I am trying to create a scaly/wrinkly skin texture for a dinosaur model. I first saw the procedure on YouTube:
“Rhino (Creature Creation 7) - Modeling, Sculpting, Texturing, Rigging (BLENDER TIME-LAPSE)” by HOKIROYA. Please skip to 7:16 on the video for the procedure.
The texture was applied directly to the mesh in Sculpt Mode using some kind of masking. I am unable to replicate that unless I have a ridiculous amount of subdivisions that would crash Blender, so I’m pretty sure that was not the method used. I have replayed the video several times at the lowest speed, but was unable to follow the steps required.
I have not been able to find a similar procedure elsewhere.
If there is someone who knows the specific steps to recreate that texturing, I would be grateful for the help.
Here’s a version of the stencil tutorial with the bump map set up , it’s what is happening in the video from what i watched , i detail a bit so people that aren’t too used to Blender texture paint mode aren’t too lost :
In Edit Mode
Have your model/sculpt unwrapped
go to Texture Paint Mode and click on the Tools -> Slot drop down menu and select “Normal”
at the popup, setup the image texture to be grey (0.5/0.5/0.5 RGB), the reason of that level of gray will be the altitude 0 so when you’ll bump map paint if the color will go toward being whiter it will create elevation and if it goes toward blacker it will create crevisses.
If you had the image full white, there wouldn’t be no elevation and if you had it full black, no crevisses.
For the dimension bigger will mean the bump map will be more nicely detailled, lower will mean that it may get pixelized once too close, but image dimension may also have an impact on the performance, it’s up to your needs.
You may not need to have an alpha channel for this texture, depending on whatever you’re going to do, again it’s up to you.
Change the viewport shading to Material, that’s required to see in the viewport the effect of the bump map. I use Blender Render by default , if you use Cycle Render you may need additional/different steps, no idea.
Now go to the Texture tab :
Click on the “New” button, then after the options will appear click on “Image” and load the bump map you want to use on your model as a stencil to paint
Once done it should look like that :
Look into the Texture paint mode Tools again , you will see the bump map texture you selected there :
See the “Brush Mapping” just below that is set by default to “Tiled” , click on it and select “Stencil” instead
Once done, move your cursor into the 3D View and the stencil texture will appear :
from there the basic commands to work quicker
While holding Right Mouse button you can move that stencil around with your mouse
While holding SHIFT + Right Mouse button (and moving the mouse) you can resize that stencil
While holding CTRL + Right Mouse button (and moving the mouse) you can rotate that stencil
By pressing F you can setup the size of the brush you’ll use on the stencil
By pressing SHIFT + F you can setup the strength of the brush
Remember to SAVE your bump map (the one that will be in the UV/Texture Editor) so you don’t lose all your work when you save your blend, as if you don’t SAVE this whole bump map you’re going to create by painting into a real file before closing Blender, it may be lost.
It works! Nearly. I followed the steps you laid out as closely as I could (as you were using Render and I primarily use Cycles). My mesh texture is amazing!
I finally found a tutorial. It’s different from what Sancuary suggested.
Take your mesh
Modifiers -> Multiresolution -> subdivide at least 3 times
Go into Sculpt mode -> sculpt brush (go to textures and open a scale tex, then under ‘stroke’ hit ‘anchored’)
That creates a scale texture directly on the mesh! The downside is that good looking scales require a mesh with upwards of 900,000 K faces. So expect lag.
Tip: If you want your mesh to move, create the armature and parent it to the mesh BEFORE sculpting. If you don’t, you get the “bone heat weight” error.
