[Solved] Exporting vertex painted model with gloss

[Mr X]

I have a high poly model that I've vertex painted with smart materials to be rendered in Blender. The problem is that I can't figure out how to export the glossiness of the model. If I use the export in the paint room, only the colours will show up in Blender and I don't know of other ways to export. So I could use some help here.

[digman]

Vertex colors only support exporting  RGB  colors and alpha... This is not a limitation of 3DC... 

 

Edited April 13, 2017 by digman

[Mr X]

Ok, what should I do with my model to change it to something that does then? Preferably so I don't have to repaint it. I mean, the gloss is there already so I guess it's stored in some way right?

[digman]

Create a low polygon retopo model, create seams and unwrap. The model does not not have to be super low in polygons depending upon the end use of the model.

Bake to the paint room for the textures and normal map or a displacement map. The vertex colors will be baked to the paint room. 3DC will also bake the correct roughness / glossness and metallic maps.

Export from the file menu.  Export objects and textures.

In Blender if you use Cycles as your renderer, then use one of the available PBR shaders out there for Blender. 

The above is not a tutorial but just the workflow.

EDIT: You can choose not to paint vertex color but first bake for your normal map or displacement map then paint using your smart materials. You will get a higher quality texture. Of course you will have to a good enough texture image resolution. Vertex color quality is depended upon the amount of vertices in your mesh.  Also vertex painting does not support depth painting when using a smart material.

Edited April 14, 2017 by digman

[Mr X]

Right, I'll give this a shot. Thanks.

[ajz3d]

In case you don't want to retopo and UV and use vertex attributes instead, what you could do is export two separate models:

• One with ordinary colour stored as vertex colour attribute.
• The second - with roughness (or any other channel) stored in vertex colour attribute. You can use "Copy Channels" to copy Roughness to RGB channels.

Then, in Blender import both models and copy vertex colours from the second one into new vertex attribute of the first model. Hide the second model. After this, it should only be a matter of making the shader read this new attribute and interpret as roughness.

I'm not sure if the above is possible in Blender because I don't use it, however I don't see why it wouldn't be.

[Mr X]

I've been thinking about exporting the gloss separately but if you can only do it with another model it wont work for me. Blender is a memory hog...