The beauty of Materials.

[Aquila Kytori]

As Arton has said you need a special development build of Blender to bake using Cycles but you don't need that if you go back to your usual Blender Render.  

The Tutorial in message 13 is not for baking out a Cavity map but for setting up to create a Rendered Image using the cycles renderer.

I mentioned message N° 13 because the first few images shows where the things are 

 

So what you have to do is follow the steps in message N°9 only.  (Using the Blender Render)

And watch the Andrew Price video from 0:45 to 2:25 where he explains what the Dirty Vertex Paint options in the Tool panel are for.

 

 

 

[Pamela Galli]

Okay thanks will look at that -- I was following Andrew Price's tutorial.

 

ETA -- Well that was a lot easier than setting up all those nodes!  Seems to have worked :-)

[Drongle McMahon]

I have struggled a bit with this dirty vertex thingy. Let's see if I have understood any of it. It is supposed to darken the cavities. I's not the same as AO, but vaguely similar in some ways. The differences are (?) because this is supposed to mimic accumulation of grime rather than purely lihjting effects. With the right settings, it can darken flat surfaces too, leaving only protruding edges, from where the dirt gets rubbed off, un-darkened. So while it can mimic AO, it has a wider repertoire of effects.

However, as far as I can see it only works with real geometry. Maybe I was missing something? I couldn't get it to work with just an active subsurf modifier. I had to apply the subsurf and then add a displacement modifier to get the required geometry. In contrast, the AO could be done with a un-applied subsurf and using the displacement map as input to the material. It didn't have to be a displacement modfier.

In any case, neither AO nor the dirty virtex things can be done without real geometry in one form or another. So that's quite distinct from the methods for making a map directly from a normal map. If you are making the normal map from geometry anyway, then needing it is not a problem, but in some of my examples, the normal mps are made from a fractal in GIMP; no geometry anywhere. Of course I could have made a displacement map from the same fractal (in fact that;s essentially what you do on the way to making the normal map) and used that as a displacement map in Blender to generate the AO or cavity map, but that is much more time consuming, and would need very high subdivision to get the same resolution. The effects are certainly not the same. Thw direct method produces highlighted edges as well as shadowed areas. So it is useful to have these different methods avalible.

Anyway, just for fun, here is a comparison of an AO map (top) and a dirty-vertex-cavity map (bottom) made from the same displacement map in Blender. The displacement map was a procedural texture.

[WhiteRabbit0]

Yeah I made an entire lighthouse with materials.  68 prims and more detail than you could get in 600+.   Don't say we haven't been making things with materials..  You have to remember Firestorm JUST added them in last release.

Things move slowly in SL, most of the people who jumped on the materials bandwagon had already been using them in other environments (like me), it will take awhile for people who are SL excusive designers to finally get into it  But it will happen.

[Mikki Miles]

3 days ago I found bitmap2materials (by allegorithmic), it seems to be a good option on Mac, and it creates curvature maps, I think that's quite the same as cavity maps.

b2m looks very interesting!

[Jake Koronikov]

I decided to take a little project with Materials too. A long time ago I found very interesting looking 3D Buddha model in the internet (a free model, been there around for years I think). This original mesh was a decimated and triangulated about 62K tris, propably the very original has been even more dense, maybe. No textures nor materials were included.

My mission was to turn this 62K tris mesh into SL object of reasonable land impact. The result of this little project was a mesh object with 3748 Quads. That equals about standard SL avatar, whitch is about 7700 tris.

Not a bad result I think, and I had "free polygons" to design a lotus chair and some sort of a lotus back leaf for the chair. The buddha with his body, head and hat is about 3000 quads.

Snapshot of the final result:



The issue that has been bothering me from the dawn of SL materials is: There is a huge amount of users that do not keep the "advanced lightning model" setting on. How to make my creations to look good for both materials and non-materials viewers at the same time....and I am still not sure what is the absolutely correct workflow for that when dealing with SL.

Zoomed snapshot, NO Advanced Light....

And Advanced Light set as ON:

My workflow for this Buddha was as follows:

1. Re-Topology process in Zbrush. After that, the base mesh is about 3000 quads.
2. Uv-unwrap this base mesh in Blender (I prefer the UV tools of Blender more than ZBrush ones)
3. Bring the base mesh back to ZBrush.
4. Subdividing and reprojecting the basemesh against the original triangulated verion. Now I have my own hi-poly mesh with UV map. The Hi-poly version is now over 3 million polys.
5. Sculpting some details and smoothing the surface. The original mesh was a bit rough at some points.
6. Generating Normal maps using XNormal. Source files are the lo and hi poly version from ZB
7. In ZB, generating 32 Bit Displacement map to be used in Maya when baking textures. I prefer large disp map instead of brining 3 million poly model into Blender or Maya, due to performance.
8. Manually designing specular maps in Photoshop. All sorts of a little tweaks
9. LOD design in Blender

Okey, the baking textures is the way I try to solve this material vs. non-material user experience.
The baked texture contains:
- light(map) baked,
- ambient occlution,
- very strong specular and reflection effects of golden material

Of course, baking could be done by compositing cavity,curvature,occlution,lightning,specular,diffuse and so on maps in Photoshop.

