Polypainting keeps creating strange unwanted blending problems.

[The_Conundrical_Prep]

I’ve had this problem in most of my recent sculpts when I attempt to paint a mesh using layers. Before I try to describe it, here’s a picture showing sort of what I mean:

For some reason, this seems to appear as an interaction between areas with zero polypaint data and painted areas. Before I begin I try to cover the whole layer so that there is no transition between the two, yet it starts appearing again if I hold ALT and delete patches. It also can’t be avoided on higher sculpt layers because I can’t just fill the entire layer in and try again.

As far as I can tell, the layer seems to exist as a negative coat of paint that will generally interact poorly and create stair-stepping borders rather than accepting coloring. I can’t smooth it, I can’t blend it out. I have to cover it completely with a thick layer of paint.

It also creates a buffer space around my brush as if I had the Gradient setting on, which I don’t. You can see in the screenshot that the falloff seems to lack transparency so as the brush feathers, the additional pixels are filled in with the alternate color.

I’m fairly sure there’s got to be an easy solution to fix or avoid this but I’m having trouble figuring out how to google the problem.

Attachments

[The_Conundrical_Prep]

It happens even when I haven’t erased or used the ALT key. It seems to burn a stroke or part of a stroke onto the surface and lift it out instead of blending it.

I think it’s pretty clearly a byproduct of the way transparency is applied on the brush. I don’t know why, though. It’s an interaction between areas with no color data and areas with invisible color data.

You can see the transparent feathered ends of my strokes reemerging as if they were solid colors when I try to go over them again. Unless I’m on a layer on which I can afford to cover the whole thing with a layer of paint, I can’t stroke in the same area twice.