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Preparing for painting

Lesson 3: Painting textures on surfaces

Painting symmetrical strokes

 

Learning Resources > Tutorials > Getting Started with Maya > Painting > Lesson 3: Painting textures on surfaces > 

Painting with an Artisan brush

In the following steps, you paint various colors on the texture you just assigned. You also change the size of the brush strokes.

There are two types of brushes you can use. The default is the Artisan brush, which you’ll use in the next steps. (Artisan refers to a group of painting tools in Maya that share common tool settings.) The other brush is based on the Paint Effects brushes; you’ll use it later in the lesson.

To paint using an Artisan brush

1. If you have a tablet and pen, you can experiment with pressure sensitivity as you paint. Open the Stylus Pressure section and turn on Stylus Pressure. (You do not need to have a tablet and pen to complete the lesson.)

   By default, when you paint with Artisan brushes, the pressure you apply to the pen affects the Opacity setting of the 3D Paint Tool. The harder you press, the more opaque the stroke.

2. In the Color section of the Tool Settings, click the box next to Color and select a color in the Color Chooser. Leave the Color Chooser open. You’ll use it in the next few steps.
3. Paint a stroke by dragging on the model.
4. Select another color from the Color Chooser and paint over your first stroke.

   The new color paints over the first color by default. Note that you can blend the colors by choosing a different Blend Mode setting, under the Paint Operations heading. You won’t blend the colors in this lesson.

5. Move the brush onto Dino, hold down the b key and drag to the left to make the brush smaller. Drag until the number at the brush icon changes to about 0.5. You don’t need to be precise.

   Use this hotkey when you need to change the brush width. To make the brush wider, drag to the right. You can also change the width by changing the Radius (U) setting.

   

6. Experiment with different colors and brush sizes on Dino.

   To undo a brush stroke, choose Edit > Undo, Redo, Repeat. The number of strokes you can undo is specified by the Queue Size in the Undo category of the Preferences window ( Window > Settings/Preferences > Preferences).

7. To remove paint, turn on Erase in the Paint Operations section and stroke the desired region.