But the irritating problem is, that I have baked into texture a lot of information that should be achieved via SL diffuse and specular shaders. That is, using diffuse, specular and normal maps.

Also, I can not use SL specular map effects to full extend. With both baked and SL shader effects the result would be too strong, washed out, burned or whatever.

The result looks quite okey inworld in SL, and specular + normals look good when moving camera around the object. But...if you are obsessed with small details...zooming into some parts will show you the overlapping effects of baked textures and spec/norm maps. I hate those *smiles*

Anyway, I do not know why I wrote this. Maybe just to ask: Has anyone else been fighting with non-material vs. material viewer features combined together?

[Pamela Galli]

So do you have any indication that the person who made this model is okay with you making money from his work?

 

[Jake Koronikov]

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Pamela Galli wrote:

So do you have any indication that the person who made this model is okay with you making money from his work?

 

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Yes Pamela, I do have indication: Terms of Use, http://www.3dcadbrowser.com

 

"Terms of Use (Version 1.12 of 26 November 2012) . .

Use of downloaded materials All of the downloadable resources available in 3D CAD Browser catalog may be used free in your own or commercial projects. Downloaded resources may not be sold individually or provided for free to another parties."

This particular model is "Uploaded by Reginald L Franklin at 9 November 2002 into Architecture - Sculpture / Statues 3D Models. "

 

[Pamela Galli]

Looks like you  have enough stuff on that site to fill several stores without having to make a thing. Nice.

[Jake Koronikov]

I think this conversation between me and Pamela is now extremely off-topic. And yes, welcome to 21st century : ). It is nice that today creative people often share their creations to be used by others. There is a lot of ways to do that. Maybe you should google word "3d repository" and go deeper into that word. Find out what it means and what kinds of licenses there are out there. And also find out why people share things. Sometimes people sell their products to be used commercially and further developed by others. Sometimes they share things just for fun, and to be further developed by others - sometimes also commercially. Sometimes they deny the commercial use, witch is good too. Personally, I create nearly all objects myself, but there are situations when it does not make sense. As an example, this buddha is a part of Second Life replica for old Japanese temple. The buddha is one detail in the whole temple, to be exact it takes 0,1% of the overall land impact of the temple... Yes, it is nice. I saved maybe even weeks of work by using this buddha as a base mesh and developed it further to be part of a bigger creation.

[Kwakkelde Kwak]

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Jake Koronikov wrote:

Maybe you should google word "3d repository" and go deeper into that word. Find out what it means and what kinds of licenses there are out there.

---

Although in itself this is not bad advice, I would like to add a warning. If something looks too good to be true (or in this case free), it often is. A lot of those repositories with ((royalty) free) items contain tons and tons of stolen models.

If the original owners of the IP rights find out you used their models, they can sue you and you're likely to lose, no matter what the website said about rights. You could sue the people offering the models on the website for your loss and then some (and probably win yourself), but who wants to go down that road?

[Jake Koronikov]

I totally agree with Kwakkelde Kwak. Even some very popular and good reputation web sites carry copied creations. Maybe commons sense and some further google work reveals what is original and what is not...

Anyway, I am personally very willing to pay for a good quality base model that someone has made and sells it to others. I feel it is supporting someone else in the community of 3dmodelling. If I pay X dollars for something and gain X+20 dollars over one year, I feel it is a fair deal for both.

[Pamela Galli]

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Jake Koronikov wrote:

 I saved maybe even weeks of work by using this buddha as a base mesh and developed it further to be part of a bigger creation.

---

It saved you weeks of work because someone else already put in those weeks of work. You trust that everything uploaded on that website as a freebie was generoulsy donated by the original creators -- to save you weeks of work -- because the website says so. 

I am not so trusting of those websites. 

 

[Jake Koronikov]

Okey Pamela. But you obviously are trusting that Frigidaire (trademark of Electrolux corp) is willing to give you a right to use their products as base for your SL creations? Have you ever read the "Terms and Conditions" of Frigidaire web site. The Terms and conditions to use the high quality images you download from their web pages? and *commercially* re-use the Frigidaire protected trade mark as your products in SL ? You obviously really should find out what they say on that web page.

If you have not read the web page, here is an extract :

"Frigidaire authorizes you to view and download the information ("Materials") at this Web site ("Site") only for your personal, non-commercial use. This authorization is not a transfer of title in the Materials and copies of the Materials and is subject to the following restrictions: 1) you must retain, on all copies of the Materials downloaded, all copyright and other proprietary notices contained in the Materials; 2) you may not modify the Materials in any way or reproduce or publicly display, perform, or distribute or otherwise use them for any public or commercial purpose; and 3) you must not transfer the Materials to any other person unless you give them notice of, and they agree to accept, the obligations arising under these terms and conditions of use. You agree to abide by all additional restrictions displayed on the Site as it may be updated from time to time. This Site, including all Materials, is copyrighted and protected by worldwide copyright laws and treaty provisions. You agree to comply with all copyright laws worldwide in your use of this Site and to prevent any unauthorized copying of the Materials. Except as expressly provided herein, Frigidaire does not grant any express or implied right to you under any patents, trademarks, copyrights or trade secret information."

