Mirror texture painting

Hello guys.

I have a model in blender which is perfectly symmetrical. I created uv maps and wanted to start painting textures on it. Unfortunately I can’t find the way to turn on mirror painting.

I already looked for a solution, but everywhere people write it is only possible if the model has a mirror modifier.

So seriously, there is not an option in texture paint mode to turn on X mirror and just start painting? I’m using 2.71 version.

I’ll very grateful for answer.

No, unfortunately symmetry painting is not in Blender for now.
The only way currently is to involve a mirror modifier.

That’s very unfortunate, because usually it is very useful tool and all other 3d software seem to have it (correct me if I’m wrong). Anyway thanks a lot for confirmation.

I don’t think all 3d software has it, but the main 3d painting tools have it. It was a target but there wasn’t time to add it, possibly later someone might code it in. I have to test, but I thought that you can make a copy of the object and delete half, use a mirror modifier, and then later after painting bake from the mirrored object to the previous object’s texture map. I’ll try when I get home.

Yes, i think it was Psy-Fi that mentionned he may try to get it during his GSOC, but in the end he couldn’t fit it in time.
Maybe sometime in the future we’ll see that functionality, very useful in the applications featuring it for painting, and very useful for when you deal with symmetrical uv.

I wish it was in Gimp too, there was a crowdfounding for symmetry painting, but it will certainly take lots of time before they actually include it, the same with the improved Iwrap work from several years ago that isn’t still in official release.

There is mirror painting in Krita, and I thought that was what Psy-Fi originally examined as an example since it is GPL. If you do use Krita as your texture painting tool, then you could mirror very well if you have set up your UV’s in a mirrored fashion and exported that.

Yes, if you’re on windows both Krita and MyPaint (if you use one of the unofficial recent builds, latest one being from March) both feature useful symmetry painting, the Krita version seems more customisable tough.
I wasn’t aware Psy-Fi was interested in the Krita symmetrisation, it sounds great if the code can be ported, though i don’t know how much work such port would require.
Funny to remember the ancient Deluxe Paint had already symmetry painting :slight_smile:

Still i’m more interested in Gimp having it too, as it’s my primary texture tool, it would allow me to avoid switching between applications when i need symmetry painting, fortunately the GMIC “Symmetrise” functionality even if not real time make it fast and configurable enough to help with symmetry in gimp

Hi guys,
I was searching for symmetry texture painting and found you guys post. As @Sanctuary said symmetry texture painting isnt there (yet). and I would also use gimp as primary texture editor along with texture painting in blender. So I played around with gimp a little bit and found some little tricks I want to share.

Using mirror modifier it will always symmetry, when i want to make a mole only in left it will appear in both left and right. Even after I applied. (dont know what i did wrong ^^ )

in Blender after unwrap, I see an option called: copy mirrored UV Coords. it will make uv symmetry.
then we can edit that picture in gimp (only a half) then flip that half and we should have symmetry.
Problem I found that I dont know how to select exactly half of picture to flip in Gimp
To solve that problem I used View/Show Grid and Snap to Grid
then Image/Configure Grid. for example I used 1024 x 1024 picture, so I changed spacing width to 512 (half of 1024)


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Another example on how to symmetrize something very easily in Gimp is to get the most excellent G’MIC plugin for Gimp
Out of the hundred of filters and tools it adds, there’s one in particular that is interesting for this : Symmetrize (in the Deformation category)
By default the center of the Symmetrize will be at the exact center of the image/selection , you can move it if you want, but for the case of mirroring the UV, you want to keep it default
What you can modifiy is the angle, by default it’s 90 so it will symmetrize what is on the left of the symmetry center to the right, so if you want to do the opposite, you’ll have to change it to 270.