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Old 7th December 2007, 07:47 PM   #1
lisa
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Default PLUGIN: Bake Texture Layout

New plug-in, "Bake Texture Layout". Download it here:
http://www.independentdeveloper.com/...texture-layout

This plug-in allows you to "bake" a texture from one object to another object with the same geometry but different texture coordinates. It also supports alpha-mapping, so you can bake multiple textures onto the same object.

Useful for:

- Changing UVs after you've already painted your texture without having to repaint the bitmap

- Modding games when you can't change the texture layout on the model, but a different set of texture coordinates would make it easier to paint

- Fitting text to warped surfaces or other projections that would be difficult or impossible to do by hand... duplicate your object, and bake the text with an alpha bitmap from a version of the object with a simple planar projection
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Old 8th December 2007, 07:18 AM   #2
luuckyy
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Thumbs up Re: PLUGIN: Bake Texture Layout

That plugin is really really impressive lisa.
I don't want to think about how it works internally, it would hurt my brain too much
I sure will have a use of it.
Thank you very much for sharing !
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Old 8th December 2007, 07:57 AM   #3
lisa
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Default Re: PLUGIN: Bake Texture Layout

Thanks! I enjoy writing them... even more if someone actually uses them.
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Old 12th December 2007, 12:21 AM   #4
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Default Re: PLUGIN: Bake Texture Layout

Could this be used with add light to bake shadows ??
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Old 12th December 2007, 03:03 AM   #5
lisa
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Default Re: PLUGIN: Bake Texture Layout

Not presently, no, but it would not be terribly hard to write such a thing.

Here are a couple of other ways you could go about it:

Use MegaPOV with the camera_view command to render each triangle to a texture from the point of view of the camera. (You'll need to do some pov scripting.)

-OR-

Easier method: Use the other plugin I just uploaded (http://www.inivis.com/forum/showthread.php?t=4571) to call the ATI NormalMapper tool. NormalMapper will also output ambient occlusion into the alpha channel of the normal map, which can be saved out and converted to grayscale for self-shadowing. This won't give you full lights like the POV method, but ambient occlusion can still add quite a lot in terms of lighting.
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Old 17th December 2007, 09:46 AM   #6
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Default Re: PLUGIN: Bake Texture Layout

Fantastic Lisa, thanks ... !
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Old 9th May 2008, 05:57 PM   #7
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Default Re: PLUGIN: Bake Texture Layout

Quote:
Originally Posted by lisa View Post
Not presently, no, but it would not be terribly hard to write such a thing.

Here are a couple of other ways you could go about it:

Use MegaPOV with the camera_view command to render each triangle to a texture from the point of view of the camera. (You'll need to do some pov scripting.)

-OR-

Easier method: Use the other plugin I just uploaded (http://www.inivis.com/forum/showthread.php?t=4571) to call the ATI NormalMapper tool. NormalMapper will also output ambient occlusion into the alpha channel of the normal map, which can be saved out and converted to grayscale for self-shadowing. This won't give you full lights like the POV method, but ambient occlusion can still add quite a lot in terms of lighting.
A shadow bake would be great, especially if the bake program had an option to bake as is, or add the shadow.
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Old 17th August 2008, 08:54 AM   #8
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Default Re: PLUGIN: Bake Texture Layout

Would it be possible to bake normal and displacement textures onto the coloured texture ?

I want to keep within the AC file format, rather then convert to a format that supports this.
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Old 19th August 2008, 02:52 PM   #9
lisa
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Default Re: PLUGIN: Bake Texture Layout

Ooh. That's a big one, and I've got a lot on my plate already. I'm still working on a new sculpty exporter and a lightmapper. The lightmapper turned out to be a little more work than I thought, mostly because I decided I wanted global illumination. I'd like to get at least one of those out the door before I start any more personal side projects.

It's also a little hard to justify, since you can hook up the command-line ATI tool to AC3D's render button if you want an integrated normal mapper. Press F7, choose ATI Graphics NMF as the output format and ATI's NormalMapper as the render program. Click "Show Render button on toolbar". Add any parameters as desired to the render parameters. Click Ok. Now when you click the render button, AC3D will render normal maps.

*But* if someone wants to take a crack at it, I will happily provide whatever guidance I can help with.

For any budding game developers out there, this is a good one to cut your teeth on because you'll walk away not only with knowing how to make normal maps, but with all the building blocks needed for basic collision detection as well. Here's how I'd implement it if I were writing it myself:

1) Position the high resolution model and the low resolution model at the same location based on the user-set model centers. This can happen in-memory, it doesn't have to be visible in AC3D.

2) Create a scan-line triangle renderer to walk each texel in uv space of the destination normal map. (low-res model)

3) For each texel of the normal map, project a ray [*see item #4] from the surface of the low-resolution model both inward and outward and determine the intersection point, if any, with the high resolution model. The distance from the ray origin to the intersection is the displacement value. The surface normal direction at the ray intersection of the high resolution model is the normal vector to write to the texture.

4) Write a geometry management system to make it fast. (This is the time-consuming part of the project!) Normal maps are only interesting for models with thousands or millions of polys. If you try to do ray casting without a geometry management system it will be waaaay too slow to be practical... we're talking days to trace anything, not kidding. Something like a BSP, KD-tree, sphere tree or any one of a dozen other structures will do the trick, but you will *need* to implement one of these.

5) Convert the recorded displacement and normal values from floating point to a 0-1 range, and write them to the normal and displacement texture maps. Note: You won't be able to determine the 0-1 range for the displacement map until you know the max and min displacements. (You'll want to write those values out to a text file.) Save textures to disk.
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Old 19th September 2008, 02:53 AM   #10
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Default Re: PLUGIN: Bake Texture Layout

I would love to use this plug-in in conjunction with some kind of TGA/Texture exporter to resolve seam issues with Second Life. (Or at least resolve them on one side.)

I've got a copy of Deep Paint 3D that I just picked up, but it's turning out not to be as easy to use as I expected it to be. (Ain't that always the case?)

I've been toying with 3dsmax, but I really can't help myself... I prefer AC3D. It's got a better interface (easier) and I've logged a ton of hours in it now, so it feels like 'home'. :P
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