Next-Gen Weapon Creation – Day 3: Unwrapping and Texture Baking

Creating weaponry effectively in a next-gen workflow requires detailed knowledge of a variety of very specific skills and tools. In the third tutorial of this knife creation series, we will examine UV mapping and baking, two highly complementary sciences.

This tutorial is Day 3 in a series – Go to Day 1 Day 2 Day 4

By effectively taking advantage of smoothing groups and island breaks on the UV map, as well as a baking method known as the exploded bake, we circumvent many of the pitfalls that plague those new to the baking process. The final result will be normal and occlusion maps that are generated as quickly and painlessly as possible, and a that is mesh completely ready for texturing.

Please note that, although we will be using 3ds Max, the theories and techniques discussed here can be applied to any 3d application that supports unwrapping and texture baking.

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Note: click the ‘Monitor’ icon to view tutorial in full-screen HD.

Start at the beginning – Go to Day 1

This tutorial is Day 3 in a series – Go to Day 1 Day 2 Day 4

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Discussion 10 Comments

  1. Hooper says:

    Waited for this one. Thanx for the video!

  2. Rob says:

    Fantastic work! hope to see more from you soon :D

  3. Benoit says:

    Great job! I learned some things. Thanks.

  4. Hooper says:

    I learned a few UVW unwrap tip as well.

    tip:
    When you were doing those inside polygons for the holes and were moving them and aligning them on top of each other –once they were flat ….just use copy and paste to perfectly stick them on top of each other.

  5. Martins Zeme says:

    Hmm, one thing that bugged me is why would you break up all those different smoothing groups as islands in UV editor? Normals should be baking nicely even with them attached AFAIK. Or there is something I am missing.
    Great tutorial overall. Very clear, straight forward presentation.

  6. raf says:

    why its not for downloading ?:(

  7. puja says:

    the baking process is rather tedious.. i would have to use other application such us mudbox for baking maps.. but other than that, i learn lots of modeling techniques here..

  8. puja85 says:

    any other tutorial that show easier for baking normal map??

  9. Thom B says:

    Been Modeling for 2 months and half way through the 3rd tutorial… Learning a lot, keep up the good work.

    TY and all the best.

  10. Max says:

    Super tutorial. Not for beginers:)

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