PSD image texture - material not updating?

Question

I need a way to LIVE draw shapes on my objects in blender, meaning creating squares, circles, etc as one would in Photoshop but in Blender so I can see how it looks.

So far Id just done this creating objects and making them flat -

but this isn't ideal. Next to keep the live updating I tried selecting a PSD as my material texture and UV unwrapping like this, but the PSD doesn't update live. Have to close out blender for a new shape to appear even saving the PSD file -

I need a way to add shape images/draw on my materials - how can I do this correctly? The paint tool in Blender doesn't seem to allow for clean shapes like PS.

Answer 1

Image used as textures will not update automatically every time the file is changed, but you don't need to close blender to make the changes visible.

The easiest way to do this is to re-load the image in the UV/Image editor window. The shortcut is AltR

On the Properties panel of images used as texture there is also a button to reload the image from disk.

There is an addon to sychronize gimp with blender, but I don't know if it still works. I avoid using GIMP... but the info is in this answer:

Can Krita and Blender be linked?

Answer 2

Create your shapes as black and white images in rgb, or with alpha, and use the Stencil tool to paint the shapes into the texture in the 3d view.

You can get clean shapes only if your target image is high enough in resolution as well as the stencil image being high enough in resolution - balance is necessary or otherwise you get pixelation from too low of resolution of what you are painting through or what you are painting onto.

Using the Stencil image as a Brush Mask texture, you can move it aroudn the viewport with Alt-RMB and scale with Shift-Alt-RMB, and rotate with Ctrl-Alt-RMB.

I compose shapes for use as brushes from a separate scene using an orthographic camera looking down, and I use shadeless material objects like high resolution curves and mesh objects, rendering the world as transparent. It is also the best way I have found to make stencils, and I sometimes use them as Brush textures and use Procedural textures as Brush Mask textures to chip away at the stencil I am painting.