I've thought about design with ref images and have a palette but now I'm kind of overawed in how/where to start so looking for a basic workflow / task list to help me break it down into manageable bits.
The UV unwrap isn't at all what I what expecting - there are so many tiny little pieces scattered across the texture which makes my head hurt thinking about how I'll do the neon details. Are we allowed to break up the model so we can assign separate textures to UVs?
I never think about it too much, you just gotta start and you'll figure it out along the way. So just start, don't worry, once the ball is rolling you'll get in the groove.
Yeah you can break it up as you see fit to have the textures you want to achieve what you have in mind.
One thing I learnt early on, with many different things, models, textures, game dev, whatever it may be...
Start with what you think will be the easiest.
This way you see results sooner, and improve and learn as you get to the more difficult stuff, and less lightly to give up because it is too hard.
I still do this, even though I am more experienced. It helps get further into a project quicker, and the finish line doesn't seem so far away.
Thanks both. This is hard! I've made a start on red leather, carbon fibre and main body metal.
Progress of sorts below and a few questions.
1. How can I stop the single wheel from rendering and only render the 2 instances? If I turn off rendering on the single wheel then the instances don't render either. Completely stuck on this
2. I rotated the carbon fibre so it's in line with the angle of the forks by adding a texture co-ordinates UV node into the vectors of procedural carbon fibre material which I applied by just selecting the faces... then I rotated the UVs slightly to make the weave of the fibre run in the same direction as the forks. I know there is no right or wrong per se but is that the usual solution?
3. How best to maintain control of the direction of textures across multiple faces. e.g. The dark scratchy streaks are ok where the run around the bevel of the body but I want them on a different angle on the metal seat. Would I duplicate the material, adjust angle and apply to the seats metal faces or should I rotate the UV faces so the texture angle is as I want it?
4. My leather material when applied to a cube is fine but when applied to the seat model it's stretched and distorted - why is that? [edit: have sorted this. The musgrave textures all needed texture co-ordinate nodes]
For #1 just disable the exclude from view layer tick.That way is nowhere to be seen but their instances get rendered.
#2 like that is just fine. There are a thousand other ways by messing with vectors but work smarter not harder.
#3 That's one of the usual conundrums, you'd want to use less materials and less setups, but sometimes you want something very specific and there's no way around it and you have to duplicate the material or any other thing, but each situation is unique.
Wow as simple as disabling the checkbox! Thank you. It's confusing UX wise cos the rollover on the checkbox says 'disable from the view layer' and I didn't realise this rippled across to everything else - especially as you can still enable and disable the viewport and render icons.
Steady progress. It's actually not as complicated as I thought. I can simply select faces and apply materials. Originally I thought I had to fit everything onto 1 texture like the axe. That said I haven't had to do anything complicated yet.
OK so I think I have the foundations in place. Now I need to start adding the detailing.
I want to paint over the red leather seat to make it look like it's been sat on but it is a procedural material. How can I do this? Can I bake this down to an image texture that maps to the UV's that I can then texture paint over? Or should I try and combine another image texture material with an alpha channel and use a mix shader to combine the leather with my hand painted texture?
Similarly, I want to add more scratches and paint to the base metal of the body but with more control than just trying to wing it with scaled noise textures and I want to add a solid painted orange detail trim to the carbon fibre panel edge and don't know how to go about it?
Just try it, try it all out, experiment with all the approaches you think you can get the result you're after. The more you mess around, the more you learn, the more you see where you can get stuck, what works and what doesn't, for when you're doing future projects you more easily know what approaches to take, and that will come with the experience of having tried out various things. And the more XP you'll get and you'll level up.
Slow progress. The neon on the carbon is just a PS comp onto the render atm. Next step is to try and work out how to do this. Any tips?
Questions.
It's looking really great, you're making good progress.
For the neon on the carbon fiber you can make an extra mesh on top with that shape and give it a glowing material.
If you applied the mirror modifier after you unwrapped, the UV islands must be one on top of the other. You can unwrap again or manually move them. If there isn't a two set, then make sure the seams are there and unwrap again.
I'm not sure about Photoshop, but if you can get the image that the brush uses out of it, you can load the image to Blender for sure.
Thanks. Overlapping UVs! Brush success!
Select and export the PS brush
Go to https://www.coolutils.com/online/ABR-to-PNG and convert the PS .abr brush file to a .png
Create a new texture and open in the brush .png
OK so here's what I've done which kind of works but... questions at the end
Problems & things I don't understand
Is the above correct? It feels like I've hacked it rather than done it properly.
Why has the UV applied the alpha/glow onto the edge faces of the carbon fibre?
Why are the Eevee and Cycles renders different? The glow isn't coming through on Cycles nor the updated texture painting but I see it all fine in Eevee
Yes the way you made it it's correct. Most of the time I think there is no hacking it, what I'm after is a pleasing result and if I got it then I took the right path.
For the edges glowing you're going to have to check that out, at some point you must have selected them, but either way they are glowing, so they are assigned one way or the other, or maybe there are UV's there. Check and troubleshoot.
Cycles and Eevee are very different renders. Eevee has the glow effect which is probably helping, Cycles doesn't have it and you'll have to use post production mostly. Same when ti comes to reflections, on Eevee you have to use irradiance volumens and reflection probes. You'll get approximations, not 100% equal renders.
You can take the Fundamentals of Lighting and Material and Shading I think it is to see how they each work:
https://cgcookie.com/courses/fundamentals-of-blender-materials-and-shading
https://cgcookie.com/courses/fundamentals-of-digital-lighting-in-blender
Thanks so much for all your help. Minor progress. I managed to unpick the issue of the alpha appearing on the inside faces. All those UV faces stick around but only show if you've selected the faces in the viewport. So just had to find all the stray ones that were overlapping and move and scale them off the map.
I've learnt A LOT although it's been absolutely bewildering at times. It's still not good but it fulfils the brief and is getting closer to my original idea now
Small breakthrough this afternoon. I was *really* struggling with multiple UV maps and finally thought I'd re-watch the video. Had completely forgotten JL mentioned the UV map node.... I'd been trying to do everything with Texture Coordinate and Mapping nodes!
I've mixed aesthetics now which doesn't work but I think I'm finally starting to get the basics.
OK an alternative... of course all this is showing how much I need to get my head around compositing and understanding the rendering process
This is really great!
I'm a beginner at this, so I often share that moment of "wow, where do i start?".
I really enjoy the process of learning and that sense of accomplishment after you feel you are grasping something which was initially so foreign.
I feel like I also get a lot out of seeing others' struggles and learning processes. With programs like Blender, it feels like anything is possible. I think Omar alluded to their not really being a "wrong way". Some ways are more functional, and some are more potentially problematic, but as long as you achieved the result you are going for, it was done right. And just over time, there will be less and less troubleshooting slowing you down from getting to that end result.
I really love the look of your motorcycle, and I enjoyed seeing the process unfold. Great job!