Baking individual axis for position map?

guitarguy00

Hey there,

I'm working on a project and in Painter I needed an effect for a generator where it would give me control of the parameter going from left to right of the model(I wanted the internal barrel of the gun to have more dirt/burnt gun powder closer to the chamber). I quickly learnt that the baked position map out of Toolbag wasn't going to work because it bakes all axis into the map in the RGB channels. I used Photoshop to extract the G channel out which was the left-right bake and input it into Painter and all worked well.

Is there a way of doing this straight out of Painter? As in baking out specific axis for the position map? Or is there a way of selecting a specific channel/axis in Painter that I do not know about? Thanks heaps in advance. 

Fabi_G

Hi! Did you try the Position generator in Painter?

guitarguy00

Fabi_G said:

Hi! Did you try the Position generator in Painter?

Hey there!

Yes I did but I found that I could not get a straight horizontal mask with the baked out Position map.

Fabi_G

Hm, then I didn't understand the issue, maybe some images help to illustrate it.

I thought you meant a gradient mask that goes across the mesh. Position generator, left to right:

adjusted:

guitarguy00

Doesn't seem to work for me. I wanted the pin to have more dirt/damage on the left side but just using the standard Position map wouldn't give me control over just the left-to-right even using the Position generator and the right to left slider. This is the result I got from isolating the left-right axis in the position map:



This is what I get when I just use the normal Position map. Moving the right to left slider just applied the effect generally over the pin:



It could be because the pin takes up such a tiny space on the UV map compared to the cylinder that you use? Perhaps there is a conflict there?

Fabi_G

I think you would have to remap the gradient to fit the size of the pin (like with a level).
Probably easiest and most visual option would be to project a gradient (or other shape):

Some other options:
3D Distance, a bit fiddly to set up the origin
3D Linear Gradient sampling the colors of position map for start and end
If the UVs allow it, UV projected fill gradient

guitarguy00

Fabi_G said:

I think you would have to remap the gradient to fit the size of the pin (like with a level).
Probably easiest and most visual option would be to project a gradient (or other shape):

Some other options:
3D Distance, a bit fiddly to set up the origin
3D Linear Gradient sampling the colors of position map for start and end
If the UVs allow it, UV projected fill gradient

Oh wow thanks for that, I didn't even know about these options.