Note that this is part 4 of our tutorial – you may need to start at the beginning.
Now that we’ve created a model to give ARDI the geometry of our model, we now need to tell ARDI how to paint it.
To do that, we need two textures – the diffuse texture (discussed here) and the specular texture, described in the following page.
Note that ARDI actually includes a number of default skins, which means that your model does not require a skin. However, a well-made skin is an excellent way of adding a lot more realism to your ARDI scene and we always suggest including one where possible.
The diffuse texture gives the model it’s colour. For ARDI, this texture is normally based on a combination of your AO map (created in the earlier step) and either hand-drawn images or images copied from photographs of the actual asset pasted into place.
Step 1:
To begin creating the diffuse texture, go to Blender, select your 3D model, switch to the UV Mapping mode (using the drop-down at the top of the screen), make sure that all of the faces of your model are selected (so you can see the net of your shape displayed in the left-hand pane), and choose ‘UVs | Export UV Layout‘ from the menu that appears underneath the net of the shape.
This creates a file that you can load in your graphics editing program with all of the areas that need to be painted and/or filled in.
Step 2:
Open the file in Gimp/Photoshop so that you can use it as the background for the rest of your work. Before you save your final texture, you’ll need to erase this layer or set it invisible.
Step 3:
Block out your basic colours – areas of white, black etc, or copy in chunks of photographs of the real item and paste them in using the warp controls to fit them neatly with the edges in the background.
Step 4:
Open the AO file you saved in the earlier step and paste it in a layer above your background. Change it’s transparency to something quite light, such as 10%. This will give your model much more realism and definition, even if you don’t add anything more.
Step 5 (optional):
If you’ve blocked out very simple colours or you’ve decided to leave the background transparent (in which case ARDI will substitute the paint colour for the asset), feel free to add one last layer with very transparent clouds or noise – this breaks up the plain, featureless colours and makes a hand-drawn texture much more authentic.
Once you’re ready, remember to turn off the layer you added in stage 2, and save it out to a texture. We suggest resizing your image to 512x512px before saving, as this is the ideal balance between file-size and quality for ARDI applications.