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Georgie Boy!

This Dogwaffle tutorial shows some techniques used for
painting over masks from 3D texture mapping programs.
 This is the map of an unwrapped 3D model of a low-polygon cartoon head. It was made from  the Amapi 3D tutorial "My Friend George", a 3D modeler by TGS/Eovia. (If you are interested in a free version of v4 look in iDevGames.com.) After making a model, you may use programs like ultimate unwrap 3D (www.unwrap3d.com) or uvmapper (www.uvmapper.com) to lay out a flattened arrangement of these polygons, called the texture map. It defines a texture location for each vertex of the polygons. 
When using this same texture map over the original 3D model, you will see each polygon white with black edges. The textre map fits perfectly over the model. 

The task now is to take a paint tool and paint over the mask to define the colors of the skin, hair, lips etc...
With Dogwaffle you can load the original map image (the mask) into a buffer such as the Swap buffer, and switch to the main buffer, then paint over that. While you'll see the mask in the Swap buffer, you'll be painting into the main buffer, at the same time.
It's good to retain the mask and be able to patch up details. For example if the eyes were placed too high. In this final image we've added a few details like spots on the front of the head and a beard, and we've place the eyes where the polygons of the mask show they should be.
Finally, when you map that texture into the 3D object, you get a totally new George :-)
The following tutorial is in again Qarbon's Viewlet 2 format.  This one was made with ViewletBuilder 2 and requires a web browser which is Java enabled (and Javascript to launch it). 

It was captured at 1024x768 pixels screen resolution and therefore you should have at least about 1100x850 pixels  resolution to allow for the viewlet's control buttons as well. Keep in mind that you can use the SPACEBAR to stop&continue the playback of the viewlet.
 
To watch the Viewlet, click on the link below.
Put the paint on George
We've also made this tutorial available as a zipped archive so you can download it to your local disk and view it offline later again and again. Click here for the zipped archive (it's about 3.6 MB kbytes)


 
Need an image viewer and batch converter? Try Irfanview - it rocks!
Need an affordable GifAnimator? Gamani's GifMovieGear is great.
Need a very cool unzip utility? Try Iceows or Aladdin Expander.