Mix Blend Mode

The mix blend mode is like the normal mode in Photoshop. It only does the normal texture blending mode in Blender, but if our base color and our blend color have quite large differences in values, it gives quite an effect that you can notice in the sides of the blend color.

Take a look at Figure 4-6 to see how mix blend mode works.

You can notice that in Figure 4-6, mix blend mode is like the normal mode in Photoshop. But you can see that in its edges, they have the soft blur effect that depends on the color or saturation, then turns into a burn effect.

Before we move on to our next blend mode, the blending mode in general has some categories. One of them is darken. Those blend modes under this category will turn its result color darker. In this blending mode, if you paint a white color, or any lighter color than the base color, it will become invisible or rather you will not see it applied, and anything that is darker than white, or darker than the base color, is going to have some darkening effect.

Now that we have it, let’s proceed to our next blending mode, which is one of the darken blend modes, darken.

Darken Blend Mode

The darken blend mode looks at the luminance value in each of the RGB channels and selects either the base color or blend color depending on which is darker. Let’s take a look at Figure 4-7 to see how this blend mode works.

Our base color used in Figure 4-7 is the color red. You can see in different images how darken blend mode works. You can see in that when we use the green, blue, and light blue colors as our blend color, we have a darker color as a result color, while when we use the pink and peach color that are lighter than red, we didn’t see any effect. This proves that any color that is lighter than the base color will not have any effect on our base color and will only affect the background of the base color, while any color that is darker than our base color will affect both the outside and the inside of the base color.

Okay. This might get a little confusing because of many technical things. For both darken and multiply, these are the rules applied: when the blend color is lighter than the base color, it will become invisible . If the blend color is also a color white, it will also become invisible. When the blend color is darker than the base color, you will see a result color. If the blend color is darker than the color white, you will see a result color. This also be applied in the next two-blend mode, which is color burn and linear burn, but of course, there are also some differences in effects.

Let’s now proceed to multiply blend mode, which is also part of the darken blend mode.

Multiply Blend Mode

Multiply blend mode multiplies the luminosity of the base color by the blend color. The output color or the resulting color is always a darker color. White produces no change while black pixels remain.

Let’s take a look at Figure 4-8 to see how this blend mode works.

You see that its effect is the same as in the darken blend mode. Their difference lies in how they calculate the luminosity of the colors, but their rules between the darker and lighter colors are the same. As you can see in Figure 4-8, the color green, which is darker than the color blue, results in a darker color. The light blue blend color doesn’t have an effect on our base color since it is lighter than our base color; and last, the peach color has a minimal effect on our base color since it is a little darker than white.

If that is already clear, let’s now proceed to our next blend mode, which is the color burn.

Color Burn Blend Mode

Color burn blend mode is part of the category of darken blend modes that gives you a darker result than Multiply by increasing the contrast between the base and the blend colors, resulting in more highly saturated midtones and reduced highlights.

Take a look at Figure 4-9 to see how color burn works.

You can see in image Figure 4-9 that in these blending modes, lighter colors don’t affect the base color while the darker colors have an impact. Unlike in multiply and darken, there are some instances where lighter colors can affect the base color: for example, it is darker than white and isn’t lighter than the base color. Here in color burn, as long as it is lighter than the base color, it will not affect the base color.

Next stop is the linear burn blend mode.

Linear Burn Blend Mode

Linear burn blend mode is part of the category of darken blend modes that decreases the brightness of the base color based on the value of blend colors. The result is darker than multiply but less saturated than color burn. Linear burn also produces the most contrast to darker colors than any of the other blending modes in the darker group. Let’s take a look at how linear burn works in Figure 4-10.

Its result color is the same as Color Burn at first glance, but if you look at it closely, you will see the real effect of the Linear Burn. At some point, it is darker than the Darker Blend mode, Multiply Blend Mode, and Color Burn Blend mode.

Okay. We will have now the blending modes, which are the opposite of the darken blend modes, the lighten blend modes. These modes will turn result colors to brighter colors. When you paint black, it will become invisible and anything that is brighter than black is going to have some darkening effect.

Now, let’s start with the lighten blend mode.

Lighten Blend Mode

Lighten blend mode takes a look at the base color and blend colors, and it keeps whichever one of the two is the lightest. If the blend colors and the base colors are the same, then no change is applied. Lighten looks at the three RGB channels separately when blending the pixels.

