Create Atlas: Creates a single material with a texture atlas of each color. Each face's UV maps the color of the texture. This conversation is useful for realtime graphics such as Games or VR.
Preview Texture Preview the current background image of the Image/UV Editor as a texture on the selected object.
Selection bake mode Bakes the face selection as a black and white mask.
Here is the new face selection bake mode in action
Thank you for the new release! I've been testing the Rectify tool and it works great - however, I don't know if the intended behavior is that the island is deselected after being rectified?
EDIT: hum, strange, now I can't reproduce it... EDIT 2: Still unable to reproduce it, will update if it happens again.
i found to have the following error over and over again when i import 2 different objects into my scene. Next to the fact that the models arnt neat i dont understand how to work around the error, tried using other textool versions but the error keeps coming.
Hey @renderhjs Any chance you could have the ID map functionality create vertex colours instead of materials? I often have to bake Zbrush exports together with Blender exports, and while I prefer baking from materials in Painter, Zbrush's polygroup colours make that harder (they're often extremely close to eachother in colour). So we use Vertex Colours instead, and I now find myself looking for a way to streamline the convoluted vertex-painting workflow (in a way that's easy to teach to juniors, preferably) in Blender.
Hey, i'm getting this error, the default blender baking tools are working fine, but this error keeps popping up, i think that maybe a bug, but if not, whats the ''workaround''
Any chance you could have the ID map functionality create vertex colours instead of materials?
Already implemented, will be out with 1.0.0 At some point there will be an option to also read from vertex colors into Color ID, but that will follow in a future version.
There is also an upcoming new bake mode: Material ID
After great feedback from Jakro I changed the AO bake mode from Cycles to Blender Render with normalized enabled. The results are much smoother AO bakes with less samples and a much more even gradient distribution.
An improved Color ID creation from exisitng mesh elements and conversion to other color sets. If more colors existed previously exceeding elements are cycled through the new color range.
johnas I already have some code for the mirror tool in the repository and an icon But it is disabled at the moment as it is very buggy and not yet where I would like it to be. The problem I have been facing in Blender is that UV verts are not shared but rather unique per face. So I have to detect UV clusters or UV verts of shared locations, this was much easier in 3dsMax. Will be working on this further in the future and hopefully crack it at some point
It uses composite nodes to convert a tangent normal map into a cuvature map. I am pretty close on wrapping this one up, here is my current progress The composite nodes are stored in an external blend file and appended temporarily to convert to the curvature map.
Hi @renderhjs , spent more time with the tool and still liking it a lot, but I have a question about Rectify.
I gather from what you said in this thread that particular component is not something you coded, but do you have any idea why it creates islands that differ in size and x-y ratio if you unwrap two identical pieces of geometry? I hope you see what I mean. e.g. Iron two instances of the same pillar trim, and get different results from applying rectify to them.
This behavior is a shame because it forces you to a lot of manual adjustments/eyeballing checker size, which is precisely the reason why I stayed away from UVing in Blender for so long. I feel I'm close to being able to do a full piece without leaving Blender, encountering this issue is the only time I've really had to fight the urge to go back to Max/UV Layout which is my usual tool set (but I resisted so far!)
@Mant1k0re Sadly, the plugin @renderhjs uses is based on your active element. So take note of which face is highlighted, and make sure it's the same one for both islands. There's talk of him writing his own version, which I'm really looking forward to!
I see! Well, it is something to work with for now, thanks for the tip
EDIT: yeah, that somehow did the trick for the issue I reported, but then I realized it has several other flaws... somehow the texel density is showing unexpected variance on some polygons on the same continuous piece of geometry. Sadly I'm giving up on UVing my project in Blender for now. Close, but no cigar yet will check back in a while to see how development is going.
