About 16 years ago the german software company Maxon (offers well-suited software to create 3D configurators) introduced BodyPaint 3D and revolutized the workflow of 3D painting. The integrated range of cross-plattform painting and UV mapping tools provides users with an excellent creative suite to add exquisite detail to surfaces in movies, game designs and other workflows.
The following article will take a closer look at the exciting future of BodyPaint 3D.
Over the past year, Maxon has visited many current and potantial BodyPaint 3D users and collected a considerable amount of feedback on how to improve both painting and UV tools. As far as painting is concerned, it has long been clear that BodyPaints` reliance on CPU-based software shading severely limits its potential. Maxon`s development team was tasked with migrating the painting engine from BodyPaint 3D to OpenGL. This way, fantastic results were achieved. BodyPaint`s new OpenGL painting engine offers much higher performance, improved visual feedback and a smoother workflow.
Although progress has been markable, the optimisation process is not yet complete. To ensure that this fundamental change to BodyPaint 3D continues to meet Maxon`s high quality standards, further improvements will follow in the future.
By switching from BodyPaint to OpenGL, the development team saw great opportunities to completely eliminate software shading. The next release will use the Mesa open source library to deliver an OpenGL-based fallback using the CPU. This allow users without adequate graphics cards or drivers to experience the outstanding quality of OpenGL and streamline future developments in viewport development.
After numerous discussions with BodyPaint-3D users and careful review, it was decided to remove the Raybrush feature from the next release. This feature was incredibly innovative at the time, but is no longer compatible with the implemented rendering pipeline and is no longer needed due to technology improvements.
Maxon is reliable, so Raybrush is completely replaced by BodyPaint`s OpenGL workflow, which provides an excellent interactive preview of reflection, transparency and more.
Later, new algorithms and workflows are planned to make UV mapping a faster and more intuitive process. As both the modeling and UV tools are constantly evolving, there will be convergence of functions.
We are looking forward to the next brush strokes of BodyPaint 3D, Through the process of successive optimization, Maxon`s Cinema 4D 3D software is already world class and has been successfully used by hundreds of users for years.