Let’s take a look at Figure 4-11 to see how this blend mode works.

You can notice that the dark blue doesn’t have an effect at all – like it’s invisible. You can’t see anything. When I applied the blue color, it only affected the mesh or the outside of the base color. When I chose white as my blend color, you notice that it looks like a solid color when I paint it across our base color unlike the others, which look like a highlighter color. You see in this mode that the lighter the blend color is, the more visible the result color will be.

Now, let’s proceed to our next lighten blend mode, which is the screen blend mode.

Screen Blend Mode

Screen blend mode is where the resulting color is always a brighter color. It can produce many different levels of brightening depending on luminosity values of the blend colors.

Let’s take a look at Figure 4-12 to see how this mode works.

Unlike in lighten blend mode, that part of the dark blue at least has a bit of effect here, though it isn’t that visible, but still for the other five colors, pink, blue (which is the same as the base color), green, red, and white, it is the same as the lighten.

Let’s move on to the other lighten blend mode, which is the color dodge.

Color Dodge Blend Mode

Color dodge blend mode gives you a brighter effect than screen blending by decreasing the contrast between the base color and the blend colors, resulting in saturated midtones and blown highlights.

Take a look at Figure 4-13 to see the effects of this mode.

Again, as you can see, the effect on the darker blue here is that it is much more visible compared to the other two, which are the screen and lighten. You can notice that their differences lie in how these lighten blend modes treat the darker colors because they have the same rule when it comes to light colors like pink, which has the same color of the base color and white color.

Now, let’s proceed to the last lighten blend mode but not the last blend mode, add.

Add Blend Mode

Add blend mode produces a similar but stronger result than screen or color dodge. This blending mode looks at the color information in each channel and brightens the base color to reflect the blend color by increasing the brightness.

Let’s see Figure 4-14 to see how the add blend mode works.

You can see in Figure 4-14, though add blend mode has the same rule with the other lighten blend mode, its impact is still different. Its result looks more visible than the other three.

So, we’re done with the lighten blend mode. We’ll now proceed to another set of blend modes, which are called contrast blending modes. In this kind of mode, the rule was if you paint a color with 50% gray with this mode, it will become invisible. This mode creates contrast by both lightening and darkening the result colors by using complementary blending modes to create the blend.

Now that we already know how it works, let’s start the discussion of each blending mode under this category.

Overlay Blend Mode

First stop is the overlay blend mode. This mode is a combination of multiply and screen with the base color always shining through. Overlay uses the screen at half strength on colors lighter than 50% gray while it uses multiply at half strength on colors darker than 50% gray.

Another way of thinking about overlay is by thinking of shifting midtones. Dark blend colors shift the midtones to darker colors, and light tones shift the midtones to brighter colors.

Let’s take a look at Figure 4-15 to see how this blending mode works.

Notice something at the sides of the color blue? There is some effect in the part where we paint with the overlay blend mode. It seems that the effect doesn’t only in the color that can be seen, but also these blending mode create a texture like effect that can be seen in the sides of the color stroke.

Now, let’s proceed to our next contrast blending mode, which is soft light.

Soft Light Blend Mode

Soft light blend mode is very much like overlay. It applies either a darkening or lightening effect depending on the luminance values, but in a much more subtle way. You can think of soft light as a softer version of overlay without the harsh contrast.

Take a look at Figure 4-16 to see how soft light works.

In our example in Figure 4-16, we see more of a lightening effect in soft light blend mode, though we can see some darkening in part of the white color. Well, as I stated above, it applies lightening or darkening depending on the luminance values of the colors.

Hard Light Blend Mode

At the next stop, we have the hard light blend mode, which combines the multiply and screen blending modes using the brightness values of the blend colors to make its calculations. The results with hard light tend to be intense. It sounds like it would have something in common with soft light, but it does not. It is more closely related to overlay.

Take a look at Figure 4-17 to see how this blend mode works.

If you look at Figure 4-17, you can see that our result colors look more like the result color for mix blend mode except that you don’t see any burn-like effect on the sides in any of our result color examples. This might be the reason why the resulting colors of hard light tend to be intense.

So, let’s now proceed with our next contrast blend mode, which is vivid light.

Vivid Light Blend Mode

Vivid light blend mode is like an extreme version of overlay and soft light. Anything darker than 50% gray is darkened, and anything lighter than 50% gray is lightened .

