In this two part, Blender 2.5 tutorial we will be creating a sci-fi panel. This series includes modeling of the high and lowpoly objects, baking the normal maps and other various maps and texturing the panel. We will then show you how to bring these textures into Unity 3d to be used as a custom material.
Part one we will cover modeling the details for the panel inside of Blender 2.5 and then baking the normal map onto a plane.
Hey Porter. Thanks so much for this. I started playing with normals after your excellent brick wall tutorial. I never knew you could do this.
Suggestion: Regarding the B not typing, just resize the right panel a bit larger then you can see the first letter. Bugged me too.
I saved my bigger size as a user preference.
I’m really looking forward to the Photoshop part.
I also noticed that depending on the height of the parts, i.e. bolts, they seem to not show on the baked map.
After some messing around, I noticed that the Distance seemed to make no difference, but the Bias did. 1.5 was needed to “see” any parts that were farther away from the face.
Yes, the bias needs to be adjusted to detect objects further away. The further the object the higher the bias needs to be.
-Jonathan
I also noticed, Jonathan, that it looses the closer ones when you have to set it higher.
What’s the magic size space to use? What I mean is, say I set the Bias to 1 and all of my parts need to be inside of 1 blender unit. But it doesn’t seem to work out that way.
Is there a rule of thumb on this?
Awesome tut! I would love to see more tuts like this. How to make environment tilesets for 2d games completely in blender would be really cool.
Once again, these low poly tutorials are awesome. I am really enjoying it. Also I thought I was the only one who got irritated about the first letter being hidden when typing into a text field.
I am quite excited for the part 2. Even though I will be following along in gimp I have yet to have a problem following the Photoshop parts in tutorials.
Thanks.
Very good tutorial. Can’t wait for part 2.
Quicker way to make floor texture:
Take a plane, Subdivide it.
In tools window set number of cuts to 60 or so.
Go to Face Select mode and hit “A” till all faces are selected.
Extrude Individual Faces in the Z axis. (Make sure you use Individual)
Set the Pivot Point selector in the 3D Viewport toolbar to Individual Origins
Hit “S” and scale the faces in.
Set the Pivot Points back to “Active” or “Median” or whatever you normally use.
Cheers.
Thanks for fiddling with the normalmaps and saving me a lot of time.
The reason CRTL+N screws up the bolt normals is: The bolts have an interior and rim without a volume, so blender is confused, because it can’t guess what is “outside” in a non-closed mesh like those. Non-closed works, if you don’t have planes coming out of the volume.
Cheers
Hey, I love this tutorial, i always have issues when baking textures.
Quick Tip: When you couldn’t rotate your Hemi lamp. Press alt+R to clear rotation, alt+G and alt+S also clear location and scale
Bravo! This realy was a very nice tut!
I am having an issue with the inset extrude – after finding the file and installing it I can’t get the “I” shortcut to work, I have to search for it through the space bar menu and then activate the extrusion. I tried looking for it in the preferences and key commands but cant find it. any ideas??
my Mesh (under add) is disabled?? O.O
In chapter two of the some of the more common extras will be explained useful features that can augment the production process or add value a feature or function to low-poly models when used for game development the various bake options available in Blender 3D for instance which provide 3D artists with a relatively quick way to make the different image types often used in games predominantly to improve the general fidelity of in-game assets.. The bottom image shows both bakes with their respective UVW map overlaid to highlight how each type of lighting situation bake relates to the chair and UVs the process of baking any form of map including ambient occlusion maps will produce images similar to the bottom image..
Wu I find that part brilliant, useful, with one tips per minute. All that details using finally only one plane ?! That’s what I call low polynom. I guess ‘baking process’ will be my next task on todo list. It’s magic the way some few details give the illusions of a complex model.
So much things to work, so many times to use…
Hi very good tutorial,
I have only one issue when I am looking at the edges that are beveled they are not sharp looking like yours.I am very new to blender so, I think I may have missed something with the set up.
Never mind I had the geometry all wrong for the shape I was trying to make but I have it fixed now ^^
I am having trouble with the shading map portion. When I bake, all I get is a solid grey image. The normal map worked fine. Anyone care to assist? Great tutorial so far.
Please disregard my post. I found the answer from Mike on page 1 of the comments.
Anyone having a problem with the inset_extrude addon?…I have it installed but for some reason it wont let me activate it, I installed the py file and its showing up on my addon list but it wont let me check the activate box…anyone have advice for this blender noob (also im running 2.58)
yeah. I’m having the same problem. And I’m using 2.58 as well…wth?
I think that this addon works no more for blender 2.58, i did a little search in the addons library we got in blender and i did find that there is something that looks maybe the same and it’s called polygon-inset, you may have to google it !
w00t! the addon works in the newly released 2.59
While baking my bolts were showing up as a little high and slightly to right in the normal map despite appearing to be in the place. Turns out it was because the origin of the bolts was not aligned with the origin of the plane. I swear I had aligned them before, but must have bumped it at some point. Just thought it might be helpful to point out if anyone else was having a similar issue.
Hey Porter thanks for this awesome tutorial.. it was fun and informative.
Does anybody know if I can use these same techniques in order to make a low poly terrain for Unity?
You are phenomenally helpful. You read these comments and reply appropriately. I hadn’t realized that this is what the baking was all about. I have got to say that thanks to you and the myriad of really brilliant contributors and “hackers”, Blender and its world is THE PLACE to learn 3d modeling, sculpting, and animation.
