I know the question sounds simple, but I wanted to gauge how many of you knew what I color map was.
I’m working on a texturing tool, and need to see how many people understood the concept of a color map in terms of texturing.
I have attached an image of a color map that I have generated in Maya.
For the context that you would be referring to, I will have to say probably not. If I had to make an assumption, it sounds like a splat map that is doing a lot more work than a regular splat map. I can never tell what modeling terms actually mean though.
Yes I think that Splat Maps are the closest thing to it.
The whole reason I’m asking is because I’m making a new editor extension for texturing. And in hard surface texturing these color maps help you to define what material shall be on a given coordinate on the UV space. Like if you were mixing concrete, grass and dirt into a single texture.
My concern is that if I make this tool the way I am, that lots of Unity developers will not know what the Color Map is, and thus just give up.
It would be worrying if someone bought your tool and gave up that quickly, without doing the smallest amount of research.
I think most people know what a colour map is. I really don’t think you should be concerned, I think there might even be a script or shader on the wiki with one implemented. As ShadowK said, there is one on the asset store, so I think people are familiar enough with the concept
Okay, that’s about what I was expecting. I’m not entirely sure how it would work, like a material that then asks for more materials or closer to a terrain/modeling topology tool that’s allowing you to paint materials to it?
Well the tool that I’m working on isn’t really intended to be used for terrains, but for hard surface models. (though I guess you could handle a terrain with it). if you are not familiar with the tools nDo and dDo you may want to check them out. But basically what I can do is read a color map and break down the materials you want in a given UV location of a mesh. From there I can create those materials and apply effects like scratches, wetness, grunge etc and also bake that data in to the normal map, as well as create a specular map.
I know what it is, but you can just explain it in your tool’s documentation. You don’t need to pre-assume people know it. You also don’t need to generate this from a tool, you can paint the result as well. Also, a better word would be “masks”. Unreal 4, ddo and substance designer use this terminology. By the way, your tool sounds like something ddo and Substance Designer can already do, unless I’m misunderstanding your intentions.
Yes exactly like ndo and ddo.
I have and love those tools but am a Mac user. I hate that I have to bootcamp to use it and get the use of my gpu.
I also have some interesting plans to have unity itself render parts of the textures.
Lastly not everyone has photoshop or can afford both ndo and ddo. If I can make my editor extension do the same thing than I think it will have a real use.
I don’t know specifically what it is, but from the term ‘color map’ I would assume that it was some kind of texture that described something to do with surface color.
