[SOLVED] Need help with texture painting - artifacts at seams [PIERO]

Hello,


Working through the Piero tutorial. Kent suggests to cover the seams by stamping textures on top of them (with project paint turned on). However, it just makes the seam stand out more. I get artifacts even if I try different strengths, or change the bleed value.

First picture: Artifacts right at the seam if I try to paint using white to raise the bump map a bit.

Other pictures: Painting with a texture stamp also makes artifacts at the seam


Flattening makes the seam go away, but the textures make it show again.

I think my UV layout is spaced ok, so I can't figure out what I'm doing wrong. Help is much appreciated! Thank you.

  • Matthew Fricker(frikkr) replied

    Hmm , that's strange. I have done the Piero course myself and I do not remember having that issue. Perhaps its an issue with the bleed amount around the edges of the UV islands. If the bleed does not go far enough, then you may catch artifacts.

    You can see the bleed settings here in the texture paint options :

    This value controld the amount that your paint will extend past the edges of teh UV islands on the image you are painting too. If it is not high enough then it could cause issues. Also , the UVs from my Piero are here :

    You can see how much the painted colours extend past the edge of the UV islands clearly, see what they compare like to yours. You may find that those black artifacts are the black background of your UV image showing through. You could easily test this theory by opening the image in Photoshop and flood filling the background with the colour of the legs.


    Hope this helps.


    EDIT** , I just zoomed in on your UV's and you can see that there are areas where the UV islands come close, ore even go over the colour and onto the black background. I have marked some of them here :

    This stregthens my theory that I made earlier.

  • polygondust replied

    Matthew,

    Thank you for taking the time to respond! I think you are right, since it's around the seams it must be a bleed issue. But it's something other than my bleed value on my brush, which I have set to 8px, the maximum possible value.

    Next time, perhaps I should space out the uv islands more as you suggest. Perhaps the change in normal value is drawing in the black value from the background.

    I found a couple workarounds since redoing the uv map would be difficult at this point. If anyone has the same issue, here's what I did to fix it:

    -Turn off accumulate for the brush in texture paint mode when painting bump maps. For some reason, painting with "accumulate" causes artifacts to appear faster. Turning it off, and lifting the brush before each new layer produces better results.

    -When painting color in texture paint mode, you can fix these artifacts by using a smooth brush. This is trickier when painting bump maps, but sometimes works.

    -Avoid putting too many bumps directly on the seam. Painting carefully fixed some of my issues.


    Thank you for pointing out the issue in the uv map! Next time, I will try to make bigger color splotches around the uv islands. The way it is now, every time I texture paint I get some sort of error. Glad I know what to do next time!