3DCrafter Texture Baking

[mrennie]

My workflow for baked ambient occlusion:

AO is the top layer, on 'multiply' blending mode. What multiply does, is white stays unaffected whereas grey and black will darken the underlying texture. Exactly as shadows do in real life.

If you have baked a texture from a high poly (try doing leaf springs!), add a second AO layer, but this time pick overlay, soft light or hard light and play with the opacity to make stuff 'pop'.

That's what I do ;)

But for specular surfaces, I also copy the AO into alpha channel (if there is one) so that the darker areas will have less specular shine and that enhances the contrast and makes the object look even more 3D.

[TrabantDeLuxe]

Lazy man's specular: Take the AO, high pass filter, adjust levels a bit. Presto.

[mrennie]

My workflow for baked ambient occlusion:

AO is the top layer, on 'multiply' blending mode. What multiply does, is white stays unaffected whereas grey and black will darken the underlying texture. Exactly as shadows do in real life.

If you have baked a texture from a high poly (try doing leaf springs!), add a second AO layer, but this time pick overlay, soft light or hard light and play with the opacity to make stuff 'pop'.

That's what I do ;)

But for specular surfaces, I also copy the AO into alpha channel (if there is one) so that the darker areas will have less specular shine and that enhances the contrast and makes the object look even more 3D.

Mike,

Why would you use shadow baking?

For textures close to the driver, like locomotives?

I'm still trying to get my head around it.


Daniel

You should use shadow baking (ambient occlusion) on just about everything, because it helps to make every 3D object, no matter what it is, look more three-dimensional.