Cycles - Texturing problems

[Spinell]

Two problems I'm trying to figure out with cycles and SL.

In the first, I made a lovely node setup for a shiny, glossy silk material that looks amazing in blender. I baked it using the "combined" functions (I haven't yet researched the other options, since all of the tutorials use combined) and uploaded the baked UV onto SL to use as a texture.

But... SL is not getting the info about the glossy-ness:

 

Instead of bring glossy and reflecting the colour, it's black. Is there something I'm missing? How can I get the information or the light from the glossy bake into SL? Do I need to bake some kind of special map and use it somehow in SL?

 

Second problem:

For some reason, 2 meshes I'm using are not baking properly the textures onto the UV map:

I don't know if this is because of the UV map? I just used the smart UV unwrap, since I've seen it being used often in the tutorials and it works just fine. I've tried other UV unwraps but I always get a very messy result and I don't know why.

If I use this texture directly onto the mesh it doesn't look like it's pretty rendered version above at all.

Perhaps I'm missing a node? Does this have to do perhaps with the vectors?

 

Also, since I'm asking questions: Anyone know how I can change the rendering to be done by my CPU reather than my graphics card, in blender 2.71? I think my CPU will probably be faster in rendering and I wanna check.

[Monti Messmer]

The Blender Pro´s might jump in and clarify but as far i undertand:

Glossy is a setting you have to use in SL, you can render things in Blender and export as one single texture.

The glossy texture then can be loaded in SL, one of the 3 tabs for textures, to make only certain parts being glossy, AFTER you set the glossy factor in SL too.

Monti

[Chic Aeon]

I am sure someone will come along with a more complete answer as I don't work like you do ----

BUT, in SL "shine" and "bump" are two different layers.  So three layers in all. One for texture that everyone sees and optional ones for bumpiness (normal map) and shininess (specular map).

I make these in Shadermap2 but I suspect there is a way to bake out JUST the specular map and someone will tell you how.

 

Important note: the effects of specular and normal maps can only be seen by those with ADVANCED LIGHTING turned on. Many folks cannot see it. So make sure your items looks OK without those layers showing. You can test by changing your viewing mode in the Preferences.  I am assuming here that you attempted to put all the effects you see in Blender on one layer (texture).

 

 

Texture goes on texture layer

Specular goes on Specular layer.

 

Normal goes on Normal layer.

 

Regarding unwrapping . That is a skill all in itself and there are many "better" ways to unwrap than "Smart" which isn't really all that smart at all. There are many tutorials that can teach you the basics. Medhue (if I spelled that correctly) made one not long ago.  Experience teaches the best techniques for different situations. Unwrapping  -- when done by hand (not automatically) -- often takes as much or more time in the process than the making of the model . 

It looks like there could be a variety of issues with your bow -- and you have totally black areas on your texture that could be deleted on the model as no one will see them. Also as you are making your garment remember to test inworld as it is possible to make a lovely dress that will take minutes to rez if it is too dense .

Good luck! 

[Nalates Urriah]

Chic and Monty are pretty much right. But, I'll say this a different way and use the terms you'll need to Google more information.

First, Blender can render things that SL can't. Using material in Blender is different than material in SL.

The basic texture that puts color or a pattern on an object is the Diffuse Layer. Think of it as just color. You can paint textures for this layer with GIMP or Photoshop. It has little to do with shiny/reflections/glossy. In Blender you can do actual reflections of the surroundings modeled in Blender. SL Viewers do not do that as it is too a big performance factor. Blender uses pre-rendered frames that may takes minutes or hours to render. Think frame rates of 1 per day... SL Viewers have to render a scene in 22ms, in other words the viewer in this case is 3.9 million times faster. So, it is up to the modeler to understand how everything needs to be set up to optimize for the viewer.

In Blender you can control how light reflects of an object in detail. In SL we lack some of the controls found in Blender. It is assumed that we are optimizing things and do not need those controls in the viewer. Blender will take all your shiny/glossy settings and bake them into a Specular Map. SL will use that map and reproduce most of the effects Blender put into the map. Reflections are faked in the viewer.

