Blender -> Torque3D Pipeline

This page will describe how to create a simple 3d asset in Blender3D and bake all textures to an ORM map for use in Torque 3D

Blender Setup

Before we get started we need to setup a few things in Blender.

First go to Edit Preferences -> Add-ons and Enable the Node Wrangler addon

Then go to System and make sure you are setup properly for rendering in cycles

Next save your preferences and close the preferences window.

After this head to the render tab and setup the render settings as follows

Note for baking textures we do not need a high sample count. It rarely effects the quality of the texture.

Clear your scene and save this file in your Modules Shapes folder (if a shapes folder does not exist yet create one )

Modelling

For this tutorial we are going to create a simple coin shape.

Add a cylinder

Scale it along the Z axis with S + Z and then apply the scale with Ctrl + A and select Scale.

Rotate the cylinder by 90 degrees on the X Axis so one of the faces at the top are now facing along the positive Y Axis by pressing R + X + 90

Next press TAB to enter edit mode, switch to face edit by pressing 3 or selecting the face symbol at the top . Select and delete the 2 faces.

Next switch to edge edit mode and press Alt and select anywhere in the edge left by deleting those face. Press Ctrl + F and select Grid Fill.

Doing this gives us nice Quad geometry for these faces.

Repeat for the other side.

To finish off our modelling phase, right click the object and choose Auto Smooth.

UV Mapping

Next navigate to the top corner and drag over a new window and open up the UV Editor. Be sure to turn on UV Sync Selection

You should see a similar layout to this.

Press the Y axis on the view gizmo so we are looking straight down the Y Axis

Next select all the faces created by the Grid Fill and Press U to unwrap. Select Project from view.

A new selection should appear in the UV Editor window. Move this selection and scale it so it fits in the bottom left corner of our uv space like so.

Repeat this procedure for the other side so you end up with something similar to this

Next Select the Faces in the UV editor for the side of our cylinder and select the top menu UV and choose Average Island Scale

If this does not change anything straight away, change the settings of Average Islands Scale to Non-Uniform

Scale these UVs now to fit inside our UV Space.

I like to keep my UV's quite close together and now with this latest change they match the 3d space proportions for this object. The side doesn't have a lot of resolution in this image but our main focus is the front and back of our coin.

Baking Procedural Material

Now we can TAB out of edit mode and go to the materials tab.

Add a new material and name it coin_Mat

Names of these material slots are referenced in Torque3D so it is always good practice to rename them to something relevant.

Next set our 3D Viewport to viewport shading and change our UV Editor window to the Shader Editor