What is Texture Baking?

Essentially, we take everything – direct lighting, reflection, diffuse color, indirect illumination, ambient occlusion – and try to pack it into 1 texture.

Why Texture Baking?

1. Creative reasons

Imagine you have achieved some spectacular shader in Blender scene, that involve multiple texture layers, wicked mix using grunge map and so on. Now you want to transport it directly to Unity, while retaining the look.

Exporting just the diffuse texture won’t to the justice to this uber material of yours, because Unity shader system differs from what Blender has.

What we can do is to bake everything in 1 texture (all shadows, multiple layers of awesomeness, etc). Then it will be easier to replicate the look in Unity, by inserting this texture in some shader. Yep?

2. Performance

As we will have just one texture, in some cases we wouldn’t even need to calculate the lighting at all in the game engine. In our example, we have a grungy room with a window.

Surely, it demands some Global Illumination solution. Real-time Global Illumination is very heavy performance-wise. So we can just bake lighting (and every other texture) to one package.

3. Convenience

Sometimes, it’s just more convenient to have one texture. As a bonus, it takes less space on hard drive.

Baking Passes in Blender

Here you can see how various passes (Diffuse, Lighting, etc) sums up to produce the Complete map.

As a variant, we can just bake the Diffuse texture and leave light baking to Unity. Honestly, I would advice to do all lighting stuff in Unity, because it has very fast lightmapper. But it demands the Pro version, so plan accordingly.

And while I was writing the previous sentence, I realized one possible benefit of baking light in Blender – it cost you no money.

Bake Lighting in Blender and Unity: Some Differences

What are the differences between these baking options?

1. Blender can bake various passes, including Complete map. Unity bakes only lighting, but does it gracefully.

2. Unity lightmapper is, obviously, fully integrated into Unity engine. So you won’t need to export textures back and forth.

Just press button, wait for it to calculate, done.

Baking equals Faking?

To some degree – yeah. But don’t worry, because faking is fine. And very effective on mobiles, where we can’t afford to calculate expensive effects in real-time.

Game Level Texturing Introduction

1. Block out the model & Optimize it
2. Unwrap everything into 1 UV map
3. Paint and project the texture
4. Clone details from 2-nd UV map
5. Bake it
6. Enjoy the result and start making games (this is optional)

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What is Texture Atlas and why we need it?

Let’s imagine we have 10 objects and each of them has its own UV map and texture. While it is okay in many cases, when you’re going to export it into the game engine, 10 object would mean 10 drawcalls. That’s not good.

To reduce the drawcalls to 1 we need to combine our 10 UV maps into 1 big UV map. Using Texture Atlas add-on for Blender, we can automatically do this tedious task.

Another reason to have 1 texture is that we can paint over all objects at once. Very convenient.

What exactly Texture Atlas add-on for Blender does?

1. Joins all selected objects

2. Unwraps into 1 UV map (there are a few methods available, including manual unwrap)

3. Separates the parts when done

This is the video #3 from the set of quick tutorials for Blender and Unity, dedicated to

Game Level Texturing 

1. Block out the model & Optimize it

2. Unwrap everything into 1 UV map
3. Paint and project the texture
4. Clone details from 2-nd UV map
5. Bake texture

The post Game level texturing: Texture Atlas (PART 3/5) appeared first on Creative Shrimp.

Game Level Modelling in Blender

Start from some basic model of a grungy environment. Head to Blendswap.com and search for Hallway.

After importing it to Blender, start cleaning the model from unnecessary details. Keep it as simple as possible and leave only the shapes which really contribute to the look.

Retopology in Blender

1. Delete unnecessary edge loops.

In many cases we need much less polygons, than we think, to define the shape of the model. So, select some edge loops by hitting ALT+ LEFT CLICK then press X and Delete Edge Loops.

2. Rebuild objects

In some cases (like this model) it’s a lot easier to rebuild object from scratch, than to retopologize it. You know, just create a new one.

Using that two simple techniques we can lower the vertex count dramatically – from 13000 vertices to 2800! If I wasn’t so lazy, the number could be even more shocking.

Game Level Texturing

1. Block out the model & Optimize it
2. Unwrap everything into 1 UV map
3. Paint and project the texture
4. Clone details from 2-nd UV map
5. Bake it
6. Enjoy the result and start making games (this is optional)

The post Game level texturing: Modelling and Retopology in Blender (PART 2/5) appeared first on Creative Shrimp.

