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of the model. For certain objects, like the wires and
eyes, I created unique materials by first making the
existing material datablock for that object unique
(by clicking the number next to the materials name
at the top of the Materials tab) and then adjusting
it as necessary. After assigning materials, I began
changing the diffuse colors of my materials in
search of a combination that worked, as shown in
Figure 10-14.
Baking a Texture Map
Having established my color scheme, I was able to
bake the colors to a texture map. Using a texture to
define the color of the objects, rather than different
materials, allowed me to use fewer materials to ren-
der my model and simplified the process of tweak-
ing materials later on.
To bake the texture map, I returned to the
Bake panel of the Render tab in the Properties edi-
tor, set the Bake mode to Texture, and then clicked
Bake. This baked the colors of the various materials
I assigned into a single texture (see Figure 10-15).
Because there is no interaction between the meshes
to consider this time (as there was when rendering
ambient occlusion), I can bake the meshes all at
once by selecting them all before baking.
It's worth pointing out here that you can bake
more complex material colors and textures as well.
For example, you can bake image textures into the
UV unwrapped texture for an object or bake proce-
dural materials into images. Figure 10-16 shows the
result of adding a procedural wood texture to one of
the flat materials for the Spider Bot before baking,
which gives it a zebra-striped pattern.
Texturing the Jungle Temple
In the case of the Jungle Temple, most of my tex-
tures were tileable to some degree, or they were
repeated on meshes in multiple locations. This
meant that baking maps for things like ambient
occlusion would be less effective because a map
baked for a mesh in one location may not have
quite the right effect when repeated in another.
In the end, the only mesh I baked maps for was
the statue (see Figure 10-17), for which I created
an ambient occlusion map for the object by itself.
I did this by putting the statue on its own layer while
baking, just as I did for the parts of the Spider Bot
model above.
Figure 10-14: After iterating through different color ideas
for the Spider Bot, I eventually settled on a white, gray, and
green version.
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