Hello,
I decided to share my blender file because it will be a good idea for quixel team to explain how to create these maps for quixel suite and the wiki.
So, everyone could contribute their workflow for making the maps or improve them.
For the moment, i managed to create gradient map (special thank to
MacOrion for the hint in gradient map creation), ambient oclusion and normal map (i probably missed something... well, who care ?).
Feel free to download here
https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/14183130/test_baking.blend
enjoy !
Replies
I ( and I guess others) didn't realise that what you posted is actually a blend file with the gradient map shader node material all pre-built, that's fantastic and will save many others a large amount of time.
I've only had the time to open up the blend file and take a quick look, hopefully over the weekend i'll be able to do some testing with it.
Thanks again.
you're welcome ! now that explain why not alot of people were checking my thread XD; i guess it was the title of thread were too vague ? i'm going to fix it asap then !
+1 with gradient node setup too (
Probably, may I suggest changing it to something like 'Blender Example & Node Set Up for baking to gradeint/normal/AO maps'.
BTW I had quite a few problems at the start with the file. Took me a little time to work out what bake outputs to use to get results, but then I found that the gradient map ( and i think others0 would bake outside of the uv layout in really weird ways. I tried all manor of fixes, nothing worked. Then I closed Blender down and re-opened the file and boom, everything worked exactly like it should.
So for anyone else if the bakes don't appear to be baking correctly try closing and re-opening Blender.
title fixed
for about that problem, i know why : it's because you didn't click on the model Suzanne and then in the node Windows, you need to click on one of these "material output" which it will activate the render. hope it will answer your problem
for about normal map, i'm still working on, i was trying to experiment something that is close to normal map file but done with light with the use of dirty vertex color, i will post the file later once i managed to find out how to render them correctly.
i have no idea about it, in fact, i'm still a newbie with blender despite ALL the years i have blender, i recently decided to use more often blender since it get a bit better in ergonomic sense, which i'm learning from scratch XD;
i didn't know it have that option until you mentionned, what i heard is that baking texture from cycles give better result than "traditionnally" from blender if you see what i mean... ^^;
you're welcome Eric !
Thanks for sharing first of all!
I'm working with Blender as well and started recently to use the Quixel Suite again, therefore I created a gradient material too, before I read this, with a slightly different result in the end, compared to the one you share here.
- I first tried to use the documented format +X, +Y, +Z => RGB, which didn't fit to the directions inside the mask editor (right to left etc.), now using -X, +Z, -Y.
- I used linear gradients not quadratic, otherwise the center of the gradient has a slight offset. It's important to change the color management to "none" before baking otherwise you get a gamma corrected result.
Other things that might be useful.
- If you add an color ramp behind the gradient node you can easily create a gradient from both sides of the object to the center instead of right to left.
- When baking different maps with cycles from one material, you can use emission, diffuse and gloss shader and just slab them together with the "add shader" note, no need for multiple material outputs that you have to click through, in case there are not more than 3 of course. Of course when baking you have to pick the correct baking type.
- The gradient material can be applied via material override in the scene setting as well, in case you don't wanna assign it to the object directly.
Unfortunately in the mask editor only one of the 3 gradients can be used at a time, not sure if that is on purpose, since you can obviously activate more than one. Maybe I just didn't figure out how to.