Precise colouring

Hi Everyone Im new to blender and Im trying to add precisely shaped colour areas to my model, more specifically I want to create a penguin type white belly which merges with the area around the eyes, with a sharp point between the eyes as a slightly cleaner example here the spots on Toads hat and the white cheeks and belly on the red yoshi.


but Im not sure what the best practice is for doing this, painting texturing or modelling, I’m considering the following

  1. shaping the vertices in the area I want to colour and then selecting those faces and applying a separate material But this has a number of issues a) It distorts the model b) I can’t maintain sharp edges when the the subdivision surface is added

  2. creating a oval cylinder merged with two other cylinders for the eye area and using the boolean modifier to merge the two a) its very tricky to model accurately b) the bool modifier creates a very messy mesh

  3. Painting But Im not sure how to get the very clean cut vector type shape I want

  4. texturing i.e. creating the white area as a clean cut shape in illustrator or photoshop, saving as a transparent png and applying that texture precisely to my model a) Not sure I can use a partially transparent texture in Blender b) the shape will be distorted when I apply it to my model, can I adjust / distort the scale vertically and horizontally of the texture in blender to make it fit correctly without having to go backwards and forwards between photoshop and blender adjusting it.

Which of these is the best way of accomplishing this, or is there another better way, What would you say is the standard way of doing such effects ?

Thanks in advance

have you tried to new curve stroke tool? maybe that would be helpful: http://wiki.blender.org/index.php/Dev:Ref/Release_Notes/2.72/Painting

also, i seem to recall an add-on that let’s you use vector textures. i can’t remember what it was called, but it was a few versions ago. i think the person who wrote it was macuono. you might try PM-ing him to find out if there’s an update.
(edit) it was called ‘vectex’.

Hi Modron thanks for the reply I am currently looking into your suggestion, having read up on texturing I think Ive somewhat over thought my question and maybe exporting a UV map to photoshop, might be the short term solution to my problem. But Ive found one speed painting on Youtube of curve and line stroke painting in Blender entitled “GSOC curve and line stroke with mask in sculpt” and its definitely the way Id prefer to do it, but I can’t find any tutorials do you know of any ?

Thanks :slight_smile: