Texture map help
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I spent the past couple of days trying to learn how to work around SketchUp's limitations with textures and realized that I'm needing to compensate it by making maps and applying them to the textures I used, then retexturing the mesh again. To do this, is the workflow to first render textures and replace the original textures, unwrap the textures like an UV, make the maps using a 2D normal map program, combine them in Photoshop, and rewrap it back on the mesh?
Is there a way to automate doing all the initial renders, reapply them back on the mesh, and remove the original textures, instad of having to manually position the lights and camera each time, before unwraping it to make the maps?
The posts I read and the LightUp website mentioned it does light and baked maps, but exports the model with a FBX format. The sites for the other 2D normal programs like Crazybump, Pixplant, and Make Normal Map don't get into specifics either. Any suggestions on which ones are less finicky on settings and generate a wider variety of maps? And any suggestions to minimize steps to do this?
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I'm having a hard time trying to figure out what you're attempting to achieve.
Which texture limitations are you referring to specifically (inability to do sherical, pelt, cylindrical mapping? inability to unwrap UV's?)?
What sort of model are you creating (organic? product? architectural?)?
Are you rendering the model or is this staying within SU? If you're rendering it which software are you using (LightUp?)
-Brodie
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I'm starting to do content for sims and just starting, so for now it would be product. The short version of what I'm trying to do is to get a model's textures to be as realistic as possible and include depth, shadowing, etc to look as if the materials contained multiple maps, like some of the higher-end packages, before exporting the model. I'm trying to do a workaround and combine the maps and texture to get a final texture since Sketchup only allows one texture per face.
The textures in a render have more detail than the original textures so I'm trying to render the model in SketchUp and replace the original textures with the rendered ones. When I said I was looking for a way to automate, I meant something like either to track the camera and lights completely around all of the model or to have the model spin around in front of a static camera and lights, and either way to stop at preset positions until done, then swap the nonrendered textures with the rendered textures. At this point if a uv tool can be used, unwrap the model as one texture so I wouldn't have to save each texture individually, extract the maps with a 2D normal map tool and combine them in photoshop elements and rewrap back on the SketchUp model.
I have Twilight for the renderer, but only plan to use it as a texture tool to make the textures photorealistic, rather than to make a render as the end product.
The limitation I mentioned is only SketchUp's ability to pin a texture to a face compaired to the features most of the other modelers have for textures that can do almost everything else that SketchUp lacks.
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Rather than swaping a texture, is there any way to link a section of a render to a texture and have that replace the texture?
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It sounds like what you'd need to do is Texture Bake all of your rendered maps back onto the faces of your model? SketchUp doesn't have an automated way of doing this like a program such as 3ds Max. If you're going to be doing this a lot, you may look into what it would take to build a SU model, export it to Blender (which is free and I think does have a texture baking feature), bake the textures, and then import back to SU if need be.
Otherwise, I think you'd need to basically go into parallel projection mode and render out the various faces and then use those renders to map them back onto your model. Not real difficult for a simple model, but more complex models will be bothersome.
-Brodie
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I was hoping to avoid the overhead of another modeling program if there was a 3D materials editor available that does what max and blender's material editor do and can import/export the model.
After spending a few hours on the renderer for the first time, now I understand why to use an existing photo for a texture first. For the 2D normal map software, I'm leaning toward pixplant; make a fake ambient occlusion map in a photo editor from the pixplant's normal map, and combine the 5 maps into 1 texture. I don't know if using the make normal map SU plugin for a 6th map would be overkill or not, considering that it uses the model's geometry instead of a texture to make a normal map.
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