Let’s take a look at Figure 4-18 to see how this blend mode works.

Here, we can see a visible texture effect in the middle of the blue color. But wait, you can only see the effect of vivid light using a color either lighter or darker than the base color, but you cannot see its effect if you use a blend color with the same color of the base color, unlike soft light and overlay. You can also see that its color is as intense as hard light here.

So, now, let’s proceed to the linear light blend mode.

Linear Light Blend Mode

Linear light blend mode uses a combination of the add blending mode on lighter pixels and a linear burn on darker pixels.

Take a look at Figure 4-19 to see how this blend mode works.

In our result color in Figure 4-19, linear light has the same effect as hard light. They have the same intensities, and you can’t easily see their difference.

Now, let’s proceed to the last contrast mode we have here, pin light.

Pin Light Blend Mode

Pin light blend mode is an extreme blending mode that performs a darken and lighten blending mode simultaneously. It can result in patches or blotches, and it completely removes all midtones.

Take a look at Figure 4-20 to see how this blend mode works.

It’s very clear and visible in Figure 4-20. The effect, or should we say, the texture-like effect, which might be the blotches or patches of pin light. It’s very clear to see the difference of this mode to other contrast blend modes.

Let’s discuss the last category of blending mode that we will have here, inversion blending modes. This mode looks for variations between the base and blend colors to create the blend.

Now that it was already given, let’s start discussing the blend mode that is under this category. Let’s start with the difference.

Difference Blend Mode

Difference blend mode uses the difference of the base color and blend pixels as the resulting color. White color inverts the base color while black produces no change. Dark gray colors apply a slight darkening effect.

Let’s take a look at Figure 4-21 to see how this blend mode works.

Remember that our base color is the mesh base color, and we are only using the blue color for us to have a clearer vision of what’s going on with our blend modes. See that when we use the color blue, it turns a resulting color of yellow and turns the blue color painted in the mesh to black. The green color results in pink and turns the blue color to light blue. The yellow color results in the blue color and turns the blue color to white. The light blue color results in red and turns the blue color to green. The pink color results in green and turns the blue color to red. Last, the white color results in black and turns the blue color to yellow. This is the example of how this blend mode uses the differences of the base color and blend colors .

Let’s now proceed to our next inversion blend mode, which is exclusion.

Exclusion Blend Mode

Exclusion blend mode is very similar to difference. Blending with white inverts the base color values, while blending with black produces no change . However, blending with 50% gray produces 50% gray.

Take a look at Figure 4-22 to see how the exclusion blend mode works.

As you can see in Figure 4-22, exclusion has a different kind of effect more than the effect on its color. For example, in the part where I used the color pink as a blend color together with the blue, it results in a light blue color with a green stroke effect on the outside while a red stroke plus a pink fill in the part that hit the blue color results. This effect also shows in the part where I used the color white, light blue, and blue. This didn’t show when I used the color green and yellow, but in the part of color yellow, the part that hit the color blue looks like it has been erased.

You can see here that this blend mode has an interesting effect that is worth learning.

Now, let’s proceed to our last contrast blending mode, but not the last blend mode to discuss, which is the Subtract Blend Mode.

Subtract Blend Mode

Subtract blend mode subtracts pixel values from the base color. This blending mode drastically darkens pixels by subtracting brightness. Black has no effect . Only as the blend values get brighter does the result get darker.

Let’s see Figure 4-23 to see subtract blend mode at work.

We can see in Figure 4-23 that the result color we produce using the subtract blend mode is the opposite of the color we’ve chosen. It is just like white to black, green to pink, or yellow to blue.

Now, we’re done with the three contrast blend modes. We still have six blend modes to discuss: Hue, Saturation, Color, Value, Erase Alpha, and Add Alpha. Let’s keep going !

Hue Blend Mode

Hue blend mode preserves the luminosity and saturation of the base color while adopting the hue of the blend color.

Let’s take a look at Figure 4-24 to see how this blend mode works.

As you can see in Figure 4-24, it seems this blend mode doesn’t have any effect on base mesh color but if you look closely on the part where I used the light blue, white, and yellow colors, it does have an effect but it’s not that visible. But also, you can notice how white turns to red rather than another white. This is because there is no white in a hue or black. It is only RGB. Hue is like turning the color wheel so it changes colors but doesn’t change the saturation. The saturation is like moving from the center to the edge of the color wheel, and the value is adjusting the slider on the side of the color wheel, making everything darker or lighter.

