Paint effects are an easy way to add realistic trees, grass, and plants to your scene.  There are also other paint effects brushes that will create everything from glass to meat.

There are two ways to use paint effects.  You can paint in 3d or in 2d.  You can use 3d paint effects to add objects to your scene.  Or you can use 2d paint effects to create a background image or texture.
 
 

3d Paint Effects

1)  First we will setup your work area.

• Change to the rendering menu set.
• I think it is best to use a 2 panel stacked layout.  The top panel should be the perspective and the bottom panel should be the visor.
• In the visor minimize the Animation, Rendering, Create, and /export/Users... sections.  Open the section labeled '/usr/aw/maya/brushes/'.  This is where you will find all of the available brushes
• Now create a NURBS object.  Resize it however you like.  In this example I am going to use a plane but you can use a sphere, cone, or anything else you want.  You can also use your own models as long as they were made using NURBS instead of polygons.

2)  Time to start painting.

• Select your object.
• Make sure you are using the rendering menu set and in the hotbox go to Paint Effects>Make Paintable.
• Look through the brushes and choose the one you want to use. (Note:  For some reason not all of the brushes are working right now.  Also, some work better in 2d than in 3d.)
• In the hotbox go to Paint Effects>Paint Effects Tool.
• Make sure that your object is still selected.   If it isn't then change to the arrow tool, select the object, then change back to the paint effects tool.  Before you can paint on anything in 3d the object must be NURBS, it must have been "made paintable", and it must be selected.
• Start painting on the object.

I used the corn2 brush in the plants folder.  If your object doesn't have something sticking off of it then you must have chosen a brush meant to be used in 2d.

3)  Render.

• You can't render anything without a light so create an ambient light.
• Now in the hotbox do Render>Render into New Window...
• You will probably find that your render shows your object smaller and darker than you'd like.  It might even be hard to see any color at all.  If this is the case then dolly in and/or add more light.

Of course this is only the most basic functionality of paint effects.  The possibilities are endless.  If you want to learn more then take a look at the Using Maya Paint Effects manual located in the print room of FA215.  The book explains things in a very clear and fairly easy to understand way.

If you want to start experimenting with the endless number of settings for paint effects brushes then just select the curve drawn by the brush and go into the attribute editor and start exploring.  Be careful though, it is extremely easy to move one setting a little bit too far and end up with a brush that will take hours to draw the preview of.

One last note:  If you want to combine dynamics with paint effects then use Paint Effects' built-in dynamics which can be found in the attribute editor.  Trying to use the dynamics found under the Dynamics menu set will not work correctly with paint effects.

Now check out 2d paint effects.

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comments..suggestions..questions:  josh@occipital.net