Hey, great progress on that plugin. It comes really handy. I was wondering if there's any way to get the normal tangent bake option to bake to a 32bit float image. I tried creating the image manually "xxx_normal_tanget" but the float image got overwritten with a byte image.
but do you have any idea why it creates islands that differ in size and x-y ratio if you unwrap two identical pieces of geometry
I think that the rectifying is done at a UV level not aware of the orientation or scale in your 3D mesh. As such it is very relativ and works with the input orientation / scale of the UV selection. Will hopefully investigate a bit more on this stuff now that 1.0.0 is out.
any way to get the normal tangent bake option to bake to a 32bit float image
Didn't make it into 1.0.0 but will investigate for the next version. It's interesting I keep learning a lot about blender because of these questions that I have to investigate - thanks for the feedback.
Bake sets: set groups: You can group multiple objects into groups for the bake sets. This can be done in 3 different ways:
name sequences:
assigning groups in blender:
parenting objects:
Improved AO Bake mode: Using Blender Render and normalized enabled for smoother results
New Curvature Bake mode Renders tangent normal map then applies compositing nodes to generate curvature map New Position Bake Mode Color ID to vertex Colors
Create Color ID from existing material slots Create Color ID from Mesh Elements
3D programs are not forcing you to be in an monogamous relationship. Max won't be angry at you if you dance a little with Blender. So why not both?
To the Ninja: awesome update. I haven't even had the chance to use the plugin, and there is already an update filled with more useful stuff. Thanks a lot.
@another caveman perhaps I think its just fine using multiple tools in conjunction. The thing is with Blender and TexTools for Blender: It will always be free and available. No lock in rental fee. That's why I personal think Blender is a good time investment to learn.
More ninja updates
Been experimenting lately with a script that generates a new mesh that has the same topology as the UV map (e.g. vertices can be split in UV thus requires a new mesh to create). The plan is to have some kind of Mesh Texture tool like in www.automodeller.com Screenshot from automodeller For this to work I had in mind using the Mesh Deform modifier on a mesh texture
Here's a file. I am using blender 2.79 (2017-09-11) on windows 10. That new feature looks nifty!
Figured it out pretty quickly: Actually funny to me. It's the cage object that casts shadows on everything else. If you hide the cage in the bake process it's fine. Will work on a fix this was easy to find. Must have missed this when I switched to Blender Render for AO bakes.
Edit: Turns out that Blender Render does not support custom cages. Will ignore cage models in this bake mode.
Been following this tool for a whilst; glad to see it in Version 1.0 Been getting a weird bug, though, with the rectify tool. Not really sure what I'm seeing but I included a screenshot of the error message I got. I tried reloading blender and Textools but it didnt want to know. Weirdly, it worked once but when i tried it again it failed. Any ideas?
EDIT: Okay, so I stepped away from the computer for 10 minutes and it started working again. Not sure if it's a problem with Blender, Textool or maybe my PC?
So I tried to bake Diffuse (Color IDs) and that's the result:
Hard to give good advice how to replicate it because I just used default cube. Played around with colors, hit bake, got nothing (or whatever the image above shows)
Cool to see this tool being so rapidly developed. Also it's good to be using your tools again
Awesome work renderhjs, congrats on the 1.0.0 release !
I played around with it a bit and might have found an issue with the AO baking. Could also be that I was expecting a different result. I made a test setup for baking a 'wall texture'. The normal map comes out fine using the cage, but AO doesn't seem to use the cage?
It looks like it just bakes the AO without a cage. Using the high poly during baking, but not in a projected kind of way. Is this intended?
Would it be possible for a bake to project its rays using custom normals data (i.e. Auto Smooth)?
I've been spending all day experimenting with editing Auto Smooth normals, and outside of using them in renders they seem to have extremely limited utility.
I get errors quite often with rectify, it works well, then suddenly stops, there is any work around for that or maybe is something that i am doing wrong?
I am baking color ID's to vertex colors, but when I go to object mode, I cannot see my vertex colors anymore. Is there a way to either - See vertex colors outside of vertex paint mode? - Not clear color ID's when baking to vertex colors so I can still visualize them?
I get errors quite often with rectify, it works well, then suddenly stops, there is any work around for that or maybe is something that i am doing wrong?
It wasn't developed by OP, and it's quite frankly full of flaws in its current implementation, which is of course acceptable for something free...
@renderhjs This way Cool. This made everything that needs a UV unwrap a breeze, are you going to implement the Mirror/Symmetrical feature that was there in the max version? Anyways, Thanks for sharing such an awesome Addon, you rock.
