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Is there any way to paint onto a bump map and diffuse map at the same time, so that the strokes match up? Like a multi-layer brush that uses a greyscale texture for the bump layer and a color texture for the diffuse color?

Here's a rough sculpt to demonstrate what I'm imagining:

Bump data and color data overlayed

The GIF above shows how such a brush could be made. The black and white height map would be the displacement brush, transferring its greyscale data to the bump map texture and the green one would transfer its color data to the diffuse map texture.

The resulting brush images:

Bump Brush

Diffuse Brush

Making the brush is one thing, but is it possible to use such a brush?

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    $\begingroup$ Yes, the multi-brush plugin for Blender 2.77a does exactly that, you can find it in cg cookie market: cgcookiemarkets.com/all-products/… $\endgroup$
    – Francoberto
    Commented Jun 13, 2016 at 21:14
  • $\begingroup$ It looks like this may have actually been added, though I am not sure how it works (I came across this question looking). There is now a "Material" paint mode with multiple slots. $\endgroup$
    – user121682
    Commented Apr 8, 2021 at 23:03

2 Answers 2

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Blender only paints to one image at a time.

One solution may be to set the texture brush mapping to stencil and align them visually. If your brush textures align and you don't move the 3dview then the two textures will just line up after you change brush settings and active layers.

When you enable stencil mapping, the texture is overlaid on the 3dview. Use RMB RMB to move the texture into place, ⇧ Shift RMB RMB to scale and ⎈ Ctrl RMB RMB to rotate, then use LMB LMB to paint it onto your texture image.

enter image description here

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  • $\begingroup$ Ah, clever! There's no way to paint strokes, but at least we can stamp patterns. This will surely prove useful. Thanks! $\endgroup$
    – Mentalist
    Commented Oct 25, 2015 at 13:58
  • $\begingroup$ After painting one piece you can move the texture across and line up the sides to paint the next section.... or make wider texture images ;) $\endgroup$
    – sambler
    Commented Oct 25, 2015 at 14:37
  • $\begingroup$ @user121682 Can you please elaborate on this? Where did you learn about this "Material" paint mode with multiple slots? $\endgroup$
    – Mentalist
    Commented Apr 10, 2021 at 18:17
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one more tip:

you can paint the bump and a single color, at the same time,

if you connect the image channels as masks (not as color information).

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first fill the image with a blue value of 0.5 (this will become middle bump value) (set red and green to 0)

then setup the material as in this picture:

enter image description here

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in the color selector:

use the red-channel value (R) for color intensity

use the blue-channel value (B) for bump intensity

note: the real color is selected in the MIX node (not in the color selector) !!

enter image description here

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  • $\begingroup$ I see. Nice observation. Does the Alpha output not put out anything? Is that why you're using R+B instead of RGB+A? $\endgroup$
    – Mentalist
    Commented Sep 22, 2021 at 9:10
  • $\begingroup$ if you use the alpha channel -- it will affect your color (makes it transparent) -- propably not the result you want. $\endgroup$
    – Daniol Dan
    Commented Sep 24, 2021 at 2:48
  • $\begingroup$ Only if you use the alpha channel for alpha, right? I don't usually need alpha data for things like the skin of a creature, for example. So it seems like using RGB as usual for color + alpha channel for bump might be a good solution, if I'm understanding your method correctly. I will try this when I get a moment, and report results. $\endgroup$
    – Mentalist
    Commented Sep 27, 2021 at 8:18

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