4D Paint 1.8 Addendum.
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This document contains information on features that have been added to 4D Paint 1.8 that are not detailed in the manual. The manual itself refers to version 1.13 of 4D Paint, the following features and changes have been made since then:

* The Lightwave File Reader.
* Continuous Dab Spacing.
* Brush Booster.
* Scale & Rotate Floaters.
* Bitmap Paint Scale.
* Contrast & Brightness Adjustment.
* Merging Brush & Paint Files.
* New Special Paints.
* Save Bitmap View With Wires.
* Set Clone Source on Ctrl-Click.
* Save All Maps.


The Lightwave File Reader
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4D Paint Rembrandt supports Lightwave 3D files in the *.lwo format. To load a .lwo file select 'Open' from the File menu and make sure the object type you are trying to open is '*.lwo'.

Ideally,  the *.lwo file should be in the same directory as all the bitmaps associated with the surface definitions. This allows 4D Paint to easily find all the maps. (Tip:  In the map paths section of your 4D Paint preferences add the path . (single dot) to the paths, so 4D Paint always looks in the current directory for maps). If a bitmap associated with a surface isnt found 4D Paint will ask you to locate the map and give you the option of adding the directory to the list of map-paths.

The .lwo file will be imported as a single object but surface definitions will remain intact and viewed by 4D Paint as separate materials. The mapping associated with the surface definition from Lightwave will be used inside 4D Paint and preserved. Therefore it is critical that objects be mapped carefully inside Lightwave. The *.lwo importer supports the three main surface types: Planar Image Map, Cylindrical Image Map and Spherical Image Map in any orientation.

Painting and layer management inside 4D Paint works exactly the same as with any other type of scene. Refer to the 4D Paint help files and manual for details.

Completed maps can either be saved individually from the 2D view of the render layer map (double click the Render layer in the list of layers for each channel type) or all render maps can be saved into a common directory. Choose 'Save All Maps' from the File menu. 4D Paint will prompt you to enter names for images if you have created new channel maps during the process of painting.

To use the updated maps inside Lightwave you will need either to re-load them in to the images menu, or reload the project file before rendering. (Lightwave caches images, so they have to be reloaded manually from disk).


Limitations Of The Lightwave File Reader
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Only polygonal mesh objects can be painted. Particle systems, nurbs surfaces and meta-objects cannot be painted. To be paintable an object must have one or more surfaces applied and the surfaces must have one of the three supported map types applied. Surfaces with procedural texture definitions (such as spots or noise) will not be paintable. Scene files are not supported, objects can only be loaded individually via *.lwo object files. Surface names should be unique within the first 14 characters: eg Defiant Left Engine Detail & Defiant Left Engine Registration my not be applied in the corrrect places as 4D Paint doesnt see them as unique. Text geometry may not import exactly correctly into 4D Paint,  however the maps will be applied correctly and will be paintable.


Continuous Dab Spacing
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This feature allows you to force 4D Paint to draw smooth strokes.

In Version 1.1 of 4D Paint when you painted a line quickly the stroke would break up in to a number of 'dabs' (individual applications of the Brush Head). Using the Continuous Dab Spacing feature you can tell 4D Paint that instead of drawing one dab at a time to paint a stroke it should draw as many dabs as it can while the mouse is moving and connect those with other dabs. This provides perfectly smooth strokes no matter what speed the mouse is moved.

To activate this feature, edit your current Brush and in the 'Dab Spacing' section select 'Continuous'. The X slider beneath is used to define how far apart the extra dabs generated will be. A rule of thumb with this setting is that to create a smooth stroke set the X value to less than half the width of the Brush. The default Brush for example works well in Continuous mode with its X spacing set to 4.


Brush Booster
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The Brush Booster allows you to increase the size of a brush head. When you have a Brush selected in the Brush Tool window and you do not have a Bitmap Paint selected the Brush Booster appears. It appears as a slider that allows you to select 1, 2, 3 or 4 times. This recalculates the Brush Head to the size defined.

Bitmap brush heads are scaled up to the correct size and supersampled to smooth the result. Defined Brush Heads are recalculated at the correct size to maintain smoothing.

Using the brush Booster your Brush Heads can be increased up to 121 x 121 pixels in size.


Scale & Rotate Floaters
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The Selection Tool now allows you to scale and rotate floaters that you move from or paste to the surface of an object.

Once you have a floater you can scale it (or select the 'Scale Y' check box and scale the X and Y dimensions of the floater independantly) and rotate it using the spin buttons and edit boxes in the selection window.

When you are finished, press the 'Drop Floater' button and the floater is scaled and rotated with supersampling to create a smooth result.


Bitmap Paint Scale.
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The manual does not mention the ability to scale the Bitmaps you are using in Bitmap Paint and Texture Paint operations. The results are as follows:

Brush Tools Window.

