Reference

Who it helps

• Technical artists authoring support textures in Unity.
• Shader and material artists testing color, mask, flow, or direction data.
• Environment artists who need fast paint iteration on preview meshes.
• Solo developers who want a lightweight in-editor painting workflow.

Export profiles

• Color: recommended as sRGB PNG with transparency handling.
• Mask: recommended as linear PNG for grayscale, alpha, or packed mask data.
• Flow: recommended as linear EXR for motion direction in R/G and accumulated strength in B.
• Direction: recommended as linear EXR for direction-field R/G data and the B painted/valid mask.
• Auto export chooses PNG for Color and Mask, and EXR for Flow and Direction.
• Generated exports are written under Assets/EQPaintingLab/Generated/Exports.

Technical details

• Render pipelines: exported textures can be used with Built-in Render Pipeline, URP, HDRP, Shader Graph, or custom shaders.
• Package type: .unitypackage with one root folder, Assets/EQPaintingLab.
• Assembly definitions: EQPaintingLab.Runtime and EQPaintingLab.Editor.
• Dependencies: no third-party packages, no external services, no account login, and no dependency on other EQLabs products.
• Runtime scope: small data model for saved paint assets and persistent texture bytes.
• Included shader: EQPaintingLab/Texture Preview for editor texture and vector preview rendering.
• 3D painting requirements: assigned preview meshes must be readable and must include valid data in the selected UV channel.
• Brush-tip handling: unreadable brush tips use a temporary readable-copy fallback; Invert Brush Tip flips grayscale mask data while preserving alpha.
• Post process behavior: export processing is non-destructive and does not modify the saved painting asset.

Safe usage notes

• EQPaintingLab does not require another EQLabs package.
• Preview meshes must be readable for 3D painting.
• The selected UV channel must exist on the assigned preview mesh.
• Show UV Shell is an editor guide and does not write into texture pixels or exported files.
• Preview motion, arrows, and colors are editor-only visualization; exported files keep the packed texture data.
• Generated exports should be reviewed and assigned to project materials manually.

Known limits

• Projection-aware primary strokes can cross visible seams, while mirrored symmetry clones still use texture-space stamping.
• Direct UV-space strokes use direct texture stamping and are less suitable for visible seam wrap than ProjectionAware mode.
• EQPaintingLab is an in-editor texture authoring tool, not a full external image editor replacement.