3ds Max 2012 Bible - Kelly L. Murdock [195]
FIGURE 14.32
The Paint Objects list lets you manage the objects that you're painting with.
Note
Edits to the Paint Objects list can be made only while the Paint and Fill modes are disabled. •
Painting with objects
After a paint object is selected, you can click the Paint button to enable paint mode and then drag in the viewport, as shown in Figure 14.33. Each stroke drawn with the brush lays down a new curve. The Undo command can be used to remove the last stroke, but all strokes are not added to the scene until the Commit button in the Brush Settings panel is clicked. The Cancel button removes all strokes drawn since the last commit.
Caution
Painting with objects dramatically increases the overall polygon count of the scene, especially if you are painting with a complex object. Try to keep the paint object as simple as possible to avoid unwieldy scenes. •
FIGURE 14.33
After an object is selected, simply drag in the viewport to paint with the selected object.
Before a painted set of objects is committed to the scene, you can use the settings in the Brush Settings panel, shown in Figure 14.34, to change the alignment, spacing, rotation, and scale of the objects. You have several options for randomly scattering the objects. The default alignment for the painted objects is to match the picked object, or you can align the object to the X, Y, or Z axis or flip it about the specified axis with the Flip Axis button.
FIGURE 14.34
The Brush Settings panel lets you change the position, rotation, and scale of the painted objects.
The Spacing value lets you change how far away each object is from its neighbor. The Scatter settings let you move the objects in the U, V, or W directions. The Rotation setting uniformly rotates all the objects together, or you can allow random rotations by clicking the small arrow to the right of each axis and enabling the Random option.
For the Scale settings, you can enable the Lock Axis (Uniform Scaling) option to scale all objects evenly or you can enable the Random option to randomly scale the objects within a set range of values. The Ramp option scales the objects gradually from the start of the stroke to the end of the stroke to a given size. Figure 14.35 shows several lines of pyramids with different settings. The top line is the default. The second line has an altered spacing value, the third line is oriented about the Y axis, and the final line uses a ramp scaling.
FIGURE 14.35
Painted objects can be altered by spacing, orientation, and scaling.
Painting with multiple objects
If you have multiple objects in the Paint Objects list, you can choose which objects to paint with using the option in the Paint Objects panel. The first option is to paint with just the most recently picked object. The second option is to paint with all objects in order, and the last option is to randomly paint with all objects. Figure 14.36 shows each of these options.
FIGURE 14.36
When painting with multiple objects, you can choose to paint the objects in order or randomly.
Painting on objects
The Object Paint feature lets you paint on the default construction grid, on the selected object or on the entire scene. These options are available in the Paint Objects panel. Figure 14.37 shows painting some cones on a simple sphere. The cones are aligned by default to the surface normals of the sphere.
When the Scene option is selected, the painted objects are placed on the default grid unless a scene object is encountered, and then it is placed on top of the scene object. The Offset value can be used to move the painted objects into or off of the surface of the underlying object.
FIGURE 14.37
Objects also can be painted on the surface of another object in the scene.
Using the Paint Fill mode
The Paint Fill mode allows you to place the paint