Now, let’s move on to our next blend mode, which is saturation.

Saturation Blend Mode

Saturation blend mode preserves the luminosity and hue of the base color while adopting the saturation of the blend colors. A black-and-white blend color also turns the image into grayscale because the base color doesn't have saturation.

Take a look at Figure 4-25 to see how saturation works.

Quite an effect, right? Here, we can say that when you choose a pure hue as a blend color, we can only get an effect the same as you can see in the two images placed on the left side of Figure 4-25, where I used blue and yellow as blend colors. You see that it has a result color where we have a blue color and a pink color mix in on the sides. But as we choose a color where its saturation value is lesser for the blend color, the result output has a slight change too. It became lighter, as you can see in our example. However, when we use white as a blend color, we cannot see any effect at all. Again, this happens because I’m just using the hue, or the RGB, value without using the saturation value in it; but unless you change the saturation of the color to differe from the saturation of the first color you use, you will see some big differences.

Now, let’s take a look in our next blend mode, which is color.

Color Blend Mode

Color blend mode preserves the luminosity of the base color while adopting the hue and saturation of the blend color.

Take a look at Figure 4-26 to see how this mode works.

As you can see in Figure 4-26, this blend mode has an effect of a highlighter. Well, depending on the combination of saturation of colors you use, it also determines the effect you will have in your output.

Let’s now proceed to our next blend mode, which is value.

Value Blend Mode

Value blend mode preserves the luminosity of the base color while adopting the value of the blend colors.

Take a look at Figure 4-27 to see how the value blend mode works.

As you can see in Figure 4-27, most of the result colors from this blend mode are close to a gray color.

Now let’s have these two special blend modes, which are erase alpha and add alpha.

Erase Alpha and Add Alpha Blend Modes

Erase alpha and add alpha are different from the rest because their effects aren’t about the color. Its more about the textures. When you use erase alpha , it erases or makes the texture invisible while when you use add alpha, it adds or brings back what’s been erased or hidden with erase alpha.

Take a look at Figure 4-28 to see how these two-blend modes work.

Its already clear in Figure 4-28 how erase alpha makes the texture invisible while add alpha makes the texture visible again.

Before we end our topic with the blending modes, let’s have another example for some of our blending modes and see it in Figure 4-29.

Now we’re done with the blending modes. We will be going back to the settings that can be found in the header.

Brush

Next to strength are drop-down advance settings for brush. Though all of the tools have these settings, except annotate, they have different options available for this part. See Figure 4-30 to see options available for these settings in each tool.

Texture

Next to our advanced brush settings are other drop-down settings; one is texture as you can see in Figure 4-31.

We also have settings for angle, which set the rotation angle of the brush; offset which offsets the texture map placement in the X-, Y-, and Z-axes; and size, which sets the scale of the texture in each axis.

Texture Mask

Let’s proceed to our next setting, which is the texture mask. Just like texture, this setting is the same for our six tools. Let’s take a look at Figure 4-32 to see what we have here.

So, the settings that we have for texture mask are almost the same as what we have for texture settings except the part of pressure masking. So, let’s just discuss this part.

Pressure masking allows us to clip the mask result based on pressure, creating areas of no paint when low pressure is applied to the brush. It has three options: Off, Ramp, and Cutoff. Off means deactivating the pressure masking. Ramp means distributing the mask effect above the pressure value, and cutoff means simply to select between zero and one based on the stylus pressure.

Stroke

Let’s now have our next setting, which is the stroke setting. The options for this setting are also the same for Draw, Soften, Fill, Smear, Mask, and Clone tools. Let’s now see Figure 4-33 to see the available options for this setting.

Spacing represents the percentage of the brush radius. This is only available under the Space, Line, and Curve Stroke methods. Adjust strength for spacing attenuates the brush strength according to spacing. It is only available under the Space, Line, and Curve stroke methods. Dash ratio is the ratio of samples in a cycle that the brush is enabled. This is only available under the pace stroke method. Dash length is the length of a dash cycle measured in stroke samples. This is also only available in space stroke methods.

