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Rendering/Baking Settings...

Shaun

Shaun

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Blender has an almost incomprehensible UI and there are so many different settings for the rendering.

I want to bake my textures, but what settings should I use? I have turned cycle rendering on, and upped the resolution to 100%

But what sampling presets and compression should I use?

Additionally, how do most people place lights to get a good bake?

Thanks!
 
I don't know, what's best?

Also, my material settings seem to be default double sided. Even with FSX materials checked and double sided deselected, there's still an "inside" of my building. I think this might be being rendered into the baking too, things do seem too dark.
 
Go to the N tab in the viewport, find there Shading and tick Backface culling. This will correctly display the normals if you want to.

If you want to bake, first make sure the thing is unwrapped (:P). I believe you need to switch AO on in the World tab of the Properties panel (default: on the right). Then, go to the Render tab in the Properties panel and locate section Bake. Select the bake mode and hit Bake.

Basically that's it ;)
 
Thanks! I put the sampling presets to final too, takes longer and looks better
 
You're doing this with Cycles, right? How does it deal with the FSX Material Params and the textured viewport?
 
Hmm. You can render the most fantastic skin on a model in Blender, Max or AN Other 3D modelling tool, but until it's rendered to a texture FSX/P3D can use it's never going to show in the sim.

The procedure is first map the model so it will accept textures. Next render materials on your model to taste and when you're happy, render them to bitmaps you can use in the sim. Apply these bitmaps as new materials to the model, make .dds textures and export to FS. It's usual to combine separate AO and bump/spec renders in your favourite bitmap editor to make the final FS textures.

Complaining about the complexity of Blender's rendering UI made me smile: Max, Blender, VRay, they're all complex and take lots of time to learn. YouTube is your friend here.
 
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Dutcheeseblend said:
You're doing this with Cycles, right? How does it deal with the FSX Material Params and the textured viewport?
Click to expand...

Node materials (hence Cycles) don't care about FSX Material Params (they are still there, though)... However, Blender2FSX wouldn't work with node materials, because it won't find the textures which are assigned via texture nodes.
 
Cycles seems to work with FSX materials ticked.

If I hit "AO" unter the world tab everything is way too bright, and it almost looks like Assume Vertical Normal is selected, there doesn't seem to be the discrete shading and reflections.. Though it might be because I put too many light sources surrounding it. Ill investigate.


On the UV editor, if how does one drag a whole group of UVs? if I have many selected and try to drag them it only takes the one face.
 
So here's with AO ticked with cycles, it doesn't seem to work?
11407142_1618955831651071_4318875921892443413_n.png


And without...

11174891_1618955834984404_8409780316914916613_n.png


So why the difference? The bake is a full render with AO in the list.
 
Plus fsx materials isn't a big problem for me. I'll define the textures and and, if needed, node materials with mcx.
 
The AO is indeed very light. You can see the output image after the bake in the UV/Image editor, what does it show?

In the UV editor, there are a few buttons. Let me see:

You can couple (don't know the exact name) the selection of vertices/edges/faces between the viewport and the UV editor. Very useful sometimes. This is done by the first button next to the Pivot dropmenu (next to View). In the image below, the viewport and UV editor are uncoupled.

UV_uncoupled.PNG


In uncoupled mode, you have first selected a number of verts/faces in your viewport. You can move these in your UV editor, in one of the four modes (next to the couple switch). Obviously, these are Vertec, Edge, Face and UV (the latter is a complete unwrap).

In coupled mode, the vertex/edge/face selected in the viewport, is also the selected v/e/f in the UV editor.

UV_coupled.PNG


Both coupled and uncoupled mode are useful in certain circumstances. Uncoupled can be useful when selecting a number of verts that are on the same seam, but are part of two unwrapped regions. In fact, the vertex is split and can be moved independently of the same vertex in another region (I hope you understand, I'm terribly bad at English).
In uncoupled mode however, all unselected vertices (in the viewport) won't show up in the UV editor. The contrary is the case in coupled mode, one of the reasons for being my preferred mode when editing UVs.

Hope this makes something about UV editing clear ;)
 
Regarding baking: I'll tell you something about my workflow.

I normally bake only AO and I use the standard Blender render (thus the standard materials). I unwrap the model, export the unwrap as an image and fill it with a variety of colours in Gimp. This is what I use as texture (quite obvious eh). Then I compose the right scene (deciding which objects need to drop their occlusion on the sheet, for example, I can't bake AO on gauge faceplates with needles selected since these needles will move in-sim).

I select AO for baking and start baking. With the UV editor open, I get a result like this:

AO_UV11_int_struct_pt3.png

This is what I apply as overlay on my textures.

What I understand from you is that you compose the entire texture using Cycles and bake that? If the AO is not satisfactory, I would recommend using a seperate pass for AO.
 
Thanks for the info. Yeah it's odd I can't actually see any AO in the AO one. but lots of it in the AO unchecked one. I'll play around and see what looks best in the sim. Might just use the full render.
 
I can uncouple the UVs, but when I select say more than 1, to move them you need to click on one again and drag, I want to be able to move the selected ones all together. Is there any way to do this?

Also, my transform bar gives 0.00001m accuracy, this is a PITA, can I change it to 0.01?
 
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You can toggle the Grab function with G. If I understand you correctly, that should work.

I'm not sure about the accuracy. Of course, when rotating and grabbing, you can type any value you want on your keyboard, so your selection will move precisely that value. For example, if you want to move a pair of vertices in y-direction 0.01 meter, select these, press G, Y and 0.01 and Enter.
Use Ctrl for discretes transformation (rotating by 5 degrees every time, translation with 1 m or so), Shift for very small adjustments.

Did I understand you correctly?
 
Thanks, I'll try that.

No, I mean the universal increments at the top of the transform bar. It is too accurate, and I'd like to change it to .01 or .1 from .000001. It never locks to say 2.25. But 2.29998, it's annoying.
 
Ok, I can't find where to change that. I also remember having the same annoying thing as you have, but since a long time I transform everyting by entering the desired value in either the transform field or during the transformation itself.
 
Ok, I'll try and dig it up on google, thanks anyway.

I'm getting into it now, wont be touching GMAX anymore. A nice thing is that I can bake the textures with a normal map and specular and then just use the result as the diffuse. Means FSX only had the 1 texture to deal with and it looks great.
 
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