baking shadows into texture tutorial

[theru]

like me im very new to texturing but i found a neat way to bake shadows into the texture without having to learn paint the whole thing and then in photoshop adjust it the way i want it, i asume u know about layers in photshop before trying this.

 

also, theres photoshop brushes for everything

http://www.deviantart.com/ search for photoshop brushes and u get almost everything there, eyes noose, pattern or whatever u want

 

 

1 way, there prolly a lot more ways but i found this very simple step

 

bake ambient occlusion in max.

 

 

1. Make sure your model is unwrapped in a way that overlapping faces wont look odd when the AO is baked into them. (Basically avoid overlapped faces wherever possible in the Unwrap UVW window).

 

2. When your model is unwrapped to your liking, press M to bring up the Material editor. If you already have a material applied to the model, perhaps with a texture, click on a new material "ball", and drag it onto your model. Under the "Basic Blinn Parameters" of the material, change the diffuse color to 100% white.

 

3. Go to create--->Lights----->Standard Lights---->and select skylight. Do not click on your scene to place the light yet. On the right hand side you will see the skylight parameters. You will want to ensure the color of the light is set to 100% white. By default it will have a subtle blue tone to it. You will also want to ensure "Cast Shadows" is checked, and you can even change the number of rays per sample for a higher quality shadow effect (this will lengthen your render time, I tend to use 40 rays per sample, instead of the default 20). Click anywhere in the scene to place the light. The skylight does not need to be placed anywhere special, it will do its job no matter its orientation.

 

4. Select your model. At the top of the screen, select the "Rendering" menu. Select "Environment" and change the background color to about 50% grey. This will help to avoid any odd seams in your texture, the idea is to match the background to the same shade that the majority of your baked texture will have. You can't get this perfect, but it helps.

 

5. Select the "Rendering" menu again. Click on "Render to Texture". You should see your model (if it is selected) and its name in the list of "Objects to Bake". Look under the "Mapping coordinates" section. Make sure that "Use Existing Channel" is selected, and ensure the unwrap channel is the same as the one you used to unwrap your model. The default is channel One. Next, under "Output", click the "Add" button. I usually just select "Complete Map". Click "Add Elements". You can now choose the resolution of your baked image. You will want this to be the same as your texture, so you dont have to resize the baked image when it is done.

 

6. Click "Render". A message will appear saying "The following elements do not specify a Target Map slot". You can ignore this, its purpose is to automatically apply the rendered result to your model. I have never used this feature because I will be placing the rendered texture into photoshop to merge it with my texture anyway. Click continue. It will render your image. When it is finished, I like to just click on the "Save Image" icon(looks like a floppy disk) in the render result window and save it to wherever I want it, and I usually choose .BMP as the format, so I dont lose any quality as it is saved. But save it as whatever you like.

 

Done! Now you can paste the baked AO texture into your texture and play around with it until you get it how you like!

 

You can use similar steps for baking any kind of light effect into your texture you want. Just have to play around and have fun.

 

 

 

painting wrinkles

 

an easy way 2

 

http://youtu.be/QfboLe9W16A

 

 

play around abit with this and u will be able to create a very nice texture ^^

[Guest Messenjah]

You can also do this in Blender. I've been doing it for years. Ambient Occlusion is the only way to go! :) Especially for older games where we didn't have shadows. It's a bit tricky in Blender however.

[Urwy]

You can also do this in Blender. I've been doing it for years. Ambient Occlusion is the only way to go! :) Especially for older games where we didn't have shadows. It's a bit tricky in Blender however.

 

True, it can be very tricky!

If a file gets too large, all blender does is crash on me :mellow:

But yeah, using AO on your diffuse maps can be a major improvement.

[theru]

awsum ! i managee to bake in hair and fur modfier into the texture with default scanline ao passes ,p shader hair and mentalray! gives me some idea to improve the default alpha texture/diffuse texture on hair/fur O.o

 

http://i49.tinypic.com/105utcl.png diffuse

 

http://i45.tinypic.com/2zfib1v.png alpha

 

 

http://i50.tinypic.com/1zyy69j.png shadows

 

 

with a little finetuning a perfect hair/fur map

 

i tested with just 1 plane not many verticles but with this u use projection and u get a bump map aswell

 

lol took me 3 days to figure this out

Edited July 28, 2012 by theru