Creating Materials
This tutor is based on using a single material as example. Using more and larger textures is welcomed practice.
High detail for generating normal map.
Simple shape variety can be used to make as many different things. Most were started with a polygon plane or primitive, with extruded shapes, and beveled edges.
To Generate a normal map, select high detail model, low detail plane, then Transfer Surface Information
F5 > Lighting/Shading > Transfer Surface Information (options box)
The main things to set here are width, height and file name at tangent space normals.
For more on Transfer Surface Information, read here
Maps (Photoshop)
Normal:
Generated in previous step. Studying and Paint around in the RGB channels to understand how this material works if new to normal mapping.
Color (diffuse):
The Blue channel of the normal map multiplied on a 128 gray, with a metal overlay and colors works for the diffuse map. While this material is strictly for color, a little lighting information can help.
Specular:
A high contrast color map can work as a base for a spec map (sometimes called gloss map).
Take the blue channel of the normal, find edges > invert, then set as a color dodge for quick highlighted edges.
For more on find edges to enhance edges, read here
Glow:
simply paint in a few lined on a black background for the glow map. This will be lights and how they affect the surrounding texture.
Materials Setup (Hypershade)
Window > Rendering Editors > Hypershade
Phong is the material of choice for this tutorial
Create > Material > Phong
Double click the phong in Hypershade for the attributes editor. Applying the materials is pretty straightforward, though
for normal map, delete it's connection , then reconnect as Other > Out Color > Normal Camera. For more details setting up normal maps in hypershade, read here
Color = diffuse
incandescence = glow
bump = normal
specular color = spec
To see it rendered in view port, Shading > High Quality Rendering
Here the material is applied to a polygon plane.
Part 2: Modeling and UVs
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