How to render colourful templates
Importing Missing Textures into Blender
UV Mapping in Blender
How to install plugins
Diffuse and Normal Map Baking
Using Sollumz Blender Plugin
Creating Transparent AO Shadow Maps
How to create wires in Blender
Mirror a Mesh to Ensure Symmetry
WildFyr Documentation > Blender Tutorials > Creating Transparent AO Shadow Maps
Creating Transparent AO Shadow Maps
In this tutorial, we will be learning how to make the classic AO map devs like Cartres make for Kane and GM base models.
Getting Stated - Preparing Your Model
The first thing we will need to do is grab our model, like when baking the Object Space Normal Map Template we want to grab the highest poly version of the model, so L0. For this tutorial I will be using my 2013-2024 Dodge RAM 1500 base edits of Raz3r's 2019-2024 Dodge RAM Classic. So first open your model in ZMod, and export as a DEA.
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Preparing Your Blender Scene
The first thing we will need to do in a new Blender scene, is change the ambient world colour to full Black, this is because we will be baking lights, like in my baked headlight and tail light tutorial we don't want the ambient world colour to effect our bake output. Head to the World tab and under colour drag the slider all the way down to black.
We also want to create a Material, this material needs to be nothing special, simply set the base colour to complete white. You also want to add an image texture node, for my example I made a full white 8K image to ensure the final bake is super crisp. I will scale it back to 4K later.
Finally, we will add our light, go to Add>Light>Area and move it on the Z axis by 10m, then in the light settings, set the colour to white, the power to 750w, and make sure Cast Shadow, Multiple Importance, and Shadow Caustics are all enabled.
Now we will adjust the Render and Output settings. In the Render tab set your engine to cycles, device to your GPU and your max render samples to 1024. For the Bake settings, set it to combined, uncheck Clear image, and set the Margin to 0 pixels.
In your Output settings change the resolution to the same resolution you picked for your texture, since I chose 8K, my resolution will be 8K.
Importing and Setting up your Model
Now after all that we can import the model. Go to File>Import>DEA and select the model you exported from ZMod. After you import you want to open the model in Edit mode, and grab the paint material, then press P and split by selection. You can now remove any other part of the vehicle, as we will only need the body shell. If you have lots of objects with the render turned on it can take a lot longer to render, and will interfere with your shadows. I made a collection that my main car is located in, then disabled render by clicking the camera icon. You can also do this i you have multiple versions of a model. In my example I have a bed with, and without toolboxes. I want to bake 2 seperate AO maps for each so I turned rending off for one set, and will swap them to bake again after.
Now we need to move some things to ensure the shadows cast are only from the main body shell, and not any outside objects like mirrors, door handles, or anything else. If your model has painted mirrors, door handles, or other objects not directly connected to the model, you want to drag them out to the sides so they can bake without interfering with the main model itself. If you select your piece, press G, then X, and hold CTRL you can move all the objects out by the same distance.
Setting the UV map, and the Light
We need to make sure all of our objects are using the same UV map as their template, so select each one of your objects and change the UV map to channel 2, which shows up in Blender as UV Map 1 (Blender starts with the number 0, where ZMod starts with 1).
After you have set all your objects, we need to adjust the area light to encompass the whole vehicle. I like to scale it to just over 1m from each side of the vehicles edge, including any objects we detached and moved away. Finally, remove all the materials from each piece, and assign just the Bake Paint material we made earlier.
To check to make sure everything is looking right, head to the Shading tab and see if you can see the model. It should be fully white in a complete black area, the light should be casting shadows down the side of the body shell. You might have to switch your viewport to rendered shading is it is not already, hold Z and mouse over rendered.
Baking
At this point, you have done it! You are ready to bake your final image. Select all your objects other than the light, in the material nodes highlight your image (Make sure it is fully white and does not contain any data), and in the bake settings hit Bake. This will take some time, if you are using your GPU it should go by much faster. Make sure your GPU is actually selected and active in your Edit>Preferences>System>Cycles Render Devices if "None" is highlighted change it to "CUDA" or another option and check your graphics card.
Final Stretch
After your bake, your image should look like this, and do you know what this looks like? A mask. Let's go to Photoshop (Or whatever image manipulation program you prefer).
In Photoshop import your baked texture, and apply an invert adjustment layer. Then you want to merge the invert and your baked mask layers, select all and copy it. Create a new all black layer, and add a layer mask, ALT click on the mask and paste in your inverted mask. And with that, your AO map is finished! When you apply it to your livery you want to place it between the paint and decal layers, and set the opacity between 20 and 30%
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