# 3D painting Can use a paintbrush to paint raster details directly on your 3d model, much like painting a ceramic sculpture in the real world. You can paint everything you need in Maya or open the painted texture file in Photoshop and refine details. The updated saved image will appear updated on your object in Maya. This can be a good shortcut to avoid doing a full UV unwrapping of your materials. This technique works when you are rendering using Maya settings. If you are rendering with Arnold, then a different technique is required. _link to that when it gets written_ ## prepare to paint You have to use a Maya texture such as Blinn or Phong for this. Using Arnold materials requires a different, more complicated process that we aren’t going to get into here. Set **Menu** to **Rendering**. ![[Pasted image 20221102125155.png]] Pulldown menu for **Texturing > 3D Painting** Open your **Tool Settings**. At first there will be a big Red X paintbrush for painting on your model. You need to tell Maya what map your are painting. Open up your **Tool Settings > File Textures** and choose what attribute to paint. **Color** is the default but you can paint in **BumpMaps** or **Displacement**, **Translucence** or **Incandescence**. Each attribute will require a separate texture file. ![[Pasted image 20221102133144.png]] Press the **Assign/Edit Textures** button. Increase the size of texture to 1024 x 1024 or bigger. Also choose the file format, the default .iff is limited. Choose a **.jpg** or **.png** or even a **.psd** Photoshop document. Now you can paint. ## pick your brushes In your **Tool Settings** you can adjust Brush Types, Color, Opacity, etc. There are a few simple default brushes but you can click the folder icon and load other files as brush tips. Brush tip image files are based on black being invisible and white actually adding paint so you could easily make your own brush tips. You can adjust things like Brush size, Opacity, etc. These behave the same as what you are used to in painting programs like Photoshop and Procreate. Smear and Blur brushes can blend and soften edges. Use the Flood tool to just fill the entire surface with a color. Can select certain faces to control where you are painting by using the classic marking menu of **Right-Click > Faces**. ![[Pasted image 20221102134652.png]] ## save your textures Make sure to press the **Save Textures** button at the bottom of the **Tool Settings** panel to actually save the file or you may lose your work when you close Maya. You can open the saved texture file in drawing programs like Photoshop to edit and refine the details. Save your changes in Photoshop and in the **Tool Settings** panel, press the **Reload File Textures** button to reapply. --- Learn more… - [3D Paint Tool Tutorial YouTube video from What Make Art](https://youtu.be/JIOns8Tkmhs) - [3D Painting YouTube video from LinkedIn Learning](https://youtu.be/zgXCDjSv2CQ) --- tags: #3d #maya #resources home: [[! 3d modeling- maya]]