Project a sketch for fast design label mapping

This section will cover how to use sketch projection for texture mapping a typical product design. In the past, texture map placement across multiple trimmed surface was challenging, but this is now much easier with current sketch projection techniques.

This example image use sketch projection for the small PDA button icons, PDA display, and red sketch. The scene is rendered using Alias RayTracing.

Use a texture brush with a fine plastic grain to texture paint the first layer.
In this example, the texture brush is a little too dark; to lighten it, open the Canvas Layer Editor (Windows > Editors > Canvas Layer Editor)and make this layer semi-transparent by changing the value.
Create curves to define the design primary design components. In this example, we have assigned these curves to a 3D layer and made this layer symmetric.
Create more curves that define the icons and create paint shapes from these curves or import standard company graphics.
Import a graphic design page for the PDA screen.

Next, clean up the appearance of the gray base plastic layer. We could use a mask layer and delete the plastic outside the main PDA body, but in this case, we will use an invisibility mask shape to hide the paint on this layer.

Make sure the current layer is the plastic body layer that was painted with the texture brush.
Choose Paint > Shape > Make Invisibility Mask Shape. You are prompted to select the curves, then click Accept.
The image below shows how the invisibility mask shape has hidden the paint inside the curves.
In this example, this is not what we want, so choose Edit > Invert Layer in the Canvas Layer Editor.

The image above shows how the plastic paint layer now only shows paint defined by the invisibility mask shape. The advantage to this workflow is the paint will be automatically hidden or shown as the curves are modified. If we had used a mask layer and erased the paint with a brush, it would require a significant amount of work to repair the layer.

Develop a surface for the model

Create two curves to define the top surface of the PDA.
Extrude a surface along these curves highlighted in red.

You now have built the primary surface for the PDA top.
In the Top window, choose Surface Edit > Create CurvesOnSurface > Project to create curves on surface.
Use Surface Edit > Trim > Trim Surface to cut away the top surface and discard the outer edges.

Project painted details on a simple model

From the Top view, we can quickly project paint onto the top surface.

Select the surface you want to project paint onto.
Open the option windows for Canvas > Project Sketch. This tool supports projection of paint from a number of views and onto active or all surfaces.
Change windows to the Perspective view and open WindowDisplay > Hardware Shade to toggle shade on.

Hardware Shade has been dramatically enhanced in terms of texture quality, speed and the ability to support layered shaders with transparency.
Turn on Layered Shader. By default, layered shaders is turned off because it is more expensive to calculate multiple levels of shading per pixel. But on most modern machines with up-to-date graphics cards, the extra calculations should have little impact.
Tumble the scene in real time to view this very simple concept surface.
At this stage you can reposition the graphics, then update the sketch projection either using the menu in the canvas layer editor or by repeating the sketch render process.