Great tutorial!
Hotkey ‘I’ does not work here… Blender 2.60a
You need to download the addon, link provided in previous post.
Why do you have to create a fake panel to bake to the real panel? Is it because you have to bake one image to another?
Very good tutorial
Although, somewhere at 3:58, when I changed the shading mode to textured, the colors only became brighter. Is there any way I can fix this?(or would it be okay if I let it be?) I’m using Blender 2.57 if that helps
Hey thanks for this awesome tutorial. i have learnt alot
so far i have had no issues except that my shading map is far duller then yours. i dont know why, im guessing that my geometry was extruded less than yours or something. still if you know of an answer to this then please let me know
and again awesome tutorial
thanks
Actually it is causing a major problem. because with linear burn its not showing through the metal texture hardly at all. i guess the question is this. how do i assure greater contrast between the darker & lighter areas?
Thanks
Josh
Very Nice tutorial, especially for beginners using a bottom-up approach.
Hey!
I have a problem i hope someone can help me out with.
After adding the texture i baked and saved the image of to the low poly plane, and do EVERYTHING he does on the video up until turning on Viewport shading: Texture, i get a completely black plane
Anyone got an idea of what it might be?
I got the same problem, help!
First off, Awesome tutorial… but i’m having issues with the shading texture as well… i just get a grey image… soooo annoying, everything has worked perfectly up until this. tried doing what others suggested above but don’t seem to work
after about an hour of trying to get the shading rendering correctly and just after posting the above msg, I figured I’d restart blender and see if that works… and what do you know! exactly the same settings and it rendered correctly first try.
i don’t know if this is intended but these 2 tutorials are being showed in the unity side as well the blender side
I have a problem when backing the shading maps. My normal map looks perfectly fine. After applying it to the material and looking at the plane it looks cool and as expected. But in the deepest rims (i.e. between the 75×75 floor pieces) I have a white line while with the light.
This makes it terribly hard to do a nice selection an the shading map for the bare metal fill int Part 2.
Any suggestions how I get rid of the white lines in deep rim, when the normal map is applied?
Thx in advance!
Oh yes and great tutorial!!
Just started out, and this looks like an awesome series, but could you post a download link for the inset-extrude addon? The link on the blender wiki and the blenderartists forum is broken. I’ve already posted on those places about this, but I figure I might as well ask for it here, to better the chances of a response.
Actually, I found the Inset Faces addon, default with blender 2.63a, that seems to work pretty much like the addon discussed in this video. So this may be fine and you could disregard my last post.
hi is it now called inset polygon
Hey Porter I’m a huge fan! Hope to get citizenship next month. I got everything you are showing in both tutorials and everything seems to work well but it bugs me when I can’t duplicate exact results like maybe I’m missing something and I don’t want to miss out on learning. When baking my normal map then applying the texture to low poly plane even though I have unchecked color, when rendering in texture mode the color still shows. I have done this in both 2.58 and 2.63 What did I miss? anyting important? Thanks man!
Advanced Vertex Blending Material Part2– UDK: http://play.kendincos.com/155360/Wrvlprvlpfjdhlplp-advanced-vertex-blending-material-part2-udk.html
Hi, the tutorial has has been great so far, but I having trouble adding the bolts. When I add the cylinder in it’s like it mirrors it, stretching the cylinder in odd ways. Could anyone help me with this?
Hi,
Dose inset extrude addon works for 2.63a ? in my case it seems dose not work, when i press i a script Track back error occurs. any help will be appreciated.
No it doesn’t. But Blender 2.63 now has Inset built right in, find it by pressing CTRL + F > Inset
Thank you, I have followed the tutorial all went well but when i try to apply the panel material to the plane it dose not work, means it dose not show, i thought could be some thing wrong with baking, i tried to apply built in tiles material but the result is same , dose not show in view port, what possibly i may be missing.
Thank you.
continue……
when i render it appears it seems it must be missing something like show material in view port.
having some issues applying the textures with this.
have baked the normal, shading and colour map sucessfully, photoshopped the maps into a sweet looking well used floor panel but then back in blender i apply the normal map in GLSL mode and it works fine. then i click on the new texture button to apply the painted image and the plane just turns black and nothing applys. if i switch from textured view to solid view i can see the normal map working but its affecting the colour value as well even though colour is unchecked in the properties. and if i test render i get an image that might as well have been painted by an epileptic babboon.
i’m thinking i may be doing something wrong, any advice would be appreciated
Hey, I’m using the 3D Max, but i could not make the normal and shade map like you did in Blender. Then I used a program(CrazyBump) to do this. When I finished the texture in Photshop and apply to a 3Dmax plane, i didnt got the same results as you got. There is no depth, its just texture with no depth and extrude sensation. May some help plz?
someone to help? I have the same issue Chris Heaton.
“have baked the normal, shading and colour map sucessfully, photoshopped the maps into a sweet looking well used floor panel but then back in blender i apply the normal map in GLSL mode and it works fine. then i click on the new texture button to apply the painted image and the plane just turns black and nothing applys.”
When I bake any of the maps, regardless of normal or texture, I don’t produce any results. Why is that? Before I was able to bake a normal map and a height map. After I tried to do the texture map I was no longer able to bake any of the maps. Can somebody help me on this?
I found out the problem. I didn’t turn the rendering back on. Under Scene, I didn’t have the camera icon clicked.
Great Tutorial! I only wish I saw this earlier!