If you have a Bitmap Paint selected from the list of Paints available in the Brush Tools window a 'Scale' edit box appears allowing you to adjust the scale of the bitmap. This is useful for sizing a Bitmap Paint to suit the size of the bitmaps you have applied to the Materials you are painting in. For example, if a Bitmap Paint is drawn from a source bitmap 100 x 100 that has been converted in to 4 divisions (2 by 2) of 50 x 50 pixels, if you paint this on to a Material that uses bitmaps of size 1000 x 1000 the divisions will appear very small. By increasing the scale of the Bitmap Paint you can correct this.

When the Scale edit box indicates a scale of '1' the divisions will be painted at their normal size. If you increase this number they increase in size. A scale of '2' indicates that the Bitmap Paint dabs will be painted at twice their usual size, 3 three times and so forth. Using our 50 x 50 pixels dab as an example a value of 2 would mean that the dab would be painted at 100 x 100 pixels in size. As you decrease the number in the edit box the size of the dabs decreases.

If you wish you can manually edit the number in the Bitmap Paint Scale edit box, it uses one decimal place to calculate scale. You can also use the up and down arrow buttons next to the edit box to adjust the scale value.

Texture Paint Window:

An edit box similar to that in the Brush Tools Window appears in the Texture Paint Window. It works in the same way as the other in that it alters the scale of the Bitmap Paint being used in the Texture Paint operation. The difference lies in the way that Texture Paint applies the bitmaps. The scale value indicates how many times the original size of the source bitmap the painted image will be. For example, if a Texture Paint uses as its source a bitmap 100 x 100 and the scale value is set to 15 when you paint with that Texture Paint the image applied to the object you are painting on is 15 times its source in the original bitmap. This can be useful if you are painting with a small Texture Paint in to a Large Bitmap or vice versa.


Contrast And Brightness Adjustment
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From the Image menu in the Bitmap Views you can now edit the Contrast and Brightness of an image. Select the 'Process'  submenu and 'Brightness / Contrast' from there.


Merging Brush And Paint Files
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Brush and Paint files can be merged together. This allows you to load in an old or new file without losing the Brushes and Paints you have currently set up.

To merge Brush and Paint files, follow this procedure.

* Load 4D Paint - Rembrandt
* From the 'Tools' menu select 'Brushes'
* From this menu select 'Merge Brush File'

In the file dialogue that appears locate a file that contains brushes and double click it. These files will generally be suffixed '.dat'. From the new window that appears select the Brushes you wish to merge in to your current Brush and Paint data files and press OK.

The process works the same way for Paints.

Note: Make sure you do not have a .4dp file loaded before doing this and quit 4D Paint as soon as you have done it to ensure the changes are saved to your Brush and Paint file successfully.


Special Paints.
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Alpha Masked:

The Alpha Masked paint will only paint on areas that have already had paint applied. It uses the Alpha channel of the paint that already exists to calculate the transparency of the paint applied. Because the Base Layer of any Map Type has an Alpha value of 255 consistently this paint will paint as a normal paint on that layer.

When you paint on a Layer above the Base Layer of a Map Type the Alpha Masked paint will only paint in areas that have had paint applied previously. Where it does paint it retains the feathering of the previous paint (feathering on Layers above the Base Layer is achieved using Alpha values). For example, if I paint a feathered white stroke on to a Layer above the Colour Base Layer and then use the Alpha Masked paint to paint blue, the white stroke will become a feathered blue stroke where I paint over it.

Alpha Intensify:

The Alpha Intensify paint intensifies the Alpha Value of areas above the Base Layer of a Map Type. This means that if you have painted a light stroke that is 50% transparent on to a Layer you can increase the opacity of the stroke using this paint. The transparency and feathering of the stroke you painted is defined by the intensity of the Alpha Channel and increasing this intensity makes the paint less transparent. It will also remove the feathering from the edge of a stroke if you paint too much.

The amount of intensification is controlled by altering the 'Intensity' slider in the Colour Picker, the higher the value of the slider the more the Alpha of a Layer will be intensified.

Note that this paint does not intensify the Alpha of areas that have Alpha 0, so if you paint on to a Layer that has had no paint applied previously there will be no effect (there is no paint there to intensify). This can be useful if you wish to hide an area of paint temporarily. Use the Alpha Remover paint detailed below to hide the paint then paint over the area you hid using this paint and the stroke you hid will reappear.

Alpha Remover:

The Alpha Remover paint lowers the Alpha Value of areas above the Base Layer of a Map Type. The result of this is that paint you paint over becomes more transparent until eventually it vanishes. The paint has not been removed however, unlike the eraser tool the Alpha Remover tool leaves the paint there, it just makes it invisible. This means that by using the Alpha Intensify paint detailed above you can bring back areas that you removed previously. Note that if you paint over such an area of invisible paint you will be unable to recover it later.

