Exporting Render to UV Map

Hi-

I'm pretty new to "skinning" (and will eventually try making clothing). I'm trying for a particular look on the skin ("metallic", "shiny" pretty much sums it up).

The tools I'm using are CS3 (extended) and Modo.

I can do pretty good human skins now (not premium grade, but good for a newbie at this... anything under 1 year = newbie lol ). But making the "metal - shiny" look.... that's totally different.

When I use modo - I can load up the .OBJ, apply the UV map from photoshop, and what I render looks fantastic - it's exactly what I want.

Getting the rendered UV map back out of Modo is a totally different story. I can export a simple lightmap now (Ambient Occulsion or however it's spelled, and use that as a photoshop layer - works nice). But what I really need is to apply all the changes made to the original UV texture.

I guess what I am try to do is apply my original UV to the SL avatar .OBJ, render it, and export the render back to a 2D UV texture map so I can bring it back to Photoshop.

1. Does anyone use Modo for pre-baking textures this way ? How is it done ? If I do a "bake" and the Render setting is set to "Shader Tree" - I just get a mostly-white UV map, no grey, no colour, nothing (useless to me).

2. If Modo is not the tool for this - which is ? 3DS Max or Maya ? Which has the easiest learning curve, and is there a link to a tutorial on how to do this ?


(I am *very* new at this, only a couple months in so far, but I really have hit a wall with this. So far I've figured out most of it by myself, and have learned an awful lot in a short period of time. There's been a lot of useful information on this forum which has helped, but this time I'm seriously stuck. Heck, I'm so new at this, I'm still learning some of the terminology....)

Thanks in advance for any tips / tricks / advice / links !

-Auras

No suggestions ?

No is responding to you because you are wasting your time. UVs (excluding sculpties) are useless to SL because you can't upload them. You can't upload obj either because the building is a 4 year old parametric build tools.

You (and all of us) are stucking using the template provided and ONLY the Template provided. Thats it. Everything elses is prim based. There are alot od 3d designers who come here and then scream when they realize the limitations SL has. But as Choesn Few has said, its actually good for them because it teaches them how to work smarter.

I don't know what Mondo is, so I can't comment on it other than this.
Nothing that was made for any other 3d project (poser, daz etc) works well in SL. Most don't work at all. The most any 3d program is good for related to SL is sculpties and baking wrinkles and shadows to your templates or clothing/skin textures.

So since you are using an Obj version of the avatar, have you uploaded a skin yet and checked in SL?
All of us here can make beautiful work outside of it.

Sorry if this is a downer. Its just that you are making a typical new mistake. No big. Good luck.

Hi!

Ummm... Thunderclap? Are you trying to make a new UV Map, or just bake the textures you have in Modo to the Linden map?

I don't use Modo, myself, although I know what it is. But I haven't a clue how to do things in it.

If your question is really how to Bake to a UV Map, then perhaps you'd have more luck asking the question in one of the Luxology forums? Just a thought.

I thought he was trying to make another avatar and upload it. Thats what I read. If that was confusing, sorry.