4D Paint

4D Paint was a program originally released by 4D Vision (Andy Bearsley and Max Fox-Wilson are listed as the human programmers in one copy ), for texturing models made in 3D Studio and its successor 3D Studio Max. It stores projects in folders with the extension ".4dp", which contain resources used in the project as well as an actual file with the same extension. It can be run standalone, or as a plugin for 3D Studio Max.

It seems that 4D Paint, perhaps under a different name, was originally developed some time in 1995 or earlier by Schreiber Instruments, Inc., a Colorado-based company that had been founded in 1987 to develop AutoCAD-related products. Schreiber Instruments's 3D Studio-related products were bought by 4D Vision in 1995 ; 4D Vision, which was also based in Colorado, set up a subsidiary in New Zealand, 4D Vision Asia, to develop and distribute 4D Paint. In 1998, 4D Vision Asia had changed its name to "Right Hemisphere" and released a "successor" called Deep Paint 3D some time that year. Deep Paint 3D seems to have been kept as a product up to 2011, but soon after, Right Hemisphere, which had evidently changed to primarily making "3D visualization" software as opposed to 3D modeling software , was bought by another company called "SAP" , which apparently discontinued Deep Paint 3D.

4D Paint is presumably unrelated to the 4D Paint plugin for Cinema 4D and BodyPaint 3D.

Identification
Sample files coming with extant versions (see ) start with the ASCII string.

Software

 * Gold Utils 5, a pirate CD containing a copy of version 1.13
 * Gold Utils 8, contains it in plugin form

Sample files

 * https://telparia.com/fileFormatSamples/other/fourDPaintProject/

Links

 * 4DVISION ANNOUNCES 4D PAINT A VIRTUAL WORLD 3D PAINT SYSTEM
 * Webpage (Archived version)
 * Separate webpage at the 4D Vision Asia site (Archived version)