In Blender you can male a high poly object and a low poly object, often called retopologizing, then bake the details into a Normal Map. The normal map and low poly object are imported to SL. the viewer uses the information to render the object to look like the hi-poly object. The specular map also must be backed from the hi-poly model so light reflection looks correct.

I think the diffuse and normal maps are mostly intuitive. However, the specular map is tricky, counter-intuitive. See: http://blog.nalates.net/2013/04/10/specular-maps-tutorial/

[Spinell]

Thank you very much for all your replys. You did help me understand this better and I am getting some better results in SL.

However, it hasn't solved my problem all the way. Let me give you another picture:

As you can see form the left, the scene is pretty well illuminated. I have three planes with emission plus a diffuse node on the actual material. But, for some reason, when I bake the diffuse map, I cannot get light on the arms part, no matter what. I can't wrap my head around this one.

 

[Drongle McMahon]

Can you show us your material nodes and tell us which "Bake Type" setting(s) you are using?

[Spinell]

Here's my node set-up. The second one is for the Silk Pattern node group.

 

For the bake, I tried a few options to see if any got rid of the blackness in the arms, but no luck. The one I showed you before was done using the Diffuse Direct bake. I didn't use any other options. I also didn't change anything with the world or scene settings.

I'm still learning my way around the nodes. It's very intuitive but sometimes there are a few effects that are hard to pull off.

[Drongle McMahon]

Take me a while to digest the nodes too. Meanwhile, have a look at this blender wiki page. I says what the different bale options do. Now I am also just beginning with this, and I can't say yet exactly what goes where in the SL maps, but I think at least you need to use the "Diffuse color" for diffuse map in SL, and "Glossy color" for specular map in SL if you want to see only lighting effects of the ALM shader.

The direct (first light bounce) and indirect (multiply bounced light) maps are the results of combining these inputs with the geometry and lighting in your scene*. They can presumably be used for baked-in lighting, but I think you have to composite them with the colour maps in PS or GIMP to get what you need far baked lighting that will work without ALM.

It seems to be very often that people confuse the specular map with a map of baked highlights under specific lighting and camera angle. Ive made a picture and will do another post explaining the distinction. In summary, if you use baked highlights as a specular map, you will only see them in ALM when lighting and camera angles coincide with those used to do the bake. To get proper effects under ALM, the specular map must define the reflective properties everywhere on the surface, not just show the places where you happen to have highlights under one set of conditions. If the surface is homogenous, you can just use the "Blank" specular map with appropriate slider adjustments.

The "Glossy color" map is only the eqivalent of the RGB channels of the SL specular map. It seems you have to rely on playing with the Glossiness and Environmental sliders to get effects equivalent to the "Roughness" of the BSDF nodes and the differences between Glossy and Diffuse. If you need the roughness to vary across the texture, I can't help you yet. That needs a map of the specular exponent to go in the alpha channel of the normal map (and maybe of the specular map too)!  Possibly you could get that by setting up to bake the roughness input to the BSDF nodes as the diffuse texture.

As you can tell, I don't have well worked out solutions, particularly for the last point. I hope someone else has better and will add them here. Meanwhile, I hope this helps a bit.

*ETA: I think it would be more accurate to say that these (direct and indirect) maps comprise the modulation of the incident light by the geometry and lighting and camera angles. This is then filtered by the diffuse or specular colour to produce the combined output. Si with ALM, this modulation is done within SL, according to the light an camera angles there which are generally different from the baking conditions. So you only need to use the color map in the diffuse and specular slots..

 

[Spinell]

I forgot to mention: in SL, I AM using ALM. I've used that diffuse map I baked inside SL and I do get a really good glossy effect. No complaints there, it works very well and I can even adjust the effect.

EDIT: I found the problem! Really, sometimes it's the simple things, isn't it? I took a look at my original combined bake and the problem was there. I had an extra shader mix that was messing up things. I took that out, did another combined bake and NOW I got the colour on the arms, not just the black. From here, I will probably add to SL a glossy bake and diffuse bake to get that shiny effect and it should be fixed. I'll psot it here.