3d painting in CS4 ... where is which texture saved ??

[mom...@adobeforums.com]

Hi

I'll try to explain it:

with a 3d model loaded in ps cs4 i go to the material in question and "load" an existing image as the texture. lets call it "head_texture". so far so good.
now when i "open" that texture, i an see it in 2d . it is still called "head texture". also good.

now when it comes to saving the texture it is getting confusing. Because for some strange reason the loaded texture (head_texture) is NOT the original file (head_texture) anymore, but gets saved in some temp location.

First problem: it is not visible to me as a user which of the now two versions of my "head_texture" i am really painting on.

So here's my question, is there a way of making cs4 use the actually loaded texture file instead of some instance which it seems to be creating?
I couldn't find any setting where I could define it.

Just to add to the confusion, ps4 seems to be behaving differently when a new texture is being created from scratch instead of loading an existing one.

well, head scratching issues... if anyboyd could shed some light to this, i still want to believe i am just missing something basic.

thanks in advance

[Wade_Zi...@adobeforums.com]

I think the way it works is that it never actually touches the original and I would not try to go outside the painting procedure, the texture is essentially a smart object. Leave it be.

Or put in a feature request explaining why you need this!

[mom...@adobeforums.com]

I think you are right Wade. Seems to be "hard coded" in a certain way. And I am sure there are some reasons to it.
The reason I was thinking of this is because I spent more time in the 2d world then actually painting on the model itself. And to do so I don't want to have all the overhead of a 3d model and shading engine if I don't use it.
It's just very easy to get confused about which version of the texture is attached to the 3d model.
no big problem, just something I'd think could be improved, work flow wise.

But I think I'll adapt to the work flow ps dictates.

it's neat though. Running it on my mac book pro and it works reasonably well I must say.

[Wade_Zi...@adobeforums.com]

Well you can paint directly to the Model, there are different painting modes you can select and some make it easier for you to see, why not take a look at the tutorials and if you don't see it I can try to put together one myself.

[Patrick...@adobeforums.com]

Hey, does anyone know why, when I try to paint on a 3D object with white, it doesn't show up...or the colour white is transparent?

[steve_g...@adobeforums.com]

Hi Patrick,

Can you post the PSD file somewhere?

[steve_g...@adobeforums.com]

hi momweb,

The texture maps get loaded into a 3D layer as embedded files. Photoshop generally doesn't have the UI to work with linked files. When you open a texture from a 3D layer and save, it only updates the embedded file. If you want your edits to propagate to the original reference file, you have to Save As... and overwrite the file.

If you want to edit the original reference file outside of the 3D layer workflow, and only occasionally see the result, you can set up an action that loads the texture map. This might be useful if you are not the only one working on the texture file. Or if the 3D file has a few materials, and a few people are working on various parts this might also help manage the project.