Texturing

Techniques

• Thomas Brush - Creating structures from a single texture .

• CheckingMyLootz - Texturing with: 'Pixel Palette Texture' x 'Trim Sheet Textures' x 'Single Atlas' x 'Multi Atlas' .

  • Depends on the art style, but all are interesting.

Baking

• Grant Abbitt - Texture Baking .

• Motivations :

  • Have procedural effects baked into a texture, so it can be rendered in game engine materials.

  • High-poly to low-poly conversion:

    • Used to maintain the high-poly detail quality on a low-poly model.

• Precautions :

  • An invisible object can affect baking/rendering.

    • Visibility icon is ignored; only the Render icon matters.

• Color Space Choice :

  • For 'Base Color/Albedo/Diffuse' or 'Emissive':

    • Use sRGB

  • For other maps:

    • Use Non-color.

      • Ensures correct baking results, avoiding color space conversions that could alter the bake.

      • Only takes linear mathematical values.

      • 'Linear' also seems to work.

• Bake Quality :

  • Cycles samples:

    • Preview: 10 samples.

    • High-quality: 512 samples.

• Grant Abbitt - Baking many objects into the same texture .

  • Manipulates object UVs, considering texture margin between baked objects.

• Grant Abbitt - Baking the Normal Map of a high-poly model for a low-poly model .

• Grant Abbitt - Baking the Normal Map of a high-poly model for a low-poly model using a "cage" .

• The CG Essentials - Baking Ambient Occlusion .

• AGI - Baking Ambient Occlusion .

  • It is explained that the 'glTF Settings' node in the Shader Graph is really a 'dead-end', not displaying any result in the image preview in Blender, only ensuring that the AO information is exported to the glTF file during material export.

  • The reason AO is placed in this 'dead-end' is due to Blender's Shader Graph not supporting 'Occlusion', since it was made for Cycles, which calculates AO in real-time. This may change in the future if Blender adds support for Eevee.

  • AO baking is somewhat awkward, as Blender allows baking using Cycles, but it is not possible to see the texture result in Eevee due to this lack of support.

  • The rest of the video shows:

    • Some fixes in AO baking due to geometry normals and textures appearing in front during render.

    • Final process to ensure AO export in the glTF file.

• Grant Abbitt - Baking the Cavity Map of a high-poly model, to be used by a low-poly model .

• Grant Abbitt - Baking the Cavity Map of a high-poly model, to be used by a low-poly model .

• Grant Abbitt - Baking Ambient Occlusion of a high-poly model, to be used by a low-poly model .

  • The only thing done is Ambient Occlusion baking in Cycles. Supposedly, the existence of the Normal Map is required for Ambient Occlusion to be baked.

• Grant Abbitt - Using some baked textures .

  • {0:13 -> 0:32}

    • A new texture is created where the Base Color Texture Paint will be applied. This texture is then multiplied by the CavityMap texture, resulting in a mixture of both textures.

  • {3:45 -> 4:24}

    • Discusses the process of baking the result of mixing both textures into a single Base Color texture.

    • It's somewhat strange that in addition to using the CavityMap texture as a mix with the Base Color, it is also used for Roughness; the reason is unclear.