by Didik Wijaya

I think previous texturing tutorial is enough to get nice looking Gundam. But if you want more convincing texture, this tutorial is for you. There are several Gundam body parts that has text or "sticker" attached, like in left and right shoulder, and shield. You will create that "sticker" in this tutorial.

1. First, hide all objects except right shoulder. Zoom in and capture the screen (Press PrintScreen button in keyboard). Open Photoshop, choose File>New and press Ctrl+V. Crop image like image below. And draw or add text (white text on top of black color). Also create a black color image.

You can right click this image and save to use later in later step. For example save as gundam_rshoulder_mask.jpg

Right click and save this image as black.jpg

2. Next, you need to create unique material for right shoulder object. Open Material Editor. Drag "basic color" material to another unused slot to make material copy. Apply this material to right shoulder object. Name this material "right shoulder". In Multi/Sub-Object Material, click Add button once. You will get new sub-material with ID=8. Click and drag from "white" sub-material to make copy of this material. Make sure you use clone method: Copy.

3. You need to modify this sub-material clone. Click this sub-material. Rename this sub-material. Click None button right next to Diffuse Color. In Material/Map Browser window choose Mask. In Mask parameters, click button right next to Map and choose Bitmap. Use any black image you have. Click Go to Parent button. This time click button right next to Mask. Choose Bitmap, use image you created earlier (gundam_rshoulder_mask.jpg).

4. Right now, you don't have any polygons with ID=8. Select right shoulder object. Activate Polygon selection. In Top viewport, select front polygons. Then set ID=8.

5. Do a test render, now you will have black text appear. Look at image below to understand how this works. Noticed that you have white base color. Then you have black image map and mask image. Map and Mask image work together. Mask image works like opacity channel. It control tranparency in map image. White color area in mask image lets the same location in map image appear when rendered. Otherwise, black color area in mask image make the same area in map image transparent.

6. Unfortunately, text location in right shoulder object is not right. Apply UVW Map modifier to right shoulder object. Use Planar Mapping type, then activate Flip in U Tile. Note: Mapping type and Flip is differ from one object to another. Other object sometimes doesn't need Flip active.

7. You can do the same process like above to any other part of Gundam. For example, I applied the same techniques to left shoulder and shield. For shield, because I want white text, I used white color image as map.

You can use this image below as Mask image in left shoulder object.

You can use this image below as Mask image in shield object.

Gundam RX-78-2 Texturing Part 1 | Part 2

Go to Mecha Modeling: Gundam RX-78-2 Main Menu. This is where you can browse all tutorials about Gundam RX-78-2

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