CompuServe Messages

Dear Painter Users! This is a document describing one of the new capabilities of our upcoming upgrade to Painter X2, which we lovingly have code-named Painter X3. I'll be uploading other feature peeks as time goes on… This isn't the only new feature! Just one of the many ground-breaking new ideas we're known for. Also: no questions about ship dates, please. This may get a bit technical for some, but it's worth looking at! Painting onto 3D objects. The object is to be able to visualize the 3D object on screen and adjust the surface color using any and all of Painter's brushes. This exacting approach is the only way to get a real quality 3D rendering. Without good texture maps, 3D objects don't look real. They look like that ferocious baby in "Tin Toy". You know what I mean, 3D enthusiasts! Also, we're talking *fast* painting onto the surface of a 3D object. Almost as fast as regular Painter brushes. Can you imagine painting pointillist color onto an object, or using liquid brushes on a "glaze" on a vase that you're working on? Painter will let you do it! Model Import These objects will be importable in two ways (1) from DXF or a private facet file format, and (2) as a G-buffer. Facet file format will include three or four vertices per facet (if planar). Each vertex can have a normal vector (for phong-style shading) and an optional texture map coordinate (for vertex mapping, which is necessary when objects stretch or deform and the texture must stay put). Objects have diffuse and specular qualities about them, so an object can be soft looking (like a superball) or shiny looking (like a billiard ball). Objects don't have to be closed. Object color comes entirely from a texture map. Cylindrical, cubic, and pass-through mappings are all supported. We will support painting onto a number of objects (up to 256 in the scene). Up to 256 texture maps per scene. Up to 256 photometries per scene. No limit on the number of facets in the file. I have imported 1,000,000 facet scenes into Painter and they work (rendering takes some time, proportional to the amount of the screen covered by the facets, and affected a little by the number of facets). On the other hand, a 1,500 facet vase looked perfectly smooth due to the Phong shading we employ and took a few seconds to import.