Blender 2.8x - how to use two images for texturing

Hi,

I am new to texturing. I want to texture a human hand using Blender 2.81a.
I have two images, one showing the top view of the hand and the other one showing the bottom view.
Now I want to apply both texture images to the 3D mesh of the hand but I don’t know how to do.
Searching on the internet gave me tutorials how to use texture painting. But I think I need something different (correct me if I am wrong).
I have already UV unwrapped the upper and lower part of my 3D mesh.
But I don’t know how to work with these two images now.

  • Do I have to use two UV maps?
  • Or two texture slots?

Please note:
If possible I need a way that I don’t need to combine the two images into one by using e.g. Photoshop or Gimp. I want to keep the two images separately. This because I have not only hands to texture but also other objects where I always have one image for the top and another image for the bottom side.
So I want to save the extra work using Gimp or Photoshop.

And one more question comes up:
If I finally got the textures mapped correctly there will be a visible seam where the upper and lower part of the mesh come together. Along this seam both textures do not smoothly fade together.
How to get rid of this seam? I want to blend both textures smoothly so one cannot see any harsh transition between the upper and lower part of my mesh.
There must be some way how to smear or blend both textures together.

Any help would be appreciated!

Thanks so far…

Hi Mr Burns,

You should combine hand top and bottom UV map into one single map. After you made the hand seam lines, select all faces and just make a UV for it.

Hope that helps.

Hi darkasrzerotwo,

thanks for reply. But combining the two maps into one is exactly not what I wanted (please read the part under ‘Please note’ in my 1st post).
Is it not possible to use two UV maps (or two texture slots) to get what I want?
If combining two images into one and use one UV map is the only way in Blender to get this done then I have to go this way.
But I want to know if there is any possibility to use two separate images in one mesh and blend the area where the seam is somehow.

Thanks for further help…

Hi Mr.Burns,

Maybe you are referring to UDIM. As for now, current stable Blender release does not support UDIM. Future version of Blender will have that feature embedded. Though, you can download and play around with the daily builds to test the UDIM.

Hi darkasrzerotwo,

thanks but I cannot believe that blender does not support to use two images for one objects.
What about the texture slots - I don’t know anything right now about texture slots but may this can be a way?