Monday, July 20th, 2015 Posted by Jim Thacker

Rui Batista releases PolyPaint 1.5 for Cinema 4D

Tools developer Rui Batista has released PolyPaint 1.5, a new update to his pack of plugins for making use of vertex paint information in Cinema 4D, adding support for alpha channels and better Unity compatibility.

Import vertex colour information from ZBrush, or paint it directly in Cinema 4D
First released in 2014, PolyPaint enables Cinema 4D users to load vertex paint information from OBJ or FBX files exported from tools that support it, like ZBrush, 3D-Coat and Blender.

Users can also vertex paint within Cinema itself, painting directly onto the vertices of a mesh and rendering the resulting surface colour, without the need for UVs or texture maps

Tools for transferring and painting vertex colour data onto objects
PolyPaint consists of six plugins, including a tag for attaching vertex colour data to an object, a shader for interpreting that data, and plugins for transferring data from materials or other objects.

There is also a direct painting tool with a basic range of options, including brush settings for smoothing existing paint strokes, lightening or darkening them, or changing the contrast or saturation.

New support for RGBA data and FBX 7.2
New features in version 1.5 include support for RGBA data, enabling users to make use of alpha channels: a workflow shown in the first half of the video above.

There is also a new PolyPaint from Material command, designed to work better with higher-poly meshes.

In addition, PolyPaint 1.5 can now export FBX 7.2 files, which can be imported into Unity preserving the RGBA information for any vertex shaders that make use of it.

Pricing and availability
PolyPaint 1.5 is available now. The Pro version costs €45 (around $48); the Base version, which lacks the plugins for transferring vertex colour data from other objects or UV-mapped textures, costs €25 ($27).

Read more about PolyPaint 1.5 on Rui Batista’s website

See more videos of the new features in Rui Batista’s Vimeo channel