What is 4D Paint?

What is 4D Paint?

4D Paint is a 3D texturing package for the PC. It has been designed to work directly with the 3D packages it supports, transferring models, materials and maps directly from the package to 4D Paint's work windows with the press of a button. Currently 4D Paint supports 3D Studio MAX from Kinetix and Microsoft's Soft|Image seamlessly and allows the loading of .3ds files and 3D Studio .prj files, expanding its support range. Seamless support for NewTek's Lightwave will be available in the fall/winter of 1997.

4D Paint allows users to interactively position and paint directly on to the fully rendered surface of a 3D object imported through any one of these methods. The object has its Color, Bump and Self Illumination maps rendered interactively on its surface as you paint and rotate.

Traditionally one of the hardest jobs involved with rendering was the texturing of surfaces. Simple surfaces have always been moderately easy to texture but when irregular surfaces are required the limitations of trying to assign a 2D bitmap to a complex 3D surface become apparent. The solution to this appeared some years ago on Silicon Graphics machines with 3D paint packages that provided the ability to paint on to a rendered surface and thus position texture correctly in relation to geometry. These packages were naturally only available to those with large budgets and fast machines to work from and until 4D Paint there was no package on the PC that could reproduce the features and speed of these packages. 4D Paint was developed by 4D Vision Asia with the intention of bringing the power of workstation 3D Painting to the PC.

Painting Tools

4D Paint provides painting tools that are not limited by the 3D nature of the product. Unlike many 3D painters 4D Paint is fast enough to allow the objects to be treated in almost exactly the same way as a simple canvas. Paint tools include the standard tools such as lines, polygons, cut and paste, brush, fill and text but are augmented by a powerful Layers system that allows the painting of transparent overlays on the surface meaning none of the paint below is damaged. 4D Paint is not a 2D paint package with a 3D preview like some other PC 3D painters, it is a fully fledged 3D paint package with tools designed to cope with the additional challenges a 3D environment adds to the traditional field of computer painting.

The package presents a 3D window containing your objects without the need for the 2D bitmap windows to be constantly open (even if they are minimized) while you work. If 3D is your preference you will never need to open a 2D window inside the package. If you prefer to work in 2D we also provide a 2D window for painting that can have the mesh of the object overlaid to show you where your paint will be applied. This overlay does not damage the paint beneath and remains overlaid while you paint. It can be shown or hidden instantly at the touch of a button. In addition to this, when you paint in the 2D view your paint is updated in the 3D view simultaneously.

4D Paint is also the only one of the three main 3D paint packages on the PC to allow you to paint more than one map type at a time. This means that if you want a stripe of shiny red oil paint in 4D Paint you simply produce a paint tool that has Color, Bump and Shininess applied and paint a stroke with it. Without this system you would have to paint a stripe of red then a stripe of bump then a stripe of shininess, matching the others as you do so.

4D Paint provides a set of tools that mimic their real world equivalents. When we say 'oil paint' our oil paint applies color, bump and shininess for example. You can also set any paint to be a 'wash' or 'highlight' forcing it to apply itself only in to the dents or the high points of the object's bump map. This allows you to reproduce the washing and dry-brushing method used in miniature painting.

Techno Stuff...

The emphasis of the product is speed. Everything you do is reflected fully rendered on the surface of the object you are doing it to. If you paste something it is pasted on to the surface rather than on to the screen and can then be moved around on the surface bending itself around the geometry until you are ready to commit it. If you paint the paint strokes you apply are applied at full quality, there is no need to re-render the object after each stroke. When you paint bump it appears on the surface as you go and the package is fast enough to do this on a 486 processor. When you rotate an object there is no need to drop to wire frame modes, 4D Paint is fast enough to rotate it with color, bump and self illumination rendered on to the surface as you go. The reasoning for this was simple, how can you be expected to paint an object if you are constantly having to drop in to rendering modes that don't show you your paint work or having to re-render every time you make a simple change?

Memory usage is another important factor. 4D Paint's closes competitor in terms of features takes significantly more memory to do anything. A rendering screen of 1024 x 768 in that application takes an unbelievable 40 megabytes of RAM just for the 3D window, 4D Paint uses 5 megabytes of RAM for a window the same size.

Try it out right here!

Download a full 4D Paint demo for 3D Studio Max or Softimage with an additional module. Go the 4D Paint directory on the CD and unzip the files and you are ready. This is a 30 day evaluation and only licensed for that period of time. Use beyond the time limit is prohibited.