In the previous recipe, we made the scales image texture seamless, ready to be seamlessly mapped on our model. If you go back to Chapter 5, Unwrapping the Low Resolution Mesh, you'll remember that we assigned two different sets of UV coordinate layers to it: the UVMap layer, divided into 5 different tiles (this is called UDIM UV Mapping; it's a popular standard in the industry and means U-Dimension), and the UVMap_scales layer, set up to repeat the scales_tiles.png
image pattern at the right size on the model:
By zooming in and looking carefully at the result of the tiling (in Textured Solid mode, which is enabled under the Shading subpanel of the N viewport sidepanel), you can see that although we used a tileable scales image, we still have seams in some areas. This is obviously due to the fact that the UVMap_scales layer (as you can see in UV/Image Editor in the Edit Mode after selecting all the mesh's vertices) is made up of separated and overlapping islands to obtain a randomly distributed mapping of the scales on the Gidiosaurus skin:
A simple solution to fix these seams is to bake the random scales pattern on the 5 tiles of the UVMap layer and then use the Paint Tool to adjust the gaps. This a step that we have to do in any case to allow further texture modifications such as the painting of befitting facial scales around the eyebrows, the eyes, the nostrils, and so on, but let's go in order.
To be able to bake and then paint on the different tiles in real time through the 3D viewport, we must prepare the file a bit.
Start Blender and open the Gidiosaurus_library.blend
file; save it as Gidiosaurus_baking_scales_01.blend
:
Now, let's prepare the materials; remember that, at the moment, we are under the Blender Render engine and not under Cycles:
Enamel
and the Body
material datablocks.Material_U0V0
, Material_U1V0
, Material_U2V0
, Material_U0V1
, and Material_U1V1
.Material U0V0
slot and go to the Textures window to click on the New button and add a texture.*3
, then press Enter (in Blender, you can do a math calculation for any parameter like this anywhere). Copy and paste (Ctrl + C and Ctrl + V) the result of the multiplication, 3072, into the Height slot; click on the Name slot to write the texture name as blank_U0V0
, then press the OK button at the bottom of the panel:This adds a blank (alpha background) 3072 x 3072 pixels image as a texture on the material.
U0V0
. Go down to the Mapping subpanel and click on the Map slot to select the UVMap item:texture_making
folder as blank_U0V0.png
, then click on the pin icon button to the right to activate it (Display current image regardless of object selection):As the image is saved under the Image subpanel, the Source slot caption changes from Generated to Single Image.
texture_making
folder, you have saved the images: blank_U0V0
, blank_U1V0
, blank_U2V0
, blank_U0V1
, and blank_U1V1
.Material_U1V0
slot and click on the Assign button. Go to the top right UV/Image Editor window and click on the X icon button on the toolbar to unlink the current image datablock (which is still blank_U0V0). Then click on the Image item on the toolbar and from the drop-down list, select the blank_U1V0
image.Material_U2V0
slot and again click on the Assign button. Go to the following image editor and unlink the current image datablock to load the blank_U2V0
image.Material_U0V0
). Then go out of Edit Mode.As you can see, by selecting the vertices of the UV islands in UV/Image Editor, the corresponding vertices on the mesh are also selected. Moreover, this makes all the UV islands visible in the image editor, even though, we haven't selected a single vertex on the mesh yet (normally, you see only the islands of the selected vertices in the image editor). This way, it's simple to associate a certain UV island with a certain material and a certain group of vertices on the mesh.
Material_U0V0
slot. Go to the Texture window and click on the second texture slot right under the U0V0 one. Click on the New button, scroll down to the Image subpanel, and click on the Open button to browse to the texture_making
folder and load the scales_tiles.png
image.Unique datablock ID name
slot as scales_tiles
. Click on the checkbox to the side of the U0V0 texture slot to disable it (this is just temporary but mandatory for the baking, otherwise it would create a dependency loop, that is, the Circular reference in texture stack message in the top main header and in the Terminal panel as well):Material_U1V0
slot and then click on the second texture slot right under the U1V0 one and click on the New button. Click again on the black arrow button and this time, select Paste Texture Slot Setting:Thanks to the pin icon button that is enabled for each loaded image, it's possible to keep the different images visible at the same time. At this moment, the 5 different PNG images are blank, so this isn't particularly evident; it will be a lot more clear when we start to actually paint on the model through the 3D viewport.
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