Hand-painted gradient bases?

armagon

So, I've noticed that some people tend to use a hand-painted gradient base across the entire model, as well as some ambient occlusion and edge-detection. Is that some sort of baking tool or plugin for Maya or 3DS Max that people use as base before actually painting the texture? Is there anything like that for Blender?

Mark Dygert

The polycount wiki is has some good info for 3dsmax and maya.
http://wiki.polycount.com/wiki/GradientMapping

Other 3dsmax gradient workflows/scripts:

Gradient maps that use world space
https://knowledge.autodesk.com/support/3ds-max/learn-explore/caas/CloudHelp/cloudhelp/2018/ENU/3DSMax-Lighting-Shading/files/GUID-7CC927E9-37F5-47B7-9A86-9FC2617E0116-htm.html

Data Channel Modifier
https://knowledge.autodesk.com/support/3ds-max/learn-explore/caas/CloudHelp/cloudhelp/2019/ENU/3DSMax-Modifiers/files/GUID-99C5FAEC-993A-404F-BB09-B52C30679564-htm.html

Soulburn Scripts
  http://www.neilblevins.com/cg_tools/scripts/3dsmax/soulburnscripts.htm

oglu

We do all gradient stuff in Mudbox by hand. Its easy and fast. Even if the main tool is Substance. 

Neox

we use 3dcoat for it, also super quick and easy to use

SnowInChina

guess you could build a simple world uv setup for blender for baking

but, maybe not worth your time ? just do a front planar unwrap on uv#2 and bake it to uv#1