[Pamela Galli]

 

Apples and oranges. I used appliance pictures on those kitchens I made in 2009 (my later mesh ones I made entirely from scratch in Blender) -- but Frigidaire is in the business of selling refrigerators, not pictures of refrigerators. I am not reselling Frigidaire products as my own.  

You and many others, OTOH, are importing 3D models made by others and selling them as your own. 

I understood from the first moment that mesh for SL was announced that there would be a flood of ripped models into SL, and so there have been. Whole stores have sprung up overnight. User Generated Content has come to mean User Uploaded Content.  And no way to stem the tide. 

And it's a damned shame, for both the 3D modelers who have their work passed around for others to profit from, but also for the original mesh creators in SL who spend 50X the time to create as the mesh uploaders take to upload. 

 

 

[Jake Koronikov]

Dear Pamela. You clearly do not have any idea about what Intellectual Property, protected trademarks and copyrighted materials are.

The use of Frigidaire logo (whitch is visible in your La Galleria kitchen products) and Frigidaire product photos projected into your cube shaped objects in your products is striclty forbidden by Linden Lab. And also forbidden by Fridigaire brand itself, thru their protected trademark. More information can be found here:

http://wiki.secondlife.com/wiki/Linden_Lab_Official:Intellectual_Property

It is damned shame that some creators sell and earn money from their products, that clearly violate the very basic and even common sense IP regulations....

 

It is also shame if users upload mesh content that violate the original creators rights. But the point is that people have to understand their rights to use/upload/share/deliver/reproduce/re-sell and so on of the object/texture they are uploading. After receiving the licence from the creator, the user has the right to upload the mesh inworld and sometimes even sell it. Sometimes the licence is received by paying a fee for the original creator, sometimes 3d-modelling community shares meshes for free. It all depends on the licence that you receive.

This really is not very difficult to understand....

And repeating my answer to your earlier comments: I design 3d content nearly 100 percent myself, there is some rare situations (as this buddha for example) when I use purchased or free-to-use-commercially licenced models. You can check this by yourself inworld. I can have also a private conversation with you about this.

 

 

 

[Pamela Galli]

A picture and a model are still apples and oranges: Frigidaire is not selling pictures of appliances (and doesn't care if someone in SL puts a picture of one on a prim); 3D modelers ARE selling 3D models, and they do care that others are profitting from their hours/days/weeks of work.  

And here's the deal -- once you have been seen to download someone else's model from a scurilous freebie website to sell, it's not going to be easy to convince anyone that any mesh you sell is original. 

[Jake Koronikov]

Just read thru the previous terms and conditions of Frigidaire and understand what it means to put their logo on a commercial 3d model representing a kitchen appliance. I hope you finally understand. And I hope we close this conversation.

[daValDunnit]

too bad other readers got all hooked up on the politics of your model, your question was,

  

Jake Koronikov wrote:

The issue that has been bothering me from the dawn of SL materials is: There is a huge amount of users that do not keep the "advanced lightning model" setting on. How to make my creations to look good for both materials and non-materials viewers at the same time....and I am still not sure what is the absolutely correct workflow for that when dealing with SL.

Anyway, I do not know why I wrote this. Maybe just to ask: Has anyone else been fighting with non-material vs. material viewer features combined together?

 

so i just wanna say yes, i love the advanced lighting and i make my creations with it. But they look terrible in viewers without the good graphics cards. I am beginning to make 2 versions of my models, one for use with ALM and one for use without. Although i wonder if the users who dont use ALM even notice a difference. Certainly those who do will notice

 

[Jake Koronikov]

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so i just wanna say yes, i love the advanced lighting and i make my creations with it. But they look terrible in viewers without the good graphics cards. I am beginning to make 2 versions of my models, one for use with ALM and one for use without. Although i wonder if the users who dont use ALM even notice a difference. Certainly those who do will notice

 

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I love the new materials features too, those give so incredibly more possibilities for realism. And I have been thinking of two versions too. Maybe I should go that way . Mixing things together just does not work for everything. And without any baked details the non-ALM view is horrible, true.

One possibility would be to play more with specular map. Maybe gradually transfer specular color to black on those areas that are lit by baked specular in diffuse (texture)channel. Most irritating issue is strong baked light vs. specular effect . Well and sometimes also baked details vs. normal map effect. Anyway, this materials feature is great as a whole!

[daValDunnit]

I do have a question, is there an art to getting a good non-glossy texture with materials? I'd love to get a nice weave or fabric texture, but it seems to me that without the specular map (and therefore some shine) i just cant get the depth. I try to turn down the gloss in the specular map as much as i can, but the effect gets lost without the gloss, shine and light. All the materials objects seem to have that plastic look. Does anyone know where there are some good models i can look at inworld, that look more like fabric or timber, and less like plastic?