This is amazing, I am working on my first project in Blender and wasn't very impressed with the UV tools, I cannot believe after coming back to Polycount after so long away that I find this straight off the bat. You are awesome and though I haven't used TexTools in Blender yet I know it will rock. Thanks for this.
Found another issue... using Convert->Vertex Colors works on the selected object, but if you have any other objects with ColorID's in the scene, the ColorID's on those objects are obliterated. It also does not convert them to vertex colors.
This is amazing! I've somehow completely missed this up until now. I've been using Blender pretty seriously for about 2 years but I've been really disappointed by the UV mapping options, so I'm super excited to start playing with this! Thanks @renderhjs !
Thanks @renderhjs for the great addon! Now everyone can baking like a pros!
From time to time I checked new update from Your BitBucket account to try new features, and I have some issue when I try to bake a tangent normal map. Normal looks wird:
Maybe It is some bug or maybe I just make some mistake. I don't know. If You need I can send my blend files.
@renderhjs Thanks for your quick answer. Now it's all make sense for me. One more time thanks for Your help. You doing a great job I can't wait for new features.
@renderhjs Bit of a spoiled request, but: I currently name my highpoly meshes _HI and lowpoly _LO, any chance this could be added to the list of recognised naming schemes?
@renderhjs Bit of a spoiled request, but: I currently name my highpoly meshes _HI and lowpoly _LO, any chance this could be added to the list of recognised naming schemes?
No problem added it to the code, will be included in the next release
Mesh texture tools A new tool to wrap meshes like textures around your objects. Consists of 2 tools: Create UV mesh and wrap selected UV mesh and Mesh Texture.
Bake mode: Displace A Blender renderer feature: A bit like a depth mask on a normal projected basis. Great for mesh displacement in engines or 3D packages.
Bake mode: Wireframe Quick bake of the wireframes as a black and white mask. Perhaps in some cases just faster than exporting the UV layout manually.
Bake mode: Legacy AO and AO As the previous AO baking mode (using Blender render engine) didn't support cages I decided to add the Cycles AO baking mode as well which supports Cages. The Legacy AO mode will have in many cases nicer results because of the normalized feature it uses but for cages use the now normal AO mode.
Select flipped UV islands Simple tool to selected Flipped UVs. It will select any UV island that has at least one UV faces flipped.
Color ID from directions: 2, 3, 4 or 6 Process that me and a friend came up with years ago and that we used for hand painted 3D models or pixel art renders. These models for example uses this technique with unique directional colors for up, left & right, front & back
Bake 32 bit float mode added New option in the addon preferences to change from 8 bit per channel to 32 bit per channel texture baking. Make sure you read the CG Cookie's guide on normal map baking in 32 bit as you still may have to convert the baked texture back to 8 bit using dithering.
This latest version of Textools is super awesome in baking. It has all the bake types I need to create a PBR material. I've decided to try baking out planks onto a low-poly mesh. I've used a cage to bake out the perfect normals. However, baking out the AO and the displacement is another story.
On the right is the high poly mesh made up of planks separated by a gap of 0.5cm. On the left I have used textools to bake out the displacement and AO maps. If you look at the gaps in the map, the color is not black as it's supposed to. I have tried baking with a cage on/off. I've also inserted a plane across the high poly mesh but I still get the same result. Any idea of how I can fix this?
Just a quick question – I toggled something somewhere and everytime I re-unwrap my mesh it's layout gets organised like this:
it's applied even when I delete the UV map and create a completely new one from scratch. How can I toggle it back to the original behaviour? (the padding doesn't have effect on this)
Hello, great tools great work. I have a couple questions. 1) similar to max relax tool and more likely similar to maya unfold tool, can a tool be added? And maybe something like maya layout tool, a tool that will scale, rotate uvs and pack in 0-1 space. So small polygon islands in 3d, takes less space in uv. 2) can we bake an alpha for our tilable sculpts, something similar to zbrush grab alpha doc function, or can we use one of the existing bake option for this purpose, so use it in Painter as height map? If there is something in blender that can be used for these requests which i dont know, please let me know.