Jitter jitters the position of the brush while painting. This option is available under all stroke methods. The pen-like icon next to Jitter is for enabling brush sensitivity for Jitter when using your graphic tablet. Jitter unit controls how the brush Jitter is measured. We have two options here: View and Brush. These options are also available under all stroke methods. Next, we have input samples where the recent mouse locations, which are the input samples, are averaged together to smooth brush strokes. This option is available under all stroke methods. Stabilize stroke makes the stroke lag behind the cursor and applies a smoothed curve to the path of the cursor when enabled. There are two settings under this option: Radius and Factor. Radius sets the minimum distance from the last point before a stroke continues and factor sets the amount of smoothing. Stabilize stroke is available under space, dots, and airbrush stroke methods.

We also have draw curve, which is under the curve stroke method. It executes the curved stroke. Rate, which is under airbrush stroke method sets interval between paints for airbrush, and edge to edge, which is under the anchored stroke method, determines the brush location and orientation by a two-point circle where the first click is one point and dragging places the second point opposite from the first.

Falloff

Now that we’re done with the stroke setting, let’s look at the falloff setting (Figure 4-34).

We have ten curve presets here: Custom, Smooth, Smoother, Sphere, Root, Sharp, Linear, Sharper, Inverse Square, and Constant. By default, the mask tool is set to smooth while fill, draw, smear, soften, and clone tools are set to custom. So, at first glance, you will think they have different settings, but that’s not the case.

Enabling normal falloff means as faces point away from the view, the brush strokes fade away to prevent harsh edges. Angle is the angle at which the falloff begins.

Cursor

Next to falloff settings , we have cursor settings. Take a look at Figure 4-35 to see what we have in these settings.

Display cursor allows you to see the special cursor that helps you by displaying the information about the brush. Cursor color sets the color of the brush ring while performing a stroke. Falloff opacity sets the opacity for the falloff. Texture opacity sets the opacity for the Texture, and mask texture opacity sets the opacity for the texture mask .

Symmetry

Now, we have the symmetry setting , which can be found in all texture paint tools, including annotate. Take a look at Figure 4-36 to see what it looks like.

This setting will help you mirror what you are doing in one part of the mesh to the other side, depending on what axis you choose. It is just like the mirror modifier for our modeling.

Texture Slot

Next is the texture slot . Texture slot is where you add the texture or material base color for your mesh. This is the most important setting since you cannot start your project without a material base color or a texture in it. These are also available in all tools except for annotate tools.

Take a look at Figure 4-37 to see this setting.

First, we have mode where you can choose a mode of texture you want to have. We have two types of mode: Material and Single Image. Material mode is the one we called material base color or what is created inside Blender while the single image is the one that is a texture or something imported from outside Blender.

To create a material base color, first you will add one by clicking the plus icon. Whatever you choose here, the next settings will be the ones in the middle of Figure 4-37. You will be asked for a name or label for your base color, width and height for the pixel resolution of your base color, color for the main color, and generated type for what kind of image you want your material to be. For a generated type, we have three options: Blank, which generates a blank image; UV Grid, which generates a grid to test UV mappings; and Color, which generates improved UV grid test UV mappings.

For single image, we only have simple settings. New means new texture, and open means to open or browse texture. The UVMap is something related to our UV editing since this texture will directly flatten to the mesh and means Blender will also automatically create a UV map for this one. The last one is the interpolation, which has two sets of option: Linear and Closest. These two have lots of formulas to explain so I leave it with that.

Mask

Let’s now proceed with the mask settings , which all texture paint tools have, including annotate tools. Take a look at Figure 4-38 to see the settings.

This is another setting for masking. This is for if you ever don’t want to paint on some part, but you want to freely paint on the other parts of the mesh. By using this mask setting, you can cover up for that part you want to avoid, being able to paint on it and freely paint on the other parts. You can even use this to trace on an image.

Take a look at Figure 4-39 to see how this works .

So, in image 1 of Figure 4-39, we applied the mask. In image 2, we painted over the mask using mix blend, and in image 3, you can see the result of what I did using the mask setting.

This is just one of the uses of masking.

Basically, this is how mask settings work. The new button is for saving the result of the masking you created in the Blender, like in image 3 of Figure 4-39. Open is for browsing the image for masking, UV layer again is for directing Blender so that the result of what we did in the mask setting has a UV layout created automatically, and the display color is for the color you want to use for the masking. It will affect the output so make sure to choose wisely.

