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Post by gerdzerlkinerfdamahn on Mar 8, 2020 3:50:13 GMT
Basically a thread for anything relating to how to do specific things in Blender, like setting up shader nodes, making hair particles, animating, etc.
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Post by rscott on Mar 9, 2020 17:26:19 GMT
First for all the newer people trying to add textures to Blender, and are lost. You need to know what the textures are before you can Plug them into nodes in Blender! Here is an image that will somewhat explain what each type will look like. of course, there are other types such as Roughness, but they will look a lot like metalness maps, just a bit brighter. I these types of images in Blender, Black is solid and White is Transparent...so if you plug it into the Metalness slot the white areas will add the effect and the Black will Block it...That is one way to tell the Metalness Map...it is usually just thinner lines of white. One of the first things you should check is, does this model have multiple UV layers? A lot do! Almost a guarantee that the Normal Map will be in the first UV, and everything else in the second. Here is an example of a "Node Tree" with several of these textures applied... In this one, you can see that you can change what UV is used by adding a UV NODE, and selecting which UV. and a quick render using Eevee.
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Post by Rancor022 on Mar 9, 2020 19:23:08 GMT
rscott, FYI according to a DICE dev, they use roughness maps in-engine simply by inverting the specular map. That's what I've been doing and it works perfectly in C4D.
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Post by rscott on Mar 10, 2020 13:47:31 GMT
rscott , FYI according to a DICE dev, they use roughness maps in-engine simply by inverting the specular map. That's what I've been doing and it works perfectly in C4D. Yes that works on most cases, unless there is a roughness already, then I would use that... Also in some cases, when you know there is a metalness, say armor and say you have a Diffuse>Specular> maybe a roughness, and a Normal. You need to remember that Metalness is the only thing that has a color. If the Diffuse has color appears there is a color on the Specular, you might have to plug the Specular into the diffuse node, and diffuse into the specular. Then don't change it to Non-Color. Appears that the color map would be the Diffuse, but if plugged in like you normally would it sucks! If reversed and Specular plugged into Diffuse and Diffuse Plugged into Specular and Metalness over to Full, then it will work as it should.
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Post by dlight on Mar 11, 2020 1:51:11 GMT
if you got textures like those, the colored specular is done like that. i.imgur.com/ToWJm2o.jpgthis is game shader style with seperated diffuse and specular terms. you can choose whether you mix specularity or plain add it for full glow. the specular color itself contains the specularity encoded in it's brightness. note that the metalness is not directly set as a value, but encoded in that way that metal usually has no diffuse color. doesn't mean you can't use color. i mean you can fake roughness by just adding a bit of diffuse. or use the color seperation to make unnatural specular materials. you won't get those with the basic shader.
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Post by gerdzerlkinerfdamahn on Mar 15, 2020 3:00:18 GMT
How would I shade window screens, particularly those on vehicles? I've been trying to shade the windows on an X-Wing, a Tie Fighter, and the Millennium Falcon, but I haven't had any results that look like how they should.
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Post by dlight on Mar 15, 2020 12:53:26 GMT
like this. you can choose whether to alpha blend or hash. whatever looks good to you. you got stain and glass color. also stain and glass transparency. the glass color and transparency obviously control the reflection amount. if you wanna do that you could add a fresnel node to get a more 'proper' ior transparency evaluation on the more rim angles. you also could add the inverted mask as roughness, but that makes the blended edges shiny af, which looks bad. you also (2.82 coder error - the principled shader is actually kinda broken there for insulator reflections) need to set metal or it will not reflect probes or in general (it's a 'vergamed' shader error). and ofc the reflection probes are only necessary for eevee, it's not needed for cycles. i think that's it. i.imgur.com/WUqkPjB.jpg
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Post by gerdzerlkinerfdamahn on Mar 16, 2020 2:35:05 GMT
like this. you can choose whether to alpha blend or hash. whatever looks good to you. you got stain and glass color. also stain and glass transparency. the glass color and transparency obviously control the reflection amount. if you wanna do that you could add a fresnel node to get a more 'proper' ior transparency evaluation on the more rim angles. you also could add the inverted mask as roughness, but that makes the blended edges shiny af, which looks bad. you also (2.82 coder error - the principled shader is actually kinda broken there for insulator reflections) need to set metal or it will not reflect probes or in general (it's a 'vergamed' shader error). and ofc the reflection probes are only necessary for eevee, it's not needed for cycles. i think that's it. i.imgur.com/WUqkPjB.jpgHow would I apply those "Dirty Glass MSR" / "Cockpit Window Dirt" / "Cockpit Screen" textures, though?
