Texture blending in 3ds Max

Will Faucher

Hey.
So I've been playing around with texture blending in max, and I've been having a few problems. Is it possible to blend more than 2 different textures in max?
Here is what I am doing:
- Use a Blend Material instead
- Define Material 1 and 2
- assign "vertex color" to Mask with cannel x
- add "verex Paint" modifier set channel to channel X and paint

Is it something I am doing wrong?

thanks!

Anuxinamoon

You know, i tried using the blending material thing for my Unearthly challenge, and it worked.... in the renderer. Which was totally wrong as I needed it to work in the viewport. I ended up making my own Direct X material using ShaderFX. As I needed like 4 mix maps.

There was a post here in PC somewhere that had people posting about mix maps and vertex colour blending (thats where I found shader FX) But I cant find it anymore.
Edit: I found it http://boards.polycount.net/showthread.php?t=45726

Piflik

You can use RGB Tint Maps to convert RGB Vertex Paint into 3 separate Masks...paint one Mask red, one green, one blue, and set the respective channels black or white in the RGB Tint Map (eg: red mask > red channel white, blue and green channel black)...use separate Vertex Paint Modifiers for each Channel and set the Blend Mode to 'Add' for the two upper layers (since there is no way of painting additive in one layer...at least I haven't found a way yet...there is an 'additive' checkbox in the brush settings, but that doesn't seem to do what I want it to do...)

Mark Dygert

http://www.3dtotal.com/team/Tutorials/vertex_paint/vertexpaint_01.php
You end up nesting a blend inside of a blend.

Will Faucher

Yeah I saw that tutorial earlier today. Is it just me, or is it ridiculously confusing?

Mark Dygert

Yea totally confusing. I think when I went through it I took notes and boiled it down to "nesting a blend in a blend".

Will Faucher

Thanks vig. I have another question. This is for an offline render in 3ds Max. I was wondering if it would be possible to bring the landscape into UE3/UDK, texture blend there, and then export it back into max? Would the blends follow to max?

Thanks!

Mark Dygert

I don't think they vertex colors are exported out of UDK. I remember exporting a few ground meshes out and having to copy/paste the blends from the old mesh to the new when I brought them back in.

UDK uses RGBA channels to blend, Max uses Material Channels. So even if the vertex colors made it out of UDK you would need to set up a similar material in max (using RGBA not Map Channels like in that tutorial).

The blend materials in max don't preview properly in the viewport, you normally have to render them to see how it all looks. ShaderFX has good viewport blending that pretty closely mimics how you would set it up in UDK but it might not render correctly as its meant to be viewed only in the realtime viewport. But then again you can visualize the blends pretty well looking at the different vertex paint preview options.

Ged

hey sorry to resurrect this old thread but is there a viewport shader in max or maya these days for viewing rgba blended textures(eg R is rock, G is grass, B is sand, a is snow and a mix mask) ?

Mark Dygert

ShaderFX for max will probably do it, but it is only in the viewport. I think Josh Stubbles also put together some kind of viewport shader, I remember he used it to blend grass and dirt...

Now that max has Slate you might be able to wire whatever output node you want into whatever input node, so you might want to start there then move onto shaderFX if it doesn't work.

Ged

thanks I thought that might be the case, still it was worth asking

Ace-Angel

Problem is in Slate, you still lack alot of functions to make the magic happen in a friendly way. You're stilling going to put a Blend into a Blend, and still need to manually access each node and set up the masking manually.

It also doesn't help that you need to setup your Vertex and Texture slots (Bitmap) manually via the node, old school style, since for some odd reason, simply popping in a Bitmap, half of the time won't hook on your input.

So basically, while slate might be nicer to look at, it not only forces you to setup half of the stuff manually by double clicking the node, then ticking boxes and putting up if it's a color or texture from there, but it also becomes confusing to look at in the long run if you want to make any changes.

So either stick with Blend (2 textures and 1 mask) which is the easiest option, or write your own shader, or use this: http://www.polycount.com/forum/showthread.php?t=105291