Hi, I'd like to bake a gradient map from a model. I'm texturing an oilpump and I want the lower part of the model to seem dirtier but the model is too complex to paint in. Any ideas how to do this?
You could simulate this by placing a plane like a ground under your model, and baking an ambient occlusion map (tweak the settings around to get the best effect). People will probably be able to suggest some other more interesting techniques if you show your model/textures I think.
Just create a new uv channel, planar map the mesh, and create a gradient that suits your purposes, this is really fast and works really well, I do this often on weapon models to highlight "interest areas" ie towards the barrel and toward the buttstock will be a bit darker, but the area you'll see up close is brighter and…
What you could also try is having 2 lights in the scene, one above the object, and one below. Set the above one to a very high number, so that it blows the whole thing white. And set the low light to a negative number so that it sucks light away. Then just bake the lighting, and you should have what you're looking for (I…
Relying on VCs for all blending is very expensive for the engine. We use Vertex Alphas (VA) to blend additional dirt details into a model only when the asset is either a key 'landmark' or needs to be highly repeatable without holding up production for the same asset modified 50-odd times. We actually reversed the blend…