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Post by dlight on Mar 16, 2020 5:30:35 GMT
How would I apply those "Dirty Glass MSR" / "Cockpit Window Dirt" / "Cockpit Screen" textures, though? i'm certain you don't need the msr textures, really. the black one is just black. i'd guess this is the roughness, since glass is entirely shiny, means no or minimal roughness. the gray textures doesn't make much sense either. maybe it's the specularity aka reflectivity. you shouldn't use this empty textures tho. it's a waste of memory and computation power sampling those. so... you set them as simple shader values/constants. about the screen texture. it looks like an animated texture something, which you shouldn't need either. the window dirt 02 (line) texture looks like it needs another uv channel and is potentially only mapped to the edges of the glass. you could just combine/add it to the dirt 03 texture and use the result as the whole dirt mask. i think.
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Post by rscott on Mar 18, 2020 15:33:30 GMT
How would I shade window screens, particularly those on vehicles? I've been trying to shade the windows on an X-Wing, a Tie Fighter, and the Millennium Falcon, but I haven't had any results that look like how they should. I have a different approach than dlight , and of course it will depend on what is actually included and what isn't...There are many occasions on glass ( especially if there is no interior ) I will just color the window with a Gold, and bump up the specular and lower the roughness, IE. Make it shiny/Reflective and semi-transparent. But in other cases, like the Droid Tri Fighter, there was a Metalness/Specular ( which adds all the grunge ) and Roughness...Like dlight was saying the Metalness and the Roughness are usually a waste as they are solid Black and Grey and you can just bump up those in a Principled Shader...I went ahead and for this tut, added in everything... The Droid Tri has 3 UV channels, 1 for the Base, 1 for the Emissive ( with texture map ) and 1 for the Normals. Basic setup looks like this ( my way )...
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Post by gerdzerlkinerfdamahn on Mar 21, 2020 11:04:30 GMT
How would I generate glowing effects that accurately match the game's various engine/thruster lights? Likewise for lightsabers and blaster bolts.
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Post by dlight on Mar 21, 2020 16:12:12 GMT
well... i usually render any form of emission as a seperate pass and relative fast gauss blur and add it. for selective anisotrophy you will need more control passes and 2 more blur filters for x and y directions. unfortunately the blur filter mask/size input seems broken in 2.8 so there's no quick way to selectively xtra blur based on intensity/emission strength either.
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Post by rscott on Mar 23, 2020 14:27:50 GMT
How would I generate glowing effects that accurately match the game's various engine/thruster lights? Likewise for lightsabers and blaster bolts. I use Eevee about 99.9 % of the time as I only want to get something on-screen that looks GOOD, so here is what I do for all that... For emissive shaders in Eevee, 1st thing you need is to change some settings in the Scene. For the nice GLOW effect change the add Bloom and adjust settings to your liking. Add screen space-Reflections, and I also add AO ( personal Preference ). Node tree and result for a Light Sabre...Note: for a color emissive you have to be careful as setting the shader too high will wash out the color to white, make most of the changes in the scene tab... ( above) that is all it takes...You can always add more, like noise texture or gradient to add some transparent fade-out. otice I add a transparency shader and mix with an emissive... which makes the area not have a stark line from the mesh. For a model that includes an emissive texture by itself or packed into another, it is still basically the same, but you won't usually need the transparency unless the model includes an Alpha Mask, that mask out the areas of emission. Look back at the Tri-Fighter and this shows the node set-up I used when there is an emissive map. That's a quick and dirty in EeVee, and the shaders will work in Cycles as well except there is no Bloom in Cycles so follow dlight 's advise and or, work on the file in the Compositor and add-in a Glare-Node to get about the same.
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Post by gerdzerlkinerfdamahn on Apr 3, 2020 15:58:19 GMT
How would I realistically (as possible) shade skin and eyeballs? I've tried different methods, but a lot of them look really uncanny valley and fake.
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Post by lordofthekierans on Apr 8, 2020 12:12:47 GMT
How do I assemble and rig the clone trooper models for animation? I don't need all the extra bits of the skeleton needed for the model to function in Bf2, just the bits that actually manipulate the character.
