So this is my first M16A4 model as well as the first attempt at texture painting that I have ever done. I realize that this could use alot of work and I am open to constructive criticism, BUT ONLY CONSTRUCTIVE. I also know the proportions are slightly off on objects such as the sights and that is something I plan to fix in a similar model.
You Model Looks pretty GOOD. I think it is time to look at some more advance Materials. Do you intend to make the stock wood or Plastic ?
The stock is supposed to be a plastic type of texture. I could definitely use some help with making a more believable plastic texture.
also should I always be using cycles render even while im still modeling the object? It just seems to me like cycles render has many more object shaders and options for rendering but blender render actually renders the object much faster. I was just using the blender render to create the materials and textures on this.
Texture painting gives blurry results. I suggest you use vertex painting to mask to mix the textures together.
Paint the areas white that you want texture 2 to appear, paint the areas black you want texture 1 to appear.
Add an Atrnibute Node and set the value to col. Mix the two textures with a Color Mix Mode and plug-in the fac of the Attribute Node to the fac of the Color Mix Node
Add a image mapping node to increase the texture’s scale
OK there are two main routes you may want to go from the model you have. If you are making a gaming asset then Render Baking is the way to go. I know very little about this so I will talk about using cycles and setting up materials for the more photo-realistic route. With something as powerful as blender there are several ways to achieve want you want. As a result there is no single right way to go about it. So you have used texture paint. This means you will have one or more uvmaps and corresponding images. These can be used in any of the render engines. The question is how is your model constructed. Is it a single object or multiple objects parented together. Both are valid approaches. Then you have a choice of using a single material or multiple materials on each object.
In constructing materials much more control is available using the node editor. If you have not already looked at this then I would suggest some of the online tutorials. I have been using blender for over two years now and I still watch tutorials regularly. I got a really nice test object off one last week. The node editor will allow you to build complex materials and plug in inputs such as texture paint. I would suggest that you use cycles and the material node editor.
I have made a crudely modelled gun but used better materials. I will put the image and the node trees below. So if this is what you are after, grab them and have a go. They still need work. Particularly the stock material but a least it a starting point. Note you can plug you texture paint in as a colour node as this will give you more control.
It Depends what you are doing the rendering for. Modelling itself does not need to be rendered.
You can set up the 3-D editor display in various format including wire-frame and mocap shading
You can always use the openGL renderer to render out a quick preview in any of the render engines or test out an animation.
Also with cycles there is a preview mode which does a realish time render. For materials use the material preview window.
I see what you mean. those textures look much better than the ones I made, but thats just advanced materials I suppose. I have several questions about modeling objects such as this and no youtube tutorials seem to be able to answer my questions. These are my main questions:
- Say I have my magazine and my stock, both separate objects but in the same scene, not parented to each other. Is it wrong to have two UV maps, one for each piece of the object when I combine them together? Every tutorial I’ve seen on youtube has an extremely complex UV unwrap with like a billion tiny pieces. when I look at the UV map like that it seems like an overwhelming job and knowing what piece on the model corresponds to what piece on the UV map is nearly impossible. I feel like it would be easier to make two images for two UV unwrapped objects as an alternate to one UV map with tiny parts.
2.Is it best to leave each seperate object that moves(IE. charging handle, magazine, trigger, mag release, etc) as seperate objects or is it best to combine everything in the scene that is part of one object?
As for how the entire object was created, I took a different method rather than the “all separate object” method I used and everything is part of the same object. As for the texture painting method I took, I literally took each small piece of the object that would have different colors and physically separated them from each other(IE, moving the sights up in the Y axis a foot higher, moving mag release and trigger to the left of the lower receiver by a foot) and I painted them that way while they were still one object. After I was finished with painting each object, I just put them back where they were supposed to be. I only have one UV map for the entire object, but im not sure how I can apply two different materials with that type of setup.
EDIT: So I plugged in all of the nodes in the first picture and the textures are already looking 100 percent better. I’m loving it but definitely still needs work. images here:
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Answer
I am glad you like the materials. Be prepared to adjust the sliders to get the look you want. I just knocked something up as a learning exercise as a means of honing my skills. The true professional will pick quite a few hole in what I have done
Answer 1
I had to do a little experiment to test this one as it is something that I had not done before. It looks like you can take a single object texture paint it and then separative it into two objects with the painting intact. Use P in edit mode to break objects up. Ctrl-J to join objects together.
If you have separate objects they can have separate uv maps. You can have more than one uv map on a single object and they can overlap. Last time I looked the limit was 16. Its much more manageable if you do this. You will need to use the attribute mode in your materials if you have more than one uvmap on a single object . Otherwise I think it defaults to the first one.
With texture paint you can paint directly on the object as well as in the image editor. There’s a button which masks the paint so it only goes on the vertices you have selected in edit mode which makes this a lot easier. If you hide stuff with Ctrl-H in edit mode this also Hides the stuff which is hidden which means you do not have to move stuff to work on it. Just select the vertices in edit mode first. Ctrl-I to invert selection H to hide. Ctrl-I again then go into texture paint. Press the button (Box with red spots on it) and you should have your part by itself. Alt-H unhides stuff.
Useful that last one. It’s scary if you hit H by accident and all your work disappears ! I know I have been there If you are working on a single object, vertex groups are worth looking into. Can help a lot with selecting the parts you are working on. Ctrl-L select the rest of a linked set of
vertices.
Answer 2
If you intend to animate your gun then it is better that moving parts are separate. (You can use shape keys if you keep it as one object. ) It also makes it easier to apply different modifiers to the objects. You can use P in edit mode to make a vertex selection into a separate object. You may want to parent the objects to the rest of the gun Ctrl-P in object mode so that when you move the gun the parts don’t get left behind. Alt-P to undo. Ctrl-J to join object back together.
Materials are assigned at the vertex level (I think, someone correct me if I am wrong about this)
In edit mode select the faces you want highlight the material in the material tab in the properties window and use the assign button to assign that material to those vertices.
You can add as many material as you like to an object create new ones or use existing ones.
In the mode editor for a material you can add any image texture as input and with the attribute mode access any of the uvmaps for the object the material is applied to. You will need different version
of a material if the uvmaps have different names on different objects. Materials applied to the same object can share textures ,uvmaps ,and vertex paints (You can have more than one of those per object as well ). It looks like you can access the uvmaps of other objects as well. I have not felt brave enough to try this last one out yet.
I would suggest that you set up a simple set up using maybe a couple of default cubes and try out the above on them. It a LOT safer way to get the hang of how it works than risking a model which has taken a LOT of work to create. Then make sure you have a backup copy before you try it out on the real thing. I learned that lesson when I managed to lose work which had taken me a month. Now that just HURTS
Sorry to bump this thread up again, but since you introduced me to advanced materials, this is probably the best run ive had at putting materials on it. I’ve made several copies of my model though and am continuing to experiment with lots of different materials and shader types. Let me know what you think
Just keep experimenting. When I started Doing blender I would just find random tutorials and attempt to replicated what I had seen. This would often lead to discoveries and techniques I would not have found by a more systematic approach. Gather enough experience and it will lead on to better things. With something the size of blender you never stop leaning. There is always something new around the corner.
I would suggest that have have a look at lighting as this can have a HUGE impact on how your texture appears. The popular ones are HDR and three point lighting. In the images below the same material looks very different under different lighting. When creating a model it can be useful to try different light schemes as this can be quite revealing and can make material adjustments easier.