@renderhjs One thing I do a lot in unwrapping is making sure a cylindrical UV Island's (think arms or legs) left and right (or bottom and top) seams line up, and it's a hassle. Can you think of a way to automate this, preferably with u/v clamping (so it only moves on the selected axis). Another problem I run into often is that I straighten and pin edges, but then there's no tool to relax the spacing of those vertices to match the mesh (after mesh edits, or just when the straightening result in wonky spacing) Do you think any of that fits in Textools? Also, you've mentioned wanting to develop a system that tags an edge as 'straight' and automatically keeps it that way when unwrapping, are you any closer to developing that at all?
• Whenever applicable, having as many commands as possible also appear inside the default "U" UVunwrap menu : things like Iron Faces, Peel Edge, UV Smoothing, and so on. Basically anything that operates at the mesh selection level without any interaction with the UV/Image editor.
(and on a related note, making sure that all these also show up through spacebar search too).
• Having offset UV buttons, with a few presets (1unit, 1/2, 1/4, and so on) • For island rotate, having the option to rotate around the center.
Replies
Update Version 0.9.7
Download & Documentationhttp://renderhjs.net/textools/blender/
What's new
- Bug fixes:
- Create Atlas:
- Preview Texture
- Selection bake mode
Here is the new face selection bake mode in actionCavity map and worn are working again
Creates a single material with a texture atlas of each color. Each face's UV maps the color of the texture. This conversation is useful for realtime graphics such as Games or VR.
Preview the current background image of the Image/UV Editor as a texture on the selected object.
Bakes the face selection as a black and white mask.
Thank you for the new release! I've been testing the Rectify tool and it works great - however, I don't know if the intended behavior is that the island is deselected after being rectified?
EDIT: hum, strange, now I can't reproduce it...
EDIT 2: Still unable to reproduce it, will update if it happens again.
i found to have the following error over and over again when i import 2 different objects into my scene. Next to the fact that the models arnt neat i dont understand how to work around the error, tried using other textool versions but the error keeps coming.
What is the fix?
Any chance you could have the ID map functionality create vertex colours instead of materials?
I often have to bake Zbrush exports together with Blender exports, and while I prefer baking from materials in Painter, Zbrush's polygroup colours make that harder (they're often extremely close to eachother in colour).
So we use Vertex Colours instead, and I now find myself looking for a way to streamline the convoluted vertex-painting workflow (in a way that's easy to teach to juniors, preferably) in Blender.
http://renderhjs.net/textools/blender/Blender_TexTools_0.9.7.zip
Upcoming 1.0.0 has a lot of stability improvements regarding baking like restoring previous materials and faces of sub materials.
Michael Knubben
At some point there will be an option to also read from vertex colors into Color ID, but that will follow in a future version.
There is also an upcoming new bake mode: Material ID
Online help buttons for each section of tools
After great feedback from Jakro I changed the AO bake mode from Cycles to Blender Render with normalized enabled. The results are much smoother AO bakes with less samples and a much more even gradient distribution.
An improved Color ID creation from exisitng mesh elements and conversion to other color sets. If more colors existed previously exceeding elements are cycled through the new color range.
Some small thing I'm missing are mirror tools, any chance you will add those in future?
I already have some code for the mirror tool in the repository and an icon
But it is disabled at the moment as it is very buggy and not yet where I would like it to be. The problem I have been facing in Blender is that UV verts are not shared but rather unique per face. So I have to detect UV clusters or UV verts of shared locations, this was much easier in 3dsMax.
Will be working on this further in the future and hopefully crack it at some point
New Bake mode: Cuvature map
I shared this in the Blender Thread but I have been working on a new curvature baking mode as explained here or demonstrated in this blendswap.It uses composite nodes to convert a tangent normal map into a cuvature map. I am pretty close on wrapping this one up, here is my current progress
The composite nodes are stored in an external blend file and appended temporarily to convert to the curvature map.