Options

Let’s now proceed to the options settings and take a look at Figure 4-40 to see what it has for us.

So what we have here are bleed, which extends paint beyond the faces UVs to reduce seams; and dither, which is the amount of dithering when painting on byte images; occlude, which only paints onto the faces directly under the brush when enabled; backface culling, which ignores faces pointing away from the view; cavity mask, which masks painting according to the mesh geometry cavity; screen grab size, which is the size to capture the image for re-projecting; quick edit, which edits a snapshot of the viewport in an external image editor; apply, which projects an edited image back onto the object; and apply camera image, which projects an edited render from the active camera back onto the object.

Annotation Stroke Placement

Now, to close our discussion on tool settings, let’s proceed to our last setting, which is the annotation stroke placement that can only be found in the annotate tool. Take a look at Figure 4-41 to see this setting.

We have three options for this setting: 3D cursor that draws strokes at the 3D cursor location, view that sticks strokes to the view, and surface that sticks strokes to the surface.

Color Palette

Color palette is where you can store or create swatches for your project. This is important as a reference color so you don’t need to memorize or list down the color code of the list of colors you are going to use or have already used. What you will just do is to use the eyedropper and pick it up in the color palette. This will be more convenient, making you more at ease while doing your project.

This is only available in fill and draw tools.

Workspace

Workspace has settings that can help you change your editor mode whenever you want to by selecting the editor mode in the select menu. It also has the list of the previous add-ons you already used. Take a look at Figure 4-43 to see a sample of its settings.

Now that we’re already done with the tools and settings in the 3D viewport, we’re going to proceed in the tools and settings that we have in the image editor .

Tool Settings

Take a look at Figure 4-45 to see our tools together with their tool settings.

We have Draw, Soften, Smear, Clone, Fill, and Mask. Unlike in 3D viewport, we don’t have an annotate tool here.

As you can see in Figure 4-45, we almost have the same settings for these six tools. First, we have the search box where you can search brushes available in Blender; the brush name indicates the name of the brush/tool. We also have the color picker where you can pick the color of your choice for painting, which is only available for fill and draw tools. Next to it is the blending mode where you can choose the type of effect you want with your painting, which is by default is in mix mode and only available for fill and draw tools. We also have radius, which sets the size of the radius of your brush tool; and strength, which sets how powerful the effect of the brush is when applied.

Advanced Settings

Now we have these advanced settings that are somehow a little bit different from the ones in the 3D viewport and also vary depending on the active tools. Take a look at Figure 4-46 to see the options available under these settings for different tools.

Brush Tip

Now, let’s proceed to another setting that is called Brush tip . Take a look at Figure 4-47 to see this setting.

(Wait a minute. It seems I already saw these settings before. Ah! In cursor settings in 3D viewport!) Yes. The cursor settings in the 3D viewport are called brush tips in the image editor, but still they have the same function .

Tiling

Now, we’re down to the last setting we have in the image editor for all the tools , which is tiling. Take a look at Figure 4-48 to see what these settings have.

So simple right? It’s because its purpose was for helping you create tiling for your textures, either in the X-axis or Y-axis.

We’re already discussed the image editor. Since its settings are almost the same as what we have in the 3D viewport, we don’t need to discuss it in depth.

We already know that the texture paint workspace, or Blender itself, gives us two ways to paint our texture. We can do it in 3D way (in 3D viewport) or in 2D way (image editor). The tools are the same, so it’s a matter of when’s its convenient and when we want to be creative. Let’s begin our sample project !

UV Mapping

Let’s go to the UV workspace (Figure 4-50) and have our game asset UV mapped. First, I choose the rook in layout workspace (but you can also do this in 3D viewport ➤ Object Mode) and then go to UV editing and choose Smart UV project under the UV header menu, and ta-da!

We already have a UV layout ready as shown in Figure 4-51.

Even though we already have a UV layout presented after the Smart UV project, we need to take a look at some things like overlapping UVs. We can so this by going to Select menu ➤ Select Overlap.

We can see in Figure 4-52 some of the overlapping UVs. What I do is to first take a closer look in order to know how should they be placed before I move those overlapping UVs.

Figure 4-53 shows the new UV layout with more spaces between UV islands and without overlapping UVs.

I also use Smart UV project for king, knight, pawn, queen, bishop, and for our landscape. Take a look at Figure 4-54 to see their UV layouts.

