Hi, I’m having some strange issues while projection-painting some skin on a character mesh.
The diffuse map is an 8k png (which I forced into mud by scaling up the native 4k paint layer, since there’s no options for > 4k). After working on it for a bit, I’ve noticed that most portions have been degrading with some strange stains/streeks (see attachments) and have no idea why this is. If I paint over them it looks fine but I think the problem is when I save the file...if anyone could help I’d really appreciate it.

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two possible issues

1) its an 8bit image. Use 16bit, it blends colors better.

2) The alpha channel that gets stored with the image is messing with the layers transparency. I’ve run into this after importing images as layers. Its a pain. Fill the alpha channel and report.

Its most likely 1.

I dont recommend painting 8k maps in mudbox.

8k maps are not memory friendly. They are huge bottlenecks in performance, especially in mudbox where you have limited amounts of ram (and we always have limited amounts of ram even outside of mudbox)

I think you will be surprised to see how well mudbox performs with 16, 2k maps, vs 1, 8k map. It will even have more resolution than a single 8k map.

The reason is, mudbox, (and renderers) will load images dynamically better and manage memory a lot better.

A single 8k will limit your ability to use more layers too. But with multiple 2k maps, you will have a lot of room for multiple layers, and many more images.

it seems as soon as i try to paint an 8k 16 bit map the quadro’s driver crashes (after 20 minutes of frozen system)...so it’s not even an option. The problem is that im supposed to render the model in lightwave which supports just a single UV tile, that’s why i cant divide the map, unfortunately. The only thing i can think of is not to save during the painting and when i’m done export the paint layer as 16bit tiff then convert it to png or jpeg in photoshop and eventually reimport it in mud to paint it further. and in the meanwhile pray mud doesn’t crash.

just confirming the above works pretty well and as a bonus, as long as im using a jpeg the lag is almost zero...and ii can go with no saving for long sessions since the crashes in mud are somewhat of a rare event. anyways thanks again for the advice :)