The amount of Alpha removed is defined by the 'Intensity' slider in the Colour Picker. The higher the value of this slider the more Alpha will be stripped away as you paint.

Note that this paint does not take the Alpha to 0, the minimum it can reduce an area to is 1. This means that the paint is still present though invisible. This can be useful if you wish to temporarily hide an area of paint. Use this paint to make the area invisible then use the Alpha Intensify paint to return it to its visible state.

Rainbow:

This paint randomises the colour of each dab. Unlike the Randomise Luma paint, the Raindow paint randomises every aspect of the colour, not just the luminance. The amount of randomisation is controlled using the 'Variance' slider that appears in the Paint Edit box when you select this Paint Type. Very low values will produce little variance in the colour you are painting between each dab painted whilst a very high value will produce large amounts of variance.

Horizontal Bands:

The Horizontal Bands paint paints horizontal bands of alternating Foreground and Background colour. For example, the first band would be of the Foreground Colour, the second of the Background Colour, the third of the Foreground and so on and so forth. The thickness of these bands is controlled by the 'Height' slider that appears in the Paint Edit dialogue when you select this Paint Type.

Vertical bands:

The Vertical Bands paint paints vertical bands of alternating Foreground and Background colour. For example, the first band would be of the Foreground Colour, the second of the Background Colour, the third of the Foreground and so on and so forth. The thickness of these bands is controlled by the 'Width' slider that appears in the Paint Edit dialogue when you select this Paint Type.

Smudge Paint Type

The Smudge Paint smudges anything it passes over. It can be defined to smudge any of the map types available. The strength slider that appears in the Paint Edit box when you select the Smudge paint type can be adjusted to alter the amount of smudging applied.

Smudging works best when used with a Brush set to Continuous Dab Spacing.

Smudge & Paint Paint Type

The Smudge & Paint paint type paints a single dab of whatever map types it is set to then smudges that. This allows paint to be slowly applied to an area and spread around with a single tool.

Smudging works best when used with a Brush set to Continuous Dab Spacing.

Procedural Marble Paint Type

The Procedural Marble paint paints a marbled pattern of the foreground colour with veins of the background colour. Using the Size and Density sliders that appear in the Paint Edit box when this type of Paint is selected you can control the type of marble applied.

The Procedural Marble paint will paint the same marble pattern every time you apply it until you reset the randomiser. This means that you can paint over the same area again and again with different colours without the pattern changing. To reset the randomiser hold down the Control key and paint a dab of the marble paint.

The Procedural Marble paint is completely scalable. Because the pattern you see painted is defined by an algorithm even when set to the highest size it can it will apply itself perfectly smoothly with no jagged edges.

This paint looks great in the Bump Map. For more contrast in the bumps set the foreground colour to white and the background colour to black.

Procedural Clouds Paint Type

The Procedural Clouds paint type paints clouds of the foreground colour and transparency. This paint is best used on a layer above the base layer. Using the Size and Density sliders that appear in the Paint Edit box when you select this paint you can edit the appearance of the clouds that are painted.

The Procedural Clouds paint will paint the same clouds pattern every time you apply it until you reset the randomiser. This means that you can paint over the same area again and again with different colours without the pattern changing. To reset the randomiser hold down the Control key and paint a dab of the clouds paint.

This paint is completely scalable. Because the pattern is defined by a mathematical function it will not lose smoothness when scaled up for painting.

One interesting thing to do is to set the Colour intensity to 0 and paint this paint on to a layer above the Base layer. With intensity set to 0 no colour will be applied but the colour already on that layer will be made transparent in parts and become cloud-like itself.

Spread Paint Type

The Spread Paint samples the colour underneath its first dab and paints that colour for the duration of a stroke. This allows you to spread a colour already on the object without needing to sample it to the foreground colour. This also works in the bump map and can be used for smoothing areas out without the need to use the colour picker to adjust the current bump intensity


Save Bitmap View With Wires.
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From a Bitmap View you can choose to save the bitmap currently open as an image file on disk. If you have the 'show mesh' option switched on at the time 4D Paint will ask if you wish to save the wireframe with the Bitmap. If you select 'Yes', the wire mesh that you see in the Bitmap View will be drawn in to the image file exported. This means that if you wish to touch up the bitmap in another package you can use the mesh as a positioning guide.


Set Clone Source On Ctrl-Click
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When using the Clone Tool you can change the source for the clone operation by holding down the Control key and clicking the new area to be the source.


Save All Maps
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In the File Menu you will find a 'Save All Maps' option. If you want to save all of the maps you have been painting to disk, select this option. Locate the directory in which you wish to save the first and all images will be saved to that directory with their original names. If you have added maps to a scene, you will be prompted for names for these new images.
