Baking Multiple Sculpties from One Object in Blender

Is it possible to bake more than one sculpted prim from one object (file) in Blender? I've made something and gotten a successful sculpt out of it. Now I've edited the object and want to make a second sculpt with the differences. When I follow the steps in the tutorial video I just get a black square in the UV/Image Editor window.

This may relate to my basic confusion about what "sticks with" a .blend file. In previous attempts at things if I get hung up I have to start from the very beginning again since I don't know which of the various images and uv files are linked to the object I've made.

Thanks for any help and/or wisdom!

first of all, yes you can have many objects (sculpties) in one blend-file and you can bake each of them separately. What may confuse you is how the objects, the textures and the sculptmaps are linked together. Here is a brief attempt to explain what goes on:

1.) When a sculpty is born, an accompagnying sculptmap is created alongside. You will see this sculptmap in the uv-image editor whenever you are in edit mode. This is the normal and automatic way it goes and this sculptmap is the target of the bake.

2.) Whenever you create a new sculptie, a new image is created alongside and associated to the sculpties sculptmap.

3.) Whenever you create a COPY of an object, the sculptmap is shared by the original object and by the copy(!). You can change that manually by creating a new image in edit mode, see below.

So as long as you are just creating sculpties one after the other the number of images grows in the uv-image editor. You always can find out which image is associated to which sculptie by selecting the object in object mode, then switch to editmode. The correct image is shown.

Now one caveat is, that there is a huge difference in what you see in object mode and in edit mode:

when in objectmode you see the sculptmap of the object which you have edited least recently. When you select another object, the sculptmap does not automatically switch. So you could select one object, then bake and the sculptmap would be produced in the background, but you would not see that. Only when you go to edit mode the image switch takes place and now you see the result of your bake. And this results remains visible when you go back to object mode...

In the particular case when you see a black sculptmap which does not get baked:

- check that you are in edit mode, so the current sculptie is associated to the black image.
- now bake. If it still does NOT change fr0m black to something else:

- in edit mode: select ALL vertices of the sculptie.
- in UV-image editor: create new image. (take care about the correct image size)
- bake. Now it should work.

Sometimes the "sculptie" texture has been silently dropped (by accident). IN that case go to object mode, then: Object -> Scripts ->Sculptify objects That will recreate a sculptmap (works mostly, sometimes (rarely) i get very strange effects though)

If it still does not work, wait until "great Domino" answers

And so it did! Thank you so much for the above explanation (which I'm still digesting.) One really does need to follow each step in the right order with these programs, don't they!


Just to clarify, when I'm working on object1.blend and I've made a sculpt of it, when I open it again and do "save as" to create the object2.blend file, it takes the first sculpt map with it. But the files like the projection map, texture layout, projection texture and the final baked surface texture are separate files?

all these data elements are "volatile" until you store them to file. But after you have stored them to file, they will be available for you when you reopen the blend file. And yes, they will be referenced by both blend files when you make a copy. All that makes sense to a certain degree. You will either want to reuse image data which you created in one blend file. And if you make 2 textures for different objects, you would store them either under different file names, or in different directories. So blender is very consequent here, (maybe not very obvious though )

BTW you CAN pack the image data right into a blend-file (use the "package" icon in the UV-.image editor). You will want to do that when you want to transfer a blend file to someone else (e.g. via Email) and you want image data to be passed along and not "rebaked". This makes sense in particular for textures or other image data that might not have been produced by blender...

I'm resorting to necroposting my own thread here in hope of getting some more help.

I'm sculpting like crazy now or at least better than I was before The issue I'm coming up with is getting the projection texture back into Blender after an interrupted work session.

If I start from scratch, make the object, keep Blender open while I'm making the projection texture in another program I have no trouble.

When I close the Blender file, work on the projection texture for how ever long I take, open Blender again and open the projection texture file, when I switch to texture paint mode, the object is textured with the sculpt map. It's pretty, mind you, but not what I'd hoped for. At one point in closing and opening the file and trying different things I got the object textured with the projection texture but it didn't correspond to the layout mesh at all.

My guess is that I need to have that layout mesh open and set to ....something?... before I open the projection texture. Something UV needs to be going on. But what?

ETA: In reviewing the helmet tutorial again I'm thinking I need to get the projection map back somehow. I'll bang away at that until I hear otherwise.

In the tutorial we recommended to create 2 maps. Today i think it is better to create 3:

1.) The "sculptie" map. This is done when you create a sculptmesh. So you have it already.

2.) the "projectionmap". In the tutorial we tell to create a new map with "UV texture new". You do this in object mode and in first place it is a copy of the sculptie map. You use that map to map your foto/image/whatever to your object.

3.) the "texture" map (what i recommend to create nowadays). this is again a copy of the sculptie map (create another new map with "UV texture new" as explained above. ) Name that map "texture" and be sure to create it in Object mode!.

The benefit of having the additional texture map is that you never mix up sculptie and texture as happens to you right now (you see the sculptie map as texture on your object)
I also believe that if you name this map "texture" then the LSL-exporter will automatically find it and add it to the export folder.

Now when you open blender after you worked on the pojectionmap, then do this:

1.) go to edit mode
2.) For the "projection" map ensure that "set active UV texture" and "set rendering UV texture" both are checked.
3.) select all vertices (important!)
4.) in the UV editor select your projection texture.
5.) After this is done (in edit mode!) switch to the "texture" map: ensure that "set active UV texture" and "set rendering UV texture" both are checked now for "texture".

then bake -> render meshes -> texture only

Now the final result is available in the image associated to the "texture" map. And now you see, that by switching the active UV texture between "sculptie" and "texture" you always see the correct associated image. You just bake the sculptmaps into the "sculptie" map and the textures into the "texture" map...

I hope that i could explain it clear enough and could help a bit with this workflow ? Or do i missunderstand your problem ? Or do i explain it in a too complicated way ?

For your step 2 (the second list) above, I don't have a ProjectionMap on the Mesh tab when I re-open the Blender file. Do I need to create one again?

To clarify, when I refer to the projection texture it's the one I made my painting my textures over the mesh outlines saved by the "save UV face layout" action.

By pinning (?) the projection texture I can get it to show up on the object, but it's the whole area of that image including the whitespace between the areas painted over the mesh and it doesn't correspond with the object.