I gather from what you said in this thread that particular component is not something you coded, but do you have any idea why it creates islands that differ in size and x-y ratio if you unwrap two identical pieces of geometry? I hope you see what I mean. e.g. Iron two instances of the same pillar trim, and get different results from applying rectify to them.
This behavior is a shame because it forces you to a lot of manual adjustments/eyeballing checker size, which is precisely the reason why I stayed away from UVing in Blender for so long. I feel I'm close to being able to do a full piece without leaving Blender, encountering this issue is the only time I've really had to fight the urge to go back to Max/UV Layout which is my usual tool set (but I resisted so far!)
EDIT: yeah, that somehow did the trick for the issue I reported, but then I realized it has several other flaws... somehow the texel density is showing unexpected variance on some polygons on the same continuous piece of geometry. Sadly I'm giving up on UVing my project in Blender for now. Close, but no cigar yet
I think that the rectifying is done at a UV level not aware of the orientation or scale in your 3D mesh. As such it is very relativ and works with the input orientation / scale of the UV selection. Will hopefully investigate a bit more on this stuff now that 1.0.0 is out.
@wannabe
Didn't make it into 1.0.0 but will investigate for the next version. It's interesting I keep learning a lot about blender because of these questions that I have to investigate - thanks for the feedback.
Version 1.0.0 is out
http://renderhjs.net/textools/blender/Changes:
Preferences: Switch swizzle coordinates
Bake sets: set groups:
You can group multiple objects into groups for the bake sets. This can be done in 3 different ways:
name sequences:
assigning groups in blender:
parenting objects:
Improved AO Bake mode:
Using Blender Render and normalized enabled for smoother results
New Curvature Bake mode
Renders tangent normal map then applies compositing nodes to generate curvature map
New Position Bake Mode
Color ID to vertex Colors
Create Color ID from existing material slots
Create Color ID from Mesh Elements
and lots of smal improvements
I just tried 1.0.0 and the ao bake seems to be broken for me. It gives me a black image everytime. Could anyone try if they get the same?
Great job
To the Ninja: awesome update. I haven't even had the chance to use the plugin, and there is already an update filled with more useful stuff. Thanks a lot.
I just tried 1.0.0 and the ao bake seems to be broken for me. It gives me a black image everytime. Could anyone try if they get the sam
Michael Knubben @Ruflse
Thanks guys
@another caveman
perhaps
More ninja updates
Been experimenting lately with a script that generates a new mesh that has the same topology as the UV map (e.g. vertices can be split in UV thus requires a new mesh to create). The plan is to have some kind of Mesh Texture tool like in www.automodeller.comScreenshot from automodeller
For this to work I had in mind using the Mesh Deform modifier on a mesh texture
That new feature looks nifty!
Must have missed this when I switched to Blender Render for AO bakes.
Edit: Turns out that Blender Render does not support custom cages. Will ignore cage models in this bake mode.
Been getting a weird bug, though, with the rectify tool. Not really sure what I'm seeing but I included a screenshot of the error message I got. I tried reloading blender and Textools but it didnt want to know. Weirdly, it worked once but when i tried it again it failed. Any ideas?
EDIT: Okay, so I stepped away from the computer for 10 minutes and it started working again. Not sure if it's a problem with Blender, Textool or maybe my PC?
Hard to give good advice how to replicate it because I just used default cube. Played around with colors, hit bake, got nothing (or whatever the image above shows)
Cool to see this tool being so rapidly developed. Also it's good to be using your tools again
I played around with it a bit and might have found an issue with the AO baking. Could also be that I was expecting a different result. I made a test setup for baking a 'wall texture'. The normal map comes out fine using the cage, but AO doesn't seem to use the cage?
It looks like it just bakes the AO without a cage. Using the high poly during baking, but not in a projected kind of way. Is this intended?
I've added the blender file.
I've been spending all day experimenting with editing Auto Smooth normals, and outside of using them in renders they seem to have extremely limited utility.
- See vertex colors outside of vertex paint mode?
- Not clear color ID's when baking to vertex colors so I can still visualize them?
Halp!
