I’d also like to know something similar. I just paid to have someone model a 3D bottle that I could apply a label design to. The only thing is that I can’t get the label to apply to the bottle. I haven’t been able to find any tutorials on this; only things that are kind of close. By the way, I have a new Mac Pro as well with the same video card and I can paint directly on the model with no problem.
Do you happen to have a blank texture layer? If so, fill it with a solid color and try again.
Check that. I just deleted the color out of my texture layer and I could still paint on the bottle. Not sure what the situation is with your file.
Thanks Scott – but Nope – still doesn’t work for me. I was actually able to experience a momentary victory when I tried painting on an obj format on the 3D layer, until it painted the entire model in that color and even then it looked like a dotted texture.
It seems like I should be able to ‘ungroup’ it and paint, but I don’t know how to access parts of the model itself.
Any ideas? Thanks!!!
Isolating 3D parts is a selection process. You select the polygons you see, expand/ contract from there, then hide the layers/ polygons you don’t need. In both your examples it seems that neither of you has a proper contiguous UV set in the files, so any painting will fail because your UV data only contains isolated islands, giving the scatter. And a very knowledgeable 3D developer once told me, that the Sketchup OBJ files are the most atrocious and out of whack ones on the planet, so this certainly adds to the problem. In any case, you problems can only be solved by going back to your 3D programs and looking for the right options. If you have no access to a 3D tool yourselves, I recommend downloading the free blender. This would at least help to verify the defunct nature of the UV sets and after a little reading up and practice you may even be able to create your own UV sets, e.g. based on a cylindrical projection for the bottle. I also recommend you ignore realworld scales when exporting your models and instead make them large-ish (10 or 100 times the size). This helps circumvent the OBJ format’s precision issues and will improve handling, as PS will equate 1 unit to 1 pixels and the more units/ pixels you have, the more precise the handling.
Mylenium
Mylenium — Thanks for the level of detail you offer here! I had no idea that SU output such terrible 3D (obj) files. Kind of a bummer since I am very familiar with SU versus Blender! Although blender looks like once you get into it, can be extremely useful– especially for the price 🙂
A couple of issues I’m having trouble understanding:
– how to isolate and then select polygons in PS.
– confusion on UV Data Sets and their creation.
I tried to blow up/enlarge a test model (granted, in SU) and export in a variety of different formats; as well as downloaded a free model from a blender user to export as obj, as well as 3ds, to bring those into PS.
No joy. Definitely confused, but willing to try anything to get this working! Again, whatever clarity you can offer is very much appreciated!
