The LSCM unwrapping method, which lets you unwrap a model's UVs based on defined seams, also comes in handy when working with complex shapes. Whether adjusting UVs for a low-res game model or a high-res matte painting, BodyPaint 3D provides the UV tools you can rely on when the UV mapping is not as perfect as the model you have built.

Sculpting

Organize in Layers Organize your sculpt project in layers, each with its own sculpt level, mask and strength settings. Simply click any layer to activate it and jump to the appropriate level of detail. Arrange layers in any order and even within folders, so it’s always easy to find and activate the right layer. You can freeze your sculpts at any time to release the memory being used by sculpting and view the effect of deformation on your sculpted mesh.

Integration

Perfect Combination

See how BodyPaint 3D interacts with...

New in R14

Sculpting Organic modeling is made easy with the fully-integrated Sculpting system in BodyPaint 3D Release 14. Transform any base mesh into virtual clay, shaping it with tools like Pull, Pinch, Smooth, Knife or Scrape. Advanced symmetry tools allow you to mirror a single stroke along multiple axes, and even radially. Finer details can be added using stamps and stencils, and you can apply masks to limit the sculpting to specific regions. You can even organize your sculpt project in a hierarchical layer system and modify mask and strength options for each layer. Directly texture, animate and render your sculpted mesh, or easily bake it to a low-poly mesh with displacement and normal maps.

Materials and Shaders Colors, materials and surfaces - this is where BodyPaint 3D is unbeatable and new material shaders offer creative minds even more possibilities. A new, incredibly realistic-looking wood shader and a new Normalizer shader for transferring Normal and Displacement maps have been added. The Weathering shader lets you make surfaces look aged and worn.

	Interface BodyPaint 3D is more comfortable to use than ever! Use the Commander to speed up your workflow or take advantage of the improved OpenGL viewport, which now has the ability to display soft shadows. BodyPaint 3D can also be switched to the new Arabic interface.

System Requirements

MINIMUM SYSTEM REQUIREMENTS

Windows XP, Vista or 7 running on Intel or AMD CPU with SSE2-Support; Mac OS X 10.5.8 or higher running on an Intel-based Mac; 1024 MB free RAM, DVD ROM drive. Standard DVD installation can take up to 4 GB of disk space. Software must be registered for permanent use.

Supported Operating Systems for CINEMA 4D R14 and BodyPaint 3D R14
Windows

• Windows 7 (all variations)
• Windows 7 64-bit (all variations)
• Windows Vista (all variations)
• Windows Vista 64-bit (all variations)
• Windows 2008 Server
• Windows 2008 Server 64-bit
• Windows XP (Pro / Home) Service Pack 2 & 3
• Windows XP Pro 64-bit
• Windows 2003 Server
• Windows 2003 Server 64-bit

OS X

• Apple OS X 10.7 (and up)
• Apple OS X 10.6 (and up)
• Apple Mac OS X 10.5.8 (and up)

Minimum CPU Requirements CINEMA 4D R14 and BodyPaint 3D R14

Minimum processor Windows PC

• Intel Pentium 4
• Athlon 64
• Sempron (K8 with SSE2)
• VIA C7

Minimum processor Macintosh

• Intel CoreSolo

Supported processors

• Intel Pentium M
• Intel Pentium 4
• Intel Pentium 4D
• Intel XEON
• Intel Core Solo
• Intel Core Duo
• Intel Core 2 Duo
• Intel Core 2 Quad
• Intel Core i7
• Intel Core i5
• Intel Core i3
• Intel Celeron
• Intel Celeron D
• AMD Sempron (K8/Socket 754)
• AMD Athlon 64
• AMD Opteron
• AMD Phenom

Processors not supported

• Intel Itanium
• Intel Itanium II
• Intel Pentium
• Intel Pentium II
• Intel Pentium III
• AMD K6
• AMD K7
• AMD Athlon XP/MP
• AMD Duron
• Power PC G4
• Power PC G5

A Word About Graphics Cards

In short, CINEMA 4D and BodyPaint 3D run on any OpenGL-capable graphics card (which includes the vast majority available in the past 10 years). We do however strongly recommend using a dedicated 3D graphics card with a chipset from AMD or NVIDIA. Currently, powerful graphics chips are also available on mid-range notebooks.

Always make sure to use the latest drivers (no beta versions), certified for your operating system. Newer drivers are usually faster and more stable.

If you're looking for speed comparisons, conduct a search for CINEBENCH scores on the internet.

Disclaimer: MAXON cannot be held liable for the compatibility of specific graphics cards with the Enhanced OpenGL mode. Due to the amount of possible combinations of graphic chipsets, operating systems and driver revisions, it is impossible to guarantee the operation on all systems. Also, technical specifications in MAXON products are subject to change. Please use the most current demo version of CINEMA 4D oder BodyPaint 3D to test the compatibilty on a specific system.

A Word About NVIDIA 3D Vision

If you intend to use NVIDIA's 3D Vision shutter glasses for your stereoscopic experience please note that a quad buffered graphics card is required for use in conjunction with CINEMA 4D.

A list of graphics cards that support the neccesary features can be found at NVIDIA's website:

http://www.nvidia.com/object/quadro_pro_graphics_boards.html

Supplementary Information

Reviews: http://www.maxon.net/en/news/reviews.html
Customers Stories: http://www.maxon.net/en/customer-stories.html
Videos: 

• Manufacturer’s YouTube Channel: http://www.youtube.com/MaxonC4D
• Mad Macs’ Youku Channel: http://u.youku.com/madmacs/

License Server:

For educational institutions and production facilities managing multiple licenses of CINEMA 4D and BodyPaint 3D, MAXON offers a robust license server technology that makes the management of numerous licenses and groups of licenses with various configurations a breeze.

Network administrators can define groups, assign individual licenses, and define a unique lease time for each group. This means you can allow laptop users to extend their lease for off-site work, or give a specific project group access to additional licenses. All this control means you can make more efficient use of your investment in MAXON Software.

Maxon Service Agreement:

The MAXON Service Agreement (MSA) is optionally available to MAXON customers. Participating customers are kept up-to-date with the newest releases of CINEMA 4D and/or BodyPaint 3D. As soon as a new software version is available, MSA participants will receive these automatically, allowing them to immediately take advantage of all new features and advancements.

The MAXON Service Agreement is ideal for companies working with fixed budgets - no more surprises when planning next year's expenses. In addition to the most up-to-date software version, MSA participants also receive enhanced services such as expanded use of software or discounted admission to special events, and more.

You’re on the go and don’t always work in the office? Software licenses included in the MSA can also be installed onto a second computer (e.g., a laptop for working on the go or on a computer at your home office) as long as both installations are not used simultaneously.

If you are interested in becoming a MAXON Service Agreement participant, please contact us.