From time to time I checked new update from Your BitBucket account to try new features, and I have some issue when I try to bake a tangent normal map. Normal looks wird:
Maybe It is some bug or maybe I just make some mistake. I don't know. If You need I can send my blend files.
https://www.cgcookie.com/articles/bit-depth-how-compression-affects-normal-maps
Perhaps I make the 32 bit float optional in the settings
edit: oh, you haven't updated the post yet, so: http://renderhjs.net/textools/blender/
A new version of Textools is out!
New release 1.1.0
Download
http://renderhjs.net/textools/blender/Release notes
http://renderhjs.net/textools/blender/log.html
What's New
Mesh texture tools
A new tool to wrap meshes like textures around your objects. Consists of 2 tools: Create UV mesh and wrap selected UV mesh and Mesh Texture.
Bake mode: Displace
A Blender renderer feature: A bit like a depth mask on a normal projected basis. Great for mesh displacement in engines or 3D packages.
Bake mode: Wireframe
Quick bake of the wireframes as a black and white mask. Perhaps in some cases just faster than exporting the UV layout manually.
Bake mode: Legacy AO and AO
As the previous AO baking mode (using Blender render engine) didn't support cages I decided to add the Cycles AO baking mode as well which supports Cages. The Legacy AO mode will have in many cases nicer results because of the normalized feature it uses but for cages use the now normal AO mode.
Select flipped UV islands
Simple tool to selected Flipped UVs. It will select any UV island that has at least one UV faces flipped.
Color ID from directions: 2, 3, 4 or 6
Process that me and a friend came up with years ago and that we used for hand painted 3D models or pixel art renders.
These models for example uses this technique with unique directional colors for up, left & right, front & back
Bake 32 bit float mode added
New option in the addon preferences to change from 8 bit per channel to 32 bit per channel texture baking. Make sure you read the CG Cookie's guide on normal map baking in 32 bit as you still may have to convert the baked texture back to 8 bit using dithering.
Apart from the new features a lot of bug fixes have been addressed with this release, more on that in the release notes http://renderhjs.net/textools/blender/log.html
On the right is the high poly mesh made up of planks separated by a gap of 0.5cm. On the left I have used textools to bake out the displacement and AO maps. If you look at the gaps in the map, the color is not black as it's supposed to. I have tried baking with a cage on/off. I've also inserted a plane across the high poly mesh but I still get the same result. Any idea of how I can fix this?
Just a quick question – I toggled something somewhere and everytime I re-unwrap my mesh it's layout gets organised like this:
it's applied even when I delete the UV map and create a completely new one from scratch. How can I toggle it back to the original behaviour? (the padding doesn't have effect on this)
1) similar to max relax tool and more likely similar to maya unfold tool, can a tool be added? And maybe something like maya layout tool, a tool that will scale, rotate uvs and pack in 0-1 space. So small polygon islands in 3d, takes less space in uv.
2) can we bake an alpha for our tilable sculpts, something similar to zbrush grab alpha doc function, or can we use one of the existing bake option for this purpose, so use it in Painter as height map?
If there is something in blender that can be used for these requests which i dont know, please let me know.
One thing I do a lot in unwrapping is making sure a cylindrical UV Island's (think arms or legs) left and right (or bottom and top) seams line up, and it's a hassle. Can you think of a way to automate this, preferably with u/v clamping (so it only moves on the selected axis).
Another problem I run into often is that I straighten and pin edges, but then there's no tool to relax the spacing of those vertices to match the mesh (after mesh edits, or just when the straightening result in wonky spacing)
Do you think any of that fits in Textools?
Also, you've mentioned wanting to develop a system that tags an edge as 'straight' and automatically keeps it that way when unwrapping, are you any closer to developing that at all?
If anything I'd have only a few suggestions :
• Whenever applicable, having as many commands as possible also appear inside the default "U" UVunwrap menu : things like Iron Faces, Peel Edge, UV Smoothing, and so on. Basically anything that operates at the mesh selection level without any interaction with the UV/Image editor.
(and on a related note, making sure that all these also show up through spacebar search too).
• Having offset UV buttons, with a few presets (1unit, 1/2, 1/4, and so on)
• For island rotate, having the option to rotate around the center.
Thank you for your time !