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Post by Fwecka (Lolabellesims) on Dec 15, 2021 22:35:00 GMT -5
Hi. If this is in the wrong forum feel free to move it.
I've been following this tutorial and the video author went through many, many steps to texture the anvil. The result is beautiful. I was wondering if it's possible to do something like what was done in the video and bake the results into a diffuse map that would match my UV map? Minus the specular effect and the shading, of course. I would want an evenly-lit diffuse with no shading.
I'm trying to research more but I'm not even sure if what I want to do is possible. If not, I won't bother researching.
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Post by mauvemorn on Dec 16, 2021 6:43:35 GMT -5
Hi, cycles is a recommended render for baking because the result is more accurate(in terms of how the materials react to the environment). It takes much longer to bake, though.
Baking Diffuse instead of Combined will give you the color info without shadows, yeah, but you can get it in Blender render as well, probably faster, by baking Textures
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Post by Fwecka (Lolabellesims) on Dec 18, 2021 21:54:05 GMT -5
Hi, cycles is a recommended render for baking because the result is more accurate(in terms of how the materials react to the environment). It takes much longer to bake, though. Baking Diffuse instead of Combined will give you the color info without shadows, yeah, but you can get it in Blender render as well, probably faster, by baking Textures So, I could go through the method shown in the video - he painted scratches and dents that are very realistic - and produce a diffuse based on that? I've said before that I am not happy with how my textures turn out. I'd like to produce a diffuse that is photorealistic and I'm not sure where I should start researching to learn that. In the video, he talks about Substance Painter being a good software for texturing, mainly because SP lets you paint in layers similar to how Photoshop lets you paint in layers. I don't know if I need to focus on learning Substance Painter or if I can use Blender to produce a photorealistic diffuse. |
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Post by mauvemorn on Dec 19, 2021 8:58:06 GMT -5
“The diffuse” in blender and “the diffuse” in ts4 are different things.
In blender it is the color information of the material. It does not need to contain the shadow, specular, bump, etc, information because they are controlled by other components of the material. The rendering is interactive, the environment is not static, the result changes every time anything else is changed. If you need an anvil to be blue, you just choose a different hex code because everything else comes from other things.
In ts4 the environment is static, how the item will react to the environment must be baked to texture because the game will not generate all of it itself like blender renders. If you will assign a blue color to the mesh and will bake the diffuse, the result will be flat blue.
My point it, if you want realistic textures, create the environment(Littledica has already done that for us) and bake EVERYTHING to texture, not diffuse, not ao, but Combined.
Substance painter does not do anything blender cannot do. It is not reasonable to learn entire software instead of just learning how to set up render engine and materials in blender.
Also, substance painter cannot do what blender can which is to recreate the same exact environment that exists in ts4.
also, I watched this anvil course and it is not particularly useful to us (unless you want to learn how to model things and if this is the case, there should be better, more straight-to-the-point tutorials because Blender Guru…. talks a lot). You should just watch an introductory tutorials for cycles, how to work with nodes, and how to bake materials to texture. I think I watched the ones from Grant Abbitt, his tutorials are very substantial, he also models a lot for games, so his content is more suitable for us.
While we’re at it, I do not recommend the tutorials from cgmatter on nodes because they are more focused on procedural nodes which are of little use to us.
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Post by Fwecka (Lolabellesims) on Dec 20, 2021 3:04:07 GMT -5
Grant Abbitt. Thanks for the tip. I needed to know where to start my research and I wasn't even sure what to search for in Google, so I appreciate you pointing me in the right direction.
Yeah, the modeling of the anvil was fun, but the texturing portion seemed useless to me. Really, when it comes down to it I'd like to know how EA makes their diffuse textures. Do you happen to know?
Edit: The video below is sort of what I had in mind though it's not photorealistic texturing; not a big deal since TS4 is supposed to be "cartoony," anyway. The video author UV mapped the character then painted the model directly in Blender and baked the results into...looks like a diffuse though it appears to include AO information. I may be mistaken on that. This method involves nodes which I am not very knowledgeable about, however, so I have a lot of work ahead of me.
Using combined will include lighting and shadows while baking a diffuse will result in a flat color, right? Is it possible to get an evenly lit result with combined? Sorry for all the questions but I'm in the initial information-gathering stage right now. Just trying to get a basic grasp of this and get things organized in my head. Baby steps.
Edit #2: Right here at the 43:29 mark. He painted the texture onto the model and the result is what you see here. He was able to save this texture as a PNG. The image doesn't include ambient occlusion but that can be baked separately and then combined with the other image in Photoshop. This is what I'm thinking of.
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Post by mauvemorn on Dec 20, 2021 9:46:54 GMT -5
Really, when it comes down to it I'd like to know how EA makes their diffuse textures. Do you happen to know? They model something, bake ao either to it or from high poly to low poly, sometimes they overlays the texture ( hair, knitwear), then paint details over it manually, then add highlights either manually or by baking them.
You can plug in ao node in the diffuse in the material or you can bake them separately and combine
If the light in the scene is ambient, then Combined will give you an evenly lit texture, but that is not a good thing. It will look no different from ao in that sense. In real world things are not lit evenly, the cube map in ts4 is not white, maxis meshes are not lit evenly.
Combined includes ao, objects cast shadows onto themselves.
Open a new scene in blender. Subdivide the default cube, uv unwrap it in any way, assign a material with any color. Create a floor. There is already a lamp. Switch to cycles, lower Bounces in Light paths to 1. Bake each maps individually to understand what information each of them stores.
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Post by Fwecka (Lolabellesims) on Dec 21, 2021 2:12:37 GMT -5
Not sure if I did this correctly, of course, but baking a diffuse and baking combined resulted in the exact same thing. Added a plane and sized it big. Added a cube, W > subdivide 2x. Added a material—just a plain color. Entered cycles. In the node editor, checked use nodes. This added a diffuse BSDF node and a material output node. Shift + A > texture > image texture. Unwrapped the cube, and assigned an image texture (plain black) in the UV editor. Selected the image texture node, linked the black texture. Then I baked a diffuse and a combined texture. Exactly the same. I find this surprising, actually.  |
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Post by mauvemorn on Dec 21, 2021 8:30:28 GMT -5
Hmm, i remember doing it with diffuse but, too, cannot recreate the result now, i'll look into it later for i still have not finished the hat chop tutorial edit: I think it’s because I had a texture plugged in and now there is no texture, I’ll check it later |
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Post by mauvemorn on Dec 22, 2021 6:24:33 GMT -5
Yes, that was the texture, my apologies for misinformation. Diffuse with a texture with Color selected - flat bake. Diffuse simply - everything you need. Combined has some additional options but we do not need them for our items
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Post by Fwecka (Lolabellesims) on Dec 23, 2021 4:54:55 GMT -5
Thanks, Mauvemorn. I appreciate your help. And I really, really thank you for the hat chop tutorial. That is going to help me a lot in the coming days with the Resident Evil 4 conversion. Just a heads up, the Resident Evil conversion includes the character's skin on the face and hands and I will definitely have some questions about how to proceed.
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