I am playing around with Specular and AO map. The setting for Specular map has “Spec” button activated under “Map To” tab. This setting alone seems to do nothing. So I adjusted the “Shader” setting to give more secularity and it seems to work. But is this the way to make Specular map work?
As for AO map, I activated “Amb” button under “Map To.” This seems to do nothing. What is the proper button to push and adjust its intensity?
If you don’t want to use an external image editor to combine your different texture maps, for the AO set to col and the texture blending mode to multiply or overlay (try different blend modes to give the result you like).
http://wiki.blender.org/index.php/Doc:Manual/Textures/Options/Map_To#Texture_Map_To
http://wiki.blender.org/index.php/Doc:Manual/Composite_Nodes/Types/Color#Mix_Node
http://www.blendercookie.com/2010/01/21/creating-an-axe-part-2/
For the spec map, you have to depress the ‘NoRGB’ button.
So far for Specula setting Map To tab are set as follows; Spec button “on”, use Mix setting, and Var slider bar affects secularity.
AO map works but only under Col button “on” with use of Multiply setting. I am just laying down dark value on diffuse map with this setting. Amb button does nothing. Which make no sense to me.
AMB has nothing to do with the ambient occlusion (see link in my previous post). It is how you affect the amount of ambient colour on your object. The ambient colour is part of the world settings.
Humm ok Richard. It says, “Influences the amount of Ambient light the material receives.” I took that to mean reverse of Secular, and it is controlled by AO map. You know deep corner being darker. Anyway I suppose Amb button is used in conjunction with AO render right? I did ran some test and found Amb map do work with AO “on.” But with regular lighting, it had very little effect if any.
The AMB Map To affects how the ambient setting in the Shaders panel is affected across an object based on a texture. If you use the ambient occlusion pass in an external image editor like photoshop for example you would use a Multiply blend mode so it darkens the colour map where the AO is dark. This is the same as adding a separate texture channel in blender but without the better control you will have externally.
You have to deselect the Use Alpha button for the Specular Map and you have to decrease material specularity to 0.
Richard, Amb setting in Shaders tab verified; different material can have different AO effect setting. In image below, small cube to the right had Amb setting at .5 for all image; set as a constant. What I found was that Amb setting showed up fine in Render window but not in Preview.
Got it blackjack93, Alpha button “off.” I don’t get about reducing Specula to zero though. Are you talking about Specula setting under Shaders Tab? That will make entire material with zero Specula.
What??? Just make a tut!