Object previews for projection painting operations using arbitrary paint surfaces are provided. The object preview is rendered from the view of the arbitrary projection paint surface. The object preview is provided to the user, who then may define projection paint attribute values by painting over the object preview. The projection paint attribute values are mapped back on to the projection paint surface and one or more images of the object geometry are rendered using the projection paint attribute values. Object previews are rendered by defining a camera view and a proxy surface. A mapping from the proxy surface to a projection surface is defined and associates proxy surface points with projection paint surface points. Rays generated using a projection operation are defined and a renderer uses these rays to determine attribute values for their associated points on the proxy surface to define an object preview image.