You can see the different UV layouts created from the Smart UV project in this sample project that we have. For the landscape, remember that what we used in creating the landscape is an add-on and by default already has many vertices that result in having a lot of UVs presented in the UV layout. In this case, to make sure we don’t have overlapping UVs, just use the select overlap; but we should avoid these kinds of crowded UVs as much as possible.

Now, we still have two more assets to UV mapped, and I used a different technique here. Take a look at Figure 4-55 to see our next process.

What you can see here is that I use the sphere projection for UV mapping of our two spheres. Since there are also some overlapping issues here, I move some of the UV faces.

Figure 4-56 is the final output of UV layout for our spheres. I move the upper and lower parts where there are overlapping issues and scale it overall to make sure the whole island is in the UV layout.

Now, we’re done with UV mapping, let’s proceed with texturing.

Texturing

First things first, let’s start texturing the landscape. I select the landscape asset and add our material base color (Figure 4-57). I select pure white as our material base color.

I start added our first blending color (Figure 4-58). And I do this in the image editor since it will be easier to paint the overall landscape using the image editor, and with this, the overlapping UVs of the landscape can easily be covered or will not affect our texturing very much.

Take a look at Figure 4-59 to see our output for the landscape asset.

In the meantime, this is the output for our landscape. What I did here is I only used mix blending mode and just changed the radius and strength from time to time according to my own preferences. It depends on the other assets and processes, and this might be enhanced for the sake of our overall design.

Let’s now proceed to texture our chess pieces.

I start the chess piece texturing with the pawn. For this one, I first used the fill tool and directly filled the gradient color in the image editor. You can make the gradient work by clicking at one corner, then dragging your mouse cursor to another corner. For the setting of filling in the properties, I use radial for gradient fill mode and choose the light blue and white colors. Figure 4-60 shows that even though I choose light blue and white colors in the properties setting, the output is kind of purple. This is because if you look at our settings for blend mode at the header settings, it was set to exclusion with the color near to purple. That’s why our result color turns to a purple gradient.

I add another blending color using our draw tool in Image editor using soft light blend mode with a color in the range of green. The output color, as you can see in Figure 4-61, is blue with a combination of light blue. In soft light, when you paint over the part where you will paint the soft light blend mode, you will see another color just like in our sample project. As I paint around, the first color to see with soft light is the blue color, but as I paint over with it, the light blue color appears.

I then use the smear tool to add an effect to our coloring (Figure 4-62). I also directly use the tool in 3D viewport to soften some of the edges that were created by the parts of the UV layout or the division of the mesh.

I add a color in the range of pink using a draw tool with the screen blending mode directly in the image editor, and then I use the smear tool directly to the mesh in 3D viewport to blend the colors and add an effect; our output is shown in Figure 4-63.

Let’s continue to our other pieces. For bishop, I used a fill tool also directly in the Image editor to create the first blend color. Then I used a different blending mode by adding other blend colors like Saturation, Value, Add, and Color Dodge. Then I directly blend the colors using the smear tool. Figure 4-64 shows the results.

Next, we have our rook. I use the same process with the rook. I use the fill tool to create a gradient color with red, pink, and purple; then I add white colors using the draw tool with a lighten blend mode. For the finale, I use a smear tool directly to the mesh to blend the colors and smoothen the edges that were created by the corners of the UVs.

But wait, we have two rooks here. It will be troublesome if we have to repaint this won’t it? Well, there’s a solution out there. Take a look at Figure 4-65 to see the process.

First, you just select the mesh you will have your material with, and for this project that will be the other rook. Then go to the material panel in the properties editor, click the icon beside the new button, and choose the material you want to reuse and voilà! Your mesh is already textured (Figure 4-66). You just need to check if something is need to edit such as if there is a need to smooth in the blending of colors, etc.

Now, let’s proceed with our texturing process and take a look at Figure 4-67 to see the output for the rest of our game assets.

For the knight, I used the same material as we used in the landscape. For the rest of the assets, we use the same method: Using the fill tool, choose a gradient for applying the first blend color and then use the draw tool together with another blend mode such as color dodge to create effects. Then use the smear tool for blending colors and smoothing sharp edges created by UV layouts in the textures.

Now, let’s take a look at Figure 4-68 to see our final output for this texturing process.

Now, let’s proceed to our next chapter and continue learning!