This FAQ will collect many questions that often arise. If you may have any questions. Feel free to contact me and I'll add those here.

Q: I reinstalled BPainter and got an error on activation. Is BPainter broken?

A: When installing a new version of BPainter always make sure to first uninstall the old version. Restart Blender, and install the new version. Otherwise problems may arise. Blenders Cache System can cause problems here.

Q: BPainters performance does lag. What can I do?

A: If BPainters painting performance is bad, Blenders is bad too. BPainter uses Blenders normal paint mode. But I noticed there may be a lag massiv lag that can occur. Setting the window draw mode in the User Preferences -> System -> Window Draw Method to Full helped in my case. Test with various draw methods and see what works best for you.

Q: Does BPainter work with other Render Engines(Octane,Lux) besides Cycles and Blender Internal?

A: No, BPainter only works with Cycles and Blender Internal Renderer. It takes massive use of shipped in functionality. Renderer like Octane and Lux are integrated differently. But once Blender 2.8 is going to be released, it is planned to support EEVEE realtime Viewport.

Q: What about textures, do I need to save them manually?

A: No, BPainter takes care of saving all image resources. No worry of loosing image data. Setting and external path for a Paintchannel will make sure every texture is saved externally, otherwise internally.

Q: Does BPainter support a multilayer PBR workflow?

A: BPainter does not support painting on multiple layers at once. It had a working prototype, but it did have a lot of limitations due to blenders internal design. Thats the reason why it is not build in and only a proof of concept.
But BPainter offers a nice design to reuse existing textures an manipulate them so they can be used as specular or roughness input.

Q: Why do I see only one Layer

A: Make sure you are using the "Material" Shading mode. Otherwise Blender will only show the active layer.

Q: I don't see any Layers. Everything is black.

A: One reason could be that no lights are in your scene. When using Blender Internal Renderer you need to make sure that your scene is lit.

Q: The Layers don't seem to be updated.

A: BPainter uses its own Layer Data. When manipulating the nodes or textures manually and not from BPainter Tab it may happen they the represented data gets out of sync. To make sure everything is updated properly Press the Layer Update Icon that appears once something is out of Sync.

Q: I am painting on the Object, but no strokes appear.

A: This can be caused by a few reasons:

  • There is no layer to paint on. Make sure to create at least one layer.
  • If layers are present, take a look if a layer is selected. Reselecting layers may also help.
  • Check that your model has a UV Map.
  • Make sure your object normals are orienting outwards. Maybe you need to recalculate them (Ctrl+N)
  • Doublecheck that the alpha preserving option in the brush settings is disabled.

Q: I just merged some layers and cannot undo anymore.

A: This is a problem that is caused by Blenders undo system. In texture painting mode only brush strokes can be logged as undo steps. So unfortunately other functions that are not related to painting will not be available in texture paint mode. If you make some important merges, make sure to save the file before.


© 2018 Andreas Esau. All Rights Reserved.

