Masking Options?

Hey, I recently got ArmorPaint, and wow, for a totally open source project there’s a lot of great progress in it! But the one thing that’s driving me nuts, as a hard surface modeller, is that there’s no in AP masking system. The polygon and painted mask options for Substance are great for selecting specific parts of the mesh to get base options before adding grime or whatever. I tried to use the Color ID map feature, but when I’d try to bake the map, it’d only every show a single solid color, and I couldn’t access the map from the Color ID menu. If there may be something I’m doing wrong I’ll share more info and files, but for now, I’m genuinely impressed with the tool, this is all really good!

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When you are talking about baking, is that process in blender or in armor paint?

I’ve been UV unwrapping the whole model, then splitting to separate objects. I do this in place of allocating materials or doing colour IDs (which I cannot seem to get working well myself in the current version).

What the above allows you to do is just paint on the section of the model you want to (hiding the rest of the geometry). The cool thing with this method is that you can also very quickly paint on everything, which of course is great for dirt/grime over the entire model and over multiple materials. I’ve gotten some nice glazed/opal style effects running in corners using this method.

I actually find the above quicker than using masks and layers in SP, as I don’t have to forward plan as much. I also like the fact that separated geometry can be painted as they are split completely in the viewer - something I wish SP could do. A combination of how AP works with geometry hiding and polygon masking would be killer though! Not to mention particle brushes! Future AP release perhaps?

Yeah, that’s one way to do it. What worries me though is that color ID maps should be working. Where are color ID maps not working: are you not able to make them? Are they not working as expected when imported and used in ArmorPaint? Are your color ID maps in lossy or lossless format? (for example, you want png, not jpeg)

Oh, btw, welcome to the community forum :smile:

Ah. Guess who forgot about this, and kinda dropped the program. yikes.

thanks for replying though, even if i ignored you @Sojan_Janso

If I’m reading OP correctly, I think I have the same question. I need a way to paint onto specific polygons without painting on others. I know this has to be very basic functionality for a texture painting program, but I can’t find it anywhere. Can someone tell me how to do it?