Projection Pal
A powerful camera projection toolkit for Blender that streamlines texture painting workflows. Create, manage, layer and paint multiple camera-based projections directly in your scene.

A ‘Projection’ is the context of this addon is a node group, containing an image, and an optional mask. You use it similarly to the way you would use any bitmap texture, but it handles the mapping of the texture inside the node group. It is linked to a camera & projects through it, so adjusting the camera position, angle & FOV will all alter where the projection is applied to your objects. The addon in the side panel (default shortcut ‘N’) will manage a lot of the internal settings of the node group, so you hopefully shouldn’t need to go into it unless you need to do something advanced. You can adjust mix modes, opacity etc. all from the addon UI.

The addon by default tries to add the Projection node group to the Diffuse input of your material when added to an object, and it will mix over the top of whatever you already have in this slot. You can connect it to any slot you like, so you could project roughness, transparency, use it to mix between 2 materials etc. anything you can use a normal texture for. You can reorder the node group, and copy it from one material to another. If you click the ‘refresh’ button on the object list, the addon will try and update the list to reflect the objects that are using the projection.

Installation
After downloading the zip file, open blender & go into the preferences. Under ‘Add-ons’ select the drop down menu on the top right & choose ‘Install from Disk’ then browse to where you downloaded the zip and select it. It should now show up in the sidebar of the 3D viewport.

User Interface

Mouse over the UI components to highlight the documentation on the right, or vice versa

Projection Pal Documentation

Add Projections

Create new projections in various ways.

Load Image, and preview loaded Image

Preview area for your loaded image. Shows the loaded image, use the buttons below to load images from disk.

Project Image on Selected

Creates a new projection from your current POV, using the loaded image (above), onto your selected objects.

Paste Clipboard on Selected

Creates a new projection from your current POV, using an image from your clipboard, onto your selected objects.

Paste from Photoshop

Creates a new projection from your current POV, using the currently active layer in Photoshop, onto your selected objects. Requires Photoshop to be set up to receive remote connections (so Blender and Photoshop can communicate)

Use Photoshop Document Dimensions

When checked, the layer from photoshop will be the size of the Photoshop Document, otherwise will be cropped to the layer. You want this checked if you are bringing in multiple layers and want them to keep their relative size & position.

Create Blank Image

Create a new blank image to paint directly onto your objects in Blender. Pops up a dialog where you can choose the resolution, initial color & alpha of the image.

Paint Mode Toggles

Enable to automatically enter paint mode after creating the projection. For all but a new blank image, this will create a new blank mask and go into mask painting mode, for a blank image, it will enter image painting mode.

Manage Projections

Control and organize projections in your current scene.

Show/Hide Projection

Toggle the visibility of the selected projection.

Projection Camera

Activate and the camera for the selected projection. If you are looking through a camera view, the viewport will switch to the camera you activate.

Add Manual Projection

Create a new empty projection, you will need to manually specify the camera, and load images and/or masks.

Remove Selected Projection

Delete the currently selected projection from the scene. You can choose to delete the projection & the node group, or leave the node group in your material.

Duplicate Selected Projection

Create a copy of the currently selected projection.

Projection Camera

The camera the projection is linked to. Select a camera from the dropdown to change which camera this projection uses.

Refresh Camera Projection

Update the camera projection if the field of view on the camera or scene resolution has changed. This ensures the projection remains accurate after camera modifications.

Create Camera From View

Create a new camera from your current viewport position and automatically assign it to this projection.

Toggle Backfacing

Enable or disable backface culling for the projection. When enabled, the projection will only appear on faces that are facing toward the camera. When enabled additional controls appear so you can blur the transition.

Toggle Depth Clipping

Enable or disable depth-based clipping for the projection. This will stop the projection when it gets a certain distance from the camera.When enabled, additional controls appear to adjust the clipping depth and clipping blur amount.

Projection Mode

Toggle between different projection modes for the selected projection. Live mode projects accurately, regardless of the amount of Geometry. UV mode projects the camera onto a new UV set, so its accuracy depends on the poly count. Apply UV's bakes this projection,effectively disconnecting the camera from the projection.

Projection Image

Manage and adjust the projection image properties.

Select Image

Choose which image to use for the projection.

Load New Image

Load a new image file from your computer.

Paste Image

Paste an image directly from your clipboard.

Create Blank Image

Create a new empty image for painting in Blender.

Paint Mode

Enter or exit paint mode to modify the image directly with Blenders built in paint tools. This paints on an invisible 'virtual surface' so the painting is fast and responsive even on high polygon objects. You are also not limited to painting where there is geometry, you can paint over the entire projection image.

Flip Vertically

Flip the projection image upside down.

Tiling Mode

Control how the image repeats across the surface.

Image Offset

Adjust the position of the projected image either horizontally or vertically.

Mix Mode

Choose how the projection blends with the underlying texture or color.

Opacity

Adjust the transparency of the projection.

Camera Overlay

Display the projection camera's view for precise alignment. The overlay is visible even where there is no geometry so is useful for modelling in the camera view. When enabled there is also an opacity slider.

Projection Mask

Control where and how the projection image appears.

Select Mask

Choose which image to use for the projection mask.

Use Image Alpha

Use the projection image's alpha channel as a mask. This mixes with the projection mask so you can use both.

Load New Mask

Load a mask image from your computer.

Paste Mask

Paste a mask directly from your clipboard.

Create Blank Mask

Create a new empty mask for painting.

Paint Mode

Enter or exit paint mode to modify the mask directly with Blenders built in paint tools. This paints on an invisible 'virtual surface' so the painting is fast and responsive even on high polygon objects. You are also not limited to painting where there is geometry, you can paint over the entire mask.

Flip Vertically

Flip the mask upside down.

Tiling Mode

Control how the mask repeats across the surface.

Mask Offset

Adjust the position of the mask either horizontally or vertically.

Mask Overlay

Display the mask overlay. This can be useful when painting an image, so you can see where your masking is. When enabled there is also an opacity slider.

Projection Objects

Manage which objects receive the projection.

Object List

View and manage the list of objects affected by this projection.

Add Selected Objects

Add currently selected scene objects to the projection.

Remove Objects

Remove highlighted list objects from the projection.

Select in Scene

Select the highlighted list object in your 3D scene.

Sync Object List

Manuall Update the object list to match the current scene state. Just in case they get out of sync for some reason

Add Projection Node

Manually add a projection node to selected objects. Just in case you delete the node group from the material.

Using Projection Pal with Photoshop
Photoshop handles transparency differently from other apps, you can still copy and paste from it, but you don’t get Transparency.

Theres a specific button in the addon ‘Paste from Photoshop’ which will communicate with Photoshop and bring in the current active layer from Photoshop, and it also generates a mask so you get the transparency as well. This requires you to enable ‘remote connections’ in the photoshop preferences, and set a password. You also need to open the Blender Preferences, go to ‘Add-ons’ find ‘Projection Pal’ and open its preferences to set the same password there