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Post by rscott on Apr 8, 2020 14:27:07 GMT
How would I realistically (as possible) shade skin and eyeballs? I've tried different methods, but a lot of them look really uncanny valley and fake. It will completely depend on what is included as far as shaders, and of course the mesh. A high-poly mesh will look better with a basic diffuse than a low-poly. Higher textures 2-4-6-8k will produce better results. That said' game files are in the category of Low-Poly and Lower K textures...so you need to cheat a bit. HDRI will add real-world lighting and then point lamps to emphasize areas and add contrast and bring out the normals. Here are 2 examples as well as basic skin shader set-ups... 1st is High-Poly-4k textures, including SS and displacement ( adds a great deal to the look )... 2nd is a Low-Poly and 2k textures Diffuse, Specular and Normal...Tweaked with point lamps as well as HDR and emissive...Well known game figure...
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Post by rscott on Apr 8, 2020 15:43:38 GMT
How do I assemble and rig the clone trooper models for animation? I don't need all the extra bits of the skeleton needed for the model to function in Bf2, just the bits that actually manipulate the character. IDEAS... 1. Grab one of the clone troopers from PD3m, they are already rigged...in most cases just changing the textures will give you different versions...for those that are different..you can just subtract and add meshes,, and parent them to the armature... 2. Take your mesh to Mixamo ( FREE ) and add the armature and while you are there add an animation...import the FBX to Blender and play! 3. Take the armature from a rigged mesh (PD3m) save it...import to your mesh and watch one of the hundreds of Youtube vids on how to add the armature and such...
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Post by lordofthekierans on Apr 8, 2020 23:10:31 GMT
Thanks for pointing me in the right direction mate. I've been basically going about it trial and error so far, so sorry if my questions seem a bit silly. Stumbled upon this forum by chance basically too, so I guess I've been getting lucky!
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Post by rscott on Apr 9, 2020 15:12:40 GMT
Thanks for pointing me in the right direction mate. I've been basically going about it trial and error so far, so sorry if my questions seem a bit silly. Stumbled upon this forum by chance basically too, so I guess I've been getting lucky! My Pleasure... I think we all start by trial and error and even now, that's what I tend to do when faced with something newer... I spend a better part of each morning answering questions on Blender Artist and a lot are from total noobs, like How do I get a texture in blender...etc etc... so I never feel like any question is silly...we all started out that way...Man you should have seen me dealing with changing from 2.79 up to 2.8xx...it was painful! What I showed you was just the basic shader, used with what textures there were...only the second was in render view, the first in lookdev mode...and both in eeVee... I tend to stay away from cycles...as I want immediate results and not have to wait! Once you become familiar with what nodes there are as well as how to put them together, then start making your own textures, such as displacement and normals...you can expand from the basic to some insane node trees... One of the node trees for a skin shader that I even can get lost in...
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ag458
New Member Lvl 3
Posts: 22
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Post by ag458 on May 2, 2020 17:42:31 GMT
I was wondering if anyone had any tutorial regarding proper armor (eg. Stormtrooper) texturing maps, along with good fabric clothing texture maps. Anything helps!
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Post by rscott on May 3, 2020 14:51:20 GMT
I was wondering if anyone had any tutorial regarding proper armor (eg. Stormtrooper) texturing maps, along with good fabric clothing texture maps. Anything helps! You talking about what comes with the trooper archives or adding your own textures? Or just how do you use the ones included?
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ag458
New Member Lvl 3
Posts: 22
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Post by ag458 on May 3, 2020 17:22:37 GMT
I was wondering if anyone had any tutorial regarding proper armor (eg. Stormtrooper) texturing maps, along with good fabric clothing texture maps. Anything helps! You talking about what comes with the trooper archives or adding your own textures? Or just how do you use the ones included? Just how to use the ones included. I followed your tutorials regarding ship texturing as well as skin texture and they've helped me out a lot! If I can get clothing/armor down, I should have almost everything down.