Discover how to texture the whole scene AS ONE MODEL using what can be called ‘megatexture’ approach. One model, 1 big texture atlas plus your creativity – and that’s all!

Game Level Texturing: What is it about?

Through the set of 5 tutorials, we’ll implement megatexture style texturing to our game level.

Texturing the whole section of the game level in one go is not very common texturing technique. In many cases, modular approach has big advantage – we can reuse and recombine stuff. Also, maintaining individual assets is somewhat more clean way of doing things.

Benefits of ‘Megatexture’ approach

But, texturing the big environment as 1 model has its own pros.

1. Artistic freedom

Using this technique, we can paint over the surface of 3d model as if it was 2d. In fact, we’ll use the image editor to paint texture – and then project it back onto 3d geometry. In another words, that is paint-what-you-want type of thing.

2. Realistic and Creative effects

The problem of modular approach to producing game assets is that you will have similar objects in your scene. And there is no easy way of texturing the contact surface between 2 objects. Imagine metal barrel standing on the wet ground.

The place where the bottom of the barrel meats the ground should be wet and dirty.

Of course, all this problems can be solved in any workflow, but when painting the whole scene in one go, we solve it fast and gracefully.

3. Performance on mobiles

Possible performance gain in game engines, as everything will be baked to 1 texture (maybe even 1 model). On mobile devices, drawcalls are a big concern, so having 1 drawcall in the scene is just that good.

4. Nerd achievement

John Carmack from id Software used megatexture. You use megatexture. Nerd achievement unlocked.

Contents

In these tutorial series we’ll discover how to:

1. Block out the Model & Optimize it

2. Make a Texture Atlas

3. Paint and Project the Texture

4. Clone Details from 2-nd UV Map

5. Bake lighting

6. Enjoy the result and start making games (this is optional)

The post Game level texturing: Introduction (PART 1/5) appeared first on Creative Shrimp.

In this video, we’ll talk about Input remapping and visual improvements, namely textures and its impact on overall project. Have fun.

The post Drums game. Development log #4 appeared first on Creative Shrimp.

Sneak peak at Unity 5 features: WebGL as a platform (build to web and launch without a specific Unity plugin), in game audio mixing, physically-based shading, real-time global illumination, new 2d physics affectors and other.

What do you feel about it? Personally, I think that WebGL build is the way to go.

And hey, it would be pretty exciting to have the mix sound controls in our Drum Simulator game

The post Unity 5 Feature Preview appeared first on Creative Shrimp.

Part 3. Fixing X axis rotation (Unity imports model already-rotated 270 (or -90) degrees in X axis)

This inconvenience can be solved either through rotating object itself, or through rotating its parent (if we parent it to an empty in Blender).

The post How to export from Blender to Unity3d? Part 3 appeared first on Creative Shrimp.

I’m excited to share a progress of the drum game (thinking about calling it 3Drums). Now working on a visual feedback, physics of the drums and overall feel. Looking forward to implement some sort of play-along system. With music this thing really comes to life.

Stay tuned and feel free to share!

You may also like: Development video #1 ,
Tutorial: How to Export From Blender to Unity, part 1

The post Drums game. Development log #2 appeared first on Creative Shrimp.

Part 2. Fixing scale being reset to 0.01 on FBX import.

The solution is found on Unity forum. Ntero has written a nice script to set the default scale of asset importer to 1.

http://forum.unity3d.com/threads/64047-FBX-Import-make-default-scaling-to-0-01-an-option

Code:

using UnityEngine;
using UnityEditor;
using System;
//Sets our settings for all new Models and Textures upon first import
public class CustomImportSettings : AssetPostprocessor
{
public const float importScale= 1.0f;
void OnPreprocessModel()
{
ModelImporter importer = assetImporter as ModelImporter;
importer.globalScale = importScale;
importer.generateMaterials = ModelImporterGenerateMaterials.None;
}
}

Thanks, Ntero!

p.s. File name – CustomImportSettings.cs
Script should be put in AssetsEditor

Part 1: How to preserve pivot point (origin)?
Part 3: Fixing X axis rotation

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