3DCrafter Texture Baking

[thebigroyboyski]

Just a quick question tonight.
I've texture baked my model and have the .PNG file but I have no idea how or where to add it to my model.
Any ideas ladies and gents?

Cheers

Roy

[mrennie]

Just a quick question tonight.
I've texture baked my model and have the .PNG file but I have no idea how or where to add it to my model.
Any ideas ladies and gents?

Cheers

Roy

Do you mean shadow-baking (ambient occlusion)? You probably just have to add it as a layer in photoshop, on top of the image texture, using multiply and something like 50% opacity.

[thebigroyboyski]

Yeah shadow baking.
Thanks Mike I'll give that a shot

[mrennie]

Yeah shadow baking.
Thanks Mike I'll give that a shot

Are you using the new version of 3DCrafter, version 10?

I'm nearly ready to start texturing the 4-4-0 and I was going to give it a try exporting individual parts into .obj files, importing them into Blender, texturing-mapping and shadow-baking them there, and then getting them back into the 3DC model. All that seems like quite a palaver, so if 3DC 10 gives good results, I might fork out the dosh to upgrade from 3DC 9.

[PapaXpress]

Version 10 is a bit wonky. Its not finished yet.

[mrennie]

Version 10 is a bit wonky. Its not finished yet.

I suspected as much ... thanks for the advice.

I'm still interested to see how Roy did his shadow-baking in 3DC.

[PapaXpress]

Richard made a patch for v9.3 to work with povray. It works but you need to map all surfaces spot on.

[mrennie]

Richard made a patch for v9.3 to work with povray. It works but you need to map all surfaces spot on.

Thanks, I'll try that out.

EDIT: It gives really good results! Thank you so much for letting me know about version 9.3 ... this will save me a lot of time!

[thebigroyboyski]

It's version 9.3 i'm using Mike and as Papa says it's done through POVray.
Edit, just read your edit Mike and good to see you've got it up and running

[mrennie]

It's version 9.3 i'm using Mike and as Papa says it's done through POVray.
Edit, just read your edit Mike and good to see you've got it up and running

Thanks again

[JerryC]

Just FYI, this is for Blender but should work for 3DC.

Your texture bake goes as the top layer on your diffuse texture - the texture that has all the paint on it. Put it in the third layer if you are using a Snow and Icy layer. Then you set the Properties of that baking layer to "Multiply". It should show up on your model in the game now.

If you are using a TrainLight shader, the baked texture is kept as a separate file and placed in the second texture slot of your modeling program. This method may not be desirable in direct bright lighting situations, as the baking (ambient occlusion) will wash out.

Don't read beyond this point if you can't stand a little nitpicking. Folks, if you are still using 3DC, I would definitely drop it and move to Blender. It so much easier to use, it allows for much larger and more detailed models, and it doesn't crash every five minutes. Unlike DTG, I believe you can make a very high quality model with 3DCrafter, but it is so much easier and more quickly done with Blender.

[thebigroyboyski]

Once i've got this finished i recon i'll make the jump over to Blender. I think the idea of learning new software has put me off so far.

[PapaXpress]

Run through the tutorials I posted here:
viewtopic.php?p=159737#p159737

Also feel free to add any others you may find helpful.

[thebigroyboyski]

Thanks Papa, I'll get this pesky wagon out the way then get cracking.

[TrabantDeLuxe]

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'.