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Post by rscott on May 4, 2020 16:46:08 GMT
You talking about what comes with the trooper archives or adding your own textures? Or just how do you use the ones included? Just how to use the ones included. I followed your tutorials regarding ship texturing as well as skin texture and they've helped me out a lot! If I can get clothing/armor down, I should have almost everything down. Cloth and armor or anything else you can think of works in the same way as ships-skin-rocks eyeballs etc. etc. It is just a matter of plugging in the correct maps to the right sockets and sending them to the screen... You can add an image texture node, then a diffuse shader or Principled Shader, then to output and you will get something on the screen. It is after you get the Diffuse texture on the model, and start adding specular maps, normal maps, etc. that the magic happens. It takes time and practice to understand what each node's purpose is, and how to connect them together...Youtube is your friend to help learn this process... You can take a simple Low poly mesh, with a decent set of textures and end up with a nice looking render. Once you learn a few tricks and are able to do some simple editing you can select parts of meshes, and attach a material to it and end up with a whole different looking finished render...Things like adding an emissive shader to parts on a mesh for lamps or glow comes to mind. For cloth to look good you need a good set of maps, or some fudging to make not so good maps look better...for instance, get a copy of Materialize, and you will be able to generate your own maps when all you got is a diffuse texture, not as good as baking from high poly to low...but you will almost never have a high poly, so you would need to bake from low to low, which is not quite as good but far better than none! Here is a one I just worked up and went all out just to show what can be done... and here are some of the node trees ( a bit hard to read as they barely fit on the screen). That's just the belt. Here is the upper cloth, not much different than the belt, but added multiple Normal maps as well as micro bump maps and bump mask to add that extra bit of eye candy! Just have fun with it and when you get stuck or don't get what you are after, start looking in Youtube or Blender artist...Good Luck my friend!
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Post by rscott on May 11, 2020 14:01:44 GMT
As the subject just came up in SW Modeling Thread...need to share a bit on Hair, and in eeVee, which is difficult to make it look right. Hair in cycles works way better, but I just don't like cycles that much, have to use too many passes to get a decent image...and I hate waiting!! Hair from just about every model is different, and has to be done differently in each case...and it is usually a matter of trial and error to get things right. Here is a normal hair with a skullcap and hair strands...
First thing you might ask is why add a transparent shader, when it is also plugged into the alpha channel, and the reason is it makes the hair look far better than trying to just use the alpha channel, and there is no way to control the amount of transparency with just the alpha, and when you use the alpha settings in the shader, you can pick between alpha blend or alpha hashed, in most regular settings in eeVee it will be hashed...and with this you can switch over to cycles and things will look like they should...Problems occur when you are dealing with a low-poly mesh and low rez textures...a 2k texture will look bad compared to a 4k texture...but you deal with what you got... Hair in eeVee will always look better if there is a hair mask included ( or you make your own ) which is a pure Black and White image, where the hair strands are white and the rest Black...Then you can use alpha clip, and get far superior results, you can also slip in a color ramp as a factor for the mix shader and tweak the amount of hair visibility and get it just that bit better... Like this one or Rey-TROS... different way that just worked better than with a Transparent shader, as it will depend on the quality of the texture and the alpha channel ( some work well, others are crap)... In this case the color ramp made the strands down the sides look like hair and not flat cards!
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tomdec
New Member Lvl 1
Posts: 2
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Post by tomdec on Jul 30, 2020 18:10:37 GMT
Hello everyone, I have a question in regards to animation. How exactly do you extract animations from Battlefront 2? I know that for Fallen Order you can download the psa file through umodel, is there a similar method for Battlefront 2 & the Frosty editor or is it a more complicated process? Thank you.
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Post by Rancor022 on Jul 30, 2020 18:18:37 GMT
Hello everyone, I have a question in regards to animation. How exactly do you extract animations from Battlefront 2? I know that for Fallen Order you can download the psa file through umodel, is there a similar method for Battlefront 2 & the Frosty editor or is it a more complicated process? Thank you. Much, much more complicated. In fact only a handful of people know how to do it. Frosty does not have animation support unfortunately, and likely never will at this point.
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tomdec
New Member Lvl 1
Posts: 2
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Post by tomdec on Jul 30, 2020 18:20:32 GMT
Rancor022, Damn that's a bummer, I appreciate the quick response though!
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Post by gabrialwolf on Aug 12, 2020 13:11:21 GMT
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Post by rscott on Aug 25, 2020 14:36:52 GMT
As far as I know there isn't an alternative...also as far as I know the plug-in works all the way to 2.9 Blender. When you say it doesn't work, what do you mean? Have you tried the stable release? Have you dropped back in Blender to a previous release...Does it not work at all in the Blender version you have or is it just one model? Is it the psk or the psa that's not working or is it a known issue like bone roll that's not working?
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Post by gabrialwolf on Aug 26, 2020 9:57:07 GMT
rscott, Blender failed to extract the file from the zip so had to install it manually to get it to show up. I'm soo out of practice having been away from Blender for so long.
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