Create Impressive Textures with Maxon's BodyPaint 3D

Wouldn't it be great if you could have all your favorite image editing tools in a single 3D environment? Wouldn't it be great if they worked in conjunction with your 3D application rather than against it? Well, that is exactly what BodyPaint 3D does!

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.

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. It 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, Softimage and LightWave 3D. All other applications can exchange files with BodyPaint 3D using one of the numerous available file formats (e.g. OBJ, FBX or COLLADA)

Color Profile
BodyPaint 3D now fully supports color profiles. No matter if you import an existing image to modify the texture or if you create a new image from scratch, BodyPaint 3D allows you to set color profiles for textures in 8-bit, 16-bit and 32-bit per channel color depth. And color profiles that are already embedded can be kept, changed or converted if needed of course, if needed. But it doesn't end there. Your Editor Display can also use a display color profile. Hence, if you have a calibrated monitor the color information is taken into account so you can create your texture with maximum color fidelity.

Ambient Occlusion
When texturing a 3D object it is vital to focus on the plasticity of the surface to create a realistic illusion for the structure. Sometimes the lighting can't bring out enough details and contact shadows are needed to create a vivid and convincing appearance. Ambient Occlusion is a shader that calculates contact shadows based on an object's geometry. The closer adjacent surfaces lie, the darker the shadow will appear. BodyPaint 3D R12 can now automatically create an Ambient Occlusion texture to emphasize the structures of a 3D model. Espcially with detailed models this saves a great amount of time while being extremely precise, especially when working with detailed models

BodyPaint 3D Support