*Combo Maps Revisited - BLENDER*

Originally shared by Chic Aeon

*Combo Maps Revisited - BLENDER*

I know I have been talking about combo maps a lot lately. Many months ago I wanted to learn how to make them. Debbie went to lots of trouble to teach us how. I learned -- well for a minute or two -- and then I lost the skill. I will say that this is one of the most important things I have learned in Cycles Rendering. I don't think there are tons of folks using cycles -- at least to its fuller abilities -- right now, but there is always the future.

Yesterday I went astray with the combo maps. I spent hours trying to figure out just WHERE I went astray, but I couldn't see where the problem lay. Today I think I have it.

So here is what I learned today.

What I wanted to do --- Make a second VERSION of a spice rack that had used combo maps successfully (yeah) including using textures of various sizes AND changing the scale of the texture on one of the UV maps (metalUV).

Here's what I did: 

I renamed the good file as "version 2" so I wouldn't loose my good blend file. I then went in and separated the glass material objects from the metal. With wireframe on, I selected each of the bottles one at a time and moved them to new places.

I then joined the metal and bottle parts again.  I had my combo map from version 1. It was fine EXCEPT I wanted to have a slightly different metal texture placement wise on version 2 so that the set would look more realistically like a set. Rebaking the file with the same three UVs didn't work at all. That would have been too easy!

So I deleted the bottleUV and metalUV maps and made two new maps with slightly different names.  I then deleted the OLD UV map input nodes and put in new ones (possibly not necessary but I was trying all possibilities I could think of at once). I chose the new UV maps as the inputs for each of the materials.

I THEN went in and adjust the metalUV map while the metal material was selected moving the map (JUST for the metal now)  around on the texture plane OF THE METALtexture.

I made sure that #1  the image texture shown in the UV window to bake to was the one I had been using before, that it was the image in the image texture window (far right) and that the far right image texture nodes (not connected to any other nodes) were the active nodes for both materials,

#2   that I had both materials selected and active.
#3 that the COMBO UV map (UVmap in the screenshot) was the active map before I baked.

That worked!

It sounds complicated but it IS getting easier so I heartily suggest that when you feel the need for a new skill you watch Debbie's video and try the process -- a few times :D.