PLUGIN: Render to Texture: Light Maps, Normal Maps, AO

[luuckyy]

Thanks lisa, it's a very nice addition to AC3D.
Now I wish we could have more than just the white fixed brightness point lights currently available to work with ...
Anyway great stuff !

[lisa]

Thanks everyone.

Originally Posted by luuckyy

Now I wish we could have more than just the white fixed brightness point lights currently available to work with ...

Actually, the renderer will let you colorize the lights by setting the object properties.

Just put the string "color" with your red, green, blue and intensity values in the object data text of the object properties dialog. ie. "color 1.0 .5 .5 2.0" would create a very bright reddish light.

[luuckyy]

Originally Posted by lisa

Actually, the renderer will let you colorize the lights by setting the object properties.

Indeed, and it was written in the readme file ... sorry for that

[bdkhoops]

Lisa, this is an amazing addition to the software. Up until this point I haven't been concerned with having my texture coordinates overlap. In fact, I had purposely overlapped them at times. Is there an easy way to unwrap an objects texture map so that every face is mapped without overlapping? I also find it difficult to get angled surface to map flat. Any ideas?

One more question. Is there an option in your GUI to burn the texture into the shadows and everything but delete all of the unused portions of the texture?

THANK YOU

[lisa]

Originally Posted by bdkhoops

Lisa, this is an amazing addition to the software. Up until this point I haven't been concerned with having my texture coordinates overlap. In fact, I had purposely overlapped them at times. Is there an easy way to unwrap an objects texture map so that every face is mapped without overlapping? I also find it difficult to get angled surface to map flat. Any ideas?

I usually map it in sections. There's another set of plugs I wrote that will break up the model by crease angle that you might find useful: http://www.independentdeveloper.com/...ap-by-material

For angled surfaces, sometimes I will rotate the model, apply the mapping so I get the projection I want, then rotate the model back to its original position.

I don't know of any way to do this completely automatically within AC3D, but I just learned this morning that Ultimate Unwrap 3D will create a unique atlas. The atlas looks a little odd, but it is non-overlapping.

Originally Posted by bdkhoops

One more question. Is there an option in your GUI to burn the texture into the shadows and everything but delete all of the unused portions of the texture?

Hmmm. I'm not sure I follow you. Do you mean to mask just the mapped parts? You could, I guess, create an alpha mask by setting your surface material to white and using render "Material Colors" to create a map of which areas are used, then use the alpha mask within your paint program to clip the shape. Is that what you mean?

[virtualalias]

If this works, I may have to ask you to marry me.

[lordfly]

I'm a new AC3d user, hoping to use AC3d for the upcoming mesh features for Second Life (yes, they're getting honest to god meshes now, instead of sculpties).

Anyways, when using this renderer, perhaps I'm using it wrong, but the output is either one of three things:

1) A basic texture output (no lighting, shading, or UV mapping)
2) pure black
3) pure white

On one shape I was testing on, I did get an interesting half-texture/half black thing going, but that's about it.

Lights seem to have no effect on any of it. :/ What am I doing wrong?

[DRAKELOT]

Awesome Lisa, thanks !

[Toronto]

Has anyone besides DrakeLot been able to get this pluggin to work ??
Still can't get this pluggin working.