Week 10: Texture Baking and Testing in Unity

This week, I baked textures and exported the arterial network as an FBX. I have always known how to bake normal and other texture maps from Houdini, but I was never able to bake color maps until now. I have tried and tried for weeks to no avail until now. I have exported two different artery network models, and baked two different versions of textures for each. The second variation has more realistic detail in the normal map, but no color map. The first variation was baked from a Houdini procedural Material Builder, the second was baked from geometry displacement from a VOPs network. The VOPs network is geometry dependent, and therefore requires more processing power to work with. So, I will combine the procedural noises from both in a Material Builder in order to have the basecolor texture map and the other texture maps. The HBV model has also been exported with baked textures. Materials have been applied to all objects:

Here are some videos to further illustrate:

My goals for the upcoming week are:
⦁ Scale down the resolution of the procedural Material Builder's texture to add more detail.
⦁ Combine the VOPs and Material Builder in some meaningful way.
⦁ I like the bumpiness of VOPs, and the procedural Material Builder's color.
⦁ Bring the noises, with the exact same settings from VOPs into the procedural Material                         Builder.
⦁ Bake height, metalness, and roughness maps, in addition to the color and normal maps, 4K!
⦁ Remove texture seams in Blender.
⦁ As a stretch goal, finish solving the rectified truncated icosahedron problem, for a more realistic        HBV particle.
⦁ Basically, combine existing approaches, and add more detail and realism to everything.