Blender Underground

Hello All,

I'm hoping someone could shed some light on this matter that I'm trying to figure out?

Just for practice, I'm working with a model from a popular game series, and I'm really trying to see how close I can get to this professional grade render here:
http://img10.imageshack.us/img10/3641/soulcaliburiv2008072801.jpg

Here are 3 maps used for a part of the characters clothing:
This is the gray texture map: http://img109.imageshack.us/img109/3937/graytexturemap.png
This the normal map: http://img59.imageshack.us/img59/1265/normalmap.png
This is the Mask of some type: http://img812.imageshack.us/img812/4664/sometypeofmask.png

I've read the game uses gray texture maps for the characters and then multiplies the output with a color that can then be manipulated by the user.
I know this can be done in 3ds max, as I have seen a written tutorial on it awhile ago but I can't find at the moment.
(If I can locate it I'll post a link here so to better explain)

Basically, what I think I need to know is how I can use these texture masks to overlay on top of the original gray textures and adjust the tint of colors and then somehow blend them all together for render.

I only just begun tying to learn materials and textures in blender so any help would be very much appreciated

Ok, I think the grayscale images can be described as "stencil" in blender. Here's a picture:



You can use a stencil to have a basic color and another color on top of it. You can also layer stencils to get more colors.

The material in the screencap looks like this in a render:



If this is what you're trying to do, I'll explain how to use the layered stencils. If it isn't, hope someone else can help you.

If it allows me to apply one color picker value to one part of the texture and another color picked value to another then Please do explain

Thank you for the very quick response.

I have found an image of the tutorial I was speaking of earlier, a little bit hard to see everything but I think this might help to understand what I'm trying to do

http://img51.imageshack.us/img51/7269/image1nc.png

Well, that's exactly what a stencil does. I could write a tut about it, but I think it helps more if I give you the site that taught me how to use stencils: http://en.wikibooks.org/wiki/Blender_3D:_Noob_to_Pro/Landscape_Modeling_II:_Texture_Stenciling. This tut is great, it shows how to set up and use stencils, even multi-layered ones. Only problem is that it was written in 2.49...
Another tut is this one which is newer, but it doesn't explain layered stencils. But it mentions node material stencils, which allow you to have material stencils, like making the rust on a metal not only look like rust because of the color, but the rust can also be less reflective and unmirroring in contrast to the metal.

If you are having problems with the tuts, I can throw together one myself, but I'm not good at writing tuts and am continuosly short of time. (maybe because I'm always on here ).

Hope this helps.

EDIT: Here's another one by Wes Burke who is THE PRO when it comes to tuts (nearly as good as Apollos!): Texture stencil maps. Good luck.

Thanks for the links, I'll check them out right away and post what I come up with as soon as I can put it together.

Hi Modman69

Do you have the 3D model ?

Accidentally created a new topic, but yeah I sent you a PM

Prometheus,

The tutorial links you posted are very good

I'm still having trouble using the purple and blue masks as stencils, it seems that for the technique to work properly they would need to be black and white images like in an alpha mask

I need to do some more investigating and watch/read the tutorials again for some more clarification.

But thank you again!

Yeah, you need black/white images. But you can put your image into Gimp or the like and then select only one color and turn it all black, then the other and turn it all white. I'm sure there are other ways to do it, too.

Tell us if it worked, ok?

Or you may be able to use the nodes to black/white it. That would also let you adjust it easily, without pulling it in and out of gimp constantly.

I think this probably should be done using the node editor like in the video, but I have to get used to that too since I've never used it.

I'm just going to try matching the tutorial done in max, a tutorial port I guess you can say.

I'll post soon, I hope

I think that would be a mistake.

What you want is to have a grayscale image, to keep the gradients and stuff, not just a black and white image.

Use that grayscale image as an alpha stencil : Convert the white to alpha using GIMP so that white being completely transparent, black being completely opaque, and everything in between being the alpha interpolation. Thus, your image is completely black, but the alpha layer contain the texture. Then in blender put that image over a blender material as an alpha & col material layer and there you go ! Changing the material's color shall only modify it's color keeping the texture intact.

Il get you an example tonight or soon to thanks you for this 3D model !

Thanks

This is what I have so far, but...

http://img254.imageshack.us/img254/5753/1sttest.png

I still feel a lack of control over the colors

I didn't do anything to the stencil mask, just played around with the settings in the texture property editor.

I had no luck using the node editor, but it could be a better way

Tell me what Ya think

Your image looks good so far, safe for those black glitches.

Thanks for the word, Goliath. "Grayscale", not black&white. Thought that would be all colors with 0 hue and 0 saturation. I'll throw together a demo of how to use the stencils. Then, I'll upload the .blend here so you can see what I've done.

So, see you later.