The Rifle next-gen tutorial (links below) is a more thorough step-by-step of the edge-looping and baking process. I wanted to include this on my page as another example of this method applied. I say ugly chair because I typed "ikea chair" into Google and modeled the first thing I saw...)
Model - Maya
UVs - Headus UV
Texture - PhotoShop
Baking - Turtle
You can click on the images to see larger versions with thumbnails of the textures used in each.
Flat shaded model with default lighting and wire frame. All quads.
The baked normal map applied as color so you can see it.
Ambient occlusion no lighting. This is used when making the color map.
Spherical harmonics applied as color so you can see it. Each channel (RGB) is separated and
used to give the final color map slight form and separation but not enough to fight with
the real-time game lighting. This is done for aesthetic reasons only and not as spherical harmonics
is intended for game lighting. Nothing tricky here.
Here is the spherical harmonic map combined with the occlusion map with no lighting. The surfaces
have separation and form baked in. Later this is combined with the color map (pictured below).
I lit the chair with the occlusion and normal maps so you could see the lighting contribution to
the images below.
This is the final color texture with no lighting. You can see the occlusion and the spherical harmonic map
at work here. Note the surfaces retain some form. The top and sides are slightly "hotter".
However this form is subtle enough not to fight game lighting.
Here is the lighting with color, specular and normal maps. Here the occlusion and
spherical harmonic maps are baked into the color map.
And with the wire frame showing.
Here are the textures used. You can click on them to see them at higher resolutions. All textures are at 100%. I suggest occlusion
and specular maps be used at 50% to save a little memory.
If you want to see how I combined my baked layers (spherical harmonics, etc.) check out the PhotoShop file here. You'll
see that once the baking is complete the textures are simple.
Other Pages:
2. Low Resolution Modeling and UVs
3. Texture Baking and Surface Transfer
5. Links and More Useful Stuff
