Guild of Writers

dendwaler wrote:I only baked normals, by using UV lightmapping to unwrap.
Then i saved the multicolored result after baking the normals to it.
Then , translated the result in an external program to greyvalues.
Finaly i used it as a texture and multiplied it with the first layer.
The first layer is the layer with the main texture.

I agree it looks nice here (as does the rest of your age ), but that sounds like an awfully convoluted way of achieving nice lighting. I’m a bit out of practice with Blender, but there has got to be a better way…

• Taking the grayscale value of color-encoded normals isn’t supposed to result in a shading value. I haven’t thought through yet whether it actually gives you an accurate result, or just something that looks vaguely plausible, but even if it does it’s more by accident than by intention. It also seems hard to me to control the direction of the light that way.
• You’re using an entire texture (ten-thousands of color values) for something that vertex colors (a few hundred color values) are fully sufficient for. (Of course, this argument disappears once you bake more things into the same texture that need more detail, e.g. shadows or global illumination.) According to this recent post, there is a way of baking shading directly into vertex colors, but even if there wasn’t, you could still use something like this script.

Thx for your responce cristian,

I agree fully that the work around i use is an ugly one and that it is not intended to use it that way.
I only do it , because many of the texturing options available in Blender do not export as it should and does to others programs.

I seem to do something completely wrong with the Vcoler paint method , because it never gave me a satisfying result.
May be i have to look into this again.

I never have used your texture2vertexcol script either, because i do not recognize it .
I will definitely try it , because i want to do it as good as possible.

At the moment my modelling skills are sufficient for most tasks , texturing does not have many secrets, except how to get it right into Plasma.

I am glad i started this thread, because it seems this gets me further with good comments like yours,
thx you,

Finally , todays screenshot:

I have been busy with the shading in vertex paint mode as you all suggested.

Finally i have found what i did wrong.
Its incredible stupid, but i completely overlooked that when enterimg that mode, suddenly the text on the left of it changes from " object " to paint.
Inside that new drop down menu is an option called " set shaded vertex colors"
I always wanted to change that in the settings from the material layer with has an option " vcol light and vcol paint"
The latter did not work ofcoarse.

Oh boy, i don't want to think about how many hours i did it wrong and how much i have to change in my unfinished age " the cathedral"

Thanks again Hoikas and Christian for pointing this to me.

I have to change a lot now in the " temple age " also , bevause the materials are combined with the normals layer i made.
I don't want to loose the UV map i made for those textures because i can reuse it for the lightmapping.


I hope to be able to post new immages tomorrow, with much improved lightning and far more vivid colors.

Incidently, dendwaler: How are things going with Cathedral? (I have noticed some recent activity by pojibonzai)

You may remember I mentioned intending to look into ways to optimise a few things, waaay back.
I spent quite some time messing around (had to do some extremely heavy cutting to get the age to export, even partly, on my old 2GB machine :9).
I stopped at one point, because I felt I was... "violating" your work and was uncertain where you intended to go with a number of things.

If you want a report, I could deliver one here, or in PM.


Anyway: There are some (moving) things, in the age, that I'm thinking you may possibly want to have some dynamic lighting on, if you can match their appearance with the prebaked stuff.

Temple looks nice! :)

Hi JoJon!

Glad you are still alive.!
I will answer you soon.


Today I turned on the lights! (almost complete)

The shadowmaps still have to been done.

Oh, wow!!! Awesome ... just awesome ...

Its not its final position, but the harptree will get a special place in this age.

It spreads wonderful sounds for a good meditation.

Yay the harp-tree!! Glad you've found a place to use it, dendwaler

Maybe one of these days when I have time (HAH, like THAT will happen) I will get back to work on that Romance age... I did actually start modelling it, even exported it a few times and wandered around the barren... white... landscape... that needs billions of trees added... oy.. but then life got busy and it's been sitting for months haha

Yeah!!! Keep it up and flowing, dendwaler ... what a wonderful addition and
idea ... can't wait to hear it sounding and silently contemplate and enjoy ...

Yay the harp-tree!! Glad you've found a place to use it, dendwaler

Yes it was a great concept you made with your little drawing.

I wish you would post more concept drawings, because i believe concept art is one of your strong points.
It costs you less time then building an age by yourself, but good concept art is a must for modelers like me, who are not able to draw.