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Texture Baking Tutorial.

mjahn said:
You know you can do the UVW mapping without any texture at all?

For your rail? I would open the UVWUnwrap editor, choose Flatten at default 45 degress, normalize off, and see what comes out. If it is too fragmented I'd increase the degrees setting.

After doing this to say 10 objects, I'd select them all, throw on another UVWUnwrap modifier, edit, and move the "elements" around until they are well proportioned and scaled etc. Then > Tools > Render UVW Map > save to disk. That's your texture template showing the mesh. Save it as the topmost layer in Photoshop. Set opacity to 50%, and you're fine to proceed from there. Your baked textures will fit template and model perfectly.
Click to expand...
Nice! Thanks for the tip. I know that I can do UVW mapping without texture but I failed to do that in complex structure.

As I said I'm not the best man here, but no one started this "Texture Baking" thread before. I'll do as you said and try to improve my tutorial later.

Any more suggestions about lighting?
 
Actually I am pretty much in the DARK as far as LIGHTing (geddit?) is concerned, I am afraid we'll have to wade through Help to get some er enLIGHTenment in this area. Some of the best modellers around frequent this forum and can perhaps divulge some tips. I have heard it can take up to a year to get a proper lighting setup going. I understand a tested lighting setup can be saved in a file. Then there is the question of shadows as you note in your tutorial and has been mentioned elsewhere. OA (Ambient Occlusion), Cavity Maps and the free program Xnormal should also be looked into.
 
Hi mjahn,
I did try what you said about flattening unwrap. It is good and this feature is not available in Gmax.
But I think the philosophy of scenery maker and aircraft maker are not the same. The buildings always have repeated texture and to bake all the buiding together will consume a lot of texture. I think the best way of baking texture for the building is to select just what need to be baked. Not all the building. If I want cast shadow on the top of the building, I will bake that part only and let the rest shaded by the game engine. That will save a lot of texture area.

I have one question. When I baked a tea pot with flattening unwrap, I saw a seam line. I tried to incread padding from defaut 2 ...... up to 4, 8 10 and it was still there. How to get rid of that seam line.

Regards,
Tic
 
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jtanabodee said:
But I think the philosophy of scenery maker and aircraft maker are not the same. The buildings always have repeated texture and to bake all the buiding together will consume a lot of texture. I think the best way of baking texture for the building is to select just what need to be baked. Not all the building.
Click to expand...

I guess you are right, and your tut should perhaps mention this. Or call it Texture Baking for FSX Scenery then. On the other hand, even for aircraft you can bake select parts of objects by temporarily offsetting overlapping polies out of the active UVW square.

I have one question. When I baked a tea pot with flattening unwrap, I saw a seam line. I tried to incread padding from defaut 2 ...... up to 4, 8 10 and it was still there. How to get rid of that seam line.
Click to expand...

Padding is just the painted area increased by so many pixels to guarantee proper coverage especially for MIPs. 3 Should be enough, but one must watch out to not create any overlap. Yes, one wants to have as few seams as possible, and one places them in the most inconspicuous position possible. I understand "Stitching" is one way of getting rid of them but that's an